New Contender for Stupidest Bush Quote Ever

On August 25, Bush said about soldiers who get killed in the Halliburton War:

I guess you couldn't ask for a better way of life than giving it for something that you believe in.

I guess. Or not. But is dying a "way of life"?

Terror Moms

My Saturday cartoon results from several impulses. Part of it was experimental, to see whether the extreme rightists who run the war blogs, Fox News, Drudge, etc. would rev up their attack machine to defend Cindy Sheehan et al. at Camp Casey when confronted with a cartoon that exactly parallels my March 30, 2002 terror widows critique of Lisa Beamer and other 9/11-related widows and widowers who exploited their spouses' deaths for partisan (right0wing) political gain, book sales, etc. So far, not. They're total fucking hypocrites: when a person exploits their private grief for partisan Republican/pro-Bush/pro-war gain, at bare minimum she deserves to be free from criticism because she's lost a loved one. When she does it for partisan Democratic/anti-Bush/antiwar gain, no one runs interference for her. I just wanted to prove that for all to see.
But that's a secondary motivation. The main one was for me to avoid being a hypocrite. A political cartoonist is supposed to call them as he or she sees them, and that includes sending up the tacky, maudlin and gauche on the left even--especially if--that's where he or she stands politically. The Camp Casey phenomenon has (alert, second Billy Wilder reference on the blog in recent weeks) assumed a certain "Ace in the Hole"/"Big Carnival" atmosphere which to my eyes neatly parallels the disgusting and appalling spectacle of relatives of 9/11 victims parading on stage at the 2004 Republican convention to endorse George W. Bush's election campaign. Someone has to say something when no one else dares. That's my job description.
I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan. I think she's great, although maybe not as great as the African-American father who broke down and cursed Bush on national television upon learning that his son had died for the worthless misadventure in Iraq. They censored that story, which is how you know it had power. But Sheehan is on the correct side of this issue, and I applaud her for galvanizing the perpetually confused and focusless antiwar movement.
And careful readers will note the piece's careful dissection of the lunacy of this war and its supporters.
So why Terror Moms? Like Terror Widows, Saturday's toon isn't about Sheehan, just as my Pat Tillman toons weren't about him. These are about the media coverage, the way that Americans are programmed to perceive them. A right-winger writer recently posited that we are at war with a "totalitarian death cult," i.e., fundamentalist Islamists. Setting aside that the people we're actually fighting are largely secular nationalist resistance fighters (in Iraq) or that we've increased funding to radical Islamists after 9/11 (in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), this assertion prompts the point that the Bushist neocons are actually trying to establish a totalitarian death cult right here in the United States. Consider, for example, that the current debate over the Iraq war now centers around those who lost relatives who were soldiers killed over there. The left and the right each have their respective martyrs to push around the afterlife. Sheehan counterbalanced Tillman. Bush recently dragged out other relatives to counterbalance Sheehan. The assumption, as accepted as it is absurd, is that only the dead and their survivors enjoy the moral high ground to discuss the issue. That sure leaves a lot of us out. And it's just not true. They get a vote, sure, but it counts no more than anyone else's. Only in other societies where despair has led to the creation of a death cult--the Palestinian Territories, Northern Ireland, etc.--has a consensus arisen that gives survivors of tragedy a special voice in the dialogue. And that is what Terror Moms attempts to point out.

SM writes an interesting email:

I appreciate your contributions to public discussion and am with you about 85 percent of the time. I understand your comments about "terror widows" when they pertain to someone trying to leverage his or her family tragedy into book deals, tee-shirt sales, and political gain. I also understand that there may be a fine line between the heartfelt public activism of people like Cindy Sheehan and a degeneration into media hijinx for its own sake. Frankly, I despise the "America Stands With Cindy" logo plastered on CommonDreams -- it's sleaze and gives neocon character assassins something else off-point to aim at.
Similarly, I don't appreciate seeing Joan Baez pumping the all-power fist in the air as if maybe we can all bring back the sizzlin sixties at Camp Casey.
However, I think that sometimes the better part of social commentary, like valor, might be some discretion. It's hard to see the point of mocking parents who have lost children in a war (or any other tragedy) or passing judgment on the motives behind their public expressions (unless of course they're trying to trademark their loved one's last words). There is a whole legion of neocon automata who can do that job without help from you. Why would a savvy guy like you waste bandwidth helping those psychopaths do their job even given the fact that, regrettaby, the "Big Carnival" hangers-on at Camp Casey risk undermining
the credibility of the protest?

Someone very close to me said the same thing. "When we're under siege," she said, "isn't it better to stick together, to avoid criticizing our own side?" Well, yes--if you're a party activist. But I'm independent, both in spirit and in politics. (The righties may have forgotten how mean I was to Clinton, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't have been.) Moreover, a political cartoonist is not a party activist. Once I start adhering to any party line, I become no different than the right-wing hacks who drew cartoons parroting Administration lies about Saddam's fictional WMDs--or, for that matter, the left-wing hacks who depicted John Kerry as anything more than the Anybody Bush Bush clench-your-teeth-and-pull-the-lever choice for patriotic Americans.

I know virtually nothing about Cindy Sheehan except that she is responsible for an action that has helped war protest to break through to mainstream media during the August "silly season." Nothing, as far as I can remember, has been as effective at publically pointing out exactly what a putz and a dunce our federal chief executive is. It's hard for an opponent of this hateful, sinful, fascist war of aggression not to admire Sheehan's actions for their own intrinsic value. And even if you can find something in that to wisecrack about, what's the real value? Why not put craven DLC democrats in your crosshairs more often instead of taking cheap shots at parents or spouses who have suffered the ultimate loss... for reasons worse than none at all.

I often criticize the DNC and I'll do it again.

You and I agree that anyone is a fool if he or she joins the military for college money and weekend adventure with the Army Reserves. We evidently don't agree on the issue of publically mocking their stupidity after they've died or been mutilated.

It's not about mocking them. It's about trying to educate other young men and women currently considering enlistment. Joining the military is stupid. This uncomfortable truth, one that millions of people say quietly in private, needs to become a loud chorus if we're to unmask the cult of militarism that feeds Bush's cult of death.

To be honest, I wonder if you aren't playing a bit of the Politics of Identity that you so correctly attack in "Wake Up" and elsewhere. From time to time I think you overplay your self-appointed identity as America's BS Detector. If you want to play that role --- and there are few people who can play it as effectively as you --- then I feel it would be good practice to turn the BS Detector on yourself once in awhile. I hope you don't become smug in your role because I think it makes you less effective.
Thanks for reading this and I hope you will take what I say mostly as a vote of confidence and admiration. I wouldn't have spent an hour composing this note if I didn't care about your work. Best wishes.

No doubt, that is great advice. Smugness is the great enemy of the social commentator, one that I hope I don't succumb to too frequently.

Cultural Suicide via Digitalization

Many people, some of the techies, wrote about this week's column.

Doug wrote:

I found your article on memory loss interesting and informative. I do, however, feel that you may have understated the problem. Long before we began storing information on temporary electronic media, we were using acidic paper, which doesn't last much longer. Cloth paper can survive for centuries, but acid-bleached wood pulp paper decays in a matter of decades. Librarians and archivists refer to this problem as "slow fires" which are quietly destroying vast quantities of information all over the world. Some countries have begun to convert records stored on acid paper, but not all, and some will probably never have the funds to do so. Such books and records will eventually crumble to dust. Most paper produced since the late 19th century is doomed unless microfilmed or treated with chemicals. This problem was understood before electronic media became common, but nothing was learned from our earlier mistakes.

I have copies of newspapers from the early 1800s printed on paper that's still clean and white. Cloth paper rocks. I wonder how long, say, paperbacks will last.

Peter wrote:

Read your piece. Correct. Paper trumps all.

Years ago when I was the editor of a trade magazine called "Instruments and Control Systems" I wrote an editorial entitled "The wave of the future is...Analog?" The piece had more to do with data display than the medium on which it was preserved but it made much the same points. As for display, when you look at your watch or speedometer, you don't usually need to know that the time is 8:56:32 or your speed is 61.68 mph.
Takes more time for the mind to acquire that information than a quick glance that tells you it's about 9 o'clock or your speed is about 62 mph. Human beings are analog devices.
Nothing tires me more than trying to read a long article off a computer display. Paper rules!

Technological design is so fucking cool because it deals with stuff that people do every day without thinking. Why does up mean the lightswitch is on? Does your DVD player really need an eject button on the remote control? I love that stuff. And yeah, reading a long piece on a screen sucks. I usually print them out because I miss too much if I don't. I'd love to see a study of reading comprehension comparing how effectively readers process computer-read and paper-read media. If my hate mail is any indication, computer readers tend to miss more.

Phaedrus wrote:

What a great column!
I work in a state governmental library and the whiz-bang digital documents are a flying. We used to get all reports in old-fashioned paper but now, wow, the agencies are publishing to the Web! What's that you say, you need last month's report? Oh, we took that down to put up this month's report. Those old reports are full of just dusty old numbers and stodgy facts. It is not new and improved. What did we do with the old one? I think we deleted it or something.
We get groups touring our library all the time and one of the "facts" the tour guides present is that oh all the information in these books is on the Web now! Oh really. Somebody has scanned and digitized all these old books? Really. And just where would one find them. Scary people think that if it is not on the Web, it does not exist. And when the majority of information is digital only, poof, facts will change and "history" will be malleable. Want to make 43 the greatest president of all time? Easy. The proof of WMD is in his digital presidential library.
Again, great column. By the way, I also enjoy your cartoons. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I think, sometimes I get really pissed off. But, isn't that what an editorial cartoon is supposed to do?

I love the above line about people expecting to find everything on the Web. Look, the Web is incredibly cool; I couldn't imagine life without it. But I'm reminded of a column I wrote a few months ago citing the results of a CNN poll. Several people wrote to say that couldn't find it anywhere, including on CNN's website, and were thus doubting my accuracy. "I saw it on CNN," I replied. "On TV." No, not everything exists on the Web.

Kelan writes:

There is an upside to this destruction of data. Future generations (let me go out on a large limb here and say---- assuming there are any future generations) will not have to know that our society bought large numbers of disks for the shittiest crap ever written-----Madonna, Brittany Spears, N'Stink, etc.

It's a point worth pondering. As things are now, there's a terrible danger that that music will be considered classic someday, the way Dickens (who sucks) is considered classic now.

Clare wrote:

I'm a big fan. Started with your comics, now of your commentaries and blog. Your current commentary is right on the money. When I was studying to become a librarian, I visited the Supreme Court of Florida's reference department. The archivist was tearing his hair out trying to keep players working for betamax and VHS formats (as all proceedings, by law, are recorded on video). Digital technology was just coming into use then. I'm sure he's now working with DVDs. His office looked like a electro-techno-junkyard, as he was having to cannibalize old players just to keep working models to display his tapes. And they're creating new material so fast he doesn't have time to re-format.
This rush to computerize data is being done with all the deliberation of a cattle stampede. Little or no thought is being given to the technological implications involved.
As I browse our stacks (at the Brooklyn Public Library), it's interesting to note that printed material from the 18th and early 19th century is in better shape than books published as recently as 20 years ago because it was published on rag paper, a medium that will outlive us all.
It's also sad to see families transferring their old 8 mm films to VHS and now digital video in the belief that they'll have a record of their families to past down to their heirs, when the current formats probably won't survive them.
Your commentary should be required reading for anyone interested in archival preservation.

Thanks. People don't seem to understand the magnitude of what's out there. Let's take music as an example. Each time we make a format change, from 78s to 33 LPs to CDs to MP3, the vast majority of music gets left behind. Big band music, for example, was recorded in vast numbers, but fewer than 1 percent of the genre will ever be rereleased on CD. True, most of the great classics of a genre are in sufficient demand that they will be adapted to a new format. But not all, not even close to all. A lot of stuff falls through the cracks. If Hollywood can't even release all of Billy Wilder's classic films on DVD, how the hell can we expect them to get all that Roger Corman stuff out?

Richard wrote:

An interesting article on an issue I've struggled with HREF="http://www.livejournal.com/users/richardf8/38303.html">some myself.

Ultimately, I think you can take comfort in some words of your own: "Moreover, while the majority of books printed 400 years ago have been destroyed, a few remain." The ancient world had it's own transient media too - wax tablets were used for note-taking in the Roman era. They, by and large, don't survive. Also stuff of value or interest on the web quite often makes it into print, from webcomics to Darwin Awards. And much of the conversion of printed media to digital form that is taking place is being done to facilitate study of the manuscripts without subjecting the manuscripts themselves to the risks of handling. This is a GOOD thing for the preservation of culture.

Digitalization of manuscripts is smart. It's replacing the creation of written paper manuscripts with digital files that I'm questioning.

Lakshminath wrote:

Excellent article on the storage industry and how we all rush to store everything we already have (e.g., throwing away faded 50-year old photographs after digitizing them) and the new data on new media and formats.
For my email, I refuse to use MS Outlook since it stores data in a proprietary format that can be changed at the whims of Bill, and instead use ASCII text format that has a longer life time. (format)
I think nations should find alternative means to archive samples of our history in various formats. Apparently Bill has a plan to digitize art works and provide us commonfolk with only digital versions of those works. (Note that there would be no guarantee whether we are seeing, or the future generations would be seeing actual artwork or Bill's own rendering of it :-))
Anyway, great article.

Corporate control of information is another pressing issue.

Albert disagrees:

I usually agree with your positions—have even dropped acquaintances who took offense when I emailed them links to your columns. However, I must take exception with your assertion that digital media storage is doomed—or dooming. Your points about the fallibility of hard media storage are valid—CDs and DVDs fail over time, as do floppy disks and other magnetic media. This may or may not be a tragedy for an individual, depending on how assiduous they’ve been about backing up their data. However when it comes to archiving data, fallible hard media need not be an issue.
Beyond the optical and magnetic storage media you mentioned there now exists solid state electronic storage devices—the technology of the “thumb” drive—that are on a rapidly falling cost curve while providing increasingly greater storage density (bits per cubic inch). This means that we’ll soon not only be able to store our personal media on devices with no moving parts, but we’ll have access to cheap on-line storage services. We can begin to think of our content libraries more as digital rights to content stored on line, whether by such a service or by the content owners themselves. We may also have recourse to on-line repositories of our own digitally signed copies of said media with copy to hard media rights as well as play-out rights. Importantly, on-line data will be mirrored in geographically diverse facilities so that even in the event of a catastrophic failure our data will be preserved. Of course, we haven’t had ubiquitous access to such services until now that broadband access to becoming capacious enough to allow play out of multimedia files without the inconvenience of a cumbersome wait or undesirable performance due to inchoate networks.
Eventually we’ll see the costs of solid state storage reach price points for capacious enough devices that they will displace older, more fallible technologies in the consumer marketplace. We’ll see digital video recorder devices (like TiVo) rely on such storage rather than hard disk drives as they do today. Likewise we’ll see solid state iPods and the like with enough capacity to store full motion video and tunes alike—as well as a generalization to all digital media—photos, books, and vlogs. We’ll have solid state storage in our PCs for connected back-up and play out within our homes as well as recourse to hard copying to improved blue laser CDs and DVDs. And always, content owners will keep their digital masters in geographically diverse, mirrored and reliable storage facilities. Rather than see our cultural heritage crumble and fade, we’ll be able to preserve it reliably for posterity.
Finally, let’s not decry a technological revolution that’s still in its nascence. Since we’re talking about storage media, we should observe the incredible advances made only in the last 20 years. Remember the 12” floppy disk? How about the 20 MB hard drive? As we step up the ladder of innovation, we should migrate our content along with us. This must be an on-going project. We shouldn’t feel that once we’ve archived something on (say) a 650 MB CD-RW that we shouldn’t need to re-archive as new technology becomes available and that we shouldn’t have a back-up. This was the real tragedy at Alexandria and Pergamon, etc.: lack of redundancy. Sure, their paper lasted a long time, but couldn’t avoid a catastrophic failure. Now that we have swarming technology available to us the body of digital content eventually will be jointly held by the whole of connected humanity. A digital media asset will be stored in many anywheres and available everywhere. We may feel little need to amass our own huge collections of CDs, for example, and rely on the enormity of storage to which we’re connected. Look at the kids and their iTunes; they’re already showing us the way.

One thing I wish I'd included in my column is the fact that each format change requires people to convert old data to the new format if they wish to preserve it. In many, many cases, however, people either decide that it's too much trouble to sift through all that "old stuff" or are clueless as to how to go about it. And as for that assertion that data can usually be retrieved after a crash, that hasn't been my experience. The cost is usually high and the effectiveness is usually much less than zero. I lost an entire chapter of "Wake Up! You're Liberal" for no reason whatsoever--my Word for Mac OS X seemingly believed that the huge word file was just one long word and wouldn't allow me to edit "it." Hard drive crashes have wiped me out. Ditto for most of my computer-using friends. Yes, computers rock. But you wouldn't fly in a plane that worked as well as MS Word.

And Jim gets the last word:

Thanx for the info on the virtual uselessness of discs, I did not know that! But after thinking about it for a New York second, after our civilization is totally destroyed in a nuclear holocaust of inevitable epic proportions, whenever that may be. Being 53 and growing up with bomb shelters and the threat of impending doom back then from the Russians and now with al queda's ideology of death, I'm not so sure any record of our civilization is of any importance. Upon close examination of our history of the last several millenia, what do you see? Let's start with the Holocaust(being Jewish, a logical start), western civ is a myriad of wars, the Crusades, genocide after genocide, Rwanda, WW's I & II, Viet Nam, Iwo Jima, 9/11, Hellenic Wars, a couple centuries of slavery ending only with an epic bloodbath. Albert Einstein was quoted, after decling an invitation to the Manhatten project salon, "I don't know how this war will end, but if there is a WWIII, WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones", wrap your mind around that! In light of the accomplishments of our great lunar landing, what remarkable benefits have we actually enjoyed from that feat at immeasurable costs. And finally, our current administration is such an immense embarassment, that any record of that for any future civilizations would reflect as personal disgrace for you and I to have been included as collateral participants, by happenstance of being born into it. So let the "historical documents" a la Galaxy Quest of South Park and Survivor and Big Brother 6 be stored on discs. It's a good thing!
I love you Ted, so enjoy today, it's all we ever have!

But She's a New Yorker Too

Ann writes:

Any thoughts about your pal Ann Coulter's latest idiotic rant. I figured being a New Yorker and someone who generally knows that anything that comes out of that witch's mouth is ridiculous, you might like to weigh in.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/08/26/ann-coulter-new-yorkers-_n_6277.html
Love your stuff, would love to see you on Real Time,

No one knows who would do what when push came to shove. I certainly wouldn't envy the occupation army trying to subjegate a bunch of gun-toting Midwesterners. On the other hand, New Yorkers are an ornery bunch, and occupying densely-populated urban areas has always been dicey. The toughest part of Iraq for the U.S. to control, for example, is the Sadr City section of Baghdad, so much so that it has been ceded to local militias.
What bothers me about Ann's latest is her certainty of what people "would" do. She doesn't know, and she doesn't even build a case based on historical precedent--she ought to be able to do that based on her education, right?--to show why what happened before would happen again.
As for "Real Time," ask Bill Maher. He has my number.

Terror Widows, Anyone?

From the lede of Ann Coulter's column this week:

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn. Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on "Entertainment Tonight," you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.

Let's see. Ted Olsen, one of the three "terror widows" in my (in) famous comic from 2002, appeared on "Larry King" a week after his wife's death to promote Bush's war on terror(TM), aka neo-fascist agitprop. Mariane Pearl made repeated appearances on cable news stations to promote her two books. So did the "Let's Roll" (R) widow. (She also sold a book, and filed for a trademark on the term "Let's roll.") Of course, I was demonized by Coulter's right-wing fellow travelers for criticizing these people for the (strange) way they chose to mourn their losses. Psychotic self-hating African-American pol Alan Keyes called for me to be censored, jailed and shot to death, not necessarily in that order. My, how things have changed.
So how about it, Ann? Are you a hypocrite? If you're not, I expect you to take the terror hos who shilled for the GOP on stage at the 2004 Republican Convention to task every bit as much as you do Cindy Sheehan. (holding breath...)

Jeremy Gets it Just Right

He summarizes:

I don't think you're insulting the military by focusing on the atrocities some soldiers have committed. When they stop torturing and killing innocent people, then you can stop calling it to our attention, but not before. It sucks that good soldiers are looked upon with suspicion nowadays, but most people still respect them and call them heroes when they die. It's like being a cop: They get to carry a gun. They get to search people and lock them up. They get to kill people when *they* decide it is justified. In exchange, we get to criticize them when abuses of power come to light. They have guns and we have speech. I'd hate to be in their shoes, but they should consider what it's like to have a conscience but no weapons. It ain't easy.

No comment needed.

Lag Time

Jason asks:

Not to bitch about something I enjoy for free, but I was wondering why there's always a fairly significant lag in the ucomics.com page for your work? I read a number of other strips on that site and they always are updated daily.
Case in point, today's the 18th, the latest comic is from the 13th. It would appear we're missing two.
I'm sure you have many other things to concern yourself with, but I'm starting to fall behind the blog, and look forward to getting a chance to read whatever comic it is that has so many folks up in arms over our troops comporting themselves in a less than gentlemanly manner.
Although I obviously don't have enough to do at work today, I'll nonetheless keep this short and close by relaying that I am truly a fan of your work and hope you keep doing what you do for many, many years to come.

Thanks, Jason. These are legitimate concerns. The short answer is: not my fault, not my fault! My syndicate maintains my online archives, not me. So sometimes things get screwed up. Of course, there is an option: for the small price of $10/year (or $5/6 months), you can have my cartoons and columns emailed directly to your inbox, often as much as 4-5 days before they appear online. Just email chet@rall.com to sign up to the Ted Rall Subscription Service.

Reasons to be Cheerful

That's an Ian Dury reference, New Wave fans.
Ben asks:

Regarding the comic in which you pilloried Democrats for cheering “My candidate didn’t lose by much!”
What does cheer you up in troubled times like these? As you well know, Bush & Co. have left precious little about which to feel good these days. When I’m trying to think of something positive (on the days I can drag myself out of bed without going on a rampage), I can’t come up with much; sometimes the only thing I can think of in that vein about 2004 is “Well, at least we didn’t get McGoverned or Dukakised (sp?)!” Not very cheery, I realize.
So! Any suggestions?

Patrick Fitzgerald (not to be confused with Patrik Fitzgerald, the brilliant lost "punk poet" of the late 1970s, is working up a tasty case against Rove, Cheney, etc. That alone gives me cause to get up in the morning.

From Another Vet

Jeff writes:

I frequently read your stuff on Common Dreams and elsewhere.

But Goddamn!!
Todays thing made me say "Hell Yes !"
I've been saying the same things for about as long as you apparently have
But I've never heard anyone with a wide audience say it.
It was apparent to me what was up....
we are ruled by a bunch of fucking thieves and murderers...
and they stole the last election too.......
I HATE the loss of life, but in a way I am glad to see things go so totally to shit in Iraq.....
And I DO NOT feel obliged to sacrifice a fucking thing for this war........
let all the dumb assholes who supported this thing pay the price...
I'm a fucking Vet myself........but I'm getting the hell out of here....
the American people are too fucking lazy, stupid and greedy to govern themselves........
And I have been saying that for at least a couple of decades.........

That's right: Thieves and murderers are ruling America. Loverly.

Praise from Overseas, Sort of

Brett says:

I'm an expatriate American here in Japan. I haven't lived in the States for over 9 years. It's been disheartening to watch what's happened in the US the past 5 years, especially the emasculation of our media and the Nero-like attitude of most Americans. We Americans abroad are confronted on a daily basis by the enmity created by Dubya and his minions; while most people are able to separate Americans from Dubya, that became extremely difficult to sell after the last election.
Now, I love my country and I refuse to kowtow and apologize for being an American; I will savage the Bush regime to anyone who wants to confront me about it (which happens all too often these days), but when people start in on Americans in general I push back. Fortunately, I have always been able to rely on your columns and cartoons to prove to people that not all Americans are asleep at the wheel. Thank you for that.
I don't always agree with your views, obviously. I'm not a sycophant! But I have great admiration for the courage you've shown these past 5 years in the face of the relentless onslaught from brain-dead right wing pyschos. Thanks for that.
Your new cartoon with Bush sleeping away counting flag-draped coffins is perfect. When you're good, you're very good. Nice job.

Thanks for getting it.

Moral Equivalence, Republican Style

DF writes:

Hey Ted,,,ain't wrote you in a while. I have been looking at your toons,,,just to get a laugh at the left side of things. I don't want to argue or bitch at you...you're gonna believe what you want and I the same. I do have 1 thing for you though. You say that what happened at Abu Ghraib was "torture"...I say it was child's play and will prove it.
Go to this link (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/st/~ehimchak/death_march.html) and see what Americans suffered at the hands of Japs. Compare the two. Now,,,do you still think that what happened in Iraq was torture?

Yes.
So this is what it's come to: now the armchair warriors are reduced to comparing themselves favorably with the Japanese war criminals of World War II.

One Vet Says

Bryan says:

Your column, "Sacrifice? Count me out." was some of your best work that I've read. I don't always agree with you, but this time you really knocked one out of the park. Kudos. By the way, I am a veteran who has been "over there". Keep up the good work.

Thanks, man, I appreciate it. And for those who wonder, yeah, I hear from a lot of disgruntled Iraq war vets.

The Big Tent and the Troops

BY writes:

Ted, you're a god. Unfortunately, a lot of liberals would disagree with me. The Left is split on whether we should criticize the troops for obeying unethical orders; too many think we'd hurt the soldiers' pwecious wittle feewings. How can we all fit into the Big Tent?

God? More like a minor wood nymph. But thanks.
Two thoughts:
First, it's time for the Democratic Party/American left to start recognizing that there is a wide range of opinion concerning the sort of tactics we deploy against the neofascist hard right. It's embarrassing to see Democrats shy away from their own party chairman, Howard Dean--particularly when he's one of the few Dems willing to say out loud what they all say over rosé.
Which brings me to point two. One of the major reasons Americans don't trust Democratic politicians is thay they come off as even more mealy-mouthed than their Republican counterparts. Some straight-talking, even trash-talking, is what's in order here. That includes not allowing themselves to be beaten over the head with the flag or the flag's well-armed surrogates, the military. Besides which, the kind of people who'd take offense to such remarks probably won't vote left anyway.

Sacrifice for Sacrifice's Sake?

Regular Right-wing Correspondent Alan writes:

Did you get many emails from regular readers who were surprised to hear you say you weren't interested in making a sacrifice?
You're certainly not alone in that. Unquestionably, the per capita rate of U.S. citizens unwilling to make any personal sacrifice to protect this nation is growing exponentially and will eventually result in its' demise.
Our soldiers in Iraq are taking a disrespecting from the liberal pacifists now, much like the Viet Nam vets did. When the day comes that you really need someone to protect your ass you'll find that, with the help of your liberal brethren, you've convinced everyone that nothings worth risking your life for.

No, Alan. Liberals, as much or more than other Americans, are always willing to sacrifice to protect this nation. That doesn't mean, however, sacrificing every time Piehole wages another bullshit war for no reason--er, no good reason. The wars against Afghanistan and Iraq don't have anything to do with protecting America. And that is why they're not worth risking so much as a toenail for.
Oh, and please drop that "disrespected Vietnam vets" line. That's been thoroughly debunked. It didn't happen to any significant extent.

"Slandering" Troops

A Marine major writes:

As a Marine reservist who was mobilized last year and has returned, I find your cartoon about our current troops committing torture very saddening.  I wish you could spend some time in Iraq with the troops to see first hand how our troops interact with the Iraqi people.  

Thank you for your service, but I can't help noticing the way that you gloss over the proven, photographed, widely documented acts of systematic torture committed by many US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere. The fact is, many soldiers who may not condone such behavior become tarnished by it because their sense of loyalty and embarrassment prevents them from speaking out against it. The truth is, it's more the duty of honorable US soldiers to condemn torture by Americans than it is mine or anyone else's--but they're not doing it.

Our troops today are patient, kind and disciplined.  To characterize them as sadist only aids the enemy's propaganda efforts. 

 
It would be more accurate to say that some are patient, kind and disciplined. Others--many others--clearly are anything but. If you watch the documentary "Gunner Palace," various reports from embedded reporters on CNN and elsewhere, or if you have personally witnessed the behavior of US troops in the battlefield (as I did in Afghanistan), you can't help but be stricken by the horrific, rude, unprofessional and abusive behavior of many (not a few bad apples, but many) American soldiers acting as our representatives and ambassadors to the rest of the world. Breaking into people's homes, particularly in the Middle East where such an act is considered a personal transgression of the highest order, is simply unaccptable. Placing bags over men's heads, holding down their heads with one's foot, using plastic handcuffs--these are all acts of abuse that inspire hatred and contempt against US forces and, by extension, the United States. And rounding up people for indefinite detention, without being charged, is simply inexcusable, and puts on a similar moral footing with our worst enemies of the past. Even Nazi Germany pretended to adhere to the Geneva Conventions related to the treatment of POWs, but we do not in Afghanistan, Gitmo, or other US concentration camps.
The best way to avoid being characterized as sadistic by enemy propaganda is to stop practicing sadism.

I wish people would stop politicizing the war on the left or right.  I wish that people would realize for the G.I. in the field is a simple matter of us completing our mission and establishing a democratic Iraq or letting the terrorist win and vindicating their strategy of murdering innocents to achieve political gain.  (If the terrorist win, terrorism will only grow exponentially.)

The war was politicized from the start because it was launched by the right, without the support of the left but rather over its loud objections. The right's unwillingness to build consensus, or if such a thing was impossible to give up the enterprise entirely, is responsible for our current divisiveness. Characterizing Iraqi resistance fighters as "terrorists" when the Pentagon itself estimates that 90 percent of them are native nationalist Iraqis is not helpful or useful. What is sad here is that the G.I. in the field, as you put it, has been assigned an impossible task in an unwinnable war using insufficient force strength and equipment. A democratic Iraq can never emerge from the occupation. Hell, right now there isn't an Iraq at all, but rather a de facto independent Iraqi Kurdistan and a rump Iraq minus Kurdistan. The various political and ethnic factions will fight their civil war until long after we've withdrawn. That became inevitable when we removed Saddam Hussein, the tyrant of a nation without any viable political rivals. As for murdering innocents, well, the United States can hardly claim that it doesn't do that in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, right--those are "accidents." Well, that's what the insurgents say too.

I am personally very close to a Baghdad family who lost their father to Saddam's reign of terror.  The former regime and the Baathist insurgents tortured, killed and oppressed almost the entire population including children.  More than 400,000 dead mass graves should speak for themselves.   I was in Bosnia twice and Iraq's tyranny was much worse.

There's no need to exagerrate Saddam's crimes. He was a barbarous dictator. But nothing close to 400,000 graves have ever been unearthed, and the gassing of the Kurds is a far more complicated affair than Bush would have us believe. Let's just say that no one misses Saddam, except perhaps Iraqis who long for regular electricity.

My wife is a Navy nurse currently on her way to Al-Anbar province.  We also have a two year old daughter.  I politely request that you honor our family's personal sacrifice by not charactering us in this way.  We wear the uniform and you have slandered us.  It is very frustrating to see propaganda like this coming from your fellow countrymen when you are putting your life on the line for people seeking to be free of fear and terror.
I recommend you read Natan Shransky's book "The Case for Democracy" to get a perspective on the Middle East.  I have spent significant time there and also have a M.S. in Int'l Relations with a Middle Eastern focus.

Suffice it to say, I've spent enough time in the Middle East to have my own perspective about US relations with same. And I've also read enough propaganda books by wide-eyed neo-conservatives who think we should rebuild the British Empire.

I know if is just a cartoon, but it is filled with ignorance and slanders those who are making great sacrifices for their country and freedom.  Criticize political leaders all you want, but don't please do not slander the troops.

It's not slander if it's true. If we don't want it to be true, we need to change our troops' behavior.

1945 v. 2005

Kelly writes:

I read your "1945" comic on my Yahoo home page. I'm every bit of a "liberal" or "thinking" person as you. But I must say, to portray the soildiers in Iraq that way is BS. Any population has idiots in it, including folks that write commentary as you know. Should people throw you in the same pot as Rush or a similar writer? I know, Rush doesn't write commentary but you get the point.
I have a good friend there now who is also a thinking person and knows the war is bogus. He just wants to come home. I would fell awful if he thought that's how we think of all the troops there. To put all the soldiers in the same vain as your recent strip did does nothing but to alienate the people that need to be reading your column. It also alienates people like me who love your column and email it to all their right wing friends. Just a thought.

One of the interesting aspects of cartooning is that people project their personal biases onto images to an extent that they might not in other media. Take a look at the above-referenced cartoon. There are soldiers, yes, but nowhere does it say that these solders represent all soldiers, or even all US soldiers, or even all US soldiers in each time period. What the cartoon does, or attempts to do, is contrast the shock of US troops upon discovering the death camps and torture chambers of the Third Reich at the end of World War II with the dispassionate, blasé, and yes--even gleeful--attitude of our soldiers upon learning of the abuse, torture and murder of countless (literally) Muslim detainees in American concentration camps at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc. Kelly assumes that I tarnish all 2005 soldiers with torture while failing to realize that this would require me to paint all World War II-era US soldiers as benevolent. In fact, as educated people know, US soldiers were guilty of countless atrocities, including torture and murder, during World War II. Had I wanted to indicate that these troops represented ALL soldiers, I would have indicated that somehow--but I didn't.

The harsher issue, however, is that when ONE soldier is guilty of abuse, torture and/or murder, they all are by extension. The first time an Iraqi was insulted or injured without good cause, the war lost its moral imperative. But let's get real. The abuse of Iraqi civilians and detainees (who are, by definition, all innocent until placed on trial) is widespread, normal, typical. Entire towns have been cordoned off. Night-time raids are usual. Rent the documentary "Gunner Palace" and you'll watch US troops, relying on "intelligence" that a house is a bomb-making lab, break down a family's door in the middle of the night. The men are taken away to Abu Ghraib, never to be seen again, despite the fact that no evidence was ever found of bomb-making on the premises. If Iraq war veterans are honest with themselves, they'll admit that they treated Iraqis disrespectfully--for example, yelling in English at people who only speak Arabic.

But back to the cartoon. The fact remains, America has changed. We, as a society, now condone and accept torture as acceptable. We are not the America that liberated Europe and Asia, but rather something closer to those powers that oppressed them.

Cindy Sheehan

Weinner asks:

I would like to know what your opinion is on the situation involving the protest camp set outside of the geralissimo's house. He couldn't possibly think that ignoring these people will make them go away and he looks more and more heartless by the day. Is he going to do anything about it or just do what he usually does: Nothing?
Don't hand me that guilt crap either! Everyone with an IQ over 60 knows that this man couldn't care less about the lives he's taken.
If it isn't too much trouble, could write about it in your blog?

I don't know whether Bush will meet with Ms. Sheehan or not but this is one of those rare news stories that makes me feel sympathy for Piehole. Almost.
It's hard not to enjoy seeing that shit-for-brains who plays president on TV in a tight spot. God knows he deserves it. On the other hand, this is just the sort of showboating that the GOP usually does so well. If he agrees to meet with Ms. Sheehan, soon there'll be a long line of widows, mothers and other relatives of Iraq and Afghan war dead lining up outside Crawford and, in September, the White House. At the rate he's killing our soldiers--and make no mistake, Bush is every bit as guilty of their deaths as the resistance fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan--he couldn't do anything else if he met with each one every 30 minutes. Imagine if he added the thousands of maimed soldiers too! Meeting with Sheehan would establish the sort of precedent that could rapidly spin out of control.
On the other hand, "The Big Carnival" (Billy Wilder film, and my favorite film of all time) building down the road from Bush's ersatz ranch can only get uglier and cornier from every possible perspective.
I also wish Sheehan hadn't muddied the waters by saying nice things about Piehole when she met with him as part of a group a while back. In the end, however, anyone who's pissed off at Bush, especially someone whose son he sent to a pointless death, is entitled to their rage.

And Finally...

Just finished Googling myself to see what the right-wing warblogs are saying about my retraction. Predictable: they have headlines like "Why Do Liberals Lie So Much"? Hey, pinheads: If I wanted to lie about something, I wouldn't issue a retraction. A retraction is, by definition, an attempt to set the record straight. A lie, on the other hand, is when someone says something that turns out to be untrue, and refuses to admit it. Sound like anyone you know?

Posi writes:

i guess... the families of the dead soldiers can check to see if their child's photo is included on some memorial site, but otherwise it would be tough to know if one's dead soldier was included in the number or not. you'd know he was dead and assume he was counted, but how would you know? they'd all have to count the photos.

Well, there's also a list.

but what i really want to ask is... what's up with the latest toon with mix and match extremists? no clear message or continuity. did the 9000 toon throw you off track?

Nah, it was just a send-up of that absurd term "Islamo-fascist." I tried to go simple, but I wonder if everyone got it without an explanation.

forget it, your dong great work. there's SO much disinformation out there, how the fuck are were supposed to be able to tell between huge lies, small lies, twisted truths, and outlandish acutalities? it's too much.

Yeah, well, that's the problem. Usually I'm pretty good at sussing out the lies, but not this time. Of course, that still makes my record better than all the assholes who think Iraq had something to do with 9/11, but that's a pretty low standard.

Vicker adds:

BS or not, but your cartoon made me wonder about why all casualty figures reported by the US military in Iraq are invariably on the day of the incident. I can recall none having appeared after that date. I assume some soldiers die of their injuries, but these numbers do not
appear to be added to the daily toll killed in action directly. Perhaps your cartoon had a valid point after all, even if the exact number isn't accurate.

That may be.

Chris says:

Must say, I really dig your work, man. Always check in for your weekly columns, and get a good laugh sometimes from your cartoons, also clenched teeth in anger too, not at you though, but at Bu$Co, and how much has changed in so little time, or at least how much the right feels brash enough to say and get away with in the light of day.
Anyways, I also was taken in by the 9000+ originally. Or I felt it was plausible; I have no doubt those boys at the Pentagon would get away with it if they could. Especially with that ban they have going on photographing coffins, the Soviets did the same thing during their Afghan War, delivering the caskets at night. What I have heard about this war is that with rapid medevacs and improved technology, we've been able to save a lot more soldiers' lives than we did in past wars. Unfortunately, what with the IEDs, RPGs, and other assorted lovelies, it seems that the wounds are much more severe... the flak jackets (and they're short on those too, especially your Guardsmen, reservists, and marines... seems the marines often like to use older equipment, or they're stuck with it anyways, and rationalize it by saying it makes 'em feel more "salty"... happened in Nam a lot too) deflect the blast, which then is absorbed by heads and limbs. This has caused an increased number of amputations, and brain damage, blindness, etc. Point is, I think a lot of people see the "wounded" column and think it's like a Hollywood Hero wound; just one in the shoulder, or a little cosmetic blood by the mouth to look all studly. And our oh so extra vigilant press doesn't cover the numbers of wounded much at all... over 14,000 now, or damn close to it according to icasualties.org (I think that's the address). Perhaps some good will come out of this since it's encouraged more research in prosthetics, but it's small comfort for so many of these young people who will need lifelong care.
That's about it for now, I reckon, keep up the good work, Ted, you're a good man for the left, a real asset, true patriot!

I appreciate that. Still, piss fuck shit damn I hate TBRNews.

More Fallout

Mark wrote this Letter to the Editor of E&P:

The "9,000 dead" US troops in Iraq was a smear from a neo-nazi publication (Barnes Review) to discredit the peace movement. Barnes Review works with KKK leader David Duke, praises Hitler and sells Holocaust Denial books. calling it "tbrnews" doesn't change the fact that this is a racist disinformation operation.
Barnes Review's sibling publication "American Free Press" pretends to be an opposition publication investigating scandals but they insert lots of fake claims to discredit real evidence. Perhaps the most notorious is their creation and promotion of fake claims of official complicity in 9/11 to discredit abundant real evidence of complicity. It is reminiscent (if not part of) the Karl Rove strategy used to discredit CBS (see BS?) last fall - the "memos" given to that network that were then used to alienate the media from investigating Bush going AWOL from the Air National Guard.

I don't know whether this is true.

Then there's this:

your views are not understood here. my family has been saved by your troops. who do you prefer Saddam the rapest and murderer. or Bush the Mad invader...I prefer Bush, he can only save my town, family, country.......I wish more in the USA could see this. your a lier!!!

I just wonder where this person lives, that he/she was "saved" by our troops. American troops haven't died defending US soil since World War II, and then just barely (Alaska and Hawaii, which weren't states then).

Editor & Publisher Notes My Retraction

There was never in any doubt in my mind, once I discovered the dubious nature of TBRNews, that I would issue a retraction. It sucks to admit you're wrong, but considering the alternative--becoming as credible as a Republican--well, there's really no choice at all. Anyway, there's a piece about my retraction in Editor & Publisher.

You get guys like Desmond who kick sand in your face:

Your excuses are pathetic. You liberals are unbelievable. You believe anything no matter how obviously wrong it is, if it fits your liberal agenda. Why don't you just fold up your act and disappear. It is so apparent what you are trying to do. You should be embarrassed to show your face. Say goodbye already.

Yeah, I know. Doesn't the guy care about Bush's lies? Or that he never, ever admits he's wrong? But still--I do feel stupid for falling for the 9,000 story. After the lies about WMDs, the "search" for Osama in a country we knew he wasn't in, etc., it's easy to believe that the Bushies are capable of just about anything. That cynicism opens one up to this sort of thing.

On the other hand, kind souls like Matt have also been offering support:

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I think it was a good thing to issue the retraction, and I respect you more for it. I know you
probably have a lot of rightwingnuts emailing you and telling you to do uncomfortable things to yourself, but I'd give you a pat on the back. After all, I don't remember hearing any neocons/fascists saying they were wrong about WMD in Iraq, or much of any thing else that they've fucked up.

True. In my own, admittedly biased way, I am trying to find the truth. Setting the record straight when you mess up is a big part of that.

Tom is harsh but brings up an excellent point:

I appreciate you cartoon with some exception, but regularly read it. My question for you is what do you do for the reader that glances
casually at your cartoon when you cite an inflammatory and incorrect fact? Unfortunately, I read you guidelines for e-mail and think you will probably stop reading my e-mail when I get too critical, but while I was angry and disappointed, I attempted to temper my e-mail to your guidelines.
I visited you blog for the first time yesterday and found the "retraction" you posted. Everybody gets it wrong sometimes, but your reaction seemed cowardly and infantile. To cite other cartoonists who misrepresented things hardly make it right for anyone else. You have been very critical of neo- cons and I would expect them to react the way you had. Honestly, I thought you were better than that. I would expect Karl Rove to cite others that have gotten away with his plots to exonerate himself, but you?
It would have been useful to post the retraction for the average reader to see, unless you didn't care that the average Joe see that you got it wrong. You talked about hiding bodies in the cartoon in question, but what about hiding retractions? I am not of the political mind that frequents your blog. I'm not even sure you care much, considering the amount of e-mail you recieve (according to the guidelines). It would just be nice to see someone somewhere refuse to be shrill and caustic without the integrity to make it worthwhile.
I was disappointed in your handling of the situation and hope you have considered rectifiying it. If the US military dropped a bomb on a
wedding party, I'm sure you would expect something to be done about it. While your "bomb" is on a much smaller scale, the regular reader
might like to know that just because the other kids did it, doesn't mean it's right to misrepresent the truth for the sake of argument.

Of course, with few exceptions, nothing does come from the thousands of innocent civilians killed by triggerhappy US servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we're not talking about that here.

Tom brings up an interesting point about "burying" a retraction, a practice I deplore in newspapers and television media. Unfortunately, I don't have the kind of control editors and producers have. Here's why: I draw three cartoons for syndication each week. Were I to include a text retraction with one or all three of the next week's cartoons, my subscribing clients would absolutely not run those cartoons--or would run them minus the retraction. That's because very few of my papers run all three of my cartoons each week, and they tend to view cartoons as extra content rather than staff content--stuff generated by the papers themselves. I could do an entire retraction cartoon, but no one would run it. So while I can screw up in public, it's virtually impossible for me to issue a correction anywhere other than here, in my blog. It is no doubt a highly imperfect solution to a vexing problem, but until I own my own paper or work on staff somewhere rather than through syndication I don't see a solution.

Retraction: 9,000 Dead? Maybe, Maybe Not.

I draw more than 200 cartoons a year, but this has never happened to me before: commenting on a story that turns out to be, if not bogus, at least inadequately sourced. Of course, an editorial cartoonist is always commenting on other people's reporting, so he or she is always vulnerable to the possibility of being taken in by some jackass. Consider, for example, all the cartoonists who did cartoons about Saddam postulating what he'd do with hiis nuclear weapons!

To be make this short, I'm not apologizing because I have nothing to apologize for. I read a story that came off as possible, sourced it using previously reliable informants, and ended up doing a cartoon that I wouldn't have done had I known then what I know now.

So this is a retraction of this past Monday's "C" cartoon. Did 9,000-plus soldiers get killed in Iraq? Maybe, maybe not. But as a cartoonist friend of mine points out: The relatives of those hidden 7,000 dead troops sure would be raising hell if the Pentagon were trying to hide them. To which I respond: Duh.

The battery in my BS detector must have been running low last week.

TBR News a Fraud?

F.C. writes:

I want to preface this e-mail by saying that my political leanings are far left and I love reading your articles, comics and blog.
That said, I must point out the site you provided as a source has been discredited beyond cavil:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-lampley/the-ultimate-deception_2838.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-lampley/a-poor-choice-of-sources_2891.html
Again, do not get me wrong, it is not that I cannot posit the criminal-in-thief lying about US troop casulaties but TBRnews.org is not the best way to prove it.
Frankly, as a collateral point, I do not think there is any need to lie about troop deaths - the American public is by and large in a consumeristic [sic?] frenzy (or is it stupor?) who do not care anyway. Time to move onwards!

The Huffington site comments section contains several allegations that TBR News is related to The Barnes Report and is affiliated with wacko Holocaust revisionist types like David Irving. If so, please ignore anything they say.

I'm looking into it, including trying to reconfirm my independent source(s). As F.C. writes, we don't need to copy the right by lying about them--the truth is damning enough.

Editor & Publisher Mention

E&P mentions my cartoon in a small piece. Maybe this will spark a discussion and some plain talk from the Pentagon.

Real Number of Iraq War Dead: More Than 9,000

Some emailers are asking for source material on today's cartoon about American war dead in Iraq. You can find one reference here, and there are others elsewhere. In addition, I have independently confirmed this news with appropriately-placed sources.

God bless America--with George W. Bush running the joint into the ground, we need all the help we can get.

Rodney Crowell

Jim advises me:

In the new issue of Paste, a music and pop culture mag, there's a review of Rodney Crowell's new CD (two stars) that has a prominent blurb that references your work:
"Crowell overstates his point by a Texas mile, constructing a gigantic Ted Rall cartoon version of bourgeois capitalist piggery."
Thought I'd pass it on, in case you haven't seen it.

Yeah, well, maybe I do overstate my case sometimes. Sometimes you need to do that to begin to counter the tsunami of lies and perverted logic flooding us from the right.

Book Review: "War Powers"

My review of Peter Irons' important new book "War Powers"--about how presidents have stolen Congress' power to declare war under the Constitution--appears in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.

Today I Read the New York Times with You

I haven't looked at the paper yet. (That's right, I still read the physical paper. If I still had a day job I'd no doubt be slacking off reading the whole thing online and saving money in the process, but I don't which means I have to actually work for a living. So today, for the first and possibly past time, you get to follow along while I react to today's news, as brought to you by the New York Times.

Today's lead story quotes the (cough) Pentagon as claiming that some roadside bombs used by Iraqi insurgents are manufactured in Iran. It's just another floater for possibe war against Iran because, hey, we've got so many more troops to send to death and so many more billions a week to spend. The money quote:

But just as troubling is that the spread of the new weapons seems to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.

Once again, the crux of cluelessness. The reason "enemy" Sunnis and Shiites are cooperating against us is because they both want us to get the fuck out of their country. What's surprising about that? Oh, but they'll have to fight each other after we leave. That's true. But they have to cooperate in the common fight against the United States if either wants the chance to rule post-Bushite Iraq.

On the editorial page, op-ed "writer" John Tierney has surpassed his reliable inanity:

Polar bears are mammals with a mission, whether it's Gus obsessively swimming in the Central Park Zoo, or the mother and her cub that I once followed during a dogsled expedition here in the Canadian high Arctic. We watched her with awe and kept our distance, especially after coming across the bloody remnants of her seal dinner on the ice. The message I took home was: "You mess with my habitat, and I'll mess with you."

The name of the column: "The Good News Bears."

Every day I read the New York Times' entropic op-ed page, I'm reminded of how the nation's greatest newspaper has a section unworthy of most high school newspapers. Yeah, yeah, I like Krugman too. But still.

Every now and then the Times publishes a piece that makes you wonder why they're just getting to a story now, months after you've already read and digested it. "C.I.A. Leak Case Recalls Texas Incident in '92 Race" is a classic case. It's a rehash of something that we Treasongate watchers have long known: Rove has a history of exactly the sort of sorry shit he pulled on Valerie Plame. On the other hand, the Times' sluggishness has the salutory effect of keeping the story in the news.

There's a piece about Gitmo getting leaner and (!) meaner:

E-Mail This

Printer-Friendly
Reprints



By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: August 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - In a few years, Pentagon officials say, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will have undergone a radical transformation.
The sprawling detention site known as Camp Delta, with its watchtowers, double-wide trailers housing rows of steel cells and interrogation rooms will be mostly demolished.
Instead, a sharply reduced inmate population of those the military considers the most hard-core will inhabit two nearby hard-walled modern prisons. The newest of those, which is still under construction, is modeled on a modern county jail in Michigan and is designed to counter international criticism of Guantánamo as inhumane and, to some, a symbol of American arrogance.
The first step in changing the character of Guantánamo, officials say, is to relocate many of the 520 detainees. As part of that effort, Defense and State Department officials said this week that they had reached agreement with Afghanistan to transfer 110 Afghan detainees to their home country. Eventually, the population will be reduced to 320, the capacity of the permanent prison buildings.

Sure, this is Judith Miller-style transcription journalism--some "journalist" typing what some government official tells him--but it's interesting as a trial balloon/statement of intent. The Gitmo concentration camp is becoming, as its Soviet predessors did, more permanent. It also belies, in the case of the 110 guys being shipped back to Afghanistan, repeated Administration claims that all of the Gitmo detainees were "the worst of the worst," guys so evil we could never, ever release them.

And now I need coffee. Along with regime change.

The Average Soldier

I get a lot of military email, some positive and some negative. I was impressed by this one from Johnny:

Hi Mr. Rall,
I saw you on Foxnews a few times, and while I disagreed with some of the things you said, I went to your site and check back on it about once a week. I know that you can't just always believe everything you are told and sometimes the opposition is right. I do have a problem with how you treat the military though. I have been in ROTC for the past four years and as soon as I am done my masters I am going to commission fulfilling my contract. I contracted four years ago because I wanted to serve my country and "fight the good fight" against anyone who tried to do our country harm. Many of my fellow cadets are in the same boat as me, came from an average family, good students, ( I have a 3.9 cum GPA now ), just wanting to do our service, finish it, and move on with your lives. We could have never predicted what we would eventually have to end up doing and where we would be going but it is the government, and you can't back out once you've signed the dotted line. We were not recruited and lied to, we went into it knowing full well what we were getting into. There are many many many great people in the Army ( and other branches ). Many joined for training opportunities or just to do their duty. Yet all I ever see in your comics/other writings, is disdain for the military, continually calling all of us torturers and gun wielding fanatics. While some have done such things, it embarrasses many of us to be in the same military as them. They are not soldiers out of line, they are criminals. But you must see that many of us are just normal guys that signed up for a job because we wanted to, and therefore we must do what we are required to. Foreign policy is not our fault, it is the governments. We are supposed to clean up the mess when the government can't seal the deal. Please reconsider your stance on the average soldier, blame the government for where we are all you want, but I know that when you portray soldiers in the light you do, it really hurts me and many of my colleagues that someone would look down on us, when we are just trying to do something positive for our country. I am sorry for the length of this e-mail but after following your web site for a little over a year now, I felt it was time to voice myself and hopefully get your opinion on this subject at hand. Thank you

Point taken. The vast majority of soldiers have not (presumably) engaged in the sort of atrocities committed daily at US concentration camps like Abu Ghraib and Bagram. But let's get real: people join the military in order to kill people. Or, at bare minimum, they're willing to kill people. That's what the military does, and everybody understands that. I doubt that even the lyingest son-of-a-bitch recruiter claims otherwise.

Unfortunately, dutiful soldiers get lumped in with the sadists when they refuse to stand tall, in public, to denounce those whose behavior disgraces the armed services. Especially disconcerting to those of us who wish to believe the best about the men and women serving in uniform is the way they applaud criminal mass murderers like George W. Bush at public appearances--e.g., the notorious "mission accomplished" appearance. It is also sad to see so few soldiers prosecuted for refusing to serve in the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Mass resistance, even from 1 percent of the armed forces, would prompt the kind of national reconsideration that might bring an end to Bush's madness, and yet it's not forthcoming.

One last point: career soldiers who enlisted before Bush can be excused for being stuck fighting wars which they may or may not believe to be justified. But anyone who enlisted since--or in the future--is fully aware of what he or she is getting into.

Boston Globe Mention

It came out a few days ago, but Alex Beam's Boston Globe piece references my reaction to being listed as one of Goldberg's America-screwer-uppers.

Have I Gone Too Far?

For the record: If I don't write something, I don't take responsibility for it. To wit, this letter from om****@yahoo.com (he would have deserved total anonymity, but since he sent his email unsigned I have to identify it somehow):

"Today's military is a far cry from the draftee-heavy Vietnam-era force. These guys are volunteers, hired guns. Make no mistake about their "limited job opportunities"...the military pays less than McDonald's, and McDonald's hires even in West Virginia. These troops are there by choice.
It's hard to hear the radicals when they're not given airtime--but I don't see them hanging out in the streets, either."
Your comments above show just how little you know of the U.S. military. First, how dare you say such horrible things about the men and women who take an oath to defend you and die for your freedom if need be. Second, the military is not a bad paying job at all, especially for those who are deployed overseas. They pay no state or federal tax, they make tons of extra money in combat pay and imminent danger pay, and they're usually very busy with their job (a job you were obviously too scared to do yourself), so there's not a whole lot of time to blow all their money. I'm in the Coast Guard and have friends who did year long deployments on CG patrol boats in the Persian Gulf within the past two years, and they all came back with tens of thousands of dollars saved up. We're not a bunch of back water yokels who joined up for the opportunity of kill some little brown people.
This mother fucker "Jack" you you replied to (in quite a friendly manner I might add) openly endorsed the murdering of military officers. What's worse, you did not even show the least bit of outrage at the idea of enlisted members turning on their officers. You should be ashamed to call yourself an American, you America hater you.

What's "horrible" about noting that the military pays poorly, especially at enlistment? It's hardly a secret, and there's no crime in getting a bad salary. Of course, being called too "scared" (if that's a way of noting that I prefer not to get killed without reason for some psycho "president," than I'm guilty) by a Coast Guard dude who'll never see as much combat as I have as a civilian journalist is, well, droll.
Jack didn't "endorse" fragging officers. He predicted that we'd start seeing it soon, and I said I doubted it. Hardly the same thing, and I think his email was interesting enough to warrant sharing.

The Parable of the Bus

But there's also love, this from Donald:

The August 4th comic is your best since the one -- damn, wrote to you about it before but I forget the date -- the one that showed us attacking them, and then when they retaliate (mildly) we say something like "That's it!" and we attack them even more.
I'm in Mexico now (had to leave U.S.) but I remember well being a New Yorker and going through the do-I-keep-waiting-for-the-bus dilemma. This is exactly what's happening now with our attitude towards Iraq, I
can't think of a better way of capturing this than your comic today.
I don't often write you dude, but I just want to say, you are like the only person out there and who gets widely published who expresses the kind of rage I feel over what is going on in Iraq. I was against
Afghanistan too. And the war on drugs before the war on terror. I always look forward to your next comic because I know it will help relieve a little bit of the aggravation I feel over everything that is
happening today.
(you do irk me a little when you tweak the libertarians, but hey, nobody's perfect.)
Keep up the great work!

Actually, real (i.e., liberal) libertarians who just want the government out of their lives are pretty cool. Who doesn't? It's the phony (right-wing) libertarians who want everyone but their rich bow-tied selves to fuck off and die who piss me off.

Tarantoad

Darrell writes from the US Air Force:

The “America-hating” label pisses me off, as well, since the implication is that all those who agree with you hate America, as well. Actually, I used to love America, but ever since they re-elected President Bush, I’ve begun having serious doubts about the American people’s ability to self-govern. Perhaps it’s not ability, but rather willingness, which is actually worse in my view.

My two cents not needed here.

Will Things Change?

Jack writes:

"Why, then, don't we pull for the Iraqi insurgents?....Where the heck is our sense of empathy? Why can't we see ourselves in the faces of those kids firing RPGs at convoys of Halliburton trucks stealing Iraqi oil?"
Mr. Rall,
You apparently don't choose to see us.
True, we are not now, not yet, as numerous as those tens of thousands of us who in the Viet Nam era used to march down Fifth Avenue chanting the name of Ho Chi Minh and calling for "Victory To The Viet Cong."
That time, with the continued exposure of this government of mad dogs, is now well on the way. So is the time when the poor suckers doing military duty in Iraq will express their understanding of their position in suckerdom by turning on their own officers just as they did with the Viet Nam era fraggings.
Make no mistake, there are many of us who ardently hope for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, which situation is likely to lead straight down the rails to Socialist revolution in the U.S. with the British working class in the lead and showing the way.

Today's military is a far cry from the draftee-heavy Vietnam-era force. These guys are volunteers, hired guns. Make no mistake about their "limited job opportunities"...the military pays less than McDonald's, and McDonald's hires even in West Virginia. These troops are there by choice.
It's hard to hear the radicals when they're not given airtime--but I don't see them hanging out in the streets, either.

The Parable of the Bus

Josh writes:

Nice work on this week's cartoon! Incisive and funny. Did you base the cartoon off of a classic parable or was this an original formulation? In either case i think it's a great comic, i'd just be interested if you drew on a traditional parable.

I've lived in New York a long time. The bus is often late, forcing one into the dilemma described in the cartoon, and I've often used that analogy to attack those who say we have to stay in Iraq to "get the job done." Why throw good lives after bad? This thing is no more winnable now than before...and that's being optimistic. Hell, Bush is so fucking incompetent that, at this rate, we'll be living under Iraqi occupation before long.

Don't Read Immediately Before or After Eating

Here's one hell of a story.
And yes, it does occur to me that the guy may be lying. But why? Oh, I know: he did it to himself to make a point. Uh-huh. But even if he is lying: Why shouldn't this dude get the same access to the media as, say, the government? After all, we already know the government lies. This random dude, on the other hand, is still on the up-and-up as far as we know.

God Screw The Queen

Grey writes from the UK:

as you probably know.... Incredibly, under Tony Blair's new rules, you could be (feloniously) deported from britain (to some hell on earth) for the empathy article. (if you lived there of course) He proposes to make "justifying" (or appeals for empathy?) a deportable offense!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4747573.stm

Since I live here, I'm pre-deported. Hey, that worked out fine.

Saturday New York Daily News

There's supposed to be a piece mentioning my reaction to Bernie McCarthy's "100 People" book in tomorrow's New York Daily News.

Psst...

Guess what's coming next Spring?

Hint: Good things come in threes.

War Casualties

Jason writes:

Since you are leading the charge in the Iraq/Afganistan editorializing:

Iraq only:

13,189 wounded
1,828 dead
That is a 13.8% fatality rate, roughly. The figure is up from 10% last year as attacks grow more deadly. But that's not the story. Vietnam had fewer casualties in it's first 4 years (61-65) at 10,000. And Vietnam's fatality rate was 24%. Increased medical technology and body armor has allowed more soilders to survive severe attacks. These soilders are not being patched up and shipped home, they are not recieving "million dollar wounds." Because the typical attack involves blast munitions, soilders are badly mutiliated, save the torso, and will require a lifetime of medical care. Blinding injuries are abnormally high. However, the public is more interested in fatality figures, this is not being reported. If this trend continues, and if the Bush administration continues to resist adequate responsibility for this war of arrogance and hubris, these statistics will come to the public's attention too late.
Total for Vietnam 1961-73: 200,727 wounded, 47,424 dead
Source; New England Journal of Medicine, December 2004, US dept. of defense online, and icacasualties.org

What Jason says is true, but, as my cartoon coming out Monday riffs upon, the actual number of Iraq war dead, according to internal Pentagon documents, is more than 9,000. Why the discrepancy? Apparently you're only counted as "killed in action" if your heart stops beating in Iraq. If you are wounded by an IED and die en route to an army hospital in Germany--even if you die during takeoff from Baghdad airport--you're not counted among the 1,828.

Subway Searches

If the random searches of passengers riding the New York subway were designed to increase security, they'd return that dimebag of pot they found in your backpack, no questions asked. Right?

Instead, several people have already been arrested for non-terrorism-related contraband.