From the NY Times:
'Gooks' to 'Hajis'
By BOB HERBERT

The hapless Jeremy Sivits got the headlines yesterday. A mechanic whose job was to service gasoline-powered generators, Specialist Sivits was sentenced to a year in prison and thrown out of the Army for accepting an invitation to take part in the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

But there's another soldier in serious trouble to whom we should be paying even closer attention. His case doesn't just call into question the treatment of prisoners by U.S. forces. It calls into question this entire abominable war.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is a 28-year-old member of the Florida National Guard who served six harrowing months in Iraq, went home to Miami on a furlough last October, and then refused to return to his unit when the furlough ended.

Sergeant Mejia has been charged with desertion. His court-martial at Fort Stewart, Ga., began Wednesday, the same day that Specialist Sivits pleaded guilty to the charges against him. If Sergeant Mejia is convicted, he will face a similar punishment, a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge.

Sergeant Mejia told me in a long telephone interview this week that he had qualms about the war from the beginning but he followed his orders and went to Iraq in April 2003. He led an infantry squad and saw plenty of action. But the more he thought about the war — including the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, the mistreatment of prisoners (which he personally witnessed), the killing of children, the cruel deaths of American G.I.'s (some of whom are the targets of bounty hunters in search of a reported $2,000 per head), the ineptitude of inexperienced, glory-hunting military officers who at times are needlessly putting U.S. troops in even greater danger, and the growing rage among coalition troops against all Iraqis (known derisively as "hajis," the way the Vietnamese were known as "gooks") — the more he thought about these things, the more he felt that this war could not be justified, and that he could no longer be part of it.

Sergeant Mejia's legal defense is complex (among other things, he is seeking conscientious objector status), but his essential point is that war is too terrible to be waged willy-nilly, that there must always be an ethically or morally sound reason for opening the spigots to such horror. And he believes that threshold was never met in Iraq.

"Imagine being in the infantry in Ramadi, like we were," he said, "where you get shot at every day and you get mortared where you live, [and attacked] with R.P.G.'s [rocket-propelled grenades], and people are dying and getting wounded and maimed every day. A lot of horrible things become acceptable."

He spoke about a friend of his, a sniper, who he said had shot a child about 10 years old who was carrying an automatic weapon. "He realized it was a kid," said Sergeant Mejia. "The kid tried to get up. He shot him again."

The child died.

All you really want to do in such an environment, said Sergeant Mejia, is "get out of there alive." So soldiers will do things under that kind of extreme stress that they wouldn't do otherwise.

"You just sort of try to block out the fact that they're human beings and see them as enemies," he said. "You call them hajis, you know? You do all the things that make it easier to deal with killing them and mistreating them."

When there is time later to reflect on what has happened, said Sergeant Mejia, "you come face to face with your emotions and your feelings and you try to tell yourself that you did it for a good reason. And if you don't find it, if you don't believe you did it for a good reason, then, you know, it becomes pretty tough to accept it — to willingly be a part of the war."

A military court will decide whether Sergeant Mejia, who served honorably while he was in Iraq, is a deserter or a conscientious objector or something in between. But the issues he has raised deserve a close reading by the nation as a whole, which is finally beginning to emerge from the fog of deliberate misrepresentations created by Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al. about this war.

The truth is the antidote to that crowd. Whatever the outcome of Sergeant Mejia's court-martial, he has made a contribution to the truth about Iraq.

From the NY Times:
What Prison Scandal?
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON - Maybe anyone who was once married to Liz Taylor — at a time when she favored tiger-striped pantsuits and Clyde's chicken wings — would not flinch at wrangling with another aging sex symbol and demanding diva: Rummy.

Or maybe, at 77, Senator John Warner is at a stage in life where he can't be intimidated into putting a higher value on Republican re-election prospects than on what he sees as the common good.

In a bracing display of old-fashioned public spiritedness, the courtly Virginian joined up with the crusty Arizonan, John McCain, to brush back Rummy and the partisan whippersnappers in Congress who are yelping that the Senate Armed Services Committee's public hearings into prison abuse by American soldiers are distracting our warriors from taking care of business in Iraq.

"I think the Senate has become mesmerized by cameras, and I think that's sad," said a California Republican, Representative Duncan Hunter.

Then Senator John Cornyn of Texas weighed in, suggesting that Mr. Warner, a Navy officer in World War II, a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War and a Navy secretary under Nixon, and Mr. McCain, who lived in a dirt suite at the Hanoi Hilton for five years, were not patriotic. Their "collective hand-wringing," Mr. Cornyn sniffed, could be "a distraction from fighting and winning the war."

Rummy had a dozen Republican senators over to the Pentagon for breakfast on Tuesday, and Mr. Cornyn said the secretary was exasperated by the "all-consuming nature" of the Congressional hearings.

The man who David Plotz of Slate says is widely "considered one of the dumbest members of Congress" chimed in, dumbly. Following up on his inane rant defending the soldiers accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib and whingeing about "humanitarian do-gooders," Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma wondered whether Mr. Warner was trying to help the Democrats with public hearings.

The most absurd cut was delivered by Speaker Dennis Hastert, who responded to Mr. McCain's contention that Congress should not enact tax cuts during wartime because it prevented a sense of shared sacrifice by barking: "John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda. There is sacrifice in this country."

It just shows how completely flipped out the Republicans are about how the Iraq occupation is going that they are turning on a war hero and P.O.W., and on a man who enlisted in not one war, but two.

It's hard to believe that even if the generals weren't testifying here, they could do much to stop the spiral into anarchy there, with each day bringing some new horror.

Gen. John Abizaid told the panel that the hearing helped establish an image in the Arab world that Americans face up to their problems and handle them in the open. Certainly, he wasn't echoing the often Panglossian view of Donald Rumsfeld yesterday. He predicted that "the situation will become more violent" after the June 30 transfer of power and that he might then require more than the 135,000 troops now in Iraq.

Senator McCain, who has long advocated more troops, said that the Pentagon and its cheerleaders were silly to think they could throw a blanket over incendiary developments. "It's only a matter of time before the Pentagon's new disc of abuse pictures starts bouncing around the Internet," he said.

When I asked about Mr. Hastert's crack about visiting Walter Reed, the man whose temper used to be so close to the surface just laughed. "My," Mr. McCain murmured, "they certainly are angry. There has been some obvious resentment because of my `independence' for a long time."

He reiterated that he would never run with John Kerry. "I'm a loyal Republican," he said. "A lot of their resentment goes back to campaign finance reform."

I asked whether Mr. Warner, who helped Mr. McCain, as a shattered P.O.W., reorient to America after Vietnam, was a good example of the exemplars he writes about in his new meditation, "Why Courage Matters."

Agreeing that his colleague had shown strength, Mr. McCain concluded: "I believe from my experience that the only way you get one of these things behind you is to get everything out as quickly as possible."

Open and sharing Bushies. Now there's a novel concept.

Less is Moore in subdued, effective '9/11'
BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

CANNES, France -- Michael Moore the muckraking wiseass has been replaced by a more subdued version in "Fahrenheit 9/11," his new documentary questioning the anti-terrorism credentials of the Bush regime. In the Moore version, President Bush, his father and members of their circle have received $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia over the years, attacked Iraq to draw attention from their Saudi friends, and have lost the hearts and minds of many of the U.S. servicemen in the war.

The film premiered Monday at the Cannes Film Festival to a series of near-riot scenes, as overbooked screenings were besieged by mobs trying to push their way in. The response at the early morning screening I attended was loudly enthusiastic. And at the official black-tie screening, it was greeted by a standing ovation; a friend who was there said it went on "for at least 25 minutes," which probably means closer to 15 (estimates of ovations at Cannes are like estimates of parade crowds in Chicago).

But the film doesn't go for satirical humor the way Moore's "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine" did. Moore's narration is still often sarcastic, but frequently he lets his footage speak for itself.

The film shows American soldiers not in a prison but in the field, hooding an Iraqi, calling him Ali Baba, touching his genitals and posing for photos with him. There are other scenes of U.S. casualties without arms or legs, questioning the purpose of the Iraqi invasion at a time when Bush proposed to cut military salaries and benefits. It shows Lila Lipscomb, a mother from Flint, Mich., reading a letter from her son, who urged his family to help defeat Bush, days before he was killed. And in a return to the old Moore confrontational style, it shows him joined by a Marine recruiter as he encourages congressmen to have their sons enlist in the services.

Despite these dramatic moments, the most memorable footage for me involved President Bush on Sept. 11. The official story is that Bush was meeting with a group of pre-schoolers when he was informed of the attack on the World Trade Center and quickly left the room. Not quite right, says Moore. Bush learned of the first attack before entering the school, "decided to go ahead with his photo op," and began to read My Pet Goat to the students. Informed of the second attack, he incredibly remained with the students for another seven minutes, reading from the book, until a staff member suggested that he leave. The look on his face as he reads the book, knowing what he knows, is disquieting.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" documents the long association of the Bush clan and Saudi oil billionaires, and reveals that when Bush released his military records, he blotted out the name of another pilot whose flight status was suspended on the same day for failure to take a physical exam. This was his good friend James R. Bath, who later became the Texas money manager for the bin Laden family (which has renounced its terrorist son).

When a group of 9/11 victims sued the Saudi government for financing the terrorists, the Saudis hired as their defense team the law firm of James Baker, Bush Sr.'s secretary of state. And the film questions why, when all aircraft were grounded after 9/11, the White House allowed several planes to fly around the country picking up bin Laden family members and other Saudis and flying them home.

Much of the material in "Fahrenheit 9/11" has already been covered in books and newspapers, but some is new, and it all benefits from the different kind of impact a movie has. Near the beginning of the film, as Congress moves to ratify the election of Bush after the Florida and Supreme Court controversies, it is positively eerie to see 10 members of Congress -- eight black women, one Asian woman and one black man -- rise to protest the move and be gaveled into silence by the chairman of the session, Al Gore.

On the night before his film premiered, Moore, in uncharacteristic formalwear, attended an official dinner given by Gilles Jacob, president of the festival. Conversation at his table centered on the just-published New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh alleging that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized use of torture in Iraqi prisons.

Moore had his own insight into the issue: "Rumsfeld was under oath when he testified about the torture scandal. If he lied, that's perjury. And therefore I find it incredibly significant that when Bush and Cheney testified before the 9/11 commission, they refused to swear an oath. They claimed they'd sworn an oath of office, but that has no legal standing. Do you suppose they remembered how Clinton was trapped by perjury and were protecting themselves?"

Would something like that belong in the film?

"My contract says I can keep editing and adding stuff right up until the release date," Moore said. He said he expects to sign a U.S. distribution deal this week at Cannes; the film's producer, Miramax, was forbidden to release it by its parent company, Disney.

After the first press screening on Monday, journalists noted on their way out that Moore was more serious in this film and took fewer cheap shots. But there are a few. Wait until you see Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz preparing for a TV interview. First he puts a pocket comb in his mouth to wet it and combs down his hair. Still not satisfied, he spits on his hand and wipes the hair into place. Catching politicians being made up for TV is an old game, but this is a first.

From the NY Times:
Tax Relief Charade

ast week, House Republicans were the driving force behind the passage of a stopgap measure intended to provide relief for taxpayers who have been hit of late with the alternative minimum tax. The relief is sorely needed. But the House's measure is disingenuous — a temporary fix that will mollify justifiably aggrieved taxpayers in the short run while obscuring the real cause of the alternative tax problem and, by extension, dangerous flaws in the Bush administration's tax policy.

The alternative minimum tax is built into the federal tax code to ensure that superwealthy taxpayers don't use excessive tax breaks to avoid paying their fair share. In the 1990's, it never applied to more than about one million people a year. But in recent years, the tax has begun afflicting middle-class and upper-middle-class taxpayers who are far from the multimillionaires it was intended to affect. This year, about three million taxpayers will owe this tax. Without corrective action, nearly 30 million taxpayers will be affected in 2010, most of them making $50,000 to $200,000.

Part of the problem is that the alternative minimum tax was not designed to reflect the effects of inflation, so the House's fix would provide some inflation protection by increasing the thresholds for the tax through 2005. But a more serious cause is the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. When the tax cuts were enacted, no corresponding changes were made to the alternative tax. So as the tax cuts reduce the liability on a filer's Form 1040, the alternative tax liability looms relatively larger. In effect, most taxpayers snared by this tax will be giving back all or part of the tax savings they were supposed to reap from the Bush tax cuts.

This consequence was not unforeseen — the alternative tax has been studied from every conceivable angle for over a decade. It is allowed to endure in its current form for only one reason: to mask the tax cuts' disastrous effect on the deficit. As long as the alternative tax is on the books, official budget estimates include the revenue it is projected to raise from middle-class taxpayers — even though the administration and Congress are publicly committed to ensuring that those same taxpayers won't have to pay. One way or the other, then, the administration's tax plan is sheer duplicity. Either middle-class Americans will find their supposed tax cuts gobbled up by the alternative tax, or the deficit will be far larger than the administration projects.

The hidden budget hole is enormous. Right now, the administration argues that Congress must permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. According to estimates by the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, the cost of doing so, without reforming the alternative tax, is about $1.2 trillion. If the alternative tax is reformed so it won't apply to middle-class taxpayers, the cost will explode to nearly $2 trillion.

The Senate is expected to pass the House's temporary fix, but middle-class taxpayers should not be fooled. They will either get little if any benefit from the Bush tax cuts, or they will get a deficit that has ballooned beyond anyone's worst nightmare.