Timing
I was just reading about Bill Clinton's full-blooded response to an attempted Chris Wallace ambush on Fox News. Apparently, Clinton went on and they were supposed to talk about his global initiative. Wallace ambushed him with the tired why didn't you get Bin Laden crap (try asking Bush that, Chris).
Clinton, according to the story I read, fought back full bore, finger pointing and all. Wallace tried interrupting him and Clinton said you asked the question, you get the answer. Afterwards, Clinton said
Dems should all be fighting back. When are the Dems going to listen?
This is about the power to keep America free, at a time when Time just revealed (according to On the Media) a plan, possibly aimed for October, for military action against Iran.
I think Hugo Chavez is an elected dictator, an idiot and an asshole, but it's still scary to see how many at the UN defied protocol to applaud his egregious crap, to see how hated we are.
And all because we stand for freedom.
Right?
Right.
The morals that they worship will be gone
Thanks to the
New York Times Opinionator for pointing the way to
this scary piece by Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman explaining why the United States of America may be on the verge of becoming the first country to make violating the Geneva Convention law. One is tempted to simply dismiss as business as usual the fact that Bush/Cheney et al have either steamrollered or snookered Warner, McCain and Graham. But one has to at least give them credit for trying to stop this disgrace to morality that is our White House, especially given the damage this may have done to McCain's presidential hopes. The question is, as the question so often seems to be, where are the Democrats?
Ironic that The Who's on tour again, considering one of that iconic British rock band's best known songs is "Won't get fooled again."
Lyrics:We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Four legs good, two legs better
Despite the shifting rationales of the invasion of Iraq, one would have hoped that there was some essential element of America that would remain untarnished, that Bush/Cheney/Lieberman would realize the soul of America, that dream built on freedom and equality and justice for all, would not tolerate open torture, and that's why they kept it hidden for so long.
Would that it were so. Now, even the increasingly conservative
Washington Post editorial page is disturbed by the prospect of a President who comes to Congress "lobbying for torture."
This is not America. I hope.
A few brave people in Congress and out, many of whom, unlike Bush/Cheney/Lieberman/Rumsfeld, served with distinction in the armed forces, are bravely standing for the America our Founding Fathers sought to create. They stand firmly opposed to those who proudly, like Cheney, embrace the dark side.
This is a war we are supposedly fighting for freedom, for democracy, to free a country and a world from those who who do unspeakable acts. Like torture prisoners. Yet if the White House is the face of America, what rings truest is the conclusion of George Orwell's
Animal Farm: "No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Had George Bush been reading
Animal Farm instead of
My Pet Goat on 9/11, perhaps the world would have no reason, as General Powell put it, for "beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."
How lazy is the press?
We already know from the run-up to Iraq that the media aren't likely to bite the hands that feed them leaked tidbits by actually questioning anything shoveled to them. But one would think that given the interest in the Connecticut Senate race and the big deal being made by the Me-Berman camp over a letter from
Ned Lamont, the Democrat running for US Senate, supposedly praising Holy Joe for his sanctimonious public lashing of Bill Clinton, AP or the Times would actually have taken the time to examine the source material.
But we know Joe is their favorite right-winger, soundly rejected by Democrats though he was in his last two campaigns, one for President and the other the last senatorial primary. And we know that neither criticism nor questioning of Me-Berman is something either Joe or the MSM would tolerate.
Perhaps when they're done worshipping at the altar of Joe, the MSM might want to address this letter by Scott Kimmich of Wilton in the Sept. 15 issue of
The Hour in Norwalk. It puts a whole new spin on Joe's cheap political trick, but as with Iraq, exposing that would require the MSMs exposing its own complicity in the all-spin zone.
Lamont chastised, not praised, Lieberman in letterTo the Editor:
The Associated Press headline in The Sunday Hour misrepresents what Ned Lamont actually wrote to Joe Lieberman eight years ago during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Ned didn't "laud" Joe's moral outrage, instead he chastised Joe's selecting Bill Clinton for censure.
Was the Lieberman campaign trying to set Ned up? At a press luncheon with Ned in Washington last week, reporters concentrated on his reaction to the Lewinsky affair. Within days, The New York Times published a story about the eight-year-old letter that the Lieberman campaign just happened to have at its fingertips. Yet, what Ned actually wrote was far different from the reporters' rhetoric.
Ned's letter begins, "I reluctantly supported the moral outrage you expressed ... I was reluctant because I thought it might make matters worse; I was reluctant because nobody expressed moral outrage over how Reagan treated his kids or Gingrich lied about supporting term limits (in other words, it was selective outrage); I was reluctant because the Starr inquisition is much more threatening to our civil liberties and national interest than Clinton's behavior."
Instead of being laudatory, Ned's letter actually chides Joe for singling out Clinton instead of Reagan or Gingrich.
The letter also deplores how Starr's exposure of the sordid affair "streamed into my home via every medium available, saying that "mature adults would have handled this privately, not turned it into a political crusade and legal entanglement with no end in sight."
Ned ends his letter by asking Joe to "stand up and use your moral authority to put an end to this snowballing mess ... and let's move on. It's time for you to make up your mind and speak your mind as you did so eloquently last Thursday."
Clearly, Ned was urging Joe to halt the political circus, not praising him. Ned was using the same words then as he uses in his current campaign.
Scott Kimmich
Wilton
Lacking foresight
Brigadier General Mark Scheid was one of the early planners of the Iraq invasion. According to
this interview Brig. Gen. Scheid, who is about to retire, gave his hometown Daily Press in Virginia, Sec. Def. Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Everyone's heard the old adage that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Call this an object lesson.
Waterboarding, anyone?
Interesting response below in that Bush claimed it was the abusive tactics that led to our getting intelligence from high-value targets. Once again, it seems our uniformed brass are refusing to lie. This is from the transcript of the 9/6 DOD briefing on DOD and Army new interrogation standards for regular Geneva Convention-covered enemy forces and for enemy combatants. Will all the people who have been so eager to give up civil liberty to "protect the homeland" realize this was just another power grab by a power mad group of paranoids? Or do we still believe the hype? I say we reserve waterboarding for the people in DC who can tell us where the almost $400 billion we spent in Iraq went, or why we went there in the first place. After all that, the credibility of our deterrent capacity is nil as a result, as Iran and North Korea have shown. Wonder if Cheney/Lieberman are taking time from their Iran invasion plans to listen this time to the people who actually have worn a uniform?
They're here today to brief you on two documents that the department is releasing today. The first is the Defense Department directive for detainee programs, and the second is the Army field manual for human intelligence collector operations.SPEAKERS: CULLY STIMSON, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR DETAINEE AFFAIRS
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN KIMMONS (USA), ARMY DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR INTELLIGENCE
QUESTION: General and Mr. Stimson, some of the tactics that were used, in particular in Guantanamo Bay, that were considered by investigators to be abusive when used together are now prohibited, for example, the use of nudity, hooding, that sort of thing.
In looking at those particular tactics and now not being able to use them, does that limit the ability of interrogators to get information that could be very useful? In particular on one detainee in Guantanamo Bay, some of those tactics that are now prohibited were deemed to be very effective in getting to that information.
Also, are there going to be safeguards to prevent whether it be interrogators or commanders from interpreting the tactics that are approved in ways that could be abusive, as some of those tactics were derived from standard interrogation tactics?
KIMMONS: Let me answer the first question. That is a good question. I think -- I am absolutely convinced -- the answer to your first question is no. No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that.
Moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can't afford to go there.
Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been -- in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them, have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized humane interrogation practices in clever ways, that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of legal, moral and ethical, now as further refined by this field manual.
We don't need abusive practices in there. Nothing good will come from them.STIMSON: And let me add another piece to that. Obviously, because of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Army Field Manual now is in effect law, the law of the land.
I can tell you, I'm not an interrogation expert. I'm just a lawyer who happened to end up in a policy job. But as a prosecutor in my former life, and when I spend time in Guantanamo talking to the interrogators there, they'll tell you that the intelligence they get from detainees is best derived through a period of rapport-building, long-term rapport-building; an interrogation plan that is proper, vetted, worked through all the channels that General Kimmons is talking about, and then building rapport with that particular detainee.
So it's not like Sipowicz from the TV show where they take them in the back room. You're not going to get trustworthy information, as I under it, from detainees. It's through a methodical, comprehensive, vetted, legal and now transparent, in terms of techniques, set of laydown that allows the interrogator to get the type of information that they need.
September 11
"You do what God has called you to do." -
Father Mychal F. Judge, Victim 0001, World Trade Center
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
When doves cry
Isn't this amazing? It's
an invitation (see it large enough to be readable here) from the Republican candidate for Superintendent of Education in South Carolina to a $1,000 fundraiser -
shooting doves! Wait, it get's better -
on 9/11!
I guess if we've shot the Constitution to shit under the Cheney/Lieberman administration, why not doves? As Cheney/Lieberman have repeatedly pointed out, they're treasonous anyway.
The government we deserve
A
newly released CNN poll says 43% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Steep learning curve.
