The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.
They’ve been given an extra 30 days.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Now There's a Surprise
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Proud To Be An American
Mexican citizens are in an uproar over newly released videos which appear to show a U.S. contractor teaching Mexican policy how to torture suspects, including a crude variation of water boarding. The Mexican police have been repeatedly accused of torture and this video show them practicing such techniques as dragging people through their own vomit under the directions of a U.S. adviser.The videos show a variety of torture techniques, including good old-fashioned brutality like jumping on a suspect’s ribs and dunking a suspect’s head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats..
Well, I don’t want to see it, but there’s a link to the video in that article.
[H]ow could the Justice Department investigate the allegations when it is refusing to investigate the Administration’s own torture program? Likewise, how are Democrats going to call for hearings on torture when they have refused to take meaningful action against a torture program created and directed only a few miles from the Capitol building? We have finally reached a point of complete moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy on the issue. There was a time when we were the leading voice against torture in the world. We are now viewed as an exporter and practicioner of torture.
Viewed that way because that’s what we are.
Actually, I admit I'm a little surprised that torture is something Mexico needs to import U.S. "experts" for.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
This Should Make You Feel More Confident in Our SCOTUS
Dwight Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, has some crowing rights this week. He found a serious factual error in the majority opinion barring the death penalty for child rape defendants — a flaw that was missed by both the majority and dissenting justices in Kennedy v. Louisiana as well as all of the attorneys in the case.In deciding last week that the execution of child rapists offends the “evolving standards of decency” of the country, Justice Anthony Kennedy relied on the fact that one six jurisdictions allowed for such punishment — and not the other 30 states with the death penalty or the federal government. For a copy of the opinion, click here. It turns out that recently that changed with regard to the federal government. As Mr. Sullivan pointed out, Congress added the such punishment in National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006. None of the attorneys for either side or any amicus caught the change. Nor did the dissenting justices.
[...]
This not the first time that facts relied upon by the Court have proven false. Indeed, a far more serious flaw was found in the Reynolds case where the Court established the military and state secrets privilege. At the time, many argued that the Air Force was lying about the classified information in the case and the risk to national security. The Supreme Court ignored these claims and rendered its decision creating the doctrine. Recently, material surfaced that showed that the Air Force had indeed misrepresented the facts to the Court, but when asked to reconsider the ruling, the Court refused.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Pick Your Poison - Part 3
It was actually worse than I thought.
The Democrat is expected to reveal his plans for assisting religious groups’ service programs during a speech in Zanesville, Ohio, later today. Before the speech, he will tour the Eastside Community Ministry, an antipoverty program that provides food, clothes and religious services to the area’s poor.“We know that faith and values can be a source of strength in our own lives. That’s what it’s been to me. And that’s what it is to so many Americans. But it can also be something more. It can be the foundation of a new project of American renewal. And that’s the kind of effort I intend to lead as president of the United States,” Obama said in a statement.
Pick Your Poison - Part 2
Glenn Greenwald summarizes the post-primary Obama.
The choices Obama makes about how he campaigns and the positions he takes are extremely consequential in how political issues in this country are perceived. In the last two weeks alone, Obama has done the following:*intervened in a Democratic Congressional primary to support one of the worst Bush-enabling Blue Dogs over a credible, progressive challenger;
* announced his support for Bush's FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;
* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;
* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had "dishonored McCain's service" (and for the best commentary I've seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);
* condemned MoveOn.org for its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;
* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the "the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" for "attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself" and -- echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 RNC speech -- "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world";
* unveiled plans "to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions," a move that could "invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination" -- something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.
[...]
There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important. But so, too, is the way that victory is achieved and what Obama advocates and espouses along the way. Feeding distortions against someone like Wesley Clark in order to please Joe Klein and his fact-free media friends, or legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and protecting joint Bush/telecom lawbreaking, or basing his campaign on demonizing MoveOn.org and 1960s anti-war hippies, is quite harmful in many long-lasting ways. Electing Barack Obama is a very important political priority but it isn't the only one there is, and his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.
[...]
The ways in which Obama is superior to the Bush-following McCain are both numerous and substantial (unless you're excited to have Joe Lieberman and Bill Kristol running U.S. foreign policy and Ted Olson appointing more executive-power-worshiping, privacy-eroding Justices to the Supreme Court -- and if that's not enough, see this), and that's true no matter how many justifiable criticisms are voiced towards Obama. What Obama has done over the last two weeks will drain the enthusiasm away from many of his most intense supporters (as it has even with the intensely pro-Obama Markos Moulitsas), but that isn't the same -- not even close to the same -- as deciding that it's irrelevant if he wins.
Keith Olbermann Changes His Tune
Now challenging Obama to stand up to that "loophole" Olbermann wants us to believe Obama will be thinking about while signing the FISA "compromise".
And John Dean, whom Olbermann quoted in his earlier comments, clarifies what he was really saying about the bill.
General Clark
I was going to bypass this "story", because I think it's all a crock of blowhard shit - more distraction, but then I realized that pretty much all we are doing these days is distracting ourselves from the nightmare mess we have created of this world. So...
Sign our petition, thanking General Wesley Clark for his clarity and honesty on what it takes to lead this nation’s military and veterans.
And here’s a nice post on the issue from Robert at Brilliant at Breakfast.
You Can Have the Arsenic, Or You Can Have the Cyaninde
Pick your poison.
LaBelle sends a link to this Brilliant at Breakfast post.
In 2000, enough people voted for Ralph Nader, believing that there was no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it put us on the path to the mess in which we find ourselves today.In 2006, Democrats won a razor-thin majority in Congress, and its approval ratings are below that of George W. Bush -- not because the Democrats aren't conservative enough, but because they are still capitulating to the Bush Administration.
And now, between Barack Obama's capitulation on FISA (which is likely to persist, Keith Olbermann's hopes notwithstanding), his jettisoning of Wesley Clark as if questioning whether being shot down was a sufficient condition by itself to warrant a free pass to the White House, and now a pledge to continue George W. Bush's program of Tax Dollars for Jeebus, I'm starting to wonder just how much daylight there is between Obama and John McCain -- and just what the hell happened.
Truth happened.
From time to time, I still like to think that Al Gore really was different. But I keep wanting to think the same thing about Obama, when in the back of my mind, that knowing little voice keeps saying: “Not where it really counts.”
I just don’t get it – who thinks it’s a good strategy for Democratic candidates to keep going to the right? They’ll never get the die-hard Republican vote, no matter how far they go, because Democrat is a dirty word to those GOPers – it means liberal, and that means evil.
But what they are doing is driving away the progressive arm of the Democratic party. And then they cry about Ralph Nader “spoiling” the election. It’s not Ralph who’s losing them votes – it’s themselves.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would spend at least $500 million a year to promote community aid programs run by faith-based groups.The proposal would expand an initiative put in place by President George W. Bush to aid religious organizations performing social service work, which Obama said “never fully completed its mission or fulfilled its promise.''
[...]
Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago, would create a new White House office for the President's Council for Faith- Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Among other things, the council would help train faith-based groups on how to apply for federal grants.
[...]
Obama, 46, an Illinois senator, called for rules to ensure that the council wouldn't breach the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Federal money could only be spent on non-religious activities and groups couldn't discriminate when deciding who will get their aid.
So tell me then, why is this a Council for Faith-Based programs? Sounds like bogus hocus pocus to me. Why don’t faith-based folks just organize into secular organizations that help the poor? Why can’t they do their thing under a Neighborhood Partnership? Why do they need the faith-based coverage if they’re not going to be able to have anything religious in their activities?
And since Bush organized this affront on the separation of church and state without Congressional approval, is Obama taking advantage of a program so initiated?
I smell fish.
As today's Daily Twain (sidebar) reminds us:
History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise. --Mark Twain
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
P.S.
And from the comments on that post:
FranIAm said...Obama is really upsetting me. As a practicing Christian the last thing that I want is more faith based crap.
This is not a Christian nation (I already believe this but I am also quoting my parish priest from a class he taught at church last night...)- it is a nation founded on religious freedom.A.
Big.
Difference.As he said - and I agree, if we want to be a Christian nation then fine. That would mean being compassionate to all, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, bringing justice to the oppressed, you know... Shit like that.
All the posturing is many things - it is not Christian.
Quite.
Shaking Off the Bush Legacy
[In] crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration's many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:• Defined the contemporary era as an "age of terror" with an open-ended "global war" as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;
• Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;
• Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;
• Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, "defense is not a budget item";
• Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;
• Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
• Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising "global leadership";
• Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.By almost any measure, this constitutes a record of substantial, if almost entirely malignant, achievement.
[...]
Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of "global leadership" are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century.
Have you ever watched first-graders play soccer? We can only focus our attention on the ball. Not the game.
Keepin' Us Healthy
The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country.
Actually, I’m surprised the EPA under Bush is ordering clean-ups. Maybe they know it doesn’t matter if you don’t enforce the orders.
Pentagon officials say they are voluntarily cleaning up the three sites named in the EPA's "final orders" - Fort Meade in Maryland, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.
But they don’t want anyone checking to make sure.
At all three sites, the military has released toxic chemicals - some known to cause cancer and other serious health problems - into the soil and groundwater.[...]
EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said final orders were issued because the agency is worried about drinking water and soil contamination at Fort Meade, Tyndall and McGuire. "Under DOD's management, some of these sites have languished for years, with limited or no cleanup underway," she said.
[...]
Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the country's most contaminated places, and of the 1,255 sites on the list the Pentagon owns 129 - the most of any entity. Other federal agencies with properties on the list include NASA and the Energy Department, but they have signed EPA cleanup agreements without protest.
But Superfund sites are only one aspect of the Pentagon's environmental problems. It has about 25,000 contaminated properties in all 50 states, and it will cost billions and take decades to clean them up.
The Pentagon poisons American citizens, and its own troops. I assume the brass drink bottled water.
Keepin' Us Safe
Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.[A] new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan.
[...]
But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.
[...]
American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A.
[...]
Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas.
[...]
[It] is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.
[...]
Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.
Nice goin’ BushCo. And thanks.
The Same Failed Disastrous Recipe?
A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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