Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
14, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
14, 2004
A Review
Bush's POW Porn
By Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
I was wondering when I would get a glimpse
into the erotic nature of George W. Bush. Now, with the release
of The Photos of the sexual torture that lurks within the bowels
of Bush's cells, I'd say I've got my glimpse.
Now excuse me while I barf
along with the rest of civilized and uncivilized humanity.
They say a picture is worth
a thousand words. Each of The Photos is worth a thousand new
terrorists, fully loaded, strapped up and ready to blow up as
many ugly Americans as possible.
But I digress.
I want to take a long, hard
look at Bush's sexuality. Because The Photos are Bush's porn.
Oh, he says they "disgust" him. Of course, they do.
Listen, I'm a sex therapist. Many of my clients will say something
disgusts them at first, only to confess a few sessions later
that it really turns them on.
Shortly after the censorship
dam burst and The Photos were released publicly, Bush issued
his first attempt at apologizing: "I share a deep disgust
that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated."
He coughed up the words like a chicken bone, or that pretzel
he swallowed and almost choked on. And he looked like a shifty-eyed
boy caught by his mama, his schoolteacher and the whole neighborhood
with his political pants down, way down around his ankles, exposing
his severe shortcomings for all the world to revile.
Notice that he started to say
how "those prisoners" were "treated." But
then, he couldn't say it. After all, it might have given him
an erection. Which would not help his reelection.
George II was so disgusted
that, a few hours after he made these pious pronouncements, he
went to a private party at the home of Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, Line Producer of Bush's POW Porn. I assume that Rummy
and Mrs. Rummy provided barf bags for everyone.
Giving Bush's
War That Extra Spice
Amazing how many synonyms for
"disgust" have dripped and dribbled like infected spittle
from the rapidly dissembling mouths of various pro-war pundits
and politicians, as they too are compelled to submit their reviews
of Bush's POW Porn, which they helped to produce, promote and
distribute. They are APPALLED. Shocked. Dismayed. Disturbed.
Sickened. Nauseated. Rummy is "stunned." Condi is "outraged."
Yes, this is a "deep disgust," as the President so
compassionately suggested, that the whole Team Bush Torture Production
and Distribution Wing "shares."
And yes, it's all very disgusting
and dismaying to see hooded, naked men being forced to "assume
the position" in a perverse pornographic Passion Play. But
is it any less disgusting and dismaying to see them bombed to
bloody smithereens? Is it less disgusting to see their heads
blown off, their bodies riddled with bullet holes, their arms
shattered, their legs amputated, their skin burnt to a crisp?
Is it any less disgusting to see their families murdered, their
children pulverized, their libraries torched, their museums looted,
their hospitals ruined, their homes razed, their oil stolen,
their land RAPED by invaders? Everything about the Rape of Iraq-that
is, the brutal, unprovoked invasion and occupation of this sovereign,
ancient land--has been "disgusting." The Photos just
give the ongoing horror of Bush's War a little extra "spice."
But, oh that spice. It packs
such potent psychic punch. It titillates as it appalls. It's
not the kind of thing that hurts your eyes like a cluster bomb
victim with no arms or legs and burns all over her body, or a
guy on the road whose head has been run over like a ripe melon
by a U.S. tank. Bush's POW Porn is disturbing, but you can look
at it. In fact, you kind of want to stare at it. Why do you think
they show The Photos over and over everywhere, even on Fox?
I still stand by my statement
to Charlie Radin of the Boston Globe that "death is worse
than rape." Considerably worse. But I have to admit that
sometimes sex makes a bigger impression than death. After all,
death is so final, so depressing, so yesterday. Sex is
always intriguing, even if it's "disgusting."
Of course, the more explicit
parts of The Photos are still censored. This is not Bush's doing;
just the U.S. Media, always protecting American eyes from Arab
assholes and genitalia.
But The Photos are more than
genital. They have meaning. They have mystery. In fact, they're
fraught with more mysterious meanings than a Freudian dream with
Reichian overtones and shades of "Strange Fruit." They
show torture, of course, clearly forbidden by the basic tenets
of the Geneva Convention, not to mention human decency. But they
show more than that. They show sexual torture. Nakedness, leashes,
penises, butts, masturbation, latex gloves, panties, grins of
ecstasy, grimaces of agony. They show a dark drama, a Theater
of Cruelty that Antonin Artaud only dreamt about, complete with
masks and props and imaginative staging, heavy on the symbolism,
daring to cross psychological and religious boundaries, daring
to sodomize the Saddamites, and smile for the camera. It is the
stuff of our sadomasochistic, exhibitionist-voyeuristic, hetero/homosexual,
racist-colonialist nightmares.
It's also a farce, a frat house
prank, a practical joke, a lynching party except (some of) the
victims get to live, a hazing into hell, an initiation into the
penal code-ha, ha, ha! As Rush Limbaugh chortled, The
Photos show patriotic American soldiers engaged in making "good
old American pornography." True, but there is one critical
difference between Bush's POW Porn and the films of most American
porn companies like, say, Extreme Associates, currently under
indictment for obscenity by Bush's top lawyer Ayatollah Asscraft.
That difference is that in Extreme Associates' porn, the actors
are paid to perform; in Bush's POW porn, the actors are forced
to perform. Ha, ha, ha! Joke's on you, Mohammed! The raghead
becomes a hoodhead. What a comedy!
And what a tragedy. Pathos,
terror, broken men, dead ones too, depraved soldiers, maniacal
interrogators, a profoundly sick system, America's hope dipping
below the lowest of the low. And more pictures and video are
yet to come, which Bush and his collaborators may or may not
let us see. The Director's Cut.
What we have already seen boggles,
bullies and fascinates even the most sophisticated, jaded 21st
century mind. Painfully bound prisoners writhe at the feet of
the latex-gloved conqueror. Naked men wear black hoods that cover
their heads like bags, disorienting their senses and masking
their humanity. It's a War-on-Terror twist on the old saying,
"Just put a bag over her (or his) head," and you can
do anything to her (or him).
It's hard to imagine anything
more offensive to Muslims than to see fellow Muslims being forced
by laughing Christians to get naked and do sexual things to each
other. Not that these images don't offend Christians too, resembling,
as they do, some Hieronymous Boschian lower depths of Satanica.
Jews might find the images horrifically reminiscent of naked
Jewish men and women being put through their paces by Nazi concentration
camp guards. Hindus and Buddhists are also disgusted. So are
Pagans and Ethical Hedonists. For us, the nudity isn't the problem;
it's the fact that these guys are being forced by their captors
to do things we prefer to associate with love and pleasure that
is so, well, disgusting. It's especially disturbing (and
ironic) that many of The Photos have been released during the
month of May, declared "Masturbation Month" by Dr.
Betty Dodson and other assorted sex-positive feminists. Bush's
Goddess-Damned War won't even let us jill off in peace!
Pyramid
Schemes
Several of The Photos show
the grinning guards forcing the naked men to make pyramids. Pyramids?
In Exodus (the second of the Five Books of Moses, sacred to Jews,
Christians and Muslims), we read of the Egyptian taskmasters
who forced their Hebrew slaves to build the Great Pyramids, beating
and humiliating them, making them suffer and die for the enormous
triangular tombs. Then, so the Exodus story goes, it was the
turn of the taskmasters and their Pharaoh to suffer disgusting
tortures and die horrible deaths, cursed by their own greed and
grandiosity.
The pyramids in The Photos
are the bare bodies and hooded heads of the prisoners themselves.
The American guards grin, like camp counselors, proudly presenting
their charges to the camera. Children in every culture make pyramids;
it's a common, innocent game. Turning the men into children may
be part of the "regression" the CIA manuals talk about
when they euphemistically describe this "torture lite"
or "stress and duress." The idea is "to induce
psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior
outside force to bear on his will to resist." In other words,
turn the man into a child and have him "adopted" by
one or two extremely violent, sexually abusive "parents."
The parents (guards) prepare
the child (prisoner) for class (interrogation). If you don't
do well in class (tell the interrogators what they want to hear),
you are punished. Making the naked human pyramids, being forced
to rub your no-longer-private parts against your fellow hapless
prisoners bare flesh, is one form of humiliation-style punishment
that is, it seems, specifically designed to shatter the dignity
and sanity of the Muslim man.
Of course, this is not to say
there aren't gay Muslims. Homosexuality exists in every culture.
But for most moderately religious Muslims of any sexual orientation,
the forced public commission of such acts is more or less equivalent
to a psychological electric shock. This is one reason that pre-interrogation
"softening up" techniques like these do seem to "work."
They make the victims lose their minds, and consequently, their
defenses. Does it get them to talk? Probably. Would it get them
to tell the factual truth? Probably not. More likely, it would
get them to fantasize.
Perhaps fantasies were all
the interrogators could hope for when they were desperately searching
for phantom Weapons of Mass Destruction to satisfy the agenda
of the Grand Auteur of this avant garde cinema verité
multi-billion dollar porn production--Mr. GW Bush--along with
his production studios, otherwise known as the U.S. military,
U.S. intelligence and the U.S. incarceration industry.
But before we tear into Bush
and co., let's take a look at a few more of The Photos
Presenting:
POW Porn Superstar Lynndie England!
Several Photos feature a pixyish
young woman, Private Lynndie England of West Virginia. Private
Lynndie has a lot of presence. If The Photos weren't so, well,
appalling, the girl could use them as a stepping stone
to stardom, or at least 15 minutes of fame and a book deal right
after the court martial. In one shot, little Lynndie looks almost
sweet, like a college cheerleader, as she smiles brightly, pointing
to the exposed genitals of the man beside her sitting on the
back of another naked hooded man. She gives the thumbs-up-to
whom? To the folks back home? To the prisoners themselves for
later viewing and further humiliation (plus the threat of showing
their folks back home). To other hapless prisoners that might
see The Photos and quiver that they could be next? To her bosses
at Military Intelligence? To her bigger bosses at the Pentagon?
Or maybe it's to the really Big Boss back home, the Chief Cheerleader,
the Man with a Mission that Private Lynndie, in her small, pixyish
way, is helping to accomplish. "Thumbs-up to torture, Mr.
Prez! Private Lynndie, an all-American gal after your bullying
heart, is on the job. Mission Accomplished!"
In another Photo, Private Lynndie
seems a little kookier. Maybe she'd been drinking, or maybe she
was just drunk on power. Maybe she was told to pose like this.
A cigarette dangles, Bogie-like, from her lips, as she moves
down her row of naked hooded men. She is making one masturbate
for her, but she gives her smile to the camera.
You can tell Lynndie knows
she's good at this sexual torture stuff. Why, she could set herself
up as a professional dominatrix when she goes home to West Virginia.
She'd do a bang-up business (especially after all this PR). Though
it wouldn't be the same. After all, the guys that go to doms
want to be abused. The way The Photo tells it, Private
Lynndie's hooked on the real stuff, the power that comes from
having a bunch of fellow soldiers with guns backing you up, the
power of forcing petrified men (your prisoners) to humiliate
themselves for the pleasure of other men (your bosses). There
are no "safe words" here. Lucky Lynndie dances down
her conga line of Boys in the Hoods.
Then, there's Lynndie again,
right hand giving the thumbs up, left arm wrapped around her
favorite partner-in-crime, Specialist Charles Grainer (allegedly
her lover and father of her expected child), as they stand tall
behind their human pyramid, like giddy tourists at an exotic
amusement park, or proud hunters showing off their bagged prey.
Or like early 20th century
Americans at a lynching party. Bard College History of Photography
Professor Luc Sante finds this comparison most apt: "In
photographs that were taken and often printed as postcards in
the American heartland in the first four decades of the 20th
century, black men are shown hanging from trees or light fixtures
or maybe being burned alive, while below them white people are
laughing and pointing for the benefit of the camera...
Before seeing such pictures
you might expect the faces in them to express some kind of collective
rage; instead the mood is giddy, often verging on hysterical,
with a distinct sexual undercurrent. Like the lynching crowds,
the Americans at Abu Ghraib felt free to parade their triumph
and glee not because they were psychopaths but because the thought
of censure probably never crossed their minds." Why would
they be censured when Big Daddy Bush gave the thumbs-up to "loosening
up" the limits after 9-11?
Feminists are quiet about it so far, but Lynndie does prove Right-wing
gadfly Ann Coulter's point that women in the military can be
"vicious." Of course, Lynndie's friend Chuck proves
that men are vicious too. Actually, there are more male than
female guards in The Photos; it's just that Lynndie's such a
stand-out!
A later release shows Lynndie's
serious side. In this now world-famous scene, she plays the haughty
mistress glaring contemptuously down at her obstinate dog, as
she holds a leash, the collar of which is around the neck of
one of her prisoners who lies naked, grimacing, on the floor.
Private Lynndie, Churchgoing
Patriot Daughter of Fort Ashby, West Virginia, (town of one stoplight
and six churches), Dominatrix to the Sand Demons of Arabie, Middle-Woman
to the War Machine. America's most despised young lady right
now, Lynndie is the Anti-Lynch, Jessica's shattered mirror image,
the smiling face of American Womanhood at War that no one wants
to see and that everyone now must face.
Who are you, Lynndie England,
how could you do such things, and what will you do now? Mata
Hari was a patsy too, my dear. But at least, she had the seductive
savoir-faire to blow a kiss to the boys on her firing squad before
they gunned her down. Would you? Who knows?
This much, as a sex therapist,
I do know: Wealthy American men with submissive fantasies (most
of whom are Republican) will pay their mistresses well to "Treat
me like dirt, Mistress, treat me like Lynndie treated the Iraqis!"
for many years to come.
The Blowjob
Photo: Bush's Gay Agenda
Then there's the Blowjob Photo.
Former US President Bill Clinton was impeached over a blowjob,
but his was consensual. These guys are being forced to simulate
fellatio on each other. This appears to be the Bush Way to treat
the issue of homosexuality. Let's not let Americans of the same
sex have the right to marry; oh no, that would be immoral! Let's
have American troops force Iraqis to pretend to blow each other,
in order to make them talk, or punish them, or keep them awake,
or show them who's "the superior outside force," or
to make "good old American pornography," or maybe just
because we feel like it.
Staged with an eye for drama
and composition, The Blowjob looks like a lot of the American
porn that the guards and interrogators were probably ogling on
their laptops for inspiration in between torture sessions. In
fact, in some ways, Bush's POW Porn is just an extention of the
21st century "Everyone's A Pornographer!" phenomenon.
No longer just made by the pros in the San Fernando Valley, porn
is now made by every amateur with a digital camera, from librarians
in Kansas City to military police in Abu Ghraib, and instantly
distributed through the Internet around the world.
Now I'm all for exporting American
porn to the Arab World. In fact, I already do that, since The
Dr. Susan Block Show (which some call "porn") is
on in Israel, where it's translated into Arabic as well as Hebrew
(not to mention the fact that anybody can look at my website).
I say, hey, if they want porn, we should sell it to them at rock
bottom prices, or better yet, give it to them free as a gesture
of good will and to "spread American values." But forcing
them to act in our porn movies and photo shoots is, to say the
least, not good for the business.
Moreover, most of Bush's POW
Porn is not just your basic simulated blow-job, but agonizing
S/M, otherwise known as torture, and not the fun, consensual
kind. In one photo, guards loom ominously over naked prisoners
bound together painfully. In another, a naked man, his body contorted
with terror, looks at two snarling military dogs ready to attack
him (later photographs show that the dogs do bite the man). Then
there's the shackled guy, his back in an excruciating arch, with
panties on his head. Is this a fetish show or a prison? Or are
prisons fetish shows more than we want to know?
The Passion
of the President
In what has become the lead
photo of the bunch, probably because the prisoner isn't naked,
a Christ-like figure with wires hanging from his outstretched
hands, and reportedly, from his penis, stands on a small box,
told that if he lost his balance and fell off the box, he'd be
electrocuted. He resembles a Medieval Mystery Player with his
ragged cape, bare feet and death mask hood pointed at the top,
like the dunce cap worn by the village idiot or court jester.
His plaintive stance seems to say "Why me?" It is eloquent
in its acquiescence. The prisoner is helpless indeed, but there
is power in his posture; it also says "J'accuse."
It speaks for many of us, in
Iraq, in America, in France, in Spain, and all over the world,
who would like to say to Mr. Bush: I accuse you, Mr. Bush, along
with your collaborators, of lying to us, wiring us up to terror,
forcing us into this horrible, humiliating war, while we stand,
terrorized, on a box.
It also gives us a glimpse into the sexual nature of the man.
Not the man on the box. The man who put the man on the box. Of
course, many people put that man on the box, starting with a
woman, SPC Sabrina Harman, 372nd MP Company, who set up the box,
Then there's Corporal Charles A. Grainer who told her to put
the man on the box. Then there's the MI's or CIA guys who told
him to "keep detainees awakeand get them to talkgive them
a bad night," or "soften them up." Then there
are the Generals who run the prisons and run the wars, the Vice
President who pushed this particular war, the Defense Secretary
who aggressively waged this war, the members of Congress who
voted to approve this war, the media people who promoted this
war, and the voters who gave it the thumbs-up. But it is the
self-described War President that sets the pace, goals and style
of the war, especially this war, Bush's War. Thus, my feeling
that The Photos give us a glimpse into the perverse heart, bullying
soul and pathetic little gonads of Mr. GW Bush.
Am I being too harsh on Dubya
in suggesting that these images stem from his personal sexual
nature? Perhaps. But I don't think so. Remember, this is the
man who giggled and mocked Karla Faye Tucker, his fellow born-again
Christian sentenced to die under his jurisdiction. "Please
don't kill me," he mimicked in a high girlish voice, pursing
his lips and squinting his eyes, seeming to savor the memory
of how she'd begged for her life, and, as Governor of Texas,
he'd killed her anyway. If we can understand how a U.S. presidential
candidate can talk like that in an interview with Talk Magazine,
perhaps we can understand why Lynndie and Chuck can grin like
that in The Photos.
Remember, this is the American
Executioner who, when he was governor of Texas, presided over
a record-setting 152 lethal injections. Maybe not as barbaric
as lynchings, but you can only push limits so far. This was the
son who relished being his dad's "hatchet man," especially
when he had the pleasure of axing someone suspected of disloyalty.
This is the happy gunslinger that gave the CIA authority to assassinate
those deemed a threat to U.S. interests, virtually suspending
Executive Orders by Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan
prohibiting such assassinations. This is the opportunistic autocrat
who used the tragedy of 9-11 to relax the CIA and MI's previous
restrictions on using torture, and won't even call the guys he's
picking up Prisoners of War. This is the definitive chickenhawk
who let other men of his generation fight in Vietnam, then sent
men and women of his daughters' generation to invade Iraq. This
is the back-slapping bully who celebrated the destruction of
a country with a "Mission Accomplished" costume party.
Harry Truman said "the
buck stops here." It's not much of a stretch to see how
Private Lynndie, Specialist Sabrina and Corporal Chuck might
take their Commander-in-Chief as a role model, or perhaps as
the ultimate audience of their erotic torture games.
Bush's Sexuality:
Bully of the World
Unlike his immediate predecessor,
the nature of Bush's sexuality has long been a mystery to us
common folk. He's kind of stiff with most women, though he's
very close to a few devoted advisors like Condeleeza Rice and
Karen Hughes. Does he have affairs? Who knows? If there's one
thing he's good at, it's keeping secrets (with the compliant
media as his hand-maiden). Wife Laura is sweet, but the fact
that she looks like she hasn't had an orgasm since Gulf War I
doesn't help. Their twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, are quite
sexy; that's probably why they're kept hidden as much as possible
(that and the anti-war calls to "send the Bush Twins to
Iraq!").
Bush's sexuality may be murky.
But in terms of sex appeal, he knows how to work it. Or at least,
Karl Rove does, acting as a sort of Queer Eye to Bush's Straight
Guy. Anti-war folks may have been outraged by the AWOL Guardsman
dressing up in a flight suit to land on the U.S.S. Lincoln, but
a lot of Republican women (and some men) thought "he looked
really hot --especially in the crotch!" Stuffed or not,
there's definitely a sexual market for it, along with that Rich
Boy smirk and the Cowboy swagger, at least in America. Then there's
the determination. Dubya's responses to "terrorism"
strike me as being rather impotent (Afghanistan is still a mess,
Iraq is worse and Osama is alive and still producing his own
series of hit tapes). Yet I must admit that there are many ladies
who swoon over that manly "resolve."
And men. Bush is a man's man. He seems most relaxed with the
guys, the majority of whom he charms easily. His nicknames are
part of his chummy, frat boy, pecking-order-oriented playfulness,
as if to say, "Alpha male to Beta, here's your new name."
Most men seem to eat this up. 9-11 commissioner Jim Thompson
affectionately called Bush a "bit of a tease" (tee-hee)
after their discreet unrecorded meeting with Dick in the Oval
Office. Bush and Dick (what a sexy combo!) seem to have seduced
the whole bunch of star-struck commissioners in that ultra-private
tête-à-tête. Even normally aggressive Democratic
questioner Richard Ben-Veniste gushed that the meeting was "very
cordial." What did Dubya do with these guys behind close
doors-make them form naked pyramids?
Role-playing is Dubya's forté.
He could have been an actor. He does have trouble memorizing
and enunciating stuff, but even his slow-wittedness can be disarming.
Disarmament of the victim is key to the pleasure of the sadist.
Of course, just because someone is charming doesn't mean he or
she is sadistic, not at all. But the most effective sadists-Hitler,
Stalin, the Marquis de Sade-are said to be quite charming, especially
in private, social situations.
Bush (like the others) isn't
so charming on the stump, where he shows his self-righteous side.
He rants against Evil-Doers, drones on about the sanctity of
marriage, touts abstinence as the answer to each and every sex
question, rains all over the gay parade and blocks women's reproductive
rights at every turn. The assault on women began on Bush's first
full day in office with his reinstatement of the Reagan-era global
"gag rule." He may as well have thrown a hood over
the head of international family planning. Then he picked one
of the stuffiest Americans since Anthony Comstock, Ayatollah
Asscraft, as his top lawyer; that ought to tell us something.
Yet nobody believes Bush is
as prissy as his policies and pronouncements. There seems to
be something simmering just beneath the surface of all that oppressive
earnestness, something deeply, wickedly kinky, though still kind
of corny, something like what we see in The Photos.
Something like a sadist. Or
maybe the classic label of "bully" is most apt. Isn't
the torturer just a more sophisticated incarnation of the bully?
Back in the summer of 2002, when GI-George was beating the drums
of war on Iraq, I wrote a little piece called "Cockfight
at the Baghdad Corral" comparing our proposed attack on
Iraq to "a cold, crude assault by a tactless brute who couldn't
get laid any other way, an oaf who can't or won't seduce his
target with negotiatory words and gestures, but forces his way
in, with no lube and no manners." I was worried that "all
the global sympathy we stirred up when our great phallic edifices
(Dick 1 & Dick 2) were castrated by the Terrorist's fiery
sword are fading into resentment, fear and ridicule of America,
dick-swinging, bomb-tossing Bully of the World."
And now we have The Photos
showing us Bullies of the World on the Job. I must admit I didn't
know how literally we'd be swinging our dicks like baboons (certainly
not like bonobos who could teach us a thing or two about sex
and violence).
Rape of
Iraq
Bush's pronouncements, pleading,
apologies and demands since the release of The Photos, are also
telling. Indignant as an dissatisfied customer in a bad restaurant,
he first complained, "I didn't like it one bit.'' Send it
back to the chef! But wait, does that mean that he did "like"
all the other atrocities our military, under his command, has
committed? Or perhaps he prefers the British method of handling
their Iraqi prisoners, as shown in another set of photos: Knocking
out their teeth and urinating on them. Hey, you've heard the
Brits go in for golden showers, haven't you? Then a spank and
a wank, and throw the half-dead loser out of the truck. Well,
what of it? This is war, isn't it? Bush's War and Bush's Porn,
with Poodle Tony Blair doing a bang-up job on U.K. production
and distribution.
Clinton had his (semen) "stain"
upon the Presidency. Now Dubya has his. It's also a semen stain,
but it's mixed with blood and puke and tears. "It's a stain
on our country's honor and our country's reputation, I fully
understand that," the Stainmaker-in-Chief declared in his
most groveling attempt to make it go away. But like Lady "out-damn-spot."
MacBeth, the stain-and the shame--remain.
And oh, the shame! The exposure!
The bad timing. Just a week before the release of The Photos,
Bush had proclaimed that as a result of getting rid of Saddam,
"there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass
graves in Iraq." Another practical joke. As Jon Stewart
succinctly put it, Iraq's rape rooms are "really not shut
down so much as under new management."
Of course, as those of you
who know me know, I take this kind of personally. When I wrote
"Rape of Iraq" back in April, 2003, I was using "rape"
as a metaphor for the invasion. Prevaricators on the left and
right tried to say I was accusing American soldiers of raping
Iraqis. I wasn't, at the time. But now it's pretty clear that
not only has Bush's War raped Iraqi as a country, but Bush's
Warriors have raped Iraqis as individuals, some in the very rape
rooms belonging to that so-called Supreme Rapist Saddam. Not
that Saddam hung around his own rape rooms any more than Bush
hangs around his (too dangerous!). Since we called Saddam a Rapist
Butcher, it's only fitting that we call Bush a POW Pornographer
and The King of Torture-Lite, American-style.
Prisons-Are-Us,
American-Style
Which brings me to another
of Bush's desperate pronouncements in the wake of the release
of The Photos, accompanied by the damning Taguba Report. His
ongoing efforts to impress upon the world that his POW Porn is
somehow "not American." So Lynndie and Chuck are Bulgarian?
"Their treatment does
not reflect the nature of the American people," Bush tried
to spin like a dervish when The Photos were first unleashed.
"That's not the way we do things in America," he said.
Later he clarified on Al-Hurrah TV, "What took place in
that prison does not represent the America that I know."
Of course, it's not the America
Dubya knew. That's because even though he did things that would
have landed other guys in the can, Poppy's friends bailed him
out before he had to spend any real time in an American prison.
UnCurious George also seems to have never heard of Rodney King,
beaten by LAPD on tape, or Abner Louima, sodomized with the business
end of a toilet plunger during an NYPD interrogation. Since the
Shrub is a proud non-reader, he wouldn't know that according
to U.S. corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates,
the physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what's
in The Photos, takes place in American prisons every day. This
is "the way" some people "do things"
at many prisons in America, minus the cameras (so far). Bush
should know, since he was governor of Texas, said to have some
of the worst, most abusive prisons on Earth. But the only state
he seems to govern with any skill is the state of Denial.
Here in LA, we have our own
Twin Towers, also known as the Downtown Men's Prison. As everyone
knows who's been through there, when you first get booked, they
treat you with "sleep deprivation," providing no place
to sit or lie down except an icy floor, giving you nothing to
eat but rotten baloney on stale bread, and not letting you go
to the toilet, in hopes that you'll break quickly and cop a plea.
As for beatings and rapes, the guards usually get--or just let--other
prisoners take care of that.
If you ask too many questions,
they put you in the "Suicide Ward," which has nothing
to do with being suicidal; it's just a euphemism for torture.
Here, they take away essentials such as clothes and eyeglasses
with the laughable excuse that you could use these things to
kill yourself. Then they make you stand naked in front of guards
and other inmates for hours in the cold. When I visited an inmate
in the Twin Towers "Suicide Ward," I was astonished
to see all the prisoners wearing nothing but these bizarre blue
asbestos cloaks supposedly fastened with Velcro. But the Velcro
was worn and couldn't fasten at all, so the cloaks kept falling
apart. In other words, all these prisoners were naked in front
of us visitors. And hey, this wasn't even in Texas.
Military Intelligence, CIA,
mercenaries working for CACI International, and maybe Wolfie
and Rummy themselves seem to have directed torture like we see
in the Abu Ghraib Photos. But the practices are, for the most
part, an extension of the American prison system. Lane McCotter,
a contractor who had resigned under pressure as director of the
Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while
shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours, was chosen
by the Bushies to rebuild Abu Ghraib and train the guards there.
One of the soldiers in The
Photos (a segment producer for Bush's POW Porn), Staff Sgt. Ivan
(Chip) Frederick, had worked for six years as a guard for the
Virginia Department of Corrections, and was described by his
warden as "one of the best." Scott Bobeck, a special
agent in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, testified
that Sgt. Frederick and Corporal Grainer "were put in charge
because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of
how things were supposed to be run." That knowledge came
from working in a U.S. prison system that now cages over two
million Americans.
Part of the problem is the
nature of prison. As psychological studies at Stanford and Yale
have shown, when normal, compassionate people are given the job
of "prison guard" and told by authorities to enforce
discipline or administer punishment, their overwhelming tendency
is to become sadistic and abusive. Of course, this natural prison
guard sadism can be checked with supervision. The danger of abuse
rises with severe overcrowding, a problem in America, as well
as in Iraq (not to mention Afghanistan and Guantanamo) where
thousands of people who shouldn't be imprisoned are.
But Bush doesn't care about
problems like this, just as he hasn't cared about the mulitiple
reports of abuse and torture from the Red Cross and other groups
that have been crossing his desk for years. Now he cares.
He's been caught! He's just "sickened" that the world
has seen his secret stash of porn.
Sorry Seems
To Be The Hardest Word
Ultimately, he was forced to
mouth the words "I'm sorry," though he said them to
a fellow King, Jordan's Abdullah II, not to his main victims,
the Iraqi people, nor to his other victims, the American people
(whom he should apologize to for turning our sons, daughters,
parents and neighbors into sadistic bullies like him). And sticking
to form, his so-called apology actually blames the viewers of
The Photos themselves.
Sadists love to say, 'I'm sorry
to hurt you, but it's really your fault." Bush said he told
the King, "I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the
Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.
I told him I was as equally sorry that people seeing those pictures
didn't understand the true nature and heart of America."
The first line is okay. Even
though he doesn't say who did the humiliating of the Iraqi prisoners
and their families (um, Americans?), at least he says he's sorry
about it. But then he cancels out his apology by blaming these
very people--as well as all of us who see The Photos--for believing
our eyes and not his words.
"I am sickened by what
I saw and sickened that people got the wrong impression,"
he goes on, again saying that we are "wrong" to get
the "impression" that The Photos give us. Earlier,
in his interview with Al-Hurrah, he kept repeating that the Iraqi
people "must understand" that what we see in The Photos
isn't really "America." Then, for a kicker, at the
end of the interview, he had the temerity to say to the interviewer,
"Good job." As if we needed to be reminded that Al-Hurrah
is the American Iraqi station.
The arrogance, the patronizing
tone, infantile insistence that everyone see things his way,
is breathtaking. Some diehard submissives do find this kind of
brute domination sexy-at least in fantasy. Okay, but do we really
want it for President?
Coming Attractions:
More & Worse!
We shall see what we want,
based on what we're willing to accept. Bush's POW Porn has some
sequels. There's more to come, including rapes of women and children.
And we also have the court martials of the six soldiers featured
in The Photos. After which, the more ambitious of the bunch will
get their book contracts (though they won't be allowed to make
any money from committing felonies, will they?). And there will
surely be more admonishments, reprimands and dismissals to various
disposable cogs in the wheels of the Bush War Machine. But the
Executive Producer has made clear that his main POW Porn Production
Team stays, including Line Producer Master Rummy who is doing
a "superb" job. Disgusting, but superb.
The official nominally in charge
of Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski
(who said, "I'd like to know who was the one that was giving
instructions to the military intelligence personnel to turn up
the heat"), has been canned. The new Big Cheese at Abu Ghraib
is Major General Geoffrey Miller, most recently in charge of
the draconian detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
Miller's considered competent
because, though tales of torture similar to Abu Ghraib flow constantly
out of Guantánamo, the S/M Porn Photos that have emerged
from there are soft-core compared to The Abu Ghraib Collection.
Miller might even go farther with the torture than Karpinski
who acts like she was the one wearing the hood at her own prisons.
The Taguba Report quotes Miller, after inspecting Abu Ghraib,
as saying that it was ''essential that the guard force be actively
engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation
of the internees.'' So, stack those pyramids high, kids!
The Power
of Perversion
Most of the main players are
staying or just switching locations, and will continue to do
what they were doing, only without the digital cameras.
That's one big change at Abu Ghraib, the signs that say "No
Cameras Allowed." And herein lies the crux of the "disgust."
It's not with the torture, it's with The Photos of the torture.
Those of us who want the truth
of Bush's War and every war can only be grateful for The Photos
and for the photographers. Whether they were brave or stupid
or "just doing their job," they gave us riveting evidence
of something the Bushies would like to keep secret. We can only
laugh and weep that, after the release of The Photos the first
new rule is "No Cameras Allowed."
So no more photos, and maybe
no more hoods and a few more clothes. Or maybe not. But the sickness
that we see in The Photos is only the tip of an iceberg. The
iceberg is the war. And it is melting down into a mess we can
never clean up.
Well, at least, The Photos
got the Shrub to give a simulated apology, which is more than
he's done yet through this whole war. That's the power of perversion,
specifically sexual perversion. Bush has never apologized for
the invasion or the occupation. He has never apologized for all
the lies, the bombings, the wholesale murder of thousands of
Iraqis (which we don't bother to count), the senseless deaths
of hundreds of Americans, the virtual destruction of a country,
it's libraries, his art museums, it's hospitals, it's schools.
But he does apologize for The Photos. He has to. Because his
stash was found, his pants are down, way down around his ankles,
and all the world can see what a sadistic little bully he is.
But it's not only Bush, and
it's not only Dick. It's not only Rummy and Lynndie and the guys
in MI. It's not only Fox TV. All Americans are engaged in playing
the bully game. Some of us have been "forced" into
this painful position. But as much as Bush says Iraqis "must
understand" that The Photos are "not America,"
what they show is incontrovertible: average Americans being bullies.
Which means it's more imperative than ever that we all do whatever
we can-whether we're soldiers, spies, doctors, lawyers, truck
drivers, writers, webmasters, sex therapists, schoolteachers,
secretaries, pornographers or presidential candidates--to stop
the war, and the abuse that goes with it, now.
As I write this, my email box
is filling up with links to the latest atrocity caught on
tape. This time it is an Al-Qaeda-produced snuff film showing
the gruesome beheading of young Nick Berg from my hometown Philadelphia.
The way that the killers call their murder retribution for the
Abu Ghraib abuses painfully recalls the vengeful killing of David
Pearl (another Jewish American civilian) in Pakistan shortly
after the abusive treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo
became public. Some in the pro-war crowd in America are actually
emboldened by Berg's murder, now screaming that it somehow justifies
American torture. U.S. Senators are using it as an excuse to
censor the latest set of pictures which might "incite"
more violence.
We may see some of them anyway.
The speed with which The Photos and video from the Iraqi Front
appear on our TVs and computers rattles the synapses. Now, any
amateur can take a photo, any bully can make porn and any murderer
can make a snuff film viewed by millions within moments. Will
the digital technology that made Bush's POW Porn the huge hit
that it is make this horrific human violence escalate or shock
us enough to stop it?
It's up to us. We are America.
Dr. Susan Block is a sex educator, cultural commentator,
host of The Dr. Susan Block Show and author of The 10 Commandments
of Pleasure. Visit her website at http://www.drsusanblock.com
Send all hate mail, love letters,
commentary, questions and confessions to her at liberties@blockbooks.com
© 2004, Dr. Susan Block
For reprint rights, please contact rox@blockbooks.com
Weekend
Edition Features for May 8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
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