Truth is the child of time

This is a collective letter addressed to all the Assholes in the Bush Administration.

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Dear Assholes,

You’ve really done it this time. I knew all along you were capable of ruthless, malicious manipulation, but I’ve never seen anything this bad, not in all my twenty-five years on this earth. You think you’ve seen me angry? You have no idea. I’m so angry, I’m thinking about just dropping all my other mood settings for good.

And you know what angers me the most? Your media-fed public relations stunts are just brilliant. You’ve been out-Hollywooding Hollywood since the W. Bush ship landed in 2000. If only Wag the Dog had known it would be predicting the future - here we are in a fictional nightmare. I can’t even tell what’s real anymore, and I sure as hell can’t trust you. You may just be a bunch of power-hungry, immoral, cruel assholes, but you sure know how to create the illusion that you know what’s best. And everybody’s buying it, bypassing any voices of dissent like a little kid neglecting to eat his vegetables in favor of sweets. But the question isn’t whether you know what’s good for us. Do we know what’s good for us? Well, if we did, you wouldn’t be in power.

I know I’m blowing your Asshole egos out of proportion with my broad generalizations and juvenile metaphors, but that’s not my intent. Perhaps, while keeping with the theme of your spin-tactics abreast, I should be a bit more specific. Or maybe I should just make my anger as transparent as possible, so that it might become contagious. In any event, I’m incapable of specificity. There is a swarm of wrong buzzing all around me, and I’m having trouble focusing on swatting just one mosquito since the others are waiting to suck the life out of me until I’m defeated in bitter acceptance. But for now, I’m living, breathing, and angry.

Let’s see. I could rave about Schwarzenegger’s ballot initiative to cripple the unions. I could rain praise on the Condi Rice Iraq Weather Update (Sunny…with a chance of a surprise marketplace suicide bomb and another 50 bodies found in the desert). But today I turn my attention to the Newsweek story about Guantanamo Bay prisoner abuse scandal involving desecrating (specifically, flushing down the toilet) the Quaran (also spelled Quran, and Koran, depending on the news source) in front of devout Muslim prisoners, and its role in causing riotous protests in Afghanistan. Anyway, for the 411, visit your local newspaper or news site. It’s the top story everywhere, although I’m a bit wary to recommend a media outlet at this point, as I’m unsure of what’s objective and what is just trying to manipulate me. Call me paranoid, but I can’t help but question the way my news has been delivered lately.

I read the Newsweek story reporting this incident when it first came to print. It was shocking. Treating a holy text like a piece of waste is an evil form of torture, dare I say worse, even, than the nude pyramid pileup formation photographs. But shocked as I was, I can’t say that I was surprised. Abu Garhib had paved the way for despicable, offensive interrogation methods, but I couldn't help but suspect it wasn’t an isolated incident. The people of Afghanistan knew it, too. Regardless of whether it really happened (it did), the desecrated Quaran was the straw of Anti-American sentiments. The buildup on the camel’s back is a much bigger, more intricate picture that is worth a look. I’m no anti-American, but I sure as hell would be vehemently anti-American and way more anti-Bush if I were from Iraq or Afghanistan. With this detrimental foundation of mistrust and anger inevitably building up to the protests, the planned half-assed damage control effort is not going to serve as a band-aid for the Afghan people.

And now, a more clear and concise breath of fresh air on this complicated matter. From this excellent story on Newsday, I’ve discovered…

1. Why the protests cannot be blamed on Newsweek:

"This is not simply about Quarans," said Alain de Bures, the Jalalabad-based director of Madera, a European aid agency working to rebuild agriculture in eastern Afghanistan. "This was an explosion of anger by people who are, frankly, fed up with the behavior of American troops."

2. Why Newsweek shouldn’t apologize, retract the story, back away from the truth like a coward, and cocede to what will be a death sentence of journalistic credibility:

In late 2001 and 2002, during the first year the U.S. military incarcerated large numbers of Afghan, Pakistani and Arab Muslims, troops often used Qurans to humiliate or horrify the prisoners, according to Badr Zaman Badr, an Afghan writer and editor who spent three years in U.S. prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. In an interview last weekend, Badr recounted an incident at the U.S. prison at Kandahar in early 2002 in which a soldier provoked an uproar by throwing a Quran into a drum of raw sewage.

Holy shit, I almost forgot. This post started out as a letter to the Assholes in the Bush Administration! Well, Assholes, how about I just end this by having you eat your own shit - I mean words? Here you go:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan:

[The story] "has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

"I think it was Mark Twain who said that something that's not true can speed around the world three or four times in a matter of seconds, while truth is still trying to put their boots on. And people have said, my goodness, why does it take so long for someone to come back and ... have the actual facts?"

My goodness, indeed! Yes, Secretary Rumsfeld, it was Mark Twain, but you got the quote wrong. I know, close enough, but if you’re gonna evoke a American literary legend, at least use your military man precision to get it right. You of all people should know the value of precision.

Which makes me wonder, while I have you undivided attention, why no one thinks these words sound familar, and how you had the balls to break out that quote so closely following the Iraq War-justifying WMD threat dissolving into fabrication based on false sources. Newsweek has been tarnished, forced to turn in its credibility, blamed for a riot that was just waiting to happen, while the Bush Administration’s reliance on phony sources cost billions of dollars, and more importantly, thousands of lives and broken foreign credibility.

To correct Rumsfeld, it was Mark Twain who said:

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Does anyone else think it’s just wrong that Rumsfeld tried to quote Twain and no one called him on it? The op-ed columns are slow – there’s no powerful voice of dissent – I can only hope that our strongest progressive commentators are typing away. But as long as there’s no one else going there, I’ve got to point out that the Twain reference troubles me on so many different levels, the most obvious and disturbing – it points to Iraq with a bloody finger. The Iraq War is the “lie traveled halfway around the world,” and sadly, the truth sure took its time putting on its shoes. It’s as if Rumsfeld and McClellan are almost mocking us with their hypocrisy. I hate to give them that much credit, but these Assholes are brilliant, smooth operators with honorary PhDs in Bush-era public manipulation. I wouldn’t be surprised.

And speaking of Assholes, the whole lot of you: keep making me angry. I dare you. And as long as we're trading truth quotes, I've got one for you:

"Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee."

-Immanuel Kant

With no love and even less respect,

Delia True