Saturday, July 01, 2006

Phone Calls I Never Should Have Made

"Hello, Ramada Inn how can I help you"
"I have a question that will probably seem a little absurd."
Pause .. "Yes?"
"Well... do you have a reservation for 15 kung fu masters coming from China on Sunday and staying for a week or two?"
Silence
"I guess the reservation wouldn't include the whole kung fu aspect of things, but do you have a reservation for 15 Chinamen on the 23rd?"
"Excuse me?"
"I'm trying to track down my master ... er.. a friend who's coming from China. All I know is that he may or may not be coming on Sunday, is probably traveling in a group of 15, and probably made the reservation within the past couple of days. It could have been made by the Chinese consulate, if that helps."
"I don't really know what to do with that information."
"Well.."
"In my computer, I mean, do you have a reservation number?"
"No, I only heard this third hand from his lackey... friend of a friend, you know..."
"A name, perhaps?"
"Zhang. Last name Zhang, first name Shengli"
The sound of typing
"His name isn't coming up, are you sure that it was this Ramada inn?"
"Well, I heard something like Lamada Jiudian. That's kinda like Ramada, isn't it? Lomada? Lemada? Something."
"Could you call back tomorrow after 9:00 and talk to the day manager. Maybe he could help you."
"Sorry to be of confusion"
"No problem"

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Ask a Spook...

Wandering over to www.familysecuritymatters.org, which tries to make cringing in abject terror fun for the whole family, I came across a "Ask Willa" that gets a former CIA case officer to answer your questions. Ever the inquisitive one, several questions immediately leaped into my head. I sent in the first one that I could fit into 500 characters or less.

"Dear Willa,
I read of a man that was rendered by the CIA and taken to a secret prison where, aside from other abuses, his penis was mutilated with a scalpel every day for over a week. How do you decide that a person's genitals need to be mutilated in the interests of America's National Security?"

I will be sure to post her reply to this and any further questionings, they will doubtlessly be very enligtening.

(via Steve Clemons)

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

There is no war on Terror.

Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?
Ben Kenobi - Star Wars.

I’m sure that most people don’t remember the name Abu Zubaydah. Every couple of months we hear a new name of an al Queda second in command who was just taken out in a victory for the war on terror, so its hard to keep track. But at the time Abu Zubaydah, was a big deal. He was said to be al Queda’s chief of operations, the first, it turns out, to be taken to a secret prison and tortured for information in a legal black hole.

It turns out that there were a lot of untruths said about him.

Apparently he was not in charge of logistics for al Queda terror cells, but helped arrange travel for the wives and children of al Queda leaders. He was a small fish without any inside information on operational planning.

Apparently he was completely insane. He had meticulously detailed journals in several different personalities describing what people wore, ate and said for 10 years.

It turns out that the president was informed of these facts, lied about them to the American public in order to pretend to have a victory in the war on terror. I guess keeping things confidential means never having to say “I’m sorry.”

Even after the CIA decided that he was worthless, the President ordered him to be tortured for information. The fact that he was thought to have multiple personality disorder even before being subjected to psychological and physical abuse did not prevent the information that he produced from being taken seriously. Every time he gave out the details of an impending assault on a monument or shopping mall, sending thousands of personnel from various agencies rushing across the US to protect against these “threats.”

A lot of the discussion of the use of torture, secret prisons, extra-judicial killings and spying has been framed as a conflict between heard headed realists who are willing to do what needs to be done to protect America on one hand, and the misguidedly sentimental who don't know what it takes to fight the enemy that we're up against.

The problem with that, of course, is that - all moral and legal considerations aside- you have to have faith that you're killing, jailing torturing and spying on the right people. Moreover, you have to believe that torture works. As its going on behind closed doors, outside of any oversight, you can only trust in the competence and integrity of the people involved. Of course, they’ve lied about confidential information in the past, made huge errors of judgment, and left a trail of dead bodies, cooked books, and devastated cities foreign and domestic in their wake. So, yes you can only trust blindly in the competence and integrity of the people involved.

It turns out that not only is the US government undermining the constitution and the very freedoms that they claim to be defending, not only are they committing atrocities, but they’re doing it very poorly.

So, who's the more batshit crazy, the raving lunatic, or the jackass who beats him even more senseless than he was to begin with and starts running around like a chicken with its head cut off every time he says boo?

Or the people who elect them into office, and sit idly by...