As many as seven Marines are accused of dragging an innocent Iraqi man from his home in April, killing him in cold blood and then trying to cover up the crime, NBC News has learned.
Further, military officials tell NBC that at least one of the Marines has reportedly confessed in the killing, saying they find the allegations especially disturbing because the case appears to have been a premeditated killing and not carried out in the heat of combat.
Does this really come as a surprise to anyone? Do we really learn nothing from history? Or is it that we simply no longer care, no longer have the intelligence or the willpower to break away from 'American Idol', no longer have the strength or courage to stand up and say no to the madness that surrounds us?
]]> We, as a country, have been here before. And apparently we are hell-bent on going back again.On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai. "This is what you've been waiting for -- search and destroy -- and you've got it," said their superior officers. A short time later the killing began. When news of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves through the U.S. political establishment, the military's chain of command, and an already divided American public. (www.pbs.org)
Now, I'm not saying that the current charges, should they be true, rise to the level of the atrocities committed on that spring day in 1968. But I am saying that we are firmly on our way there.
How does one train a man to kill, give him license to kill, put him in an environment where killing is simply part of the day's routine, and then tell him not to kill?
The human psyche is remarkably resilient and adaptive. We still do not understand all of the intricacies of the human mind, and we may never understand. But we do know that humans, over time, can adapt to circumstances that an 'ordinary' person would find unthinkable. And we also know that authority can be just as dangerous as a lack of authority. We have now entered into another unwinnable war, one in which the goal keeps changing, one in which victory is always just around the corner. But the people in authority tell us that we must go on. We've come this far, we can't stop now. To pull out now would be to admit defeat, to be mocked as cowards, to invite the enemy to encamp at our front door.
History shows us very clearly what happens in this kind of situation. Faced with a task that is impossible to accomplish, one with no clearly defined goal, indeed one that is designed to have no goal and no end, soldier's frustration will mount and keep mounting until a breaking point is reached. Military suicides are rising. Civilian casualties are rising. Reports of military crimes are rising. In the famous words of that venerable comic-strip character Pogo, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
These 19 Marines, should the charges prove true, have committed a repugnant act.
But what is truly repugnant is that we willingly allow this to happen.
]]>More as it develops.
]]>Everything was transparent to HST and he was vicious in pointing out the absurties of his subjects. His flair with the melodramatic was incredible; in lesser hands it could be a sad prententious joke, but in Thompson's writings, the melodramatic was inspiring. You never knew where the fiction started with Hunter. Who knows if he was really wasted surrounded by cops at a Drug Enforcement convention. It really doesn't matter, he was the kind of guy that you believed would do it.
My favorite book so far has to be Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,72. Great book chronicling the rise and fall of George McGovern's presendential aspirations. This coupled with his railings against Richard Nixon, which were especially acute facing four more years, was HST at his best. At times I laughed out loud and he educated me in the political process from primary to election.
Dr. Hunter S Thompson was truly a legend in his own time and we are fortunate to have shared that time with him. Like Elvis, his stature will grow with death and soon he will be mentioned in god-like tones. His life was the stuff of myths and legends and HST will outlive us all.
]]>The will of the Iraqi people is heavy
Apparently it is so heavy that it takes more than a small group of terrorists to overturn it. No word on exactly how much Iraqi will weighs, or exactly how many terrorists it takes to overturn it.
Terrorists have an uncontrollable compulsion to attack Democracy
We're not exactly sure how this fits with terrorist's fear of Democracy, but apparently if you show them your Democracy and they don't run away screaming then simply throw your Democracy as far as possible. This will cause the terrorists to forget about you while they attack the Democracy, leaving you free to make your escape.
Social Security is under a state of crisis
Unless we all drop what we're doing and band together to prop up Social Security, it will fall over and explode sometime between now and 2018, or 2042, or 2052. Of course, if Social Security explodes then everyone and everything will be covered in a sticky, gooey Social Security mess. And we all know how difficult that is to wash off, especially if you're wearing rayon.
Freedom is on the march
And you'd better get out of it's way. It's big and mean and angry and heavily armed, and it's not going to stop for little old you.
]]>60 Minutes asked the Department of Defense to grant us an interview. They declined. Instead, they sent a letter, which contains a figure not included in published casualty reports: "More than 15,000 troops with so-called 'non-battle' injuries and diseases have been evacuated from Iraq."
"It's difficult to estimate what the total number is," says John Pike, director of a research group called GlobalSecurity.org.
"You have to say that the total number of casualties due to wounds, injury, disease would have to be somewhere in the ballpark of over 20, maybe 30,000," says Pike.
Even as early as 1966 Senator Fulbright had some eerily prescient insights on the course of American foreign policy, insights which ring especially true in light of the Bush administration's foreign policy course during the last four years.
On the arrogance of power:
Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations--to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work.
On Unilateralism and support from traditional allies:
The United States is willing to defy allied opinion because of... an excess of pride born of power. Power has a way of undermining judgment, of planting delusions of grandeur in the minds of otherwise sensible people and otherwise sensible nations. As I have said earlier, the idea of being responsible for the whole world seems to have dazzled us, giving rise to what I call the arrogance of power, or what the French, perhaps more aptly, call le vertige de puissance, by which they mean a kind of dizziness or giddiness inspired by the possession of great power. If then, as I suspect, there is a relationship between the self-absorption of some of our allies and the American military involvement in Vietnam, it may have more to do with American vanity than with our friends' complacency.
On international law:
Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations. As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations. Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.]]>
While it is possible that this is merely bluster designed to increase the pressure on Iran, it is nonetheless disturbing given the previous track record of the Bush administration and its neocon policy makers.
This news comes closely on the heels of last week's announcement by Secretary Colin Powell that Iran is developing a nuclear missile. According to Secretary Powell, "I have seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. . . . I'm talking about information that says they not only have these missiles, but I am aware of information that suggests that they were working hard as to how to put the two together."
This is the same man who, in February 2003, stood before the U.N. Security Council and presented "evidence" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, including mobile weapons labs, nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and the now infamous aluminum tubes, none of which have been found to this day.
Powell's pronouncement is especially puzzling since the IAEA chief, Mohamed El Baradei, said last week that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities."
As for Emperor Bush, it is clear at this point that his idea of foreign policy is "more stick, less carrot." If, as political science theory teaches us, nation-states behave in the same way as children playing in a sandbox, then Bush's idea of diplomacy must be to act as the playground bully. As we, as well as others much smarter than ourselves, have pointed out before, the U.S. is already grossly over-extended in both its military and intelligence capacity. And now our "steadfast and determined" self-styled "war President" apparently seeks to bluff his way through the Iran situation by threatening military intervention which the rest of the world knows would clearly be nearly impossible given the present state of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is one thing for the President to bet his own life, it is another thing entirely for him to bet with my life and the lives of millions of others.
]]>
No embedded reporter, at least of which I'm aware, has dared to speak of civilian casualties; however, many reporters have commented on the lack of bodies (login here). As usual, there seems to be no coherent thread to the reporting coming from Fallujah and Iraq.
The absence of insurgent bodies in Falluja has remained an enduring mystery. Roaming American patrols found few on Sunday in their sweeps of the devastated landscape where the rebels chose to make their last stand, the southern Falluja neighborhood called Shuhada by the Iraqis and Queens by the American troops.
In the midst of all this conflicting information comes an anonymous blogger who has posted images of Fallujah. When words fail, pictures speak volumes. (Note: not for the faint of heart.)
]]>Gonzales and Bush have been together since Bush's days as Governor of Texas; then, as now, Gonzales served as Bush's legal counsel. While serving in that capacity, Mr. Gonzales garnered quite a reputation for speeding up the line of inmates on Texas' death row. On June 16, 1997, Gonzales wrote regarding the conviction of Irineo Tristan Montoya, that "Since the State of Texas is not a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we believe it is inappropriate to ask Texas to determine whether a breach … occurred in connection with the arrest and conviction" of a Mexican national. He wrote those words in response to a complaint by the Mexican government that the state of Texas, in direct conflict with the Vienna Convention of 1969, failed to notify them of the arrest of Mr. Montoya. Lest we forget, the Vienna Convention was entered into by the U.S. to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a representative of their home country. Mr. Gonzales, however, chose to argue that the Vienna Convention did not apply to the state of Texas since they did not sign it. Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution is very clear on this point, when it states that "... all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land."
Fast-forward to 2001. Jim Lehrer interviewed Mr. Gonzales on Newshour where Mr. Gonzales had this to say in response to a question asking how he would reassure Americans:
We of course are in an extraordinary time, Jim. And these call for different kinds of measures. But I can assure you that we have looked at everything that's been done by the administration carefully, from a legal perspective; everything that has been done, I think is well within the requirements of the constitution and the laws passed by Congress.
Knowing Mr. Gonzales previous writings concerning "the requirements of the constitution and the laws passed by Congress," I feel so much better now.
Then there's Gonzales' contribution to the Abu Ghraib scandal, in his infamous Memorandum For the President of January 25, 2002. In it, Gonzales outlines his reasoning for the justification of ignoring the Geneva Convention (oops, those pesky treaties again) and endorsing torture of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and also the right of the U.S. to hold those detainees without charge and without access to counsel.
In my judgement, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.
Quaint? Does he mean to equate the Geneva Conventions with the senile ramblings of Grandma? A summer cottage in the Hamptons is quaint, not a long-standing international treaty.
Mr. Gonzales further went on to argue that ignoring the Geneva Conventions "Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecutions under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C 2441)." In other words, if we pretend that it doesn't exist then we can't be prosecuted for breaking it. This is known as the "I didn't know" defense, as in "I didn't know it was against the law to kill the pizza delivery guy because he was 30 minutes late."
So it seems that if Bush gets his way, and Mr. Gonzales is confirmed as Attorney General, then we can expect the wholesale disregard of laws, treaties, and even the Constitution for at least the next four years.
And maybe, in 2008, we can do something to fix it. If there's anything left to fix. Or anyone left to care.
]]>Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels? - Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", 1849
Half the country is not stupid. We're all stupid. We're convinced several times a day to do things that aren't in our best interests. We work too hard. We're drinking, eating, medicating, and smoking ourselves into early graves. We overextend ourselves on credit. We knowingly stay in emotionally or physically abusive relationships. We let television raise our children. We're deliberately mean and nasty to people we don't like or agree with. We learn science from the Bible. We stay silent when speaking out would help someone. We fear the future. We fear death. And we're lazy about our beliefs and convictions and we let the Democratic and Republican Parties dictate the political agenda in America by pushing our emotional buttons. Red, blue, black, white, brown, yellow, purple, and retina-burning yellow-green...we all share the blame. - Jason Kottke, kottke.org, 2004
]]>3 MB stream
20MB stream
59 MB stream
- via boingboing
]]>