Now retired, the general who investigated Abu Ghraib quoted in McClatchy:
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
Makes no sense otherwise for Maliki to have gambled so foolishly against Sadr's militia. Maliki had nothing to lose, being without even a faded reputation of effective control over Iraq to redeem, and with nobody to replace him (notice nobody is replacing him, now that he's failed). The current U.S. administration had a chance to pull out of the air the appearance of having accomplished something with the surge and the propping of the Maliki government--all the more if a successful anti-Sadr campaign appeared to have been Maliki's independent doing. Seemingly every increment of ostensible progress the nominal government of Iraq has so far accomplished (besides clandestine killings) has been with the hands of the White House forcing forward their behinds. Suddenly they propose to make Sadr's militia stand down? Quite a change of character. Notice how when Maliki was forced to push back the deadline for his ultimatum, he pushed it no farther than the date Patreus is due to testify to Congress on the state of U.S. troops and strategy in the former Iraq? That's a date Bush & Co. would choose. Notice that Malaki was quick to push back his deadline and quick to withdraw his ultimatum? Doesn't seem like his heart was in it, does it? And could he have really been such a booby about his army's chances against Sadr's militia? The only administration with a record of intelligence that bad there is Bush's.
Just as Mitt Romney aborts his campaign to be president, it comes to my attention that he has a first-born son named Tagg. Besides noting and reluctantly admiring what appears to be a relatively subtle and appealing family naming tradition, I had a thought that the fate of Romney might have been sealed with the naming of Tagg's own first-born. I'm inclined to doubt this is right, but you might watch for a possible pending announcement of Cupp.*
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* "Essen" might explain it too, I suppose.
Look at the face and listen to the testimonial of somebody who has just been subjected to water-boarding by friends at his own instruction: Begins at the 5:00 minute mark of the November 6 broadcast of Democracy Now!
If the Jena Six affair is about anything national, it seems like it's at least about harsh sentencing. This column of a year ago by Malcom Gladwell feels relevant. Procedures can and will be racist, but egalitarian principles can be unjust too.
On NPR again today the issue of effective use of suspected-terrorist "watch lists" came up. Lest we strike the wrong balance between over- and under-identifying list members among the very large numbers of people constantly coming under our consideration--and something terrible should happen as a result--let's be totally clear about who we're dealing with: Suspected suspected suspectedly certain-to-succeed individuals dead-set on committing mass murder and destruction for no reasonable grounds or cause. We know they're out there. Whatever the critics say. I want to add we also know we'll find them.
I hear the military occupation of former Iraq is now a majority-held enterprise of Blackwater and other privately owned, commercial security providers, and that these providers--offering premium wages, thanks to lucrative U.S. federal contracts and the confidence of forward-looking investors--recruit and employ large numbers of former Iraqis. Is it any wonder a proficient new Iraqi army doesn't seem to be coming together? In the chaotic hell-zone that once hosted the economy of Iraq, smart former Iraqis with advanced training in soldiering and other things useful to regional governance will work for Blackwater, not for the hypothetical new democratic state of the Baghdad Green Zone. We're witnessing a buy-out of the control of former Iraq. The purchasers are private entrepreneurs, who appear free to pursue any practices they choose while not disclosing anything to anybody.
This seems insane. Can we call him "Hitler" now? You can't get a passport to flee to Canada, and you can expect free-wheeling, over-armed, NSA-assisted Blackwater mercenaries to be maintaining order while the guardsmen are overseas.
Feeling lucky? Well do you, punk?
I couldn't be happier that the FBI is entrapping people intending to murder, maim and interfere with daily business. Just don't treat them as if they didn't need entrapping. There ought to be a suitable category of offense with which to classify and charge such actors. Call it "Criminal lack of scruple" and have a "third degree" or "Type T (for Terror)," for example. As some have more dubiously advocated for torture, require a judge-authorized warrant for which enforcers must appeal in order to entrap and draw up standards and showings enforcers must satisfy to undertake or carry through any plan to entrap. We allow planes to spray pesticides over suburbs with the approval of a public health commissioner, though the thought of wanton spraying is disturbing, and I see no reason not to consider the same principle appropriate to entrapment. If overzealous enforcement looks to be a peril, let the sentences be light--perhaps as light as probation, in exchange for which the probationer agrees to obey special rules affecting his or her liberty and privacy, including in cases of intention to commit terrorism, for example, such surveillance as the White House now seems to be applying wantonly. If easy access to technology amenable to mass murder make our legal traditions appear to be unsafe and unsustainable, then in principle revisions are apt, and to me in practice the laws relating to entrapment seem like a perfectly reasonable place to go to work.
Isn't it time we start referring to that place over there as "former Iraq," "American occupied Arabia" or as anything else that actually makes sense?
I can't believe I only learned about this this development today:
Was there none of the usual noise from the pundits just because in space, nobody can hear you scream? Anyway the news is breathtaking. Especially if you happen to be a little more familiar than the current president with the anti-militarizing "Outer Space Treaty" the United States signed in 1967, or with the 1962 "Declaration of Principles" the U.N. adopted in 1962, or even just with the spirit of space law for the last half century or so."The United States considers space capabilities — including the ground and space segments and supporting links — vital to its national interests," the policy said.
"Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny...the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."
. . . .
"The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space."
Campaign teams aren't consulting me so far as I know, but I'll inject into the blogosphere whatever good ideas I think I have word-wise. Words as in "talking points" and "re-framing phrases" ("death tax" is the one Lakoff and everybody else invokes). I'll start with the one I offered last post and update this list if and as more occur to me.
1) "Party of the Fraudster in Chief" (use in place of "Republicans")
2) "Morals laundering" (as in "money laundering," and esp. with reference to asking police states abroad to take dictation of our prisoners who feel like confessing)
3) "Extraconstitutional," "extra injustice" (use in place of "extrajudicial," re: detainee processing)
4) [ ]
Alternately POFIC.
No "GOP" or "Republican" until after the election at the soonest.
Seems a once used and never annulled Senate rule allows an ordinary citizen to initiate impeachment of a federal official. Get your form here.
According to the New York Times, Wisconsin legislators are expressing "outrage" that the state university at Madison employs as an instructor a man who doubts the truth of the four-hijackings story of 9-11.
Barrett has got to go,’’ Mr. Nass, a Whitewater Republican, said. “It is an embarrassment for the state of Wisconsin. It is an embarrassment for the university.”
The week of July 24, Mr. Nass, who is up for re-election this year, sent a resolution signed by 61 state legislators — all but one of them Republican — to Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat, and university officials condemning Mr. Barrett’s “academically dishonest views” and demanding that his one-semester contract to teach the class for a salary of $8,247 be terminated.....
A university review determined that although Mr. Barrett presented a variety of viewpoints, he had not discussed his personal opinions in the classroom. [Aug. 1 NYTimes]
I guess it's hard to resist cutting a few corners when you know the safety of the world hangs on whether you spout your bullshit.
Rolling Stone feature news story: 2004 U.S. presidential election appears to have been stolen. Should the Republican Party be outlawed? Discuss.
Crusader castle. A 12th c. "embassy" of France in what is now Syria.
Site of the U.S. fortress embassy under construction in Baghdad. Walls to be 15 feet thick, blogs rumor. (Photo: Times of UK).
Tailored to the environment of the Levant and the lifestyle of the Western visitor, a consistent architectural theme characterizes the structures in which ambassadors have chosen to house themselves in the Middle East across the centuries. (PLS has more thoughts).
I just noticed that Oliver Cromwell's power as Lord Protector of England explicitly excluded pardons for murder and treason by the constitution of that revolutionary government. The pardon power that the U.S. Constitution later vested in presidents, meanwhile, at least in the readings of the Supreme Court, has no such limit. Indeed, Gerald Ford effectively pardoned Nixon for treason, if you ask me. That's power.
Makes me wonder if the Supremes got this right. Cromwell's constitution must have been at the forefront of the Anglo-Protestant framers' minds, and so we're all told were the liabilities of unchecked power, for which Cromwell was the natural model under the scheme of representative government they were devising. Maybe the framers viewed the limits of the pardon (no pardon for murder, no pardon for treason) obvious and implied?
Postscript: No, Madison foresaw corrupt presidents pardoning treasonous henchlings, and this is why, he said, presidents must be subject to impeachment. Or so said some scholar I saw talking to Bill Moyers on TV.
