Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

In no particular order, a batch of war-related, civil-rights, and otherwise political links, with some snippets of brief commentary:

One comment that I wanted to put above the lj-cut tag because I wanted to make it harder to overlook, is from the Salon article noted inside the lj-cut:

"The real danger to our liberty comes from politicians wanting to look like they are doing something in a time of crisis," said the ACLU's Edgar. "Unfortunately, it's inevitable that there will be politicians, including politicians in the Justice Department, who aren't really looking to make us safer but to take advantage of the situation."

I don't entirely agree with every page I link to here -- some come close to the mark without hitting it, others I'm still trying to make up my mind about, and some I actually do agree with. And I'll even try to include some that I disagree with but feel say important things or present other viewpoints especially well. But the idea is to gather a bunch of pages in the "makes you think" or "needs saying" categories, so you can probably infer my general leaning from these.

Salon.com, 24 March, Shut Your Mouth, "As radio giants censor antiwar musicians, TV networks bully pro-peace actors, and Attorney General John Ashcroft prepares a new assault on civil liberties, a climate of intimidation creeps over America." Stuff that scares me more than terrorists. Much more.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Ashcroft has authorized more than 170 secret searches and/or wiretaps -- more than three times the total authorized over the past 23 years by all other attorneys general combined. Meanwhile, the Post reported, FBI field offices have issued scores of so-called national security letters, a PATRIOT Act tool that requires businesses to provide the FBI with information about an individual's finances, telephone calls, e-mail messages and the like -- all without a warrant and all without prior court approval.

Wired, 2 January, "Bush's Year of U.S. Surveillance", compares Bush to Sauron. "The executive branch's attempts in 2002 to peer into the lives of Americans were more than a little similar to the exploits of Middle Earth's would-be rulers."

A more frightening cautionary tale from CommonDreams: When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

"With a wink of the eye, extreme torture goes unreported" from Vancouver's The Republic, May 2002.

"In October last year, US President George Bush signed into law new regulations for federal agents who are questioning suspects or material witnesses in terrorist investigations that allow them to employ torture. In the trauma of the immediate weeks following the September 11 attacks, these new regulations passed without any Congressional debate or any scrutiny by the media. Seven months later, there still has been no review of this crucial issue." [...]

"Media onslaught being prepared by White House" (AM, an Australian radio program, 20 March) describes attempts to control how this war is percieved. This does not scare or anger me -- it actually makes a great deal of sense politically -- but it should serve as a reminder to be wary of believing you're seeing the whole story anywhere.

I think I need one of these: "The Bill of Rights - Security Edition is a single sturdy metal card with the First Ten Amendments to the constitution of the United States printed on both sides. [...] You need to get used to offering up the bill of rights for inspection and government workers need to get used to deciding if you'll be allowed to keep the Bill of Rights with you when you travel." I've got no idea how it gets handled in practice, but considering that the last time I flew (June 2002), I was handed a drink in an aluminium can that I could've very easily turned into a pair of nasty makeshift knives, ...

At least this bodes well for the success of the fighting now that it's started: The leader of the AutoBots is going to Iraq

"When you murder peaceful dissent in America, you murder America itself.": George W. Bush is out of control ("Arrest Me", editorial by William Rivers Pitt in truthout 4 March)

[...] It is ironic, in a grisly sort of way. Hard-right conservatives spent the entirety of the Clinton administration baying to anyone fearful enough to listen that the President was coming for their freedoms, that it was only a matter of time before the Bill of Rights was destroyed. The myth of the black helicopters, the apocalyptic views of the Turner Diaries, and a smoking crater in Oklahoma City all testified to the brittle paranoia these people promulgated in those years.

Now, those same people have representatives with parallel views on virtually every domestic and foreign policy idea in control of the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, the intelligence services and the United States military. These are the people who brought us the Patriot Act, versions 1.0 and 2.0, the people who are responsible for the most incredible constitutional redactions in our history.

Ask Mr. O'Conner and Ms. McAliskey about it. They can tell you what happens to undesirables these days. [...]

Courtland Milloy, in The Washington Post, 24 March, Something Suspicious Is in the Air presents the irony of being questioned as a Suspicious Person for daring to ask questions about a suspicious device.

BBC report of an excellent speech from a British Lieutenant Colonel instructing his troops -- worth reading no matter which side of this issue you're on, or even if you don't care. And there's some interesting discussion of it on this site ...

... which is also where I found this quote from Jordin Kare:

When I heard Colin Powell say that there were 15 nations that were offering support but preferred not to be identified, I realized that the U.S. Government has been reduced to claiming that "the lurkers support us in email."

There's a bunch of other writing there that I haven't gotten to yet but looks interesting.

Pentagon threatens to kill independent reporters in Iraq, from a radio interview with a BBC war correspondent, 10 March. She says that in Desert Storm, "We were told that anything which was going to endanger troops lives which we understood we shouldn't broadcast. But other than that, we were relatively free." But that in the current operation, "The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon ...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."

Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gives another explanation of The president's real goal in Iraq. "The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence." He argues that the real goal is very long-range political positioning of the role of the US in the world.

Kenneth Davidson also writes about The real reasons America is invading Iraq in The Age, 20 March.

George Bush planned "regime change" in Iraq before becoming United States President in January 2001. The events of September 11, 2001, were the pretext for invasion of Iraq, not the reason. The blueprint for the creation of a "global Pax America", to which Bush subscribes and which is driving the invasion of Iraq, was drawn up in September 2000 for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush (George's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff).

A satirical "Apology from Natalie Maines" of the Dixie Chicks

Showing that the matter isn't clear cut or one-sided, these articles gave me pause. They show some reasons to be in Iraq, but I don't think they're the reasons that we are there.:

I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam By Daniel Pepper

Iraqi villagers welcome U.S. troops from CNN

atalanta quoted this Times Online article by Ann Clwyd about atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's government. (I included the linik to Atalanta's post for folks who want to get into the discussion in the comments there.)

Veering off in another direction entirely:

For fans of The Very Secret Diaries (LotR parody), here's The Very Secret Diary of George W. Bush by cygnusfap

therese19 collected what comics and late-night television hosts have been saying about Iraq.

This has gotten long, and I'm not sure when I'll have time to finish it, so I'll declare this "part one of 'n'" and post what I've got so far. I've still got a folder of bookmarks to go through.