In Memoriam
May 31, 2004
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
— John Adams (1735-1826)
As a theoretical physicist with major metaphysical leanings, I’ve long felt the above quote by President Adams to be especially pertinent to me personally. Therefore, to the many who have made the sacrifice to study the ugly side of life so that others may study the beautiful side, I offer my humblest thanks.
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And there have been so many…
| War/Conflict | Personnel Served | Battle Deaths | Other Deaths | Wounds Not Mortal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| World War I (1917-1918) | 4,734,991 | 53,402 (1.128%) | 63,114 (1.333%) | 204,002 (4.308%)* |
| World War II (1941-1946) | 16,112,566 | 291,557 (1.810%) | 113,842 (0.707%) | 671,846 (4.170%)* |
| Korean War (1950-1953) | 5,720,000 | 33,741 (0.590%) | 2,835 (0.050%) | 103,284 (1.806%) |
| Vietnam Conflict (1964-1973) | 8,744,000 | 47,415 (0.542%) | 10,785 (0.123%) | 153,303 (1.753%) |
| Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) | 2,225,000 | 147 (0.007%) | 235 (0.011%) | 467 (0.021%) |
* World War I “Wounds Not Mortal” as well as the Marine Corps contribution to WWII “Wounds Not Mortal” (68,207 of the 671,846) are actually “Wounded In Action” (i.e., number of soldiers wounded) and technically not “Wounds Not Mortal” (i.e., number of wounds meriting Purple Hearts—of which one soldier could receive multiple ones, of course).
| Operation | Killed in Action | Nonhostile Deaths | Wounded In Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enduring Freedom (Sep 2001-present) | 53 | 69 | 310 |
| Iraqi Freedom (Mar 2003-present) | 587 | 215 | 4,682 |
** Current as of May 28, 2004, 10 AM EDT.
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Want to contribute something? Then, please consider:
1) Donating your frequent flyer miles to soldiers through the “Hero Miles” program. a program which played a major role in shaming the Pentagon into paying for all legs of soldiers’ flights home for 2 week R&R leaves from Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than just an intercontinental leg from Iraq or Afghanistan to either Baltimore/Washington DC, Dallas/Forth Worth, or Atlanta. However, the domestic legs of flights home for family emergency leaves (e.g., for birth, death, or serious illness of family members) still need to be paid for out of pocket by the soldiers, as do any flights by soldiers’ families to visit them in military hospitals. Heromiles.org uses donated frequent flyer miles to defray the cost of these flights for soldiers and their families.
2) Any of the major grass roots support efforts by soldiers and their families such as http://www.anysoldier.us/ and the many programs to which it links.
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Notes and References for the Tables:
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For 1st Table:
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Source: U.S. Department of Defense, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Statistical Information and Analysis Division. “DoD Principal Wars – US Military Personnel Serving and Casualties”
All names used (notably, “Vietnam Conflict” and “Persian Gulf War”) as well as all years chosen for tabulation (notably, including 1946 casualties in “World War II” and including only 1964-1973 casualties in the “Vietnam Conflict”) are those used by the Department of Defense in the above source.
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For 2nd Table:
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Source: The present “Casualty Reports” link of www.defenselink.mil, the official web portal to all of the public US Department of Defense websites. Note that the Casualty Reports link is regularly updated and the most current one can always be found at the bottom of the “Press Resources” linklist in the right column of www.defenselink.mil.
NB: A useful general source for all military casualties from all US military engangements is the “Military Casualty Information” webpage of U.S. Department of Defense, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Statistical Information and Analysis Division. The homepage of the Statistical Information and Analysis Division has a wealth of information on many other topics too.
In response to overwhelming interest (well, okay, moderately whelming interest, e.g., Matthew Yglesias and Mark Kleiman) in the 80’s era legal writings of Douglas J. Feith, now famous, alas, for his many alleged follies and foibles as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, here’s the relevant portions of his article “Law in the Service of Terror — The Strange Case of the Additional Protocol” from the inaugural issue of Irving Kristol’s The National Interest (Fall 1985)
Read the rest of this entry »
(Or: Silly & Fun Friday News)
One of the most beautiful things about living in a democracy is that even the most closely held state secrets are eventually declassified. Sure it might take 50-60 years, but it’s still laudable that democratic governments voluntarily relinquish their secrets.
So in that vein, behold the following very funny declassified projects from the 1940’s and 50’s-era British Secret Service. (NB: The documents were released by the UK National Archives on April 1st, 2004 but they were accompanied by official statements that they were most certainly not April Fools’ pranks:
Tom O’Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, told the paper: “It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.”
Whether this is dry British wit or not, I can’t tell.)
1) Cold war bomb warmed by chickens
Plans to fill a nuclear landmine with chickens to regulate its temperature were seriously considered during the Cold War.
Civil servants at the National Archives say it is a coincidence the secret plan is being revealed on 1 April.
The Army planned to detonate the seven-tonne device on the German plains in the event of having to retreat.
Operation Blue Peacock forms part of an exhibition for the National Archives, in Kew, London, on Friday.
Professor Peter Hennessy, curator of the Secret State exhibition, told the Times: “It is not an April Fool. These documents come straight from the archives at Aldermaston. Why and how would we forge them?”
The bomb was designed to stop the Red Army advancing across West Germany during the height of the Cold War.
But nuclear physicists at the Aldermaston nuclear research station in Berkshire were worried about how to keep the landmine at the correct temperature when buried underground.
In a 1957 document they proposed live chickens would generate enough heat to ensure the bomb worked when buried for a week.
The birds would be put inside the casing of the bomb, given seed to keep them alive and stopped from pecking at the wiring.
The landmine would be remotely detonated.
Tom O’Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, told the paper: “It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes.”
2) UK pondered suicide pigeon attacks
British spy chiefs secretly considered training pigeons to fly into enemy targets carrying explosives or biological weapons, it has been revealed.
British intelligence set up a “pigeon committee” at the end of World War II to ensure expertise gained in the use of the birds to carry messages was not lost.
Documents now released to the National Archives reveal that the War Office intelligence section, MI14, warned: “Pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will.”
Among MI14’s proposals was the training of pigeons carrying explosives to fly into enemy searchlights.
Meanwhile, pigeon enthusiast Wing Commander WDL Rayner suggested a “bacteriological warfare agent” could be combined with the explosive.
‘Revolutionary’ tactics
“A thousand pigeons each with a two ounce explosive capsule, landed at intervals on a specific target, might be a seriously inconvenient surprise,” Mr Rayner wrote.
He believed his “revolutionary” ideas could change the way wars were fought, and had the tentative backing of wartime MI6 chief Sir Stewart Menzies.
However the internal security service MI5 branded Rayner a “menace in pigeon affairs”.MI5’s Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Robertson wrote: “I thought that some time ago it had been made clear that Rayner should finish writing his manual and then have nothing further to do with this committee officially.”
Rayner’s plan for a 400-pigeon loft where tests would be carried out was abandoned due to wrangling among the intelligence agencies over funding.
Members of the public can view the 280 newly-released files at the National Archives, Kew, west London.
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world–or to make it the last.”
May 16, 2004
Kevin Drum, inspired by this recent opinion piece in Mother Jones by Joshua Wolf Shenk, is beseeching the Blogosphere to think of a compelling narrative for the Democratic Party—one that can compete with the Republicans’ current storyline of “Evil walks among us, and we must slay it” (which is actually more from Buffy the Vampire Slayer than from any particular Republican candidate, but it’s certainly the gist of what they’re saying).
I’ll have more to say about this later as part of my continuing series “The Default Democratic Party Strategy and What Should Replace It” (part 1 is here, and part 2 is here). However, as food for thought now, might I remind y’all that there used to be a Democrat who offered a compelling narrative, one of a generation standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the entire world upon a precipice with utter annihilation on one side and utopian society on the other. (Hint: He is the hero of our current Democratic candidate, and he even had the same initials as him.)
The contest will continue–the contest between those who see a monolithic world and those who believe in diversity–but it should be a contest in leadership and responsibility instead of destruction, a contest in achievement instead of intimidation. Speaking for the United States of America, I welcome such a contest. For we believe that truth is stronger than error–and that freedom is more enduring than coercion. And in the contest for a better life, all the world can be a winner.
The effort to improve the conditions of man, however, is not a task for the few. It is the task of all nations–acting alone, acting in groups, acting in the United Nations–for plague and pestilence, and plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature, and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea, and the air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology, and education can be the ally of every nation.
Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world–or to make it the last.
— President John F. Kennedy, Address Before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations, September 20, 1963
… see this story. He was my colleague, my roommate, and my friend.
I Don’t Really Have Words For This Now…
May 10, 2004
… but a year from now, I know I’ll be looking back and thinking this:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.[Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", opening stanza]
[Or: What's hopefully not the model of a modern major general... sorry, couldn't resist.]
In my first post transcribing the May 3rd Charlie Rose show about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, I was curious about a potential slip of the tongue by Seymour Hersh as he was emphasizing that the now-famous Major General Taguba was but one of three major (i.e., 2-star) generals asked to investigate prison conditions in Iraq since late summer 2003:
…if you keep on reading [in the 53 page report by Major General Antonio Taguba that he was leaked and writes about here in the New Yorker], you discover that there have been 2 other Army—secret Army—investigations into the prison conditions beginning in late summer [of 2003]. So we have a situation where 3 two-star generals—6 stars in all—were involved in investigating the prison conditions. And the only conclusion you could bring, as the general* did, was that you really had an institutional issue: that the abuses began early, and they stayed.
[* Just Major General Taguba? Or was it a slip of the tongue, misusing the singular when the plural was meant? I’m curious what the other 2 secret reports concluded.]
As I explained in this clarification post, Mr. Hersh’s article in The New Yorker on General Taguba’s report makes it clear that one of these other major generals was Major General Donald Ryder, Provost Marshall (i.e., chief law enforcement officer) of the US Army. While General Ryder reported abuses and recommended action to stop them, Mr. Hersh characterizes General Ryder as being highly euphemistic and hence extremely mild in his criticisms, concluding that his report was “at best a failure and at worst a coverup.”
The third general wasn’t mentioned in the article. I ended the clarification post mentioned above with the line:
I imagine though that we’ll all soon be hearing more than we ever wanted to know about this third report.
I meant that line mostly as a perfunctory bit of closing rhetoric. Unfortunately, it was prescient. Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Mr. Hersh revealed who the third major general was, and it was definitely more than I wanted to know:
O’REILLY: All right. Well, the damage to the country obviously is just immeasurable. But reading your article in “The New Yorker.” I just get the feeling that the Army, when they heard about it, started action almost immediately. It wasn’t a cover-up situation. Or did I read your article wrong?
HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing — it’s a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of — it’s 53-page report.
O’REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.
HERSH: No, look, I don’t want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.
One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it’s very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.
[thanks to Kevin Drum for highlighting this exchange]
So, in conclusion, it was not a slip of the tongue on Mr. Hersh’s part (silly me: Lord, oh Lord, this guy is sharp!). Of the three Major Generals–Taguba, Ryder, and Miller—ordered to write reports about Abu Ghraib, only Taguba was fully condemnatory.
[Or: Five Little Words -- Don't Piss Off Potential Allies.]
[Part 1 of this continuing series is here.]
[UPDATE 5/6: The penultimate paragraph--- the one beginning "First of all..."---was extended to clarify both the prose itself and the argument underlying the prose.]
We now come to the big question: For what should the Democratic party stand?
In this regard, the following essay by Robert Reich posted on Brad Delong’s blog is especially timely. Given that Mr. Reich was Labor Secretary under President Clinton, Director of the Policy Planning Staff for the Federal Trade Commission under President Carter, an Assistant to the Solicitor General under President Ford, as well as co-founder and chairman of the notable liberal monthly The American Prospect, I’m reluctant to disagree with Mr. Reich in any significant way. However, in one significant way, I am afraid I must disagree with him.
But before getting to that unpleasantness, let me first highlight where we agree (and where he says my sentiments better than I could). Let’s start with the very beginning of Mr. Reich’s essay, as it’s a very good place to start:
Even if John Kerry wins in November, the right will remain in control of America. Democrats have almost no chance of winning back the house or Senate. Most state governorships and legislatures are also in the hands of Republicans, which gives them power to draw the lines of future congressional districts and thereby keep hold of congress. Right-wing conservatives now claim most of America’s airwaves – they are in full command of “talk radio” and “yell television.” They run most Washington think tanks. They inhabit some of the most influential positions on Wall Street and in American corporate boardrooms. Radical conservatives are, in short, America’s new governing elite.
…
We failed because we failed to build a political movement behind us. America’s newly ascendant radical conservatives do have such a movement, which explains their success. They have developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. They have devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them are: it’s your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare). They have a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same worldview and who vote accordingly. And they have a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the south and west, and big business.
Beyond a quibble about using the adjective “coherent” to describe any ideology that unites evangelicals, secular blue-collar whites, and big business, I cannot deny the critical advantage Republicans possess by virtue of their far better organization. As a telling, recent example of how the lack of organization can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, behold the following Gallup poll perfomed in early March that asked about the open letter on “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking” sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists in mid-February, which numbered 20 Nobel Laureates among its many prominent signatories.
“Recently, a group of prominent scientists charged that the Bush Administration is ignoring and distorting scientific evidence concerning the seriousness of environmental problems such as global warming. How much have you heard about this criticism before now: a great deal, a moderate amount, not much, or nothing at all?”
Great Deal: 8%
Moderate Amount: 26%
Not Much: 40%
Nothing At All: 26%“Who do you tend to believe in this matter: the scientists who claim that the Bush Administration is ignoring and distorting scientific evidence about environmental problems, OR, the Bush Administration, which denies ignoring and distorting scientific evidence about environmental problems?” (Options rotated randomly so none enjoys the benefit of always being the first listed)
Scientists: 59%
Bush: 32%
No Opinion: 9%[Margin of Error: 3%; Source: http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm]
Or, if you’re willing to take slightly longer sad strolls down memory lane, behold the examples highlighted by Mr. Reich:
Democratic centrists, like the Democratic Leadership Council, attribute the party’s difficulties to a failure to respond to an electorate grown more conservative, affluent and suburban. This is nonsense. The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been among suburban voters but among America’s giant middle and working classes – especially white workers without four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic base. These are the same people who have lost the most economic ground over the last quarter-century.
…
In 1994, when battling for his healthcare proposal, Clinton had no movement behind him. Even though polls showed support among a majority of Americans, it wasn’t enough to overcome the conservative effort on the other side. By contrast, George W Bush got his tax cuts through Congress, even though Americans were ambivalent about them. President Bush had a political movement behind him.
So where do I disagree with Mr. Reich? Quite simply, I feel our guiding principle should be “Don’t Piss Off Potential Allies.” The importance of these 5 little words should be painfully obvious by now: launching “crusades” where “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” may possess the pluses of being simple and indeed stirring, but it has the major minuses of being inefficient, if not utterly unaffordable.
I don’t mean to imply that Mr. Reich is proposing a public posture for our domestic policy as condescending and clumsy as the one the Bush Adminstration has taken for our foreign policy, but I do wish to object to calling ourselves a “populist movement to take back democracy from increasingly concentrated wealth and power.”
First of all, there are many Americans—many Republicans—that are quite cognizant of the unfairness of present public policy, but they object to “populism” as it’s presently conceived and perceived as a cure worse than the disease. In this regard, I find it actually heartening—and not depressing—that a Harris Poll from June 2003 measuring support for the 2003 tax cuts observed twice as many Republicans saying these tax cuts were “generally unfair as to how it is divided between the rich, middle class or poor” (32%) as ultimately concluding the tax cuts were a “bad thing” overall (16%), which note was a discrepancy made even more shocking by the fact a vast majority of Republicans said these tax cuts would help them personally “only a little” (60%) or “not at all” (25%). Granted the glass ain’t half-full. It’s only somewhere between one-sixth and one-third full. But that’s more than enough. If we Democrats play it right (no pun intended—after all, I’m contending that these Republicans agree with us on the proper ends of domestic policy, they merely disagree with us on the proper means), then we could convince many of these Republicans that they should vote for us and not for the current incarnation of the Republican party. That’s all we’d need for a substantial governing majority.
Second of all, there is no need to alienate major chunks of the business community by implying that our policy proposals will fundamentally realigning the burden so that it is more fairly shared (read: “more fairly shared than your past 4 years on Easy Street, you avaricious bastards!”) Instead, one thing we should do is highlight every instance we find that being good to your workers can actually be good for your bottom line even if government policy were not to change. In this regard, behold the following beautiful comparison between Costco and Wal-Mart from Business Week [the exact citation eludes me at the moment]:
Another thing we should do is realize that our tax code is riddled with perverse incentives that tempt businesses to shortchange workers. [Sidenote: Framing the issue as the temptation of moral men, rather than the actions of amoral or immoral ones, is probably a better way to win friends and influence people, too.] Major, revenue-neutral tax simplification could be embraced by many businessmen, if only because it would give them an avenue to accrue benefits without being vulnerable to continued extortion by the Republican “K-Street Project” (see, for example, Nick Confessore’s article “Welcome to the Machine” from the Jul/Aug 2003 Washington Monthly). Revenue-neutral tax simplification can be done in ways that can bring a smile to the faces of both economists who fervently believe in the necessity of the lowest possible marginal tax rates and common folk who depend on each and every paycheck. [For more, see the links in my April 24th post "Ideas for Destructive Procrastination"... the ones about "radical centrist reform of government" and not the ones about "interpreting quantum mechanics without going insane," though those too are excellent fonts of inspiration into which one can dip when one is feeling confused about the world today.]
The Key Quotes from the May 3rd Charlie Rose on the Abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison (Part 3)
May 5, 2004
[Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here]
And now for the one that really keeps me awake at night, the one that emphasizes to me that even if every single bystander in the world woke up tomorrow and thought “Well, those Americans… yeah, some of ‘em really screw up, but they’re basically good people” and honestly meant it, we’d still have a mess that’s going to take years to clean up… and then I remember Hell’s going to freeze over before there’s any chance of such forgiveness:
CHARLIE ROSE: Sy [Hersh] and Bob [Baer], tell me about what impact you think this will have in terms of prosecuting the war, and of what you’re hearing, and—I think there’s a powerful line at the end of your piece in terms of—of where this might take us.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well you can’t believe how bad things are. Walking away from the prison issue, I’ve never seen the—I’ve never seen the high command as upset as—as it is. We got the Marine Corps really in a rage at the Army. There’s a lot of very, very bitter, nasty internecine warfare going on about what’s happening, who’s doing what. I’ve never seen a structure—it’s sort of self-destructing, and I know it’s an extreme statement, but I can tell you there’s a very—more bad feelings between the services as I’ve ever felt. The Marines feel the Army did a terrible job in Fallujah. And the Marines feel the Army has done a terrible job in the prisons—that this is an Army Reserve issue, and the Army can’t run anything. And I have to tell you: the major general’s report that I mentioned—Taguba’s report—he was scathing about the incompetence of General Karpanski [sic]—Karpinski—and her, the, brigade that ran the—you know, she was responsible for 3,400 Army reservists and, who knows, 8, 9, 10,000 prisoners and 3 large prisons and a half-dozen, or a dozen, smaller detention centers. And when we use the word “prison,” we’re not talking about thieves, and we’re not talking about a defeated army. We’re talking about civilians that have been picked up in sweeps, many of them randomly. Really they’re detainees under the law. And in his [Taguba’s]—in his study, he said more than 60% of the people in that—in those prisons—had nothing to do with wrongdoing. They weren’t anti-American. They weren’t part of the insurgency. They weren’t al Qaeda. He just said the inability of the system, the Army system, to process the good from the bad is unspeakable. It’s also a war—it’s a war crime. So you have all these people streaming out of the prisons. You know, one of the things that’s amazing to me about the secrecy of this is that all of the Iraqis knew how bad things were. I’m sure, Bob [turns to look at Bob Baer] you know that from earlier years, from the—from the time of Saddam, everybody knew what was going on, and it hasn’t changed much.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how complicit—[brief crosstalk from Mr. Hersh] let me go to Bob now—how complicit was the CIA—I mean, they were—Bob—at all in terms of liason on all this?
ROBERT BAER: Well, apparently the CIA was in this prison. And additionally, there are e-mails existing—I’ve seen some of these e-mails—from [Military Policeman, Staff Sergeant Ivan] “Chip” Frederick—saying in effect that the CIA was there, and it brought in a prisoner who later died of his beating. [NB: Some of these e-mails were printed in the British newspaper, The Guardian, see this link.] And as you know, the CIA is in the middle of an investigation—they haven’t denied that they were involved in the beating death of this prisoner. So we’re going to hear more about this, about what went on in that prison. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure.
The Key Quotes from Last Night’s Charlie Rose on the Abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison (Part 2)
May 4, 2004
Continuing my personal transcribing efforts begun in this post of the best quotes from last night’s Charlie Rose show (necessary since Mr. Rose doesn’t offer free transcripts, only audio files, on his website)…
In this installment, here’s a quote echoing a point made many times already, I’m sure, within the blogosphere (e.g., this post by Billmon and this one by John Quiggen at that philosophers’ collective Crooked Timber). In it, former CIA officer Robert Baer (author of the bestselling books See No Evil, his memoir of his CIA years, and Sleeping with the Enemy, his critique of the US-Saudi relationship) offers the following excellent bit of historical/symbolic awareness:
CHARLIE ROSE: Robert Baer, you’ve been to this prison. Tell me about it—before, you saw it right after Saddam—right after the—you had access to it.
ROBERT BAER: I saw it a couple days—of course, I had known about the prison for years, it was a symbol of Saddam’s regime, a symbol of the torture he used for years and years. And I went there shortly after Baghdad fell, probably the 12th or the 13th of April. And it was horrific what I saw. It was before US troops had gotten inside the prison. There were bodies—buried up to their waist—and half-eaten by dogs, torture chambers, electrodes, hanging rooms—a lot of these cells people went into and never came out alive, they were stood up all night in the heat—130 degrees—would die overnight. And really you–we–have to consider with Abu Gharib and the fact that what went on here. This prison was notorious for its torture. If you went in, you rarely came out alive. And so the fact that this went on with American troops puts us on par with Saddam, and that’s really the problem this Administration is going to have.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me more.
ROBERT BAER: Well, I mean you have to look at the symbolism of prisons—of corrupt regimes. Look at the Bastille in France during the French Revolution. I mean the first thing they did was tear that thing down, and it was never replaced. What we’re doing—the problem with these pictures is it’s all about humiliation. These people were—were degraded in the worst possible way, and what feeds Bin Laden’s movement is humiliation, perception of it or real humiliation.
CHARLIE ROSE: That the West and America are humiliating us by a whole range of activities.
ROBERT BAER: Or their local regimes, like Saddam’s regime.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
ROBERT BAER: And this is going to add to the pool of recruits for Bin Laden. No question about it.
