NEON GODS

This is what we fought for in Iraq?

Religion is SO uplifting, isn't it?  And yes, many Christians have the same feelings towards these victims and if we were a Christian theocracy, as many on the right desire, we might see scenes like this too.

--Trakker

Time To Get Out of Afghanistan

Bob Herbert is right,

The war, hopelessly botched by the Bush crowd, has now lasted nearly eight long years, longer than our involvement in World Wars I and II combined. There is nothing even remotely resembling a light at the end of the tunnel. The war is going badly and becoming deadlier. July and August were the two deadliest months for U.S. troops since the American invasion in October 2001.

Nevertheless, with public support for the war dwindling, and with the military exhausted and stretched to the breaking point physically and psychologically after so many years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the president is ratcheting the war up instead of winding it down.

via www.nytimes.com

I'm truly gobsmacked that Obama is doing this.  Once Bush decided to focus on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan, it has turned into a stupid, unwinnable war. We can't afford it, it's unfair to our troops, and to escalate the war in a country that has rebuffed every other attempt at invasion or pacification for centuries is ridiculous!

I suspect Obama is afraid that if he pulls out of Afghanistan the Republicans will crucify him and the Democrats for being "weak" on the war on terror. So what? As President he is supposed to do what's best for the country.  Anyway, I don't think there is enough support for this war now that pulling out would hurt Obama. 

But I suppose he has gone too far with the escalation for him to turn around and pull out now.  This is just another example of how President Obama is looking more and more like a clone of George Bush.  It's another reason why liberals must cut our ties with Barack Obama.  We must oppose this escalation.

--Trakker

Tulsa World: Inhofe blasts Obama at town hall

President Obama is disarming the military, destroying everything good about America and determined to turn foreign terrorists loose on U.S. soil, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Wednesday.

via www.tulsaworld.com

These are the words of Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) at a town hall meeting today. Sen. Inhofe is either a dangerous idiot or (worse) a dangerous Anti-American, hateful enemy of our Democracy. He and his fellow right wing lunatics are doing everything they can to encourage a rebellion. These are the words of a United States Senator, not some wacky private individual.

The Democrats, the Obama Administration, and the media have got to start answering this shit. As long as they keep getting away with it they will keep ratcheting up the rhetoric until all hell breaks loose.

--Trakker

Why The Rich Should Send THEIR Kids To Fight Our Wars

The headline says it all, "Soldiers in Colorado slayings tell of Iraq horrors."  Here is what was happening in Iraq while the George Bush was strutting around bragging about all the good we were doing for the Iraqi people.

Several soldiers said unit discipline deteriorated while in Iraq.

"Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated," said Daniel Freeman. "You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley," an armored fighting vehicle.

With each roadside bombing, soldiers would fire in all directions "and just light the whole area up," said Anthony Marquez, a friend of Freeman in the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. "If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em."

Taxi drivers got shot for no reason, and others were dropped off bridges after interrogations, said Marcus Mifflin, who was eventually discharged with post traumatic stress syndrome.

Why?  Because the Bush Administration knew that the only alternative to keep sending the same troops back into battle over and over again was to implement the draft.  The draft would have instantly generated a lot of opposition to the war, so George Bush decided it was better to ruin the lives of our troops (and sacrifice the lives of the innocent Iraqis they murdered) than risk opposition to the war and probably lose the next election.

Soldiers interviewed by The Gazette [Colorado Springs] cited lengthy deployments, being sent back into battle after surviving war injuries that would have been fatal in previous conflicts, and engaging in some of the bloodiest combat in Iraq. [...]

The unit was deployed for a year to Iraq's Sunni Triangle in September 2004. Sixty-four unit soldiers were killed and more than 400 wounded — about double the average for Army brigades in Iraq, according to Fort Carson. In 2007, the unit served a bloody 15-month mission in Baghdad.

Now many of these same troops are back home and are still harming others (and themselves).

Marquez was the first in his brigade to kill someone after an Iraq tour. In 2006, he used a stun gun to shock a drug dealer in Widefield, Colo., in a dispute over a marijuana sale, then shot and killed him.

Marquez's mother, Teresa Hernandez, warned Marquez's sergeant at Fort Carson her son was showing signs of violent behavior, abusing alcohol and pain pills and carrying a gun. "I told them he was a walking time bomb," she said.

So far 10 infantrymen in this unit have been accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter after returning to civilian life.

We owe these guys all the help they need no matter what the cost.  They were used by our politicians, they were abused by our commander in chief.

There are many reasons why in a perfect world George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would be wearing orange jump suits for the rest of their lives, and this is just one of them.  When I hear about what our troops did to Iraqis in our name, not because they are bad people but because we pushed them beyond their limits, I cringe.  Sadly, if you go back to news articles and blog posts of 2005 and 2006 you will see that many were predicting this is what would eventually happen.

I worry that we are going to have another generation of unemployed (and unemployable) burned out, mentally wounded, Iraqi vets wandering our streets, unable to reassimilate into society after what they've seen and experienced, like the Vietnam War vets.  Unlike those vets I hope we as a people have the compassion to demand that our tax dollars be spent to heal them as best we can.

[h/t to my fellow vet, Bitburg Buddy]

--Trakker

Government Lies, Real Journalism, and Suffering On Behalf of the People

Nancy Youssef, of McClatchy News, wrote a long article about Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, an Afghan who was detained in U.S. custody for 6 years, most of that time was spent in Gitmo.  He was released in 2008.

He's back in Afghanistan working as a tribal to help the people of his province, and much to his horror the Pentagon is now accusing him of engaging in terrorism again.  Read the article to see how ridiculous their claim is and how badly Wakil has been treated by our country.

Glenn Greenwald used this article to highlight the many lies our government has been telling us about terrorists, detainees, Gitmo, and the whole Bush war on terrorism.  Glenn praises Youssef's article and calls it an example of how real journalism should be practiced.

As the McClatchy article reflects, what is and is not real "journalism" is not that complicated.  The government makes a claim.  The role of the "journalist" is not to repeat it or merely report that the government claims..., but instead, to investigate it with skepticism to determine whether it is true, and then report if it isn't.  And journalists don't have to wait for a member of the "opposition party" to call them and object before doing so.  That's so basic that it's staggering to believe that it is disputed, and yet not only is that proposition disputed, it is explicitly rejected by many -- if not most -- establishment journalists.  And in that fact lies much of the explanation for what has happened in the U.S. during this decade (at least).

Also of interest is the first comment posted to Glenn's column.  Jim White is a frequent commenter and here is what he wrote:

At the end of the [McClatchy] article, we have this:

"Where is the justice? I am still being threatened because of this," Wakil said, his arms flailing. "But I do not want to retaliate. People respect me now more than before because they know I am innocent. It is my job as a tribal elder to suffer on behalf of my people."

What a succinct summary of the depths to which we have sunk. First, of course, Wakil understands that the concept of "justice" no longer exists for the United States when it come to the Great War on Terror.

Further, though, I dare anyone to give me a single example of a political figure in Washington who sees their job as entailing the obligation "to suffer on behalf of my people". Inside the Beltway, the only objective is to enrich oneself as much as possible in both cash and power while ensuring re-election. The concept of doing anything, let alone suffering, on behalf of the people is completely foreign to our government...

--Trakker

[Don't] R.I.P. McNamara

I spent four years in the military during the Vietnam War so I know Robert McNamara well. No, I never met the man but everyone in the military at the time felt his touch.  I never met a serviceman who liked or respected him.  He was your stereotypical bureaucrat, running a war and sending men and women to their deaths from his comfortable office in Washington.

Well, he finally joined the 58,000 plus troops who died in his little war.  I think Joseph Galloway (McClatchy News) has the best response to McNamara's death yet.

When famous people die, we have come to expect scores of tributes to the person, with stories of all the great things he or she did in their life, and how much they will be missed.  Well, this one is different.  Galloway hated McNamara and he's not afraid to show it.  He writes:

The only disagreement I ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

He goes on to describe just how deep Halberstam's hatred was,

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

Read Galloway's piece, it's deliciously irreverent.  And scroll down to WallaceN's comment.

--Trakker

 

Memorial Day - What It Really Means

Memorial Day should be a somber affair, a day when we ponder and honor those men and women who have died serving in our military.  I wish I could write, "...who died defending our country" but we all know that our wars are often a result of whims or ego or outside pressures rather than to defend our country from real threats.  The Iraq war is just the most recent example.

The rich and powerful of our nation have managed to manipulate our political system to the point where they and their families never end up in the National Cemeteries buried under marble headstones.  They usually benefit from the expanded government spending that accompanies war.  Because they now control our politics by sponsoring our politicians, we can probably expect more stupid wars in the future and more marble headstones in our cemeteries.  We could put a stop to this if we wanted to badly enough, but we Americans appear increasingly demoralized and act powerless because we know that nothing less than a full-scale rebellion can change the system.

So, on this day that we have set aside to remember and honor those who have died in battles we have deemed necessary, please take some time to think about what a huge sacrifice they made, and then take a few more moments to acknowledge that many of these young lives were needlessly sacrificed and think about just how wrong that is.

--Trakker

Not a War, a Crusade.

Apropos for a Sunday, we find that the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld distributed their top-secret intel reports with cover sheets that had inspirational Bible verses printed over military images which Donald Rumsfeld himself delivered to the White House.  Evidently, Bush, Rumsfeld, and JCS Chairman Richard Myers saw nothing wrong with this.

It's hard not to conclude the Bush Administration saw the "war on terror" as more of a religious crusade, the American "Christian" nation fighting the Muslims.

Another RW Pundit Says America Can Torture

This column by Charles Krauthammer is a classic!  If I ever teach political science I will spend a week on this column.

Krauthammer begins: "Torture is an impermissible evil." According to the Geneva Convention Against Torture he should have stopped there, but of course Krauthammer believes we Americans are superior to everyone else, so we get to have two exceptions.

For a point of reference, here is what Sections II & IV of the Convention Against Torture that Ronald Reagan signed says:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. [from Greenwald]

Krauthammer's first exception: the "ticking time bomb" scenario. This isn't really an exception because almost any country would use torture in this extremely rare circumstance.

But notice the caveat that John McCain adds but Krauthammer fails to emphasize: you do what you have to do and then take responsibility for it!

In other words even though McCain suggests torture may be called for in this one circumstance, anyone who uses torture should understand it's still a crime and that they must be held accountable.

That's exactly what Krauthammer and his GOP buddies are desperately trying to avoid!!!

The rest of his column makes one cringe with embarrassment.  After citing the single case where any rational person would probably agree torture might be the only way to save hundreds or thousands of lives (the "ticking time bomb" scenario), Krauthammer then cleverly implies that those of us who believe torture is a crime, no exceptions, would not use it in the ticking time bomb scenario and are thus unfit to ever be in a position to make national security decisions.  Funny, that would include Ronald Reagan!

The rest of his column is full of equally tortured (sorry) logic and propaganda disguised as intelligent commentary.  Most of it is easily parsed and the flaws exposed by anyone who reads it carefully, but we all know the GOP is scared shitless now that we are beginning to connect all the dots.  I believe the picture that emerges will show that the Bush administration was filled with monsters.

The Washington Post desperately needs to jettison at least half of it's columnists (begin with Krauthammer and Broder). There are smart bloggers on both the right and the left who write smart opinion pieces every single day(!) that far surpasses anything I read in the Post editorial section anymore.

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin at the WaPost's White House Watch demolishes Krauthammer's argument!  Why is Krauthammer a still a featured columnist in the WaPost?

--Trakker

To Prosecute or Not Prosecute

Andrew Sullivan on whether to prosecute those responsible for torture.

Absent any serious attempt to get to the bottom of this and prosecute the guilty, the US's commitment to the Geneva Conventions and to the UN Convention on Torture is transparently insincere - and the entire international legal edifice restraining such barbarism gutted by its ostensible global leader. Bush and Cheney will not just have destroyed the integrity of America, they will have done more to advance the use of torture worldwide than anyone since the Conventions were first set up. [...]  

We have two honest options: to investigate the torture and prosecute the guilty or to formally withdraw from Geneva and the UN Convention on Torture. I know it would be more convenient if we could all just move on and avoid this. But we can't. So which one?

Greg Sargent points out that in a recent NY Times poll, 71% of Americans believe waterboarding is torture, just 26% say no.  The 71% may even increase once new pictures of our torture methods are released on or about May 28th.  It occurs to me that Obama risks greater disapproval if he blocks prosecution than if he allows the chips to fall where they may.

--Trakker