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Excuse Me?!?

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Now I know that you can’t read the inflection in my voice when I say: “Excuse Me ?!?” So I’ll describe it for you. It is that inflection which suggests disbelief that you have been put in a particular situation, or shock that some person says something that you didn’t expect from them. I say … Read more

Abu Ghaib: Moral Disaster

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Before I comment on Abu Ghaib I want to provide my sources in case anyone is interested in looking into it further:

Amnesty International

Slate’s roundup of the story.

Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article.

Phil Carter.

You may also be interested in Sgt Stryker’s response. Or you may also be interested in what Lt. Smash has to say.

Abu Ghraib represents a number of disturbing things, all of which must be dealt with.

First, it is either a horrible breakdown of military discipline or a truly foolish tactic employed by some fool(s) in the military. I strongly suspect it is the former, because if you read the articles above you will see that the investigations of and the beginnings of court martials for these abuses were already underway before the news broke. I will not offer any excuses for these soldiers. The stress they are under in Iraq does not excuse them. Anger at seeing their friends killed in Iraq does not excuse them. The fact that such torture and worse is common in Arab countries does not excuse them. This kind of treatment is not what Americans are supposed to be doing. It is morally wrong and the military needs to crack down hard on those who think that it is ok.

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Back from Orlando . . . .

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. . . . And unwilling to confront the reality of a war that the current administration seems unwilling to win, and a heartsickening torturegate that the Secretary of Defense appears unable to confront. C’mon, man, at least read the freakin’ report — it’s practically in the New Yorker, for God’s sake. (MSN removes the … Read more

It can also happen in Brooklyn

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One of my initial reactions to the Abu Ghraib story was a vague, irrational feeling that the place itself was evil; that we should have blown it up; that we never should have used it for our own detentions. We probably should blow it up, and follow the rest of John Quiggin’s suggestions. But this … Read more

What the Heck

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My Movable Type blog is taunting me. Whenever I try to go to the main editing menu I get the following error:”Can’t call method “description” on an undefined value at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 296.” WTF? I haven’t changed anything to my templates in months and I haven’t done anything but upload posts in months either. Help, … Read more

Those SCREECHING Sounds: Part II

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There go the goalposts…. sov·er·eign·ty (svr-n-t, svrn-) n. Complete independence and self-government. November 17, 2003 The Iraqi Governing Council and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (CPA) agreed November 15 on a process to hand over power to a transitional government in Iraq no later than July 2004. The “Agreement on Political Process,” signed by … Read more

File Under: Puh-leaze…Of Course, You Did

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According to what I was told when they stopped me at the airport, the answer to this question is “Yes, He DID get preferential treatment.” Indiana Republican Rep. John Hostettler, an avid hunter, mistakenly brought a 9-mm handgun to the Louisville, Kentucky, airport on Tuesday and was briefly detained, his press secretary said. “It was … Read more

The Apocalypse is around the bend . . . .

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For perhaps the first time since 1992,* a public figure has actually admitted making a mistake!

“Words can sting and hurt,” [Sen. Christopher] Dodd [D-CT] told The Associated Press Wednesday. “If in any way, in my referencing the Civil War, I offended anyone, I apologize.”

He said he was trying to make the point that Byrd would have been a good senator at any point, and “I was not thinking of the KKK or his vote against the Civil Rights Act.”

Add my voice to the chorus of those who are congratulating Dodd for doing, umm, what seems self-evident. (Have we really sunk so low that we cheer the admission of obvious blunders? We have? Well, carry on then.)

(Via John Cole via RJ West.)

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Utter idiocy.

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Updated: . . . . . by me. I’m not a fan of the Daily Kos, but the following post (in its last-updated form) is based on an imperfect understanding of events. To use a useful euphemism.

‘Bout all I can say is that Diarist SOJ is an idiot. Click on continue to read on, or mercifully let it rest.

von

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Full Disclosure.

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I posted the following as a comment on Tacitus on Sunday morning. Since it concerns the upcoming election, and since you have a right to know where each of your ObWi commentators are coming from, here it is again. (Note that it’s a bit of a rant: I’d probably tone it down a notch if I were writing it as a blog entry. All typos have been faithfully replicated from the original.)

Update: It appears that my liberal Republican ass is on the left-end of a trend. (Joe Lieberman Democrat also works as a good shorthand.)

This Administration is about to make me lose my “pro-war moderate lefty-libertarian” label, and become a screaming far-left moonbat.

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I’d be remiss . . . .

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If I didn’t at least refer you to the LGF Quiz. You, too, can attempt to determine the “who said it?”: A Little Green Footballs commentator or a Late German Fascist. (Via Wonkette, who first directed my attention to the quiz.) Like Tacitus, I think it’s a bit unfair to hold a blogger responsible, even … Read more

Happy Easter (a day early)

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I missed giving the Passover blessing, so I’ll be a bit early: Happy Easter! For the Christians in the audience, please remember that today is the important one — not Good Friday, despite what Mel Gibson would have you believe.

Of course, consider the source: I’m an agnostic, lapsed Presbyterian, one-time Christian existentialist, one-time Ayn Rand materialist (shudder), who has close Jewish relatives to whom he’s devoted,* who was married in a Lutheran Church, whose parents are Episcopalians, who was deeply influenced in his moral thinking by a Catholic law school,** and who buys a lot of books on Buddhism.***

In other words, I am a mess. But I do like Easter. Easter represents the very highest things in humanity: sacrifice, love, patience, and perserverence. You don’t have to believe in it to be moved by it. (Though, as I grow older — and perhaps wiser — I do find myself believing in it all the more.)

Be kind to one another. Be kind even to your enemies — especially to your enemies.

von

p.s. to Moe Lane/others: Don’t let this pre-empt your own Easter greeting.

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So . . . .

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Judgments on Rice? I thought she did fairly well. She was bruised by Bob Kerrey’s questioning, and she gave up a potential bombshell — that the title of the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief was “Bin Laden determined to attack the United States.” I understand, now, why the Administration is trying to keep the … Read more

Time and other essential things (Part III)

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A week was indeed generous of me. There’s a showdown coming, and time favors our adversaries: On Monday, as American authorities issued an arrest warrant for Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who set off the most serious insurrection so far in Iraq, his supporters were fortifying the mosque here with heavy weaponry, bracing for … Read more

Time and other essential things (Part II)

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Events are moving past us. This morning I predicted that we had at most a week to arrest al-Sadr. Now, if reports from the scene are to be believed (usual caveats apply), we may have even less time: A coup d’etat is taking place in Iraq a the moment. Al-Shu’la, Al-Hurria, Thawra (Sadr city), and … Read more

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Discuss: “Report Is Better Than Expected; 308,000 Positions Created.” What’s Kerry going to talk about now?

Last post for tonight…

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…from me, at least. At any rate, I decided to not go to bed before saying that this Patrick Lasswell post about 9/11, Bush and comic book superheroes was extremely good, although I sincerely doubt that the people who would most stand to benefit from its insight would agree. Not that it follows that all … Read more

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Murderous thugs say the darndest things: “Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization.” “Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected.” That’s it. I’m voting for Bush. I don’t truck … Read more

Say what?

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From Andrew Sullivan, with whom I usually agree: Al Qaeda has been seriously weakened since 9/11, thanks almost entirely to those countries, especially the U.S., that chose to confront it. But it seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard … Read more

It’s turtles all the way down.

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Jeepers! Now that “thingy where Republican staffers looked at some memos they knew they shouldn’t look at, but it was really tempting and maybe sorta also the fault of a naive sys-admin” (the “probably-a-scandal-gate”) has taken another twist:

Senate Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle is to investigate whether a confidential report on leaked Democratic memorandums was itself improperly leaked, potentially damaging the careers of more than 20 Senate staffers.

Enraged Republicans suspect the unredacted version — intended only for senators’ eyes — was given to the press accidentally on purpose.*

From The Hill. (Drum, as usual, is on top of it.)

Frankly, these guys desperately need to have a lock-in at the Y. You know, order pizza, swim in the pool, play ping-pong — it’ll be fun!

UPDATE: Harley chides: “you buried the lede. If Graham’s defection holds, this goes to a prosecutor.”

‘Tis true. Now, don’t you have a new baby and a lovely Deanna to Read more

So, is this a flip-flop?

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President Bush will answer all the questions of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House spokesman said today, suggesting that the president will be more flexible in his approach to the commission. Commission members said late last month that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had placed strict limits on … Read more

That Taranto. What a scamp he is.

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Turns out that Senator Kerry’s* apparently on the record as opposing the banning of ROTC from colleges that receive financial aid – which, as James Taranto helpfully points out, is already the law, but still. Taranto argues that this would be a good thing for Kerry to play up as a Sister Souljah moment (the various bans are mostly there because of the extremely hypocritical and discriminatory policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” existing in the US military**): I disagree. The last thing that Kerry wants to do is remind the gay community that he is already not the most vocal supporter of gay marriage out there.

Naughty, naughty, James.

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HELL LEMURS!!!!!

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Thanks to Amygdala one of the central mysteries of the universe is explained: to wit, why the heck somebody thought that guitar-playing, off-key singing spong-monkeys would be useful in selling (admittedly-tasty) hot submarine sandwiches. God, I really am getting old. I must concentrate on the fact that somebody called these things hell lemurs – which, … Read more

And three makes a trend.

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I have no idea how the average Iraqi feels about his situation, but Kevin Drum, David Adesnik, and Bird Dog at Tacitus all feel pretty darn good about our progress. Here’s a sentence I thought I’d never write: Drum, Adesnik, and Bird Dog are in agreement on Iraq. All three posted before today’s round of … Read more

Another Canadian Tortured in Syria

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I’m just passing this along without comment–what is there to say, really?–except to note that the U.S. doesn’t seem to have been involved this time: Yesterday, another Canadian citizen — this one of Iraqi descent — met reporters to tell his story of torture at the hands of the Syrians. And here, too, the information … Read more

Somebody Said Somewhere…

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… that it’s a bad thing to blog just to give your readers something to read. I dunno if that’s true or not, but it’s been a busy week for me (had to actually concentrate on work for a change; oh, the horror), so here’s an open thread. If you’re strapped for a comment, I … Read more

Would Castro just die already?

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My first, very partisan response to seeing this: Bush Tightens Rules on Travel to Cuba was “He’s such a whore!” What other voter block is he going to throw a meaningless bone to? Then, I stopped and thought, well, what if he’s right. What if “Fidel Castro government [really] has taken steps to destabilize relations … Read more

An unexpected death – and expected reaction.

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While I agree with John Cole that this article draws an incorrect conclusion from a tragic event – it’s about that poor woman who died of a heart attack while watching Gibson’s new film – I’m actually surprised that John might have expected anything like a different spin on events. I’d normally be unpacking a … Read more

Liberty, Sanctity, or Equality

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There’s no way around it. The FMA is either 1. anti-Liberty 2. anti-Sanctity or 3. anti-Equality To defend the FMA, you must own up to one of these stances. 1. Anti-Liberty In this context, anti-Liberty means anti-gay. One must believe that sexual orientation does not fall under the umbrella of the “liberty” we believe is … Read more

Isengard on the Potomac: #2

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Part II: What the Experts Say This is the second in a series on Bush’s environmental record. Part I: Mission Statement is available here. Feedback to the first part of this series got a bit muddled, for which I’ll take responsibility, but to summarize the point: The EPA has a mission, a raison d’etre, and … Read more