Sean Penn in Iraq

This should be news to no one: Sean Penn is none too bright.

Yes, that's a harsh judgment to pass on Madonna's first love, but nonetheless an inescapable conclusion, given this:

Sean Penn went to Iraq a year ago not as an actor, but as a father, a husband and an American. He made the visit, from Dec. 13 to 15, 2002, to learn about the American-Iraqi conflict from the people who were living through it. A year later, the week before Saddam Hussein was captured, Penn returned to Iraq to find out how life had changed after the American invasion. What follows is his account of what he saw.

Actually he went not as an actor, nor a father, nor a husband, and certainly not as an American. He went both times as a self-serving moron on his own imaginary jihad.

In his defense, there will never be any way to know what portions of Sean's story are true, which (if any) were written by him, or who may have helped him with the big words. Sean's tale was originally published as a two-part serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, but the Common Dreams website conveniently compiles both pieces into one complete chunk.

Among other exciting adventures, Mr. Madonna got to meet real American Soldiers. Note the condescension:

U.S. soldiers today are not what you'd picture if you grew up on World War II movies. Think younger.

Now add zits (some of them).

Wrong. Actually they're older. World War Two was fought by young men directly out of High School; Iraq is occupied by a professional Army. However, in all cases front-line infantry troops were mostly young men. Sorry your Hollywood vision of war was wrong, Sean, (Note to producers/directors with agendas: don't forget zits on the corpses when planning makeup and special effects for your Iraq war movies!)

This is not the war of yesteryear, with relatives waving our boys off on ships and losing all contact beyond a weekly mail drop. These are young people who, via the Internet, are reminded daily of the comfort and safety of home and are quick to express their desire to return to their families. I want to ask many of them their feelings about our occupation in Iraq, and some express thoughts on this issue without being asked. And their thoughts represent all sides of the debate. But one has to be mindful that these are young people who have lost friends to battle, and girlfriends, boyfriends, wives and husbands to distance. One wouldn't expect them to yield easily to the notion that perhaps the United States should not have sent them in the first place.

One would expect the American soldier will never yield to such a pathetic and cowardly bit of thinking, Penny. Sorry you couldn't get any anti-American quotes from a group who'd have reason to make them, if any one would. A rephrase of your sentence is in order: "I was shocked to find that in spite of the burdens they carried, the American soldier remains true to his country. In spite of having reaped so many of the benefits of freedom I turned traitor with less than one-tenth the incentive."

Next Sean relates his brush with the shadow people who are benefiting from Iraq's misery as he comes face to face with Dick Cheney's Halliburton cronies (warning: I've left Sean's profanities in place):

As darkness descends, the sound of gunshots intensifies. On this night I'm determined to make my way across town to meet with Rob Collier of The Chronicle.

My taxi arrives at about 9 p.m., and one of the staff of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting gives the Arabic-speaking cabdriver directions to the restaurant where I'm to meet with Collier (I'll get a goddamn lamb chop yet). I grab my video camera, slip the button to "night shot," and my driver and I hit the road.

It's about a 20-minute drive along a main artery through Baghdad. We're about 10 minutes in when, on the opposite side of the road, I see a U.S. military unit conducting a raid on an apartment building. I tape it from the car as we pass. I zoom in through the back windshield as doors are kicked in, and I stay fixed on the scene until we drift a block and a half away, when the image appears too small to be useful.

As I am about to shut off the camera, I sense a bright light over my right shoulder. Keeping the camera to my eye, I pan past the windshield to where on the right shoulder, six armed Iraqis mill about beside a sandbag- fortified position, housing a long-gunner in front of a nondescript building. We are moving into some traffic as I pan the camera through the passenger-side window. One of the armed men screams something in Arabic at me and raises his rifle toward my camera. We are suddenly stuck in traffic.

I switch off the camera and drop it at my feet as more rifles and voices rise and move toward us. I suddenly fear that my driver might attempt to accelerate and somehow escape. Every instinct tells me that the soldiers would fire on us if he did. I know he doesn't speak English, so I use the universal, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

He whoas and we are surrounded at gunpoint by six guards as they pull us from the taxi. There is a lot of shouting, and my driver looks frightened. We are ushered out of the illuminated area of the street and now, standing in a darkened Baghdad alley, my legs spread, arms extended, I am circled by six leather-jacketed Iraqis, their Kalashnikov rifles trained on me.

Here is what comes to my mind: "Dear Phil Bronstein, please accept my formal resignation from journalism. My understanding is that Giorgio Armani is sending a new linen suit to my California home, and I would like to supply it a body as intact as possible, as the suit is tailored. P.S.: I miss lamb chops. "

In lieu of explaining this in the Arabic I don't speak, I await the commander of this yet-unidentified militia. When he arrives, I am searched. It is not the casual search of amateurs, but rather of people who believe they are going to find a weapon. And then the commander speaks. He speaks in English, reviewing the passport and press credential he has pulled from my pocket. He speaks in good English. This man is no Iraqi. But I can't make out his accent. Perhaps South African.

And then he is joined by another man dressed in what I would call militarized CIA garb: combat boots with camouflage pants tucked into them, topped by a civvy shirt with an identification tag on a long chain around his neck that cannot be read in the darkness of the alley. This one speaks Texas. I'm asked the whys and wherefores of my presence and camera. I am informed that the building being guarded had been car-bombed the previous day and that they will need to review the videotape and detain me for as long as that takes. It seems they are concerned that their fortification is being, in some way, reconned for further attack. I ask with innocent curiosity who I am dealing with.

The Texan curtly informs me, "I work for DynCorp."

I ask for a business card.

Just as curtly, he says, "I don't have a card," then points at the chained identification around his neck, "only this ID."

Of course, we are still in the dark, and it is still illegible. Although the Kalashnikovs have by now been lowered, further questions don't seem to be on the invitation list. And rather than ask them to shine their own flashlights on their identification, I take the "Yes, sir," "No, sir" route as they check the car and its contents for weapons and explosives.

The Texan tells me that when the Iraqis under his charge complete their search, I will be permitted to check that the contents of my bag are intact. They sit my driver and me on a concrete curb, still in the shadows of the alley. I distract myself by rolling the word DynCorp around in my head. Something about "The Parallax View" comes to mind. Something with a scent, redolent of war profiteering.

A third officer exits the building -- another Westerner with a short, cropped beard. It seems it is his job to review the tape I had shot. We sit in the cold night air under guard as the three officers retreat into the building with my camera. It will be another half hour before they return. And the third officer returns my camera, acknowledging that I have only shot what could be seen of their fortification by any civilian on the street and they have not deemed it necessary to erase it. I thank them for their professionalism without commenting on their lack of humor.

When the deafening crack of an assault rifle blasts through the adjacent alley, I scan the faces of this war-experienced crew. There is not a single reaction to the gunshot among them. Evidently, we represent a greater threat than one more lump of lead screaming through the shadowy Baghdad streets at 3, 000 meters per second. My driver and I make haste.

As the rifle concussion vibrates through my head, so does the name DynCorp. I've since done a little research, and here's what I found: DynCorp is a ubiquitous presence in Baghdad. A PMC, or private military corporation, DynCorp was started in the late '40s and given a big recruiting boost by the post-Church Commission firings of thousands of CIA operatives by President Carter in the late '70s.

PMCs, and there are many of them, tend to be staffed and directed by retired generals, CIA officers, counterterrorism professionals, retired Special Air Service men, Special Forces guys and so on. DynCorp is a subsidiary of the benignly named Computer Sciences Corp. DynCorp forces are mercenaries. Their contracts have included covert actions for the CIA in Colombia, Peru, Kosovo, Albania and Afghanistan.

In 1999, the company claimed 25,000 employees. As an aside, DynCorp personnel, contracted to the U.N. police who served in Bosnia, were accused of buying and selling prostitutes, including girls as young as 12 years old. When several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women, employee Kathy Bolkovac blew the whistle on the alleged sex ring and was immediately dismissed from the company. DynCorp is a "top 25" government contractor, which posted $2.3 billion in revenues in 2002, according to Business Week. It is DynCorp employees who are the security force for the new Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Former CIA Director James Woolsey is a primary stockholder.

But DynCorp is not alone. Electronic media companies employ a number of PMCs as well. CNN, for example, uses a company called AKE, a British security firm. Certainly, with CNN's high-profile correspondents and camera equipment ripe for pillaging, it's not hard to understand. But let's look at the case of another PMC -- Kellogg, Brown & Root, the company that has the security contract with the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

A subsidiary of Halliburton, it is in effect a private military at the disposal of a major American corporation and, at one time, at the personal disposal of Vice President Dick Cheney, who was chief executive of Halliburton.

Thanks to my corporate detention, I am 45 minutes late for dinner with Rob Collier.

So Dick Cheney made you late? It wasn't your fault?

Note the throw-away comment "as an aside", that during the Clinton administration while operating under UN auspices DynCorp employees were charged with videotaping the rape of 12-year old prostitutes. More on this here.

Of course it's understandable that CNN would have armed guards, considering their high profile, almost movie star status. But how utterly chilling, that Dick Cheney would have once been in charge of a corporation's shadowy security forces, similar to the DynCorp Texans (and how did he know the guy was from Texas?) that made Sean late for his dinner date after carefully checking his camera and returning it to him unharmed. If that's not enough to get you to vote against Bush this year, then maybe you need a thicker tin foil hat.

And here's a perfect example of ugly-American condescension: “He speaks in good English. This man is no Iraqi. But I can't make out his accent. Perhaps South African.” (Wow! Just like a movie villian!) Given the "this man is no Iraqi" quote no one can accuse Sean of political correctness or above-average intelligence. Of course, he could be simply practicing the fine ear for accents that is the hallmark of any truly great actor. This would also explain the “Texan” identification. Either that or Mrs. Penn raised a simpleton.

Fortunately Sean made it out alive, as you can read in the remainder of his lengthy tale, to which I offer this as a moral:

The world is a dangerous place, made more so by the presence of many stupid people.

And one good thing that could result: when your children ask you "What's an Idiotarian?" You can have them read of Sean Penn's visit to Iraq.