The head of the CIA has stepped down and a new guy has been nominated. The press goes on and on about “the beleaguered agency” and their faulty intelligence. But I seem to remember the CIA warning the Bush administration NOT to use the intelligence and information that the Bush Krew planned and did use to support their WoMD justification for the invasion. It was a case of data mining — the Bush Bunch used whatever data, however faulty, they could find to support their made-in-advance-plans — the “facts” were selected to fit the policy, as the Downing Street memo made clear. Then, when caught with their pants down, they made the CIA the fall guy and the U.S. press curiously fails to remind us that it was the administration who promoted the erroneous intelligence, not the CIA. Is the press STILL afraid to call Bush and Co. on their lies? Far be it for me to hold up the CIA — toppler of numerous democratic governments — as a paragon of truth and virtue — but in this case I think they are being treated unfairly.
Saw "The Road To Guantanamo" last night — it was a screening — it will be out in June, I think. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross directed. It’s the story of the Tipton 3, and it’s great, absolutely amazing.
I vaguely remember this story being in the news. The Tipton 3 are three Pakistani Brits who happened to be in Afghanistan when the U.S. began bombing and were stupid or unlucky enough to be picked up by the Northern Alliance (enemies of the Taliban and therefore allied with the U.S.) and were then turned over as bounty to the U.S. ground troops.
These poor lads barely survive their capture by the Northern countrymen — many others around them die like cattle. Before long they are passed on to the Americans and they think their troubles are over. Think again. They are likewise beaten and abused by the U.S. “intelligence” dudes. Soon enough they are spirited away to Gitmo for further torture and further questioning.
I don’t have to go into the details of what was done to them — it’s all on the record (though the U.S. military and Republicans say they are lying.) Theirs was maybe the first unimpeachable unofficial testimony of what was going on in there. Not as bad as Abu Ghraib, but still illegal, stupid, counterproductive (these lads were politicized by what was done to them) and, maybe saddest of all — completely incompetent and useless. Almost none of the hundreds of “informants” know anything and most are innocent — just like these lads — the abuse and rendition of prisoners like these is a recruiting poster for terrorist groups worldwide. It actually creates the enemies it is trying to eliminate.
The film intercuts the real guys and docudrama recreations of their story — creatively a risky move. But as the decision was to recreate everything in scrupulous detail as described by the boys it comes across as one gripping super bad trip rather than as a dogmatic anti-Bush diatribe.
Here is one lad:
I thought the film mainly concentrated on their tragic and stupid story rather than insisting on political points — the lads on lark are as dumb as Beavis and Butthead, and their journey through Hell has almost no rhyme of reason. They could be ordinary American lads who one night get a little too palsy with Tony Soprano’s daughter and find themselves in a nightmare they could never imagine. The Americans are just lads too, as dumb as dirt and full of righteous bluster. Looking at the film still below I am reminded of the adage that when one turns one’s enemies into non-human things, then anything is possible. The head shaving and the bags over the heads are essential if one seeks emotional and physical revenge for a wrong.
City of Little Factories
Did the 5 Boro Bike Tour this morning. 42 miles! I thought I’d be more tired at the end than I am. It’s loads of fun. People in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island put signs in their yards and cheer the crowds of bikers on. The organizers close the FDR drive, the BQE, the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge on one side — so we get the thrill of riding in the middle of the street, not having to stop at red lights and no worries of the ubiquitous jaywalking peds on suicide missions.
Occasionally there are rest areas where they give out free bananas and water (and candy bars and peanut butter crackers sometimes.) One rest stop was mandatory — so things don’t get too spread out, I guess. There was lots of spandex, way way too much spandex.
9:30AM — The view to Randall’s Island under a RR bridge:
12 Noon — Riding over the Varrazano:
Of course, some guys (and gals) are little behind on their bike courtesy — or maybe they are trying to prove how manly they are — to both themselves and everyone else. So there was some high speed zooming and jockeying for meaningless leads — but mostly there was a great feeling of civic togetherness — which sounds corny and clichéd, and it is, but that’s what it was.
Maybe it was the route — the longest parts of the route go through waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens — but it gave one the impression that the old nutty industrial city that NY once was still exists. These neighborhoods are an endless series of little factories that make plastic wrapping, cardboard boxes, Ex-Lax, coat hangers, hairbrushes and, of course, wooden water tanks. Sure, some neighborhoods like Williamsburg are filling up with art galleries and bookshops, others are all Hasidic or Italian, but mostly the waterfront is still funky factories — a million miles from the industrial parks, high tech campuses and corporate headquarters that we see out west. These are factories on a small scale, sometimes family run. These are the places that make those widgets that you look at and think, “who thought of that?” “who designed that?”
