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Political outrages
Bush’s illusions. Our failure to deal with innocents behind bars. Preserving reproductive rights.

THE UNITED STATES won the war in Iraq with ease; winning the peace is proving more elusive. After months of inching toward — but never achieving — post-war stability, Iraq has erupted into chaos. This week, Jason Vest reports that a US official close to the situation thinks an all-out civil war is possible (see "Iraq Faces Civil War," page one).

Whatever happened to the end of hostilities that George W. Bush proclaimed from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln last May? Like the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and his administration said threatened the US, peace too has proven illusory.

Bush’s illusions are now America’s nightmare. His bad dreams threaten national security and international stability by making terrorism more — not less — likely. And his bad dreams compromise the lives of servicemen and -women now under hostile fire.

The war that Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are waging is based on either lies or miscalculations so wrong as to be impeachable. It’s a dispiriting choice. That is our angry, inescapable conclusion.

Outrage, it appears, has been out of fashion in Washington ever since the radical Republicans who support Bush impeached but failed to remove former president Bill Clinton for the high crime of lying about acts of oral sex. And we wonder why so much of the rest of the world thinks we’re crazy.

One American who is not crazy is Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. In a new book, Plan of Attack (Simon & Schuster), his most important work since he and Carl Bernstein blew open Watergate and triggered the political demise of Richard Nixon, Woodward — in very human and often-understated terms — lays bare the decision-making process Bush followed when he led us into war.

Simply put, Bush and his buddies weren’t straight with America. Now we need to be straight with Bush and remove him from public life. That, however, won’t be as easy as going to war.

LAST MONTH, Anthony Powell was released from prison after DNA evidence proved him innocent of the rape for which he had been convicted in 1992. The victim’s eyewitness identification of Powell played a significant role in his conviction. With DNA evidence becoming more and more accessible, the unreliability of eyewitness identifications is becoming more and more apparent.

The nonprofit New York–based Innocence Project estimates that more than 80 percent of prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence since 1992 were convicted by mistaken eyewitnesses. And this week, a University of Michigan study found that 106 of the 120 people exonerated of rape convictions since 1989 were found guilty on the basis of an eyewitness identification. (Read the report online at www.law.umich.edu/NewsAndInfo/exonerations-in-us.pdf.)

The Powell case prompted Suffolk County district attorney Dan Conley and Boston Police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole to set up a task force charged with examining how police and prosecutors use eyewitness identifications. Unfortunately, the task force will look only at ways to reform current practice and won’t re-examine past convictions. But as Phoenix writer David S. Bernstein reports this week (see "How Many Innocent People Are in Bay State Prisons?", News & Features), there are at least three cases Conley should be taking a fresh look at. In each, the evidence against the defendants consisted primarily of eyewitness testimony; in no instance was there any significant physical evidence linking the defendants to the murders with which they were charged.

If the conclusions of the Michigan study are correct — "Any plausible guess at the total number of miscarriages of justice in America in the last fifteen years must be in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands" — there are a lot of innocent people doing time. At least three of them may be incarcerated here in Massachusetts.

THIS WEEKEND, tens of thousands of pro-choice activists are expected to march in Washington, DC, to demand that legislators preserve women’s right to abortion. The message couldn’t come at a better time. (See "Our Bodies, Our Politics," page 18.)

Reproductive rights are under unprecedented assault. At no time since the US Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade (which held that women have a constitutional right to an abortion — free from government interference — during the first trimester of pregnancy, and that during the second, the government can regulate abortion only to protect maternal health) has it been as difficult as it is now to obtain an abortion.

For all intents and purposes, if you happen to be middle class and live in the city, you have access to abortion. But if you’re middle class and living in a rural area, your access is diminished. And if you’re poor almost anywhere, you effectively have no access. The same can be said about women who are under 18, who do not speak English, or who need an abortion after 18 weeks of pregnancy.

That should enrage us all. The March for Women’s Lives will take place on Sunday (visit www.marchforwomen.org for more details). If you haven’t already arranged to go to DC, it’s not too late. Most of the buses chartered by local area organizations are sold out, but limited seats are still available by calling Greater Boston NOW at (617) 254-9130. NOW has also posted a ride board for those looking for transportation at pub161.ezboard.com/bmamarchrides. If you can, go to Washington and let your voice be heard.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com


Issue Date: April 23 - 29, 2004
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