The Nation

You need look no further than the prisoner abuse in Iraq to understand the importance of the work of the Correctional Association of New York.

For almost 160 years, since a law passed in 1846 gave it the legal authority to do so, the CA has been visiting and inspecting New York State prisons and reporting its findings and recommendations to the State Legislature and the public. It usually follows up its reports with public education and advocacy in support of reform legislation.

Off and on over the course of the CA's history, it has had contentious dealings with state prison officials. But, since the summer of 1999, the relationship has been especially combative. In the past the CA would produce a report and the Department of Correctional Services would attack it, dismiss the findings, even villify the CA and its staff in the press and threaten the organization's access to the prisons.

The latest incident dates to last August. Shortly after receiving a draft copy of the CA's report Lockdown New York: Disciplinary Confinement in New York State Prisons, officials in the Department of Correctional Services retaliated by imposing a range of restrictions on the organization's prison access, including how and with whom it can conduct visits, to whom it can speak during visits, and what part of the prisons it can see.

The Lockdown New York report, it's important to point out, powerfully documents the many problems plaguing the state prisons' punitive segregation units, especially the mistreatment and neglect of the disproportionate number of mentally ill inmates who end up confined there for 23 to 24 hours a day for week, months, sometimes years at a time with little or no social interaction. The report documents extreme sensory deprivation; high rates of suicide and acts of self-harm; men in their underwear cowering in corners, mumbling incoherently; men ranting so feverishly that it was unclear whether they were insane to begin with--or driven mad by the conditions of their confinment.

It's too bad, isn't it, that the Correctional Association can't bring cameras into the prisons, rather than having to conjure up the images in words. But in important ways, the CA is our society's camera. Its representatives go everywhere in the prisons: the cellblocks, clinics, yards, visiting rooms, kitchens, program areas, punitive segregation units. Its members talk to prisoners and guards. (The CA's public education and advocacy program after the Lockdown New York report led to first steps toward more humane and sensible policies: The New York State Assembly passed a law banning the confinement of mentally ill people in disciplinary units; Governor Pataki also included an additional $13 million in his proposed budget for increased mental health services in the prisons.)

For months the Correctional Association tried "back channel" negotiations to resolve the dispute with the State, but prison officials remained intransigent on key issues involving access. Finally, in March, the CA sued in federal court, asserting that the State had effectively violated its First Amendment right to exercise free speech. The judge in the case has urged both parties to meet and seek a negotiated settlement; the CA has engaged in these meetings. What the outcome of these discussions will be is not yet clear.

So far legal fees for the case have amounted to over $100,000 (and that despite the 25 percent discount offered by CA's lawyers, Emery, Celli, et al.) Since these costs were not budgeted, the CA must find a way to find untapped sources to cover them.

In my view, speaking as both a longtime board member of the CA and as a concerned citizen, it's crucial that the Correctional Association prevails in this case, not only so that it can regain its access to our prisons--so critical to the organization's valuable work--but also to send a message that the state government's ugly, bullying tactic doesn't carry the day. For information on how you can help, click here or contact Susan Gabriel at the Correctional Association at 135 East 15th Street, New York, NY 10003, 212-254-5700 or sgabriel@correctionalassocation.org.

If only Candidate Nader were Citizen Nader. That's what I kept thinking as I listened Monday evening to his speech delivered in the citadel of America's establishment--the Council on Foreign Relations. When Nader castigated Bush for committing "high crimes and misdemeanors" by misleading the nation into a war "based on false pretenses," it may have been the truest thing ever uttered in the mahogany-paneled chambers of the CFR.

But while the message is strong; the medium is wrong. As The Nation has repeatedly said, America's consumer rights crusader got the important thing wrong when he decided to run for President this year.

At the Council, the mood was as if an exotic animal had loped into the building. Nader was greeted sourly by some, apprehensively by others, warily by many. A few leading Democratic Party fundraisers had come to check out his current message. Former Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorenson sat in the front row--and seemed to welcome Nader's nod to Sorenson's recent book which includes a section on America's unmet needs. The crowd of about 150 people included affluent investment bankers, lawyers and assorted journalists and foundation types.

Peter Osnos--publisher of Public Affairs Books--introduced the speaker with a quip about how few people have enjoyed Nader's "political durability." He mentioned three others--"there's Fidel Castro, Bob Dylan and Jesse Jackson." And to put it candidly, Osnos said, "lately Nader has been driving many of his admirers nuts."

It wasn't only his admirers who looked like they'd been driven nuts. At times, it was as if the elaborately framed portraits of former Council chieftains like David Rockefeller were rattling on the wall as Nader issued a ringing call for Bush's impeachment.

In his speech, "Waging Peace, Advancing Justice, Promoting Security & the Civic Displacement of Corporate Globalization," (or as he joked, "how to twist the tail of the cosmos in 20 easy minutes"), Nader criticized the phony handover of sovereignty scheduled for June 30th and called on the White House to set a date to end its military and corporate occupation of Iraq.

In the Q & A period, Nader was grilled by several people about why he's running in a year in which the stakes are so high. Wouldn't he be a spoiler, as he was in 2000? (Readers of this space know his answer.) Nader's response that he could gain support among Republican and conversative voters disgusted with this administration was met with palpable skepticism. And, stubborn as ever, Nader didn't bend on his message that on the fundamental issues that affect the future of our democracy, the differences between the two parties are still virtually indistinguishable.

"Yes, the parties are polarized on social issues and access to civil justice and rights, but both parties have sold our politics to the highest bidder and are unwilling to challenge sovereignty of corporations over people. The rhetoric is different; the reality is not." That comment elicited a slight hissing in the room. Later Nader said, somewhat contemptuously: "We've been completely abandoned by liberals."

Nader's speech netted a story in the New York Times, which focused on Nader's call to impeach Bush. But there were a few other tidbits:

* Nader thought it was hopeful that there was "increasing rebellion among retired foreign policy and intelligence officials," and that "this war was waged against the considered opinion of so many of them."

* Nader consciously attempted to cloak himself in President Eisenhower's legacy by drawing a connection between his speech and the General's classic speech warning of the military-industrial complex. Any talk of cutting our bloated military budget is more taboo today than it was twenty years ago, Nader rightly observed. (He referred the crowd to the work of Columbia professor Seymour Melman.)

* The "drive to war" represented the "fragility of our democratic institutions. The "lack of any deliberative process by the US Congress, the lack of an investigative process by the media--which clicked their heels" is a "severe scar on our democratic process."

* The Founding Fathers, Nader said, "did not want the declaration of war put in the hands of one man."

* "The last war that Congress declared was the War on Poverty." If our institutions of government had worked, we might have avoided this quagmire, he argued.

* We have a messianic militarist as a President; and our re-engagement with the world is hindered because Bush talks like "an out-of-control West Texas sheriff" and has a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and for our constitution," Nader stated.

* Saddam was the US's dictator. The US supported him as a bulwark against Communists, Nader stated, and we averted our eyes to his atrocitieswhen it suited our strategic needs. "The economic sanctions imposedon Iraq were a clear violation of international law and contributedto the deaths of thousands of children."

* He decried the Administration's exploitation of fear since 9/11: "To say that President Bush has exaggerated the threat of Al-Qaeda is to trip into a political hornets' nest." But it is time to raise the "impertinent question" about whether we've seen a vast exaggeration of the threat of terrorism" for the purpose of fulfilling the GOP's agenda. "Chill the other party; chill dissent; distract attention from domestic necessities and from the fact that a lot of corporations who are pouring money into Bush's private kitty get a lot of contracts; and Bush maintained his position in the polls--until recently."

* Citing William James, Nader made the case for why "we need very, very strenuously the moral equivalent of war." We need a humanitarian foreign policy, he argued. It should be a "shame on our conscience that we can't find billions to pursue the goals of alleviating hunger, poverty, that we can't find the money to take on the greatest assault of WMD that is heading our way: tuberculosis, pandemics heading from China which will take hundreds of thousands of lives here, millions there."

* Nader has finally woken up to the possibilities of the internet, quipping that "Other than the use of the internet, presidential politics hasn't had an innovation since TV makeup."

* He believes that he will be on as many state ballots as in 2000.

* Asked about the veepstakes, he followed up on what he said on ABC This Week. "I think Kerry should pick Gephardt or Edwards. Either would help him. They're both good on their feet, have their own constituencies, and are already vetted."

* Called on people to support the work of Citizens' Debate Commission to challenge the two party corporate control of the debates. (Do it at least as an antidote to insomnia, he urged, prompting some laughter in the hall.)

* He spoke little about his recent meeting with Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, but did say that when he asked Kerry how he would push through his energy independence policies,in the face of oil and gas and other energy lobbies, Kerry told him, "Just let me get in the White House and I'll use the bully pulpit." "I told him I just didn't think that was a sufficient answer."

The applause at the end was wary and light. Nader may have been invited into the citadel but he was not welcome for long. On the sidewalk outside, a lone Green Party member was leafleting. I didn't see anyone taking.

When I wrote about South Dakota populist Stephanie Herseth in this space in April, the polls showed her well ahead of her rightwing rival in the race to finish out Bill Janklow's Congressional term. And, although she still leads in the contest for South Dakota's only US House seat with less than two weeks left before the state's special election on June 2, new polls indicate that the race has narrowed, in large part due to the 1.5 million dollars spent on television advertising by national Republicans anxious to hold onto the seat.

Click here to read "A New Populist on the Block," my weblog detailing why Herseth represents the best of South Dakota's progressive populist traditions (although she isn't perfect--as some readers pointed out in smart comments.) And click here to donate urgently need funds to counter her opponent's war chest.

Let's review.

* The head of the picked-in-Washington Governing Council in Iraq was assassinated just outside the highly protected command center of the occupation six weeks before a new but yet to be named Iraqi government assumes sovereignty.

* The Baghdad home and compound of Ahmad Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress received $33 million in US taxpayer money for providing wrong and misleading (deliberately so) intelligence on WMDs and other matters, was raided by US troops and Iraqi police, pursuant to warrants issued by an Iraqi judge. The early indications are Chalabi's gang may stand accused of a) corruption; b) impeding an investigation into possible corruption in the UN's oil-for-food program in Iraq; c) fomenting a coup or otherwise trying to interfere in the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq; d) engaging in espionage by sharing sensitive information with Iran; or e) all of the above. The raid came two days after the Pentagon stopped funding the INC and four days after Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged he had made false assertions about Iraq possessing mobile biological weapons labs during his February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council. That charge had been based on intelligence provided by an INC source. At Bush's State of the Union speech in January, Chalabi was a guest of the president and sat right behind Laura Bush.

* An attack mounted by US forces near the Syrian border has led to charges that the American troops massacred a wedding party. The US military claims it struck a legitimate military target. Local Iraqi health officials maintain most of the victims were women and children.

* The prison abuse scandal rolls on, with more photos and more videotapes. Meanwhile, a soldier who worked for military intelligence at Abu Ghraib military has gone public with the accusation that guards at the prison were encouraged to abuse the prisoners. At higher levels, the US military and senior military officials have not been able to get their stories straight on who actually was in charge at Abu Ghraib and what interrogation practices were authorized (and by whom) regarding Iraqi detainees.

* The newspapers are filled with quotes from US officials working for the occupation authority who express despair and discouragement about the current situation and the road (or lack thereof) ahead.

* There are signs that security in Iraq is deteriorating further. Iraqis complain about kidnappings and lawlessness. American reporters, by and large, rarely venture beyond the Green Zone and their hotels. Earlier this week, a Time writer told me that the newsmagazine has only three people in Iraq. Much of the video footage shown on cable news stations has been shot by non-Americans hired by US media outlets. The war is too unsafe for Americans to cover. And reconstruction efforts are slowing down or stopping.

* Halliburton still cannot work up a legitimate bill for hundreds of millions of dollars in food services it has supplied in Iraq.

* Neocon Bill Kristol, one of the main promoters of the war, called George W. Bush's handling of the war "incompetent." Columnist George Will has accused the Bush administration of being unable to think clearly about Iraq. Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the intelligence committee, has groused about "growing US messianic instincts." In other words, some hawk-mice are abandoning the ship. (They're not calling for withdrawal--the neocons, actually, are urging dramatically expanding the US military mission in Iraq--but they are distancing themselves from the commander-in-chief.)

* And remember how the war in Iraq was supposed to bolster the Middle East peace process? Tell that to the parents of the children recently killed in Gaza during a protest.

Can it get much worse? The sad answer is, yes. After the June 30 hand-off, the lines of authority could become less clear in Iraq. There will be a caretaker government supposedly composed of non-politicos. And the US military will have to coordinate its counterinsurgency operations with this group. Imagine the negotiations that will ensue, as the US military tries to mount operations against the various insurgencies. How much leeway will the new government provide the US forces? After the recent "wedding party" attack, will these Iraqi leaders permit the US to strike at will? It is not difficult to foresee US operations in Iraq turning into a collection of Falluja-like standoffs. And if the new Iraqi government is supposed to be representing the Iraqi people, how will it deal with Iraqi resentment against the US occupation and military operations? A few weeks ago, Gallup reported that 57 percent of Iraqis want US troops to leave immediately. If that's an accurate reflection of popular will, how can the new sovereign government permit US forces to stay and have a free run of the country? How can the Bush administration claim it is fighting for democracy in Iraq, if it keeps troops there in defiance of Iraqi public opinion?

These are difficult questions. No wonder Bush's handling of the war in Iraq wins the approval of only a third of the American public in recent polls. Yet there do remain the diehard Bush defenders. A few days ago, I was debating Jed Babbin, a contributor for National Review Online, and he declared--no ifs, ands, or buts--that "we're winning the war in Iraq" and that the American people had full confidence in Bush. I asked for evidence of the latter proposition. He noted that he has been able to visit the heartland of America and suss out what "the people" are thinking. Bully for him. In another debate, George Neumayr, the managing editor of The American Spectator countered my pessimism by noting that Bush was doing a fine job and any criticism of him was both unfounded and counterproductive (read: of aid and comfort to the enemy). These and other traditional cons have yet to follow Captain Kristol off the reservation--though CNN's Tucker Carlson has mea culpaed his prewar enthusiasm, blaming his hawkishness on an unnamed pal who persuaded him to ignore his own instincts and ride along to the sound of the guns.

In the midst of this recent slide, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (of the Cheerleaders for Chalabi crowd) begrudgingly admitted the administration might have made one or two slight miscalculations. But the bigfoots--Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld--continue to duck responsibility for their misjudgments. Bush may still be taxing himself trying to come up with an answer to the question posed at his last press conference: can you think of any mistakes you have made as president? At the time, none came to mind. And he has not gotten back to us on this subject. As for Cheney, it would be encouraging to see him--the godfather of the administration's neocon cabal--working hard to get back from Chalabi the $27 million the United States wasted on this neocon darling, was convicted in Jordan of massive bank fraud. Perhaps Cheney can ask US troops to seize Chalabi's compound and assets and sell them off on eBay: "Item No. 23: Iranian tapestry rug, suitable for use in the office of a head of state." (Chalabi pals at the neoconnish American Enterprise Institute appear to be standing by their man in Iraq. Danielle Pletka, AEI's veep, dismissed the Chalabi raid as likely "political manipulation in order to disable somebody who has been a thorn in the side of the" occupation authorities. So it's Paul Bremer's fault. Catfight on the right!) And while Rumsfeld has expressed regret that half-a-dozen GIs turned Abu Ghraib into their own personal dungeon, he has yet to apologize for--or even acknowledge--the woefully inadequate planning that occurred for the post-invasion phase of Mission Iraq. A year ago no one, Rumsfeld said, could have predicted the troubles of today. But military and foreign policy experts back then foresaw precisely the problems that now confront the United States. But Rumsfeld thought he knew better--or perhaps he didn't think. He should be accepting responsibility for that screw-up, not the sadistic antics captured on pixels.

The bad news about the bad news is that there is not much reason to expect a change in the trend. Forget the John Kerry plan--whatever it may be. If he is fortunate enough to win (and he ought to be careful what he wishes for), he won't assume office until January 20. By then the first round of elections are scheduled to take place. But, no doubt, the situation in Iraq will have changed so much that whatever Kerry has to offer today could well be irrelevant by then. For now, it is Bush the Infallible who is stuck with the mess in Iraq, and the nation is stuck with him.

******

DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research....[I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." For more information and a sample, check out the official website: www.bushlies.com.