Now, Hindu Nationalists Rewriting California Textbooks

By Angana Chatterji

The attempts of diasporic Hindu nationalist organizations in the United States to intervene in revising segments on India, Indian history, and Hinduism in 6th grade textbooks in California State schools is disturbing.

On December 2, 2005, the Curriculum Commission, an advisory body to the California State Board of Education accepted 131 of the 153 revisions proposed by Hindu Education Foundation (HEF) and Vedic Foundation (VF), two groups affiliated with Hindutva, militant Hindu nationalist ideology. The edits offered by these groups were adopted amid intense lobbying and the misrepresentation that their views represent those of 'ALL HINDUS' in the diaspora. This bears testimony to the power and resources of long-distance Hindu nationalism, and its organizing capabilities in the United States.

The changes proposed by HEF, VF, and the Ad Hoc Committee, on the basis of recommendations made by Professor Shiva Bajpai, who too is affiliated with the World Association for Vedic Studies, a Hindu nationalist organization, assert a nationalistic and mythic history of India as 'social fact'. Contrary to reputable scholarship, the revisions refute the migration of Aryans, associated by historians with the emergence of Hinduism, from Central Asia into India.

The revisions posit Hinduism as indigenous to India and ascribed with its origins, rendering mute the histories of adivasis (tribal, first peoples) and their subjugation by Hindus. On page 238, the Ad Hoc Committee proposed, and the Curriculum Commission accepted, that the current text, 'The Aryans created a caste system' be replaced with: 'During Vedic times, people were divided into different social groups (varnas) based on their capacity to undertake a particular profession.'

Such storying dissociates the caste system from Hinduism, and discounts and neutralizes the oppressive structure and politics via which the caste system was constituted. It presents the caste system as a fluid arrangement, not restricted by ancestry. On page 245, the Ad Hoc Committee proposed, and the Curriculum Commission accepted, that the current text, 'Men had many more rights than women', be replaced with: 'Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed.' The inequity of women's rights is legitimated and discoursed as 'different rights', invisibilizing women's subordinated role in a patriarchal society, and the Vedas posed as 'revealed' doctrines.

The revisions highlight Hindutva's misogyny and bigotry, and assert a non-reflective gaze at power that justifies Hindu dominance and cultural nationalism. Their history makes Hinduism uniform, monotheistic, and monolithic, dismissing the disenfranchisement of women, dalits, adivasis, and religious minorities under centuries of Hindu ascendancy in what is today India, and therefore their ongoing struggles for justice and self-determination. What message are we sending children?

The positions taken by HEF and VF are deliberate, and consistent with the attempts of Hindutva groups toward rewriting history in India, where sectarian education campaigns undertaken by Hindu extremist groups demonize minorities through the teaching of fundamentalist curricula. The Hindu right-wing has instituted an educational network for rural and disenfranchised peoples in India, building on a mandate that validates the paramountcy of a 'Hindu worldview' and the assembling of a Hindu state.

Such corruption of education incites political and social fires, cultivating a culture of hatred toward non-Hindus and those that refuse to submit to Hindutva's tyranny. Hindu nationalist organizations, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have spearheaded this movement in India, successfully penetrating into educational systems and centralized regulatory commissions. The RSS has fashioned an institutional umbrella that has had damaging impact on education at the local level.

Created by the RSS in 1977, the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan network focuses on moral, extracurricular and physical education for 'mind, body, and spirit'. The Vidya Bharati system supervises over 18,000 schools in India, with a shared curriculum across the country. The RSS has established a network of schools, such as the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishads, Vivekananda Kendras, Sewa Bharatis, Ekal Vidyalayas, to advance the ideological agenda of Hindu nationalism.

For adivasis (referred derogatorily by Hindu nationalists as 'vanavasis' or 'forest dwellers') and dalits (erstwhile 'untouchable' castes), this ongoing reality of Hinduization forces their coercive incorporation into Brahmanical Hinduism. Hindu nationalists have utilized such educational networks as mechanisms through which to recruit and mobilize women, adivasis, and dalits in campaigns against religious minorities. The participation of Hinduized women, adivasi, and dalit communities in the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 exemplifies this pattern.

Following the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) accession to power at the centre in 1998, Hindu nationalist educators were inducted into the National Council for Education and Research Training (NCERT), the national curriculum development and review body, to make changes to school curricula. With the defeat of the BJP at the centre in 2004, processes to reverse these changes have been instated. The United States Department of State, in its International Religious Freedom reports of 2002, 2003, and 2004, stated that attempts at Hinduizing education endangered religious freedom in India. Now it appears that this same strategy is insinuating itself in California.

Hindu nationalist curricula must not masquerade as 'standard education' in California. The California State Board of Education must note that the VF and HEF and their supporters are closely connected to Hindu nationalist organizations. The HEF, its coordinators and advisors, for example, include members of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS, the US counterpart of the RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHP-A), another key Hindutva organization. The Hindu American Foundation has threatened legal action against the California Board of Education in regard to the textbook changes. Its president, Dr. Mihir Meghani, has been a member of both the HSS and VHP-A.

Hindu nationalists in the US have been targeting Professors Michael Witzel (Harvard University), James Heitzman (UC, Davis), and Stanley Wolpert (UCLA). These scholars reviewed the edits proposed by Hindu nationalists and suggested responsible changes premised on credible histories. Mr. Gaurang Desai of the HSS derogatorily equated Professor Witzel to Hitler in speaking to the Curriculum Commission. This is ironic criticism given Hindutva's professed admiration for Hitler and the Nazi Party, as Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, an early RSS ideologue, expressed in 1938, in 'We or Our Nation Defined':

'Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here'.

He continued:

'The non-Hindu people in Hindustan [homeland of Hindus] .... may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen's rights.'

After being nominated Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2001, Mr. Narendra Modi incorporated the teachings of Hindutva in his governance of Gujarat. According to a Times of India article, entitled, 'In Modi's Gujarat, Hitler is a textbook hero' in tenth grade school texts: 'present a frighteningly uncritical picture of Fascism and Nazism. The strong national pride that both these phenomena generated, the efficiency in the bureaucracy and the administration and other "achievements" are detailed, but the exterminations of Jews and atrocities against trade unionists, migrant laborers, and any section of people who did not fit into Mussolini or Hitler's definition of rightful citizen do not find mention.'

Hate mail directed at Professor Witzel has accused him of being a 'racist'. This is a despicable example of slander, and, in the name of a high moral principle, makes a mockery of the seriousness of racism. Respected and credentialed scholars such as Professor Witzel and others who served on the review panel must be judged by the merits of their scholarship. Instead, Hindu nationalists, such as Mr. Desai and Dr. Yvette Rosser, who ambiguously refers to Professor Witzel as 'a professor from Harvard University' (India-West), systematically fabricate libelous and defamatory allegations to discredit individuals, rather than engage with integrity the issues raised by those who oppose them.

Issues of racism and ethnocentrism that diasporic communities are confronted with in the United States are of critical concern and prompt us to seek curricular changes, hoping that a respectful curriculum will further facilitate a multicultural society. In proposing curricular changes, we must however make distinctions between national pride that wishes to put forward a uniform and glorifying version of history and the scholarship of history, which seeks to present the complexities within. Fiction as history does not benefit Indian-American and other California school-goers, for whom engagement with the past must facilitate a deep questioning of how things come to be, of what constitutes knowledge, of how knowledge is contested, so that the study of history informs the work of citizenship.

Source: Sikh Spectrum
http://www.sikhspectrum.com/022006/hindutva_textbooks.htm

US 'open' to Israel borders unilateral plan

The US secretary of state has said Washington may be open to backing Israel's Kadima party in drawing the country's borders unilaterally.

Condoleezza Rice said a negotiated deal with the Palestinians was preferable, but seemed unlikely since the militant group Hamas won Palestinian elections.

But she added that there had been no chance to discuss the Israeli proposal.

It is the first time the US appears to have dropped its insistence that the conflict must be solved bilaterally.

Ms Rice was speaking to reporters travelling with her to Berlin for talks about Iran's nuclear programme.

'No chance to talk'

Ms Rice pointedly did not rule out supporting Kadima's plan for withdrawing from parts of the occupied West Bank by 2010 but consolidating other Jewish settlements there.

"I would not on the face of it say... that we do not think there is any value in what the Israelis are talking about," she said.

"But we can't support it because we don't know. We haven't had a chance to talk to them about what they have in mind," she stressed.

She referred to Hamas' victory on a platform of resistance to the Israeli occupation and opposing negotiated settlements.

"If you are going to have a negotiation you have to have partners and the Palestinian government does not accept the concept of a negotiated solution," Ms Rice said.

Coalition talks

After winning Tuesday's general election, Kadima will become the largest party in the next Knesset, although it will need at least two coalition partners to get a parliamentary majority.

Efforts to form a coalition will begin officially on Sunday, when the largely-ceremonial president, Moshe Katsav, will chair the first formal negotiations.

But Kadima's leader, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has already insisted he will keep the powerful finance ministry in any new government, the Maariv newspaper has reported.

Such a stance could complicate negotiations with Kadima's most likely partner, the Labour party, which wants the finance portfolio to help it to reverse the extensive welfare cuts of recent years.

A senior Labour MP, Yuli Tamir, said not getting control of the ministry would be a red line for her party joining the government.

"There is no doubt that our demand for the Finance Ministry is a legitimate one and part of our world view," she told Israel Army Radio.

Kadima is expected to ask a number of other smaller parties to join its coalition, including the Pensioners' Party and the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties.

Mr Olmert was also called by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who offered congratulations on his election victory.

The two men did not discuss the possibility of holding talks in the near future, a spokesman for the prime minister said.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4860340.stm

Carter slams US-India nuclear deal

Wed Mar 29, 10:49 AM ET

Former US president Jimmy Carter criticized Washington's civilian nuclear deal with India, saying it was "just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation".

"Knowing for more than three decades of Indian leaders' nuclear ambitions, I and all other presidents included them in a consistent policy: no sales of civilian nuclear technology or uncontrolled fuel to any country that refused to sign the NPT," Carter said in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

India has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and developed nuclear weapons on its own.

US President George W. Bush clinched the landmark nuclear deal with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a visit to New Delhi on March 2 and is pushing Congress to amend the US Atomic Energy Act, which currently prohibits nuclear sales to non NPT signatories, to make the agreement effective.

It would give energy-starved India access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing a majority of its civilian nuclear reactors under international inspection.

Carter, a Democrat, slammed the Bush administration for abandoning many of the nuclear arms control agreements negotiated since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower.

"This change in policies has sent uncertain signals to other countries, including North Korea and Iran, and may encourage technologically capable nations to choose the nuclear option," he said.

Carter said although US companies reportedly might win two contracts arising from Indian plans to import eight nuclear reactors by 2012, "this is a minuscule benefit compared with the potential costs.

"India may be a special case, but reasonable restraints are necessary," he said.

The Bush administration had often cited what it called India's unblemished nuclear non-proliferation record to go ahead with deal.

Carter said as the five original nuclear powers had all stopped producing fissile material for weapons, "India should make the same pledge to cap its stockpile of nuclear bomb ingredients.

"Instead, the proposal for India would allow enough fissile material for as many as 50 weapons a year, far exceeding what is believed to be its current capacity," he said.

So far, Carter said, India had only rudimentary technology for uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing, and he urged Congress to "preclude the sale of such technology to India."

India should also join other nuclear powers in signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he said.

Source: AFP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060329/wl_sthasia_afp/usindianuclearpoliticscarter

Hindu school raided after giving students swords

A Hindu priest was arrested after 30 Indian teenagers were given swords as part of a school graduation ceremony aimed at encouraging them to fight "Islamic militancy," police said.

The students, aged 14 and 15, were given the weapons to "empower the Hindu community to fight back against Islamic extremism and Muslim residents," a police source said on condition of anonymity on Wednesday.

Police raided the Hindu school in an area with a history of clashes between rival communities after school officials ignored demands to halt the graduation ceremony that began five years ago, recovering 33 swords, the source said.

The study of 'Shastra and Shaastra' (weapons and scriptures) was part of the curriculum and along with a sword, each student was given four Hindu books.

Temple priest Akshar Prasad was arrested by police who said they suspected hardline Hindu organisations may have been behind the ceremony in Bhavnagar, a town in western Gujarat province.

Gujarat remains a hotbed of tensions between Hindus and Muslims after riots in 2002 left more than 2,000 people dead, mostly Muslims.

The killings were in retaliation for the deaths of 59 Hindus in a train allegedly torched by Muslims. The Hindu nationalist Gujarat government was accused of turning a blind eye to the riots, a charge it rejected.

Police launched the raid after a tip-off from a parent. "I did not want my child to carry a sword back home as the final lesson from his school," Rakesh Patel said.

Police superintendent Hasmukh Patel said schools were banned from handing out weapons. "But they went ahead with their plans and punitive action had to be initiated," he said.

Source: AFP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060329/wl_sthasia_afp/indiaeducationreligionsword

Abramoff Gets Minimum Sentence in Prison

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 1 minute ago

Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison in a Florida fraud case, the minimum sentence allowed.

Abramoff and former partner Adam Kidan pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud stemming from the ill-fated purchase in 2000 of the SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet.

The sentence won't start immediately so the pair can continue cooperating in a Washington corruption investigation and a Florida probe into the murder of former SunCruz owner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

Before the hearing, more than 260 people — including rabbis, military officers and even a professional hockey referee — wrote letters on the men's behalf asking the federal judge for leniency.

The letters, obtained by The Associated Press, put a new spin on the foibles and crimes of a man who became the face of Washington's latest corruption scandal.

"Jack is a good person, who in his quest to be successful, lost sight of the rules," National Hockey League referee Dave Jackson wrote, describing the time Abramoff brought 14 youngsters to his dressing room before a game.

Kidan, in his own letter to the judge, said he knew the SunCruz deal was wrong but said he "was very caught up in the fast paced world of my partner and the high profile that came along with it." He added, "I am not the horrible person that the media has written about."

In the Florida case, Abramoff and Kidan admitted concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they had made a large cash contribution to the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz Casinos. Based on that fake transfer, lenders provided the pair with $60 million in financing.

The same week Abramoff pleaded guilty to the SunCruz fraud, he entered guilty pleas to three federal charges as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe that could involve up to 20 members of Congress and aides, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. No date has been set for his sentencing in that case.

Abramoff, 47, and Kidan, 41, are also expected to give statements in the investigation into the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, who was gunned down at the wheel of his car amid a power struggle over the gambling fleet. Three men face murder charges, including one who worked for Kidan as a consultant at SunCruz and who allegedly has ties to New York's Gambino crime family.

Both Abramoff and Kidan have repeatedly denied any role in or knowledge of the Boulis murder. But prosecutors say Kidan has not been ruled out as a suspect and defense attorneys say Abramoff could provide critical inside information about the dispute with Boulis, who also founded the Miami Subs restaurant chain.

Source: AP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060329/ap_on_re_us/lobbyist_fraud...

American Marines murder 23 Iraqi civilians

The US military deny accusations of massive over-reaction when attacked. But video evidence from one incident has led the official story to unravel.
By Raymond Whitaker

Published: 26 March 2006

US military investigators are examining allegations that Marines shot unarmed Iraqis, then claimed they were "enemy fighters", The Independent on Sunday has learned. In the same incident, eyewitnesses say, one man bled to death over a period of hours as soldiers ignored his pleas for help.

American military officials in Iraq have already admitted that 15 civilians who died in the incident in the western town of Haditha last November were killed by Marines, and not by a roadside bomb, as had previously been claimed. The only victim of the remotely triggered bomb, it is now conceded, was a 20-year-old Marine, Lance-Corporal Miguel Terrazas, from El Paso, Texas.

An inquiry has been launched by the US Navy's Criminal Investigation Service after the military was presented with evidence that the 15 civilians, including seven women and three children still in their nightclothes, had been killed in their homes in the wake of the bombing. If it is proved that they died in a rampage by the Marines, and not as a result of "collateral damage", it would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US armed forces since the invasion three years ago.

The military still insists that eight men who also died on 19 November were insurgents who opened fire on a Marines patrol after the bomb explosion. One military spokeswoman said the civilian deaths were their fault, because they "placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the Marines responded to defend themselves". But numerous witnesses say the only shooting was by the Marines, and that the only difference between these victims and the rest were that they were young men who could be depicted as insurgents. Despite claims of a fierce firefight after the explosion, military officials say two AK-47 rifles were the only weapons recovered.

Four of the young men who died were students on their way to college. They were in a car which was near the Marines' convoy when the bomb went off. According to the soldiers' statements to investigators, they told the youths to leave the car and lie face down in the road. Instead they ran, and were shot down. All this time, the Marines said, they were under fire from nearby houses.

The IoS understands, however, that local people have contradicted this account in almost every detail. According to their statements, the soldiers were not under fire when they approached the car. Rather than order the occupants to leave the vehicle and lie down, they simply dragged them out and shot them. While investigators seek to determine the truth of the incident, the military has admitted no weapons were found in the vehicle.

The most shocking allegation concerns what happened when the Marines approached a house nearby. Although investigators are again struggling to reconcile wildly differing accounts, the military confirms that seven people were killed inside the house, including two women and a child. The Marines also reported seeing a man and a woman run out of the house, at which they gave chase and shot and killed the man. Relatives named the woman as Hiba Abdullah, and said she escaped with her baby. The dead man, they added, was her husband, Rashid.

But according to statements seen by the investigators, the first time the Marines saw the couple was not when they were running away. Instead they confronted them in or near the house. Hiba Abdullah, who spoke some English, asked if she could flee, and the soldiers let her run away. Her husband, after a moment of hesitation, ran after her and was shot in the chest.

Rather than dying immediately, local people have told investigators, Rashid lay bleeding for hours, pleading for help, but the Marines, who had cordoned off the area, refused to allow anyone access to him.

The other four men claimed to be insurgents were all the sons of a man called Ahmed Ayed. The Marines say that when they entered a house, one of the brothers had an AK-47 and another appeared to be reaching into a wardrobe for a weapon. The soldiers opened fire, killing all four. But another member of the family said the brothers had all been forced into the wardrobe and killed there.

Last November the first report of the incident, in a communique from the Marines, said Lance-Corporal Terrazas and "15 Iraqi civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb". Gunmen "attacked the convoy with small-arms fire", the statement added, and the Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one.

Although the mayor of Haditha led a protest delegation to the local Marines camp soon afterwards, the official story did not begin to unravel until an Iraqi human rights group obtained a video, shot by a local journalism student, which showed that the civilians could not have been killed by a bomb. It also showed that although the houses where they died were bullet-riddled indoors, there were no exterior marks, casting doubt on the Marines' claims of a firefight.

After Time magazine took up the story, an infantry colonel was sent to Haditha for an inquiry which concluded that the civilians died as a result of the Marines' actions rather than the bombing. But the colonel did not accuse the Marines of wrongdoing, saying the deaths were "collateral damage". Nor was there a challenge to the claim that the others were insurgents; it is not known whether the criminal inquiry now in progress will reopen the issue.

US troops are frequently accused of massive over-reaction when attacked, even allowing for the stress of combat. According to human rights groups, the only unusual feature of the events of 19 November was that there was video evidence to contradict the military account.

Almost the only other instance was an air attack in May 2004 on what the US military described as a gathering of "foreign fighters" and local people said was a wedding party. Their version was backed up by a video showing dead children and smashed musical instruments. When asked to account for the footage, the response of the authorities was to demand the name of the cameraman who shot it. An aggressive response to accusations of misconduct is common. Last week Iraqi journalists filmed the bodies of five children, four women and two men whom local police said had been killed in their home in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad. A spokesman, Lt-Col Barry Johnson, said coalition forces knew of four people killed in crossfire but denied claims that officers had failed to attend a meeting with local people.

"There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation," complained Lt-Col Johnson. "This is another clear sign of that happening, making allegations for the sake of prompting media reporting and attempting to discredit coalition operations. This is a pattern we've seen the terrorist-backed insurgency use repeatedly."

Source: The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article353678.ece

All the news that's fit to slant (Robert Fisk)

ROBERT FISK
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

It is a bright winter morning and I am sipping my first coffee of the day in Los Angeles. My eye moves like a radar beam over the front page of the Los Angeles Times for the word that dominates the minds of all Middle East correspondents: Iraq. In post-invasion, post-Judith Miller mode, the U.S. press is supposed to be challenging the lies of this war. So the story beneath the headline "In a Battle of Wits, Iraq's Insurgency Mastermind Stays a Step Ahead of U.S." deserves to be read. Or does it?

Datelined Washington -- an odd city in which to learn about Iraq -- its opening paragraph reads: "Despite the recent arrest of one of his would-be suicide bombers in Jordan and some top aides in Iraq, insurgency mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi has eluded capture, U.S. authorities say, because his network has a much better intelligence-gathering operation than they do."

Now quite apart from the fact that many Iraqis -- along with myself -- have grave doubts about whether Zarqawi exists, and that al-Qaida's Zarqawi, if he does exist, does not merit the title of "insurgency mastermind," the words that caught my eye were "U.S. authorities say." And as I read through the report, I note how the Times sources this extraordinary tale. I thought U.S. reporters no longer trusted the U.S. administration, not after the mythical WMD and the equally mythical connections between Saddam and the international crimes against humanity of 9/11. Of course, I was wrong.

Here are the sources -- on pages 1 and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "U.S. officials said," "said one U.S. Justice Department counter-terrorism official," "Officials ... said," "those officials said," "the officials confirmed," "American officials complained," "the U.S. officials stressed," "U.S. authorities believe," "said one senior U.S. intelligence official," "U.S. officials said," "Jordanian officials ... said" -- here, at least is some light relief -- "several U.S. officials said," "the U.S. officials said," "American officials said," "officials say," "say U.S. officials," "U.S. officials said," "one U.S. counter-terrorism official said."

I do truly treasure this story. It proves my point that the Los Angeles Times -- along with the big East Coast dailies -- should all be called U.S. OFFICIALS SAY. But it's not just this fawning on political power that makes me despair. Let's move to a more recent example of what I can only call institutionalized racism in U.S. reporting of Iraq. I have to thank reader Andrew Gorman for this gem, a January Associated Press report about the killing of an Iraqi prisoner under interrogation by U.S. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr.

Welshofer, it was reported in court, had stuffed Iraqi Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush headfirst into a sleeping bag and sat on his chest, an action that -- not surprising -- caused the general to expire. The military jury ordered a reprimand for Welshofer, a forfeiture of $6,000 of his salary and confinement to barracks for 60 days. But what caught my eye was the sympathetic detail.

Welshofer's wife's Barbara, the AP told us, "testified that she was worried about providing for their three children if her husband was sentenced to prison. " 'I love him more for fighting this,' she said, tears welling up in her eyes. 'He's always said that you need to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing to do.' "

But the real scandal about these reports is we're not told anything about the general's family. Didn't he have a wife? I imagine the tears were "welling up in her eyes" when she was told her husband had been done to death. Didn't the general have children? Or parents? Or any loved ones who "fought back tears" when told of this vile deed? Not in the AP report he didn't. Mowhoush comes across as an object, a dehumanized creature that wouldn't let the Americans "break the back" of the insurgency after being stuffed headfirst into a sleeping bag.

Now let's praise the AP. On an equally bright summer's morning in Australia a few days ago, I open the Sydney Morning Herald. It tells me, on page 6, that the news agency, using the Freedom of Information Act, has forced U.S. authorities to turn over 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. One of them records the trial of since-released British prisoner Feroz Abbasi, in which Abbasi vainly pleads with his judge, a U.S. air force colonel, to reveal the evidence against him, something he says he has a right to hear under international law.

And here is what the U.S. colonel replied: "Mr. Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I do not care about international law. I do not want to hear the words international law. We are not concerned about international law."

Alas, those words -- which symbolize the very end of the American dream -- are buried in the story.

I am now in Wellington, New Zealand, watching on CNN Saddam Hussein's attack on the Baghdad court trying him. And suddenly, the ghastly Saddam disappears from my screen. The hearing will now proceed in secret, turning this drumhead court into even more of a farce. It is a disgrace. And what does CNN respectfully tell us? That the judge has "suspended media coverage." If only, I say to myself, CNN -- along with the U.S. press -- would do the same.

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/263664_fisk21.html