A closer look at Harriet Miers

Take a look at this, NT Times, October 4:

"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church. It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.
[...]
Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.

In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's "700 Club," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930's. "So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court," Mr. Sekulow said.

But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly stated public commitments on social issues like abortion. While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law criminalizing gay sexual activity.
[...]
"You might think she's a pushover because she looks meek and humble," said Al Lipscomb, a former city council member. "But can America handle a Republican conservative who's fair? She is a tigress when it comes to the law."
[...]
Even though it was known that she was a high-powered lawyer in Dallas, "she never used the church to further her political career," Ms. Wilson said. "She never took a role where she was trying to stand out front," Ms. Wilson [office manager at Valley View Christian Church] said. "She put herself in servant roles, making coffee every Sunday morning and putting doughnuts out."

Scott Furguson picked up on this from the Patrick Ruffini blog. He sees the Miers nomination as a tactical assault on Democratic party unity. Coupled with the still-warm John Roberts move, submitting an in-your-face Christian Evangelical candidate for the Supreme Court is a calculated divide-and-conquer move.

It was pretty obvious that nominating Roberts drove a wedge between moderate Democrats and the left-wing ideologues -- a tactical assault on Democrat unity. Now, Bush is poised to throw a right hook at the "red state" Democrats with the Miers nomination.

Ruffini notes that today's New York Times puts Miers' unapologetic evangelical Christian faith front-and-center -- the faith of one who has converted from Catholicism -- and does it with the kind of condescension that is a hallmark of this northeastern liberal newspaper.

For the Democrat elites who think that they are "above" faith, this throws gasoline on the fire. I would be surprised if Sen. Charles Schumer let the issue of Miers' faith pass, since he apparently believes faith doesn't mix with justice. And he's certainly stupid enough to make this a key issue in his interrogation, which I believe Bush wants him to do.

Regardless of whether or not Miers passes, Bush wins. The Democrats now find themselves in an even tighter box than with the Roberts nomination. Northeast liberal senators will further alienate themselves from mainstream America. "Red state" Democrat senators will be bloodied - voting for Miers puts them out of step with the DNC, voting against Miers alienates them from their constituencies. Evangelical Christians have their day in the sun. And cultural conservatives, who have been spoiling for a fight, will get it.

The only way for Democrats to thread the needle on the Miers nomination is to take faith off the table completely. But Schumer, being a sock-puppet for Ralph Neas, won't let that happen.

This analysis strikes me as spot on. Heads, I win -- tails, you lose.

I am reminded of the first time I saw a professional baseball game in person, watching that little baseball go flying across the field in a long, high arc, professionally caught by a career baseball-player with all the ease of someone reaching up to pick an apple.

I am just as impressed when I see a politician, either Democrat or Republican, execute a move like this one. Southern politicians learned to speak in code long before the concept of "speaking in code" was ever identified. They know it to be a secular variation of speaking in tongues. How else could white Southerners so smoothly shift to the Republican Party after generations of yellow-dog loyalty?

Bread on the waters for the Jewish New Year

On Rosh Hashanah, there is a ceremony called Taslich. Jews traditionally go to the ocean or a stream or river to pray and throw bread crumbs into the water. Symbolically, the fish devour their sins.

Occasionally, people ask what kind of bread crumbs should be thrown. The following suggestions for breads which may be most appropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors come from an anonymous e-mail:

For ordinary sins.................................White Bread

For erotic sins.................................French Bread

For particularly dark sins..........Pumpernickel

For complex sins........................Multigrain

For twisted sins.........................Pretzels

It's a very long list which includes...

For telling bad jokes/puns........Corn Bread

Happy New Year to all who celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
Link to the list.
Happy New Year, Judith!

Operation Eden blog...Katrina's child

clayton james cubitt's mom was a teenage runaway, go-go dancing at a club on bourbon street in new orleans. his dad was a canadian national running pot over the border from mexico. they met, married, and moved to los angeles, conceiving him on the trip in the back of a vw bus at dinosaur national park in utah. now he takes pictures and lives in brooklyn. he grew up in new orleans and the gulf coast, where his family still lives. He is also known as siege, and all of these images originally appeared on his photo journal for Nerve.com

From the profile of Operation Eden.
Via Doc, who got the link from Jarvis...a history file in the making.
These photos and comments are well worth the visit.

I looked for an image to post, but none of them seemed to capture individually the power of all of them together. This blog, the posts, the contents, the pictures...is a package not to be picked apart. The lives of the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrins have been picked apart enough already.

Here is the post from September 1

Thursday, September 01, 2005

I'm Going Insane

"In Hancock County alone, Sheriff Eddie Jennings put the death toll at 85, with 60 people dead in Pearlington, 22 in Waveland, two in Bay St. Louis and one body that had washed up on the beach."

My mom's place is in Pearlington. Population 1600.

I need to go I'm torn in pieces. The hardest thing you can ask a white trash boy to do is sit still while his momma's missing.

posted by clayton cubitt at 12:44 PM

Flu awareness: more people are catching on

At last. Those of us who have been paying attention to H5N1 are moving from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream. When I see signs urging people to get vaccinated I know that there is still a lot of ignorance (there is no vaccine for the bad strain being monitored) but at least an awareness is growing. Public discussions will inevitably lead to talk of panic, but with enough discussion and education I think that scenario can be better controlled. The more people read, learn and ask questions, the less likely a panic will ensue.

This is a good sign.

The page views since I set up H5N1 last March total 72,150, so 20% of all page views have been just since last Tuesday. Before the ABC News "Primetime" item on avian flu, I'd been getting perhaps 500 page views per day. That night and the following day, the number spiked to just over 6,000 in 24 hours, and it's been interesting to see that it settled down to four times the previous average.
[...]
While many other sites link to H5N1, they don't seem to bring many visitors here. But I hope that if you're here, you'll follow the links to the other flu blogs and news sources. No one site can give a real overview of the situation, but a few minutes' surfing can keep you remarkably up to date.

Nothing dramatic to report.
Yet.
If and when the virus mutates into a human-to-human strain, that is when the the alarm bells will start ringing. To date there has been species jumping, but human cases have been associated with contaminated animals (chicken, swine), not other humans.

Stay tuned and keep reading.

Harriet Miers's Blog

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Don't miss it! Add it to your aggregator!

(And notice apostrophe "s" in the title.)

Mr. Chief Justice Roberts

Today is Roberts' first day on the job. (Even without the president's nomination of Harriet Miers, today would be historic.) I like this report from Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, via Ann Althouse.

Since you're dying to know: John Roberts is not wearing the gold stripes that William H. Rehnquist added to his black robe several years ago. If we wanted proof of the new chief justice's infamous humility, this would seem to serve. At Harriet Miers' press conference this morning, Bush's new nominee for associate justice, like Roberts, also claimed to be humble.

Unlike Roberts, she's truly earned that right. [Ouch!]

In a delicious double-Cheney, the woman assigned the task of selecting the next associate justice of the Supreme Court ultimately determined that there was no one so qualified as herself. [Ouch, again!]
[...]

This is great:

Justice John Paul Stevens opens this morning's oral argument with a tribute to William H. Rehnquist. He was, he says, truly "first among equals," and then he quotes from Thomas Gray: "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." He concludes by welcoming Roberts, who, he notes, "argued 39 times before this court." He smiles and adds: "Which exceeds the combined experience of the rest of us." [Gracious comments do not get any better than that.]
[...]
So, how does Roberts look in the chief justice's chair? As though he were born to it, quite frankly. He is clearly prepared for argument. He listens intently to his colleagues' questions and watches them while they speak. His first exchange with Phillips shores up his credentials as a strict constructionist: "So, your approach introduces a third concept … and that's nowhere in the statute." He goes back and forth several times in this first colloquy and is quickly confident enough to retort: "That's my question." He juggles counsels' names, time limits, and a stack of briefs as though he's been doing it all his life. The fact that Roberts' umbilical cord was being cut when most of his colleagues were already practicing law is irrelevant. He is absolutely ready to lead them.

To his left sits Sandra Day O'Connor, who may vote and count, vote and not count, or not vote and not count in this case—depending on when Miers is confirmed. How she feels, knowing that her own résumé was more impressive 24 years ago than Miers' is today, is not evident from her questions. She must be wondering, as are the rest of us, whether young Jack Roberts might not have been a better pick to replace her.

Whew!

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...and yet another prognostication from The Anchoress.

My own prediction: She may not make it to the Supreme Court. Bush may not even intend for her to get there. She may be, rather than the “misdirection,” many expected, an out-and-out decoy, floated to allow both the liberals and the conservatives to blast her out of the water so that Bush can then put up another candidate that both left and right - after having behaved very badly over Miers - will not dare to behave badly over, again.

Or…she could make it to the court and be the “pit-bull in size 6 shoes” that Governor Bush described ten years or so, ago.

Capt. Ian Fishback's letter to Sen. John McCain

The prisoner abuse story currently focuses on one Captain Ian Fishback, principal contact for the HRW report.
His letter to Senator McCain appeared in the Washington Post last week.

For 17 months, I tried to determine what specific standards governed the treatment of detainees by consulting my chain of command through battalion commander, multiple JAG lawyers, multiple Democrat and Republican Congressmen and their aides, the Ft. Bragg Inspector General's office, multiple government reports, the Secretary of the Army and multiple general officers, a professional interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, the deputy head of the department at West Point responsible for teaching Just War Theory and Law of Land Warfare, and numerous peers who I regard as honorable and intelligent men.

Instead of resolving my concerns, the approach for clarification process leaves me deeply troubled. Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is a tragedy. I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard.

It's not going away.
At some point it will be necessary that responsible people set clear standards and hold their subordinates accountable to see that those standards are followed.
The tail cannot wag the dog.
It's up to the dog to do the wagging.

Don't misunderestimate this president

I said it before and I'll say it again: Don't misunderestimate this president. He undersands well how to care for Number One. In one fell swoop he cuts his supporters off at the knees, strikes a mark in Washington that will live in the history books, protects whatever interests he may have from future problems that might land in the Supreme Court, and has Democrats eating out of his hand.

It's only been an hour, and already popcorn is filling the kettle.

I’d like to take a moment to coin a new phrase: Brownie Moment. A Brownie moment can be defined simply as the moment when a supporter of President Bush is smacked in the head by reality and loses any and all faith in the president from that moment forward. As you may have surmised the term comes from Bush’s recent comment regarding former FEMA head Michael Brown’s leadership in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

This was my Brownie moment. I understand that in the world of politics leaders often have to say things they don’t mean, or shake hands with dictators and scumbags, and do a lot of morally repugnant stuff. But when Bush said that I realized that after surveying the impotent, incompetent response of the federal government he truly, honestly believed that Brownie was doing a heck of a job. That sealed it for me. I’d been turning sour on Bush for a while, but I was still generally supportive of him. When I heard him make that remark, however, that was it. That was my Brownie moment. Read the rest. H/T Sullivan.


I didn't get to know her well, but we sat next to each other for several hours at the last meeting she attended and I liked her. We only talked law, not politics, but she won me over - and I was pre-disposed not to like her, that being the year that Bush was running for President and knowing she was his personal lawyer.

The other members of that Board at that time, at least four of whom are former ABA Presidents (including Martha Barnett who is quite progressive on women's and social issues)know Ms. Miers from her ABA work and spoke very highly of her.

My opinion could change should additional information surface that she is a Thomas or Scalia, but I don't think that will be the case. Compared to some of those under consideration he might have chosen, like the ultra-conservative 4th Circuit judges or Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown, Ms. Miers is a far better choice. Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news (!!! Their words, not mine...)

As usual, Michelle Malkin has the most comprehensive roundup of reactions. I love how utterly unbiased and objective she is!

What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court. (Video of the announcement here via NYT). It's not just that Miers has zero judicial experience. It's that she's so transparently a crony/"diversity" pick while so many other vastly more qualified and impressive candidates went to waste. If this is President Bush's bright idea to buck up his sagging popularity--among conservatives as well as the nation at large--one wonders whom he would have picked in rosier times. Shudder.

Another one for the file, this from Billmon.

Bottom line: The Demopublicans and the Republicrats are both hugely relieved that nuclear war has been avoided once again. These guys know that ideological zeal and moral clarity are for the rubes -- except in the summer and fall months of years divisible by two. And right now everybody is uncertain enough about what the next such year might bring to favor compromise over showdown. The Demopublicans sense an opportunity, but know deep down in their hearts that they will blow it, while the Republicrats smell danger, but aren't sure how to escape it. So they both want to play it safe. And now Shrub has given them the perfect opportunity to do so. Smart thinking, Karl.
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And if the price of peace is the elevation of a loyal mediocrity to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's undogmatic shoes, well the late Sen. Roman Hruska of Nebraska probably put it best when he defended Tricky Dick's nomination of the profoundly undistinguished G. Harrold Carswell to replace (just by coincidence) LBJ's partner in election fraud, Abe Fortas:

"Even if he [Carswell] is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers," Hruska declared. "They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."

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Personally, my own opinion is that with Shrub and Dick Cheney in the White House, the federal government already has all the mediocre people it can use -- and then some. But I guess there always room for one more.

"Come and rule over us" (Reposted with comment)

Here is part of a story from the time when Russian history fades backward into tale-telling.

The Northmen usually went to Constantinople by launching their boats in the headwaters of the Dnie'per River and floating down to the Black Sea. They had seen a good deal of the world, and they were bright and keen. They succeeded in making the people of central Russia pay them tribute. According to the old story, there came a time when the people determined not to pay it any longer. They united and drove the Northmen away. But they did not stay united. They quarreled among themselves, for each man did whatever he chose and no one cared for the rights of his neighbor. It is said that one among them who was wiser than the rest saw that they needed some power to govern them. He knew how much more civilized the Northmen were, and he persuaded several of the tribes about him to send envoys to the Russ, a tribe of Northmen, to say, "Our country is large and rich, but we have no order. Do you come and rule over us." A Northman named Ru'rik and his two brothers said, "We will come;" and the three set out with their followers, all well armed, as were those who had come as envoys.

"Come and rule over us," they said. Thus the coming of the Varangians becomes the foundation of imperial authority in Russia. The origin of Russian history finds autocratic roots that later become the basis of legitimacy for kings and patriarchs of the Orthodox Church whose connection with political leaders was part of one of history's most tragic dramas. In a historic sense, the Soviet Union was nothing new. Whether or not this is factual is beside the point. The survival of the story tells more about the story tellers than the origins of the tale. According to this legend there was a population of successful people so disorderly in community affairs that collectively they actually invited a foreign prince to come and rule over them.

I thought of this story when I read this morning's essay by Donald Sensing in which he quotes from an essay by Charles Dunlap, Jr. that he remembered from thirteen years ago. The essay, called The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012, is a futuresque treatment of what could very well take place in the decades following its writing (remember, it was written in 1992) barring unforeseen circumstances.

Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the nation's dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that could produce workable answers. The one institution of government in which the people retained faith was the military. Buoyed by the military's obvious competence in the First Gulf War, the public increasingly turned to it for solutions to the country's problems. Americans called for an acceleration of trends begun in the 1980s: tasking the military with a variety of new, nontraditional missions, and vastly escalating its commitment to formerly ancillary duties.

I will not insult the reader with the obvious implications of these two pieces, one from the dawn of myth, the other from a futuristic fantasy. I cite both to poke the imagination, to get the reader to look at a big picture. This is not a discussion of facts but possibilities.

In the absence of leadership on the part of elected officials the role of the military continues to expand in our national affairs. The recent catastrophic damage of Hurricane Katrina begs the question. In the absence of local and state leadership, how and when should the military intervene (or be used - there is a difference, you know) to bring about a speedy and efficient recovery in the aftermath of a natural disaster?

After last year's tsunami brought wholesale tragedy to the Indian Ocean, the military response was swift and impressive. This was an example of swords into plowshares in the best sense of the phrase. Following the Katrina disaster with all those people penned up in the Superdome, an Australian caller to a talk show asked an obvious question.

"Where," he asked incredulously, "are your amphibious vehicles???"

Where, indeed? For this observer, watching from the other side of the world, it was a no-brainer. The military has hovercraft capable of delivering tanks and trucks to battlefields with no highways. Amphibious vehicles from World War Two are being used to taxi sight-seers over both water and city streets in Boston, Detroit and other places. Why not load up water, food and other supplies, take them to where they can be used, load up a crowd of people to be evacuated, and keep it up until the situation is safer and better organized?

Why? mainly because we are locked into a mindset of "that ain't my job." In the face of a threat, too many people in positions of leadership are more interested in covering their tails than taking action to repair damage. The Houston evacuation was a model of excellence, a credit to all who took part. It is not possible to know how much the Katrina debacle contributed to that success, but I imagine no one in Texas wanted to have cameras rolling in the aftermath of a similar disaster so they insured that whatever the costs, political, financial or administrative, they could remove the largest number of people in history from harm's way.

Back to Sensing's essay. He also refers to another source, a conversation with Col. Harry Summers in 1996.
Although I served in the Army I was not a warrior in the strict sense of that term. But that doesn't mean that I have no use for warriors. They are as essential to our well-being as scientists or physicians. (I almost said lawyers, but I felt the need for too many qualifiers, so I didn't.) Problems arise, however, when warriors are asked to become something else. I recall my wife saying once that so-and-so was "hurt" by something her husband had said because he seemed so hard-hearted. I had to point out to her that the man in question was a trained professional warrior. Sensitivity in all things is not part of his persona, nor should it be. That's why he has a wife.

Col. Summers quotes William Perry, former Secretary of Defense.

...he turned to what had been the cornerstone of the Clinton defense policy, humanitarian assistance, and he boldly stated that that's not our business: "Humanitarian assistance is not the business of the Defense Department. There are other agencies in the government that are responsible for it. We can help, but it's not our business." And the clinching line was "We field an army, not a Salvation Army." That's pretty boldly stated. Of course, since then the situation changed to the point where we have become involved in Bosnia.

Sensing's essay concludes with these words.

In light of events since Sept. 11, 2001, I think we can safely dispense with the idea that commanders have forgotten how to fight. Indeed, the major missteps in Iraq are properly laid squarely atop the civilian desk of Donald Rumsfeld, as I explained here and here. Nonetheless, forgetting how to fight has not been an effect of civilian-mission creep in the armed forces.

But the broader point remains, succinctly stated by Prisoner 222305759: “People need to understand that the armed forces exist to support and defend government, not to be the government. Faced with intractable national problems on one hand, and an energetic and capable military on the other, it can be all too seductive to start viewing the military as a cost-effective solution.” And that needs to be remembered strongly by our civilian leaders..

This thoughtful essay should be required reading for everyone, both civilian and military.

I might add that by combining the roles of President and Commander-in-Chief in one individual, the founders opened the door to allow one person in authority - and that one is elected, incidentally- selectively, wisely and quickly to use the resources at his command for either civilian or military purposes.

That is why the buck stops there.

H5N1 blog is frustrated

Scientists are not politicians. And they darn sure are not all diplomats. Like all professionals they tend to stay on task no matter what the consequences. Without this "Lead, follow or get out of the way" approach scientific advances would come even more slowly than they now do. Twice this week I have come across comments at H5N1 that indicate that they will stick to the mission, even if the world around them erupts in chaos. I am impressed by this stubborn dedication.

The CDC is apparently sitting on important data, not making it available to the world scientific community.

In its Sept. 22 issue, the journal Nature reported widespread concern among influenza researchers that too little flu data collected by the CDC are being made available for research, hindering their efforts to develop flu vaccines.

Dr. Nancy J. Cox, chief of CDC's influenza branch, said the increasing focus on influenza worldwide has brought a deluge of requests for information that the CDC cannot easily accommodate.

"Given the sheer volume of such requests, we have had to make hard choices about how to respond because we do not have the capacity to comply with all requests while also meeting our other public health responsibilities," she said in a written response to questions.

One unnamed National Institutes of Health researcher told Nature that, other than the occasional large deposits of data required by journals to accompany published papers, information from CDC is "coming through an eye dropper."

Influenza researchers said their work would progress faster if they could access the disease control agency's databases of virus sequences and immunological and epidemiological data.

The blogmaster comments:

When major scientific institutions in the US are under the control and direction of the wonderful folks who brought you New Orleans, Baghdad, and intelligent design, we have more to worry about than sick chickens.

Ouch.
It reminds me of yesterday's response to the terrorist attack in Indonesia.

While I deeply sympathize with the Indonesians about the latest bombings in Bali, it's frustrating that The Jakarta Post has completely dropped the avian-flu story for the time being. If anyone can point me to another good English-language Indonesian news source, I'd be grateful.

I have worked around some very effective people in my life. Whether in business, medicine or politics, the most productive people are those who don't mince words when they are focused on solving a problem. (I even saw the same quality, believe it or not, during an armed robbery. At least four people were involved, but the one in charge was directing every move. One nervous novice wanted to take a box of rolled coins but the more experienced criminal knew that the weight of the coins was not worth the risk of toting it, so they stuck with the paper money.)

Real life is not like the scenes we see dramatized on television. The professionals know when to be nice, but if being nice stands in the way of getting the job done, get ready to have your feeling hurt.

The world is watching

As the old saying goes, a cat can look at a king. So, too, does the world look at the United States. Thanks to history's most powerful military, economic and political machine to date, America does as it pleases anywhere on the planet, world public opinion be damned. I don't have any illusions that my little light can shine too brightly in a dark corner, but I keep trying to point out ways that we might do things better.

Helena Cobban and a few others continue to write about the war pictures for porn site that I noticed last month. Aside from the obvious moral implications of such a site, the manner in which officials deal with it carries serious political implications affecting public opinion in other countries. That is a matter of no consequence for U.S. politicians who know well that the only opinions which matter are those of their constituents. I still hope that some individual or group with enough character to break away from isolationist thinking will rise to the challenge of confronting what seems to be a widespread systemic infection that needs to be controlled with strong medicine.

This comment is very good. The language and spelling are awkward, but the meaning is very clear. I have the feeling that the writer, whoever he or she may be, knows well how information finds its way through a social system controlled by a tyrant. Americans are not in the habit of distinguishing between "rumors" and "mouth to mouth" information "censored by the authorities." We in America think little about such things because we have a "free press." Consequently, if we don't see it on television, we are apt to believe it's not important. Bad assumption. Very bad.

Information about real abuse in US prisons in Iraq always makes its way to the Iraqi society as a whole. Information tralvels mouth to mouth if it is censored by the authorities. This kind of information is different from rumors. Rumors travels through the general population which are unrelated to the issue. Torture information travels through those who have experienced it, especially those which are highly reagrded by their respective communites. Thus Iraqis know what kind of treatement they were subjected to. Thusreleasing these photos will only make US citizens aware fo the problem and is not addressed to the Iraqis.

The collection of images the Iraqi public has accumulated of the US tactics and behavior makes any US move very suspicious. Actually anyone who associates with the occupation becomes suspicious from a nationalist Iraqi point of view. The vote on the constitution will show the strenght of nationalism in Iraq, especially that Sistani has not directly endorsed the constitution. I do
not think he wants to be responsible for such a historical phenomena as the division of Iraq.

Thus continued US intervention even after withdrawal will be cause for division within Iraq.The reason is that Iraqis are convinced that the US is not capable of being benovelant as a goverment. All its actions are based on its own interests. We could further state with confidence that if the US public was to vote on a proposition that would make all US intervention in Iraq solely to help rebuild Iraq even at the cost of military sacrifices and billions of dollars such a vote will fail.

Only when Iraqis are dealt with as equals, and Iraqis believe that they are equals, and capable of enforcing that elusive sovereignty, only then will US intervention have a positive influence and be accepted.

This does not sound like a terrorist to me. It sounds like someone from the street who is just expressing an opinion that happens not to be in agreement with what is happening. When we ignore the voices of opposition abroad, we do so at our peril.

This comment is important because it links two stories that I have not found clearly linked anywhere: the prison abuse story and the pictures for porn story. Together they present a very tawdry image of the military that authorities should be quick to correct rather than deny. "Correcting", of course, involves people in high places accepting responsibility. So far that seems unlikely.

Church in Iraq Helps Rebuild New Orleans Parish

There's a headline for you.

This great story is pointed out by Jim Gilbert, the same Jim Gilbert whose church was one of the first to send recovery help people into the aftermath of the first storm. I blogged about it at the time.

TULSA, Okla., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Aid is coming from a small church in Iraq to hurricane victims in the United States. The 300-member Christian church in Iraq's northern Kurdistan Governance is collecting money to help the Adullam Christian Fellowship church -- a New Orleans church hit hard by hurricane Katrina.

"We saw pictures of the devastation on television," said Rev. Hazem, pastor of the two-year old Kurdzman Church in Iraq. "We were motivated to help the people of New Orleans rebuild so we called our friends at World Compassion to see how to get money to Louisiana."

World Compassion has been working in Iraq since U.S. forces entered Iraq. The president and founder of the non-governmental relief agency, Dr. Terry Law, helped start The Kurdzman Church in Iraq.

Link to the news release.

This is why I subscribe to 3QuarksDaily

Two great links this morning...

Here is a photoblog that is a lot more than just pictures.

Caution: some of these images can be unsettling. But so can a lot of words that have been written. When we sense that words are about to carry us where we do not want to travel we can quit reading. But when we are zapped with an image it's too late not to look. In the same way that one can't un-ring a bell, it is not possible to un-see an image.

Without comment these pictures vividly (I did not consciously choose that word, but the moment I typed it the derivation from viva, meaning life, jumped out at me) illustrate that a picture is, in fact, worth a thousand words.
What a find!
For the record I am pro-choice. I do not believe that abortion should be criminalized.
But I am also in the camp that believes in making that choice fully informed. Abortion as a form of birth control is perhaps the greatest evil of our time. The time to make the choice is before sex, not afterward.

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...shifting gears...unrelated to previous item...

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And here is the most imaginative web design application I have seen to date. Go here with your curiosity glasses on and play for a bit. Don't leave until your mouse gets tired.

On the other hand, forget it. The link has been disabled.

See Abbas' note in the comments.

It isn't officially released for prime time and we aren't supposed to look at it.

But it's really, really cool and I'm glad I was able to take a peek.

(See what you're missing?)

Heat-balling honeybees and other trivia

It sounds like a spoof but it's for real.
This is news to me, but I make note of it for general interest. After seeing March of the Penguins my wonder of natural phenomena is renewed.

Honeybees that defend their colonies by killing wasps with body heat come within 5°C of cooking themselves in the process, according to a study in China. At least two species of honeybees there... engulf a wasp in a living ball of defenders and heat the predator to death....a few honeybee species can defend themselves by surrounding an invader. Researchers used to think that the few-dozen bees were trying to sting the wasp, says Seeley. Thermal cameras, however, revealed the balls' soaring heat.

Link to article. Who woulda thunk?
Thanks Gene Expression.

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Biting off more than you can chew

.

In other news, my buddy Catfish emails me pictures and story of a big catfish that bit off more than he could chew. Seems the fish tried to eat a childs ball and got it hung in his mouth. Poor guy, he couldn't get it out, couldn't dive and couldn't eat. He might have died had it not been for the man who punctured the ball and set him free.

You can see pictures and read the story at Truth or Fiction.

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Trent Lott says that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. How about a rubber ball? (The senator didn't mention bloggers as far as I can determine.)

Vote for Jake. Now.

I ask you now, what's not to love about a face like that?
This is Jake. He is one of the family. To win he needs your vote. Here are the details.

Congratulations! Your dog's photo has been entered into photowow.com's "Best WOWDog Contest".

Please note that this contest is a weekly contest that will end this Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. pacific time.

If you would like your family and friends to go directly to your submission in the contest to view your best dog photo and place a vote, please have them visit our homepage at www.photowow.com and click on the "Photo contests" link. On that page, they can enter your Entrant #32831 to vote on your photo.

Please do not encourage your friends to vote low on other dogs in order to increase your dog photo ranking. We have incorporated a formula that will not take into account certain low votes based on the second the vote is placed. Also, please remember that you and your friends may only vote once per dog photo.

If you ever want to check on your dog photo's statistics, go to the contest and click on "Check Stats" on the top of each page of the contest. Just enter the e-mail address you provided us, and you will know where you stand.

If you haven't yet, please take a few moments to click around http://www.photowow.com You will find the most beautiful custom art created from your photos that make gifts to be cherished for a lifetime.

Thank you for entering the contest and good luck!!!

Yeah, I know. It's crass commercialism. But at least it isn't spam and it's fun for us.
I wish there could be a reward, but when you think of it, your reward is about the same as ours: it makes you feel good if jake wins. How complicated is that? Thanks for your vote.

You don't even have to copy and paste unless you really want to.

Anyone can remember five digits:

32831

Flu news

From National Geographic...

There are three types of influenza–A, B, and C. Type C viruses trigger mild respiratory illness or, sometimes, no symptoms at all. Type A and B viruses, on the other hand, can cause epidemics in humans. They result in an average of 36,000 deaths and 114,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. each year. While type B viruses are normally exclusive to humans, type A viruses are also found in birds, pigs, horses, seals, whales, and other animals.

Type A flu viruses, H5N1 for example, are named for two proteins on their surface. The H stands for hemagglutinin, which helps a virus break into the cell. The N stands for neuraminidase, which helps it break out. These proteins also act as antigens. If the body recognizes them, its immune system can mount a defense.

All type A viruses attack human cells in the same way. Once the virus enters the body, hemagglutinin binds the virus to the cell surface. Then the cell surface folds in around the virus. The virus sinks into the cell until it is completely engulfed. Because the cell membrane wraps around the virus, it creates a bubble-like compartment called an endosome. A change in pH in this compartment changes the structure of the hemagglutinin and allows the viral contents to move into the cell's inner fluid, or cytoplasm.

Once there, the virus has free reign. The virus's genetic material, which is split into eight different segments, is copied in the nucleus. After being copied, the segments return to the cytoplasm, and with the help of neuraminidase, can reassemble, leave the cell, and attack new cells. However, since each of the eight segments is copied separately, if two different viral strains infect the same cell, then their segments can mix and match, ultimately forming new viruses.

Hugh Hewitt asks, "Are we paying attention yet?"

Cars are the new muskets

As the Willism post made clear the evacuation of Houston could not have happened without the use of privately-owned automobiles. Other forms of transportation were helpful, but the heavy lifting...collecting up the kids, old people, pets, extra food, whatever would fit...was only possible because some two million people went in cars. For many, cars were their shelter.

I am thinking of a corollary to the Second Amendment.

A well regulated Evacuation, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Cars, shall not be infringed.

“the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!”

Okay, then.
Sorry about that.
I started with the punch line, but I couldn't think of any better way to headline the link. Too, too good.
Dwight Meredith tracks the president's use of "all walks of life."

Normblog on Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens has one of the most nimble intellects alive. His prose, both written and oral, is a glittering roman candle of wit, full of brilliant nuance and inference. I don't always like what I read and hear, but I am awed by Hitchens' adroit use of language, quickness on his feet, and a razor-sharp command of rhetoric as an artform.

I'm not clear whether Normblog picks up his "Writer's Choice" content from other sources or if the individuals are accommodating enough to furnish original material for the series, in which well-known writers elaborate on books that were formative in their own development. In any case, the blogmaster is on to something good, and this morning's piece on Hitchens is worth a look.

Hitchens remembers How Green Was My Valley. Do not for a moment be misled by whatever mental images you may have from that old black and white classic film. There is more in the book than meets the eye (or the screen).

The cover of that paperback, which lived on long after the actual pages had turned to confetti, may have had something to do with it. It depicted a family in shawls and clogs, with some sort of hilly yet industrial landscape in the background, and it had a slogan or some other superscription which described it as 'the enduring best-seller of the war years', or a form of words very like that at any rate. I had been born in 1949 and in my neck of the woods a novel about 'the war years' should have had at the very least a portrait of Winston Churchill somewhere on its cover, or a patch of ocean corresponding to the Battle of the Atlantic (The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Monserrat, being the only other novel of remotely comparable length that I had got by heart).

Don't cheat yourself out of reading the rest.
Delicious.

Breaking news in Holland

I heard on the radio about trained dolphins armed with stun-guns for the purpose of apprehending suspected terrorists. Under special circumstances, of course.
During the hurricane some of these guys went AWOL and may now pose a threat to surfers or swimmers along the Gulf coast.

Check this out from Holland...

Gewapende dolfijnen ontsnapt door Katrina Gepubliceerd op maandag 26 september 2005 De orkaan Katrina heeft 36 dolfijnen met een ‘license to kill’ bevrijd.
De dieren maken deel uit van het Amerikaanse leger en zouden vermist worden in de Golf van Mexico, zo meldt The Observer.Experts, die de training van walvisachtigen door de Amerikaanse marine hebben bestudeerd, menen dat de dolfijnen een harnas met een verdovingswapens bij zich kunnen dragen.
De marine van de Verenigde Staten bevestigt dat er dolfijnen voor militaire doeleinden getraind zijn, maar wil niet bevestigen dat tientallen van hen ontsnapt zijn.
Het verblijf van dieren aan de kust werd overspoeld en de 36 dolfijnen kwamen in zee terecht. De dolfijnen zijn getraind om terroristen en spionnen te verdoven, zodat ze ondervraagd kunnen worden. Duikers en surfers zouden echter nu ook gevaar kunnen lopen.De vrees bestaat namelijk dat een duiker of surfer - bijvoorbeeld vanwege het feit dat hij wetsuit draagt - per ongeluk aangevallen wordt door één van de ontsnapte dieren. De kans is dan aanwezig dat deze zal verdrinken, omdat er niemand bij is om het slachtoffer direct uit het water te vissen.

No, I don't talk Dutch. But here is the Babel Fish translation...close enough for government work:

Armed dolphins escaped Katrina Published on Monday 26 September 2005 The hurricane Katrina 36 dolphins with ` license to have delivered kill. The animals are part of the American army and vermist will become in the golf of Mexico, thus The Observer communicate. Experts, who have studied the training of walvisachtigen by the American Navy, think that the dolphins can carry a harnas with anaesthesia weapons at itself. The Navy of the United States confirms that dolphins for military aims are trained, but does not want confirm that dozens of them has escaped. The stay of animals to the coast was submerged and the 36 dolphins arrived in sea. The dolphins have been trained terrorists and spionnen, anaesthetise so that they can be questioned. Plungers and surfers however now also danger are able run. Apprehension exists, as it happens, that a plunger or surfer - for example the animals escaped because of the fact that he carries from - accidentally is attacked by one of. The chance is then present that these will drown, because nobody is directly fish the victim from water.

Yep, if one of these guys puts a swimmer/plunger to sleep with a stun-gun, there probably won't be anybody around to keep him or her from drowning.

Blogmistress comments:

I thought of reading just as found oneself. Repugnantly that animals become this way ge - and abused. I have no words....

I don't think she likes the idea of dolphin conscription.
I'm not sure that I do either.

Houston evacuation was a historic success

Wanna feel better?
Go read this WILLisms post.

From the governor's office:

There exists no comparable evacuation effort in world history. Texas safely evacuated approximately 2.7 million people – equivalent of the population of Kansas – in harm’s way in 36 hours. By comparison:

* Berlin Air Lift – evacuated 177,000 people and moved 2.3 million tons of cargo over 11 months
* Three Mile Island - 200,000 evacuated
* Chernobyl - 135,000 evacuated

Using the world’s largest commercial airliner, the Boeing 747 which typically can carry 400 passengers, it would have taken 6,750 capacity flights to move 2.7 million people. There are roughly 1,000 Boeing 747s in existence, less than 15 percent of the needed capacity.

[Will continues...]

In other words, there was no simple answer, here.

Some folks complained that Texas' aversion to commuter rail, and our preference for mega-highways, proved to be some sort of Achilles heel. If only we had some rail, we could have moved all of those 2+ million people efficiently
and without any of that telegenic gridlock.

Hmm. I don't think I need to do the math on that one, do I?

The number of rail cars and tracks necessary for such an evacuation is staggering.And, meanwhile, what do you do about people wanting to take stockpiles of food and supplies, or their firearms, or their furniture and photo albums and other household items, or their pets, or their cars themselves, all out of harms way? Do they all get to ride the choo-choo, too?

Come on.

It gets better. Read it all.
And thanks, Will, I needed that.

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Friday morning I was up at 4:30 am, live-blogging the hurricane as I watched and listened to the online feed from KPRC in Houston. I now feel I was witness to a truly historic event. At some time in the future I will revisit my string of posts, like looking at a scrapbook, and relive the excitement.

Rita notes (4:30 am...twelve-hour rule explained)
Rita notes 5:10 am
Rita notes 5:25 am (Message from Holland)
Rita notes 5:35 am
Rita notes 6:00 am
Rita notes 6:30 am
Rita notes 6:55 am

Superdome report from the Times-Picayune

Conditions in the Dome were bad, but not as bad as have been reported. Via Wide Awake Cafe there is this report from the Times-Picayune which does not square with last week's reports of multiple rapes, murders and roving bands of armed thugs.

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

Pretty lengthy article, but important to note before last week's exaggerated impressions become too deeply and improperly locked in memory

Lesson: Listen and read everything and think about it. Discuss, report and contemplate the meaning, even if reports turn out not to be factual. But don't stop listening and thinking until all the facts are in. And when the next time comes -- and it will -- consider what constructive responses are in the box?

I still think it would be a good idea to have reporters "embedded" with first responders, just as they now travel with the military. Television images and live broadcasts would have the effect of generating a rapid response on the part of officials driven to be pro-active instead of pointing fingers and covering their behinds.

Tribute to Edward Said

A couple of young people at 3 Quarks Daily were privileged to have known and studied with the late Edward Said, one of the most influential scholars of the Twentieth Century. The particulars of his writing and views may be less important than the scholarly discipline he was able to engrave in those who knew him. This legacy is no better seen than in this morning's remembrance by Asad Raza. It's not necessary to know anything about either teacher or student to appreciate the deep affection and respect that shows here.

In 2003, as a graduate student in English at NYU, I rode the subway up to Columbia each week for a seminar with Said, which turned out to be the last one he taught. Wan and bearded, Said would walk in late with a bottle of San Pellegrino in hand and proceed to hold forth, off the cuff, about an oceanic array of subjects relating to the European novel (Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, Sentimental Education, Great Expectations, Lord Jim, etc.), alternately edifying and terrifying his audience. He had an exasperation about him that demanded one to know more, speak more clearly, learn more deeply, in order to please him. Some found the constant harangues too traumatic for their delicate sensibilities; I loved to have found a teacher who simply did not accept less than excellence.

Quick, easy read. Not to miss it.

Additional material, September 29

Abbas Raza's comment below references a host of links to writings about and by Edward Said. Last year's tribute at 3Qd is a virtual library shelf. For anyone interested in Said, it is a treasure trove of material. (Not, incidentally, quick and easy reading.)

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.

These words of Edward Said state, without rage or prejudice, a simple observation. He puts his finger on the vulgar simplicity with which leaders manipulate their followers, both East and West. To the degree that those leaders know what they are doing they are guilty of one of history's worst deceptions.

Soft underbelly -- updated again

The story took off faster than I expected. This post from August 23 is finally becoming relevant a month later.

These comments by Billmon are too long to summarize but too well-done to leave out. What a writer!
Go read. (Haven't seen his take yet on the most recent prisoner abuse reports. That should be a magnum opus.)

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The beast that is devouring Iraq has a soft and dirty underbelly that polite people don't want to mention. When young people are taken from a protective social environment and resocialized to become warriors, the results are not always pretty. Many, if not most, bring with them enough character, discipline and base-line ethical values to protect them from being transformed into savages. Others, sadly, do not. Aqoul points to a post at Nur al-Cubicle (A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press.) which takes a look at a website dedicated to some of the most degenerate interests of the world wide web.

The site, primarily pornographic, is structured like a forum where users exchange pornographic material, not covered by copyright, which runs from voyeur photos to hardcore shots of lovemaking with girlfriends and wives. In two special sections, soldiers can receive free access by publishing the most audacious photos taken during their deployment. One is a general section displaying photos of soldiers, including war humor. The other section is a veritable chamber of horrors with photos of dead Iraqis and dismembered bodies. Once you enter this section you are immediately advised that you will be seeing cruel images and that persons not wishing to view this type of material should not enter.

Browsing through the posts is like a descent into hell. Each post contains the most graphic of images, escalating in barbarity and viciousness and accentuated by the comments left by posters. The posts exalt the violence of the images, shot in a theatre of war. You see headless, armless burnt bodies, a face in a bowl, the remains of suicide bombers, an arm or a leg accompanied by inhuman comments, extolling the horrors..."the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi." The comments are stupefying in their cynicism...there is even a barbaric quiz, asking the question, "what body part is this"...?

I didn't bother to look past the main page which reports "Our users have posted a total of 541888 articles. We have 143718 registered users."
Scanning the topic lists is education enough. This is not, incidentally, some obscure, low-traffic corner of cyberspace. The numbers of items runs to the tens of thousands, in a couple of instances, hundreds of thousands.

That a lot of traffic by any standard. This is a very tragic consequence of an equally tragic adventure.

August 24 addendum...
The post is only a day old and the story is being picked up several places.

Helena Cobban's Just World News blog...
Body part porn and war

This morning, I asked if it was true that US service membersare now trading grotesque pictures of Iraqis and Afghans who have been or are being terribly abused onto a porn site in Netherlands. I'd read about it (in my lousy Italian) on the Italian News Agency ANSA website, here. But I can't really read Italian so I invited JWN commenters to help out.

As always when I ask for help here, I got it. Thanks to those who commented and to the creators and maintainers of this great information-leveraging system, the internet... Here's what commenters said. (And a belated hat-tip to the Belgian onfirmant from whom I gained the original tip.

Various confirmations follow with descriptions and comments.

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This comment is worth quoting:

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The images are of the dead. The voices - the comments [on the porn site]- are of the living dead. Everybody caught in that web - dead or alive - has "passed over". They're both "in a different place", a terrible place. Shakespeare's got a line, "my mind is full of scorpions". It's Macbeth's response to his dawning realisation of what he's done...and what he's become...and what he's set in train. Which is by way of saying, this war isn't just going to come home in body bags. It's also going to come home in the minds of the living. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them are going to be walking IEDs. Some of them will "go postal". Some of them will commit suicide. Most won't "go off", but that's cold comfort. Because the fuse will burn and burn...with predictable consequences. Domestic abuse. Broken homes. Nests fouled. Wives, children, girlfriends, parents, siblings friends coming in for bad times, harrowing times. Bottom line: the terrible things that are happening in Iraq are on their way round.

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Sabbah's Blog picked it up two days ago. The post has a photo of a group of laughing GI's posing and pointing at a charred corpse. Picture is captioned "Cooked Iraqi."
Also del.icio.us links and tags.

Murambatsvina

Murambatsvina.
Wikipedia entry link

Never saw the word before. Don't know how to say it. But I think it's time to put it in my vocabulary. I think it may become as much a household word as apartheid or Darfur or genocide.

I happened upon it looking at one of the blogs on Scott Ferguson's Pundit Drome, second page. I don't know how he picks his blogs, but I'm impressed. I know he and I don't come from the same place, politically, but that doesn't prevent him from putting together the best aggregator I have found. (I look at Pundit Drome more than my own Bloglines feeds.)

I'm not going to blog anymore about it until I learn more. Looks like there is a lot to learn.

A few more bad apples?

Those who dismissed the Abu Ghraib abuses as "pranks," no worse than frat initiations, or the unauthorized conduct of "a few bad apples" should get ready with a few more denials.
Seems like Human Rights Watch has released another report indicating a more systemic issue.

One sergeant told Human Rights Watch: "Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport… One day [a sergeant] shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat."

The officer who spoke to Human Rights Watch made persistent efforts over 17 months to raise concerns about detainee abuse with his chain of command and to obtain clearer rules on the proper treatment of detainees, but was consistently told to ignore abuses and to "consider your career." He believes he was not taken seriously until he approached members of Congress to raise his concerns. When the officer made an appointment this month with Senate staff members of Senators John McCain and John Warner, he says his commanding officer denied him a pass to leave his base. The officer was interviewed several days later by investigators with the Army Criminal Investigative Division and Inspector General's office, and there were reports that the military has launched a formal investigation. Repeated efforts by Human Rights Watch to contact the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the report received no response.

The soldiers' accounts show widespread confusion among military units about the legal standards applicable to detainees. One of the sergeants quoted in the report described how abuse of detainees was accepted among military units: "Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel [intelligence]. As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened. We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit."

"PUC" means "person under control." I suppose that designation has to do with some legal distinction among various prisoner categories.

No, I haven't studied the whole thing in detail. I already have a bad attitude and I don't think it would help. Just skipping through I came up with "C is an officer with the 82nd Airborne Division and West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan from August 2002 to February 2003 and in Iraq from September 2003 to March 2004. HRW spoke with him more than two dozen times in July, August, and September 2005. "

An officer, it says.
West Point.
Damn. Just damn.

I'm waiting for a truly authoritative source to firmly and clearly discredit this report. I'm not interested in spin or counter-charges or "they-do-worse-than-that" crap. Of course they do. But I like to think that we are better than that.

Sunday morning...

I blogged the report as soon as I found it yesterday. Via Crooked Timber here is an early response from Scott Horton at Balkinization,

...Military commanders owe their soldiers clear, unambiguous guidance on how interrogation is to proceed and how detainees are to be treated. Instead, the most charitable way we could characterize the situation would be to say they have created a fog of uncertainty in the area (whereas until 2001, the sun had shone with exemplary brightness)....is it really credible to talk of a "few rotten apples," when the number of those concerned goes from six, to a dozen, to nearly a hundred, and now to several hundred, operating in installations around the world and engaging in suspiciously similar patterns of conduct?...the [internal] investigations [of abuse] proceed with the highly implausible assumption that these policy decisions had no effect on what happened on the ground in Iraq. Since the U.S. Army's command-and-control structures are the envy of the world, this assumption lends an element of the surreal to these reports.

Concluding,

The introduction of torture and abuse as interrogation practices has badly corrupted military intelligence and is undermining morale and discipline throughout the service. The decision to scapegoat the "grunts" for decisions that clearly were taken at or near the top of the chain of command has further undermined confidence in the chain of command and in the integrity of the Army as an institution. The systematic denial of the doctrine of command responsibility threatens the ethic of the military on the most fundamental level. One must wonder when and where this whirlwind of destruction that now engulfs our military and threatens to undermine our national security will end.

Outstanding piece of analysis. Make this one required reading.

Monday, September 26...

Andrew Sullivan got it.

Unthinkable

I'm gonna tinker with the time of this post so it won't appear at the top of my blog today. It's too mean to get that kind of attention, but too tempting to skip.
Dwight Meredith explores an unthinkable scenario, prompting this comment left at Suburban Guerrilla blog: "Me and Bush have something in common now. His time in office has made me want to drink."

Behind the scenes...GWOT

Well, not exactly "behind the scenes" since international news stories are involved, but they may as well be with so few of the public connecting the dots.

John Burgess at Crossroads Arabia points to a couple of items that look related to me. They both have to do with Saudi Arabia one way or another, both relate to the war in Iraq, and both represent either new information or a change in policy...

First, a report from CSIS (The Center for International and Strategic Studies) breaking down the categories of foreign insurgents in Iraq by country of origin. (I suppose it is fair to say that the "flypaper" strategy seems to be attracting extremists from all over the Middle East, even if the dynamic is multiplying rather than reducing the number of recruits to their cause.) John Burgess summarizes the report nicely, but urges readers to read the original completely. I don't have that much concentration. I am very pleased with his summary.

From the report:

...the study estimates that there are 3,000 fighters. Those fighters come from all around the Arab and Islamic worlds. The largest component of these fighters come from Algeria (600 or 20%), followed by Syria (550 or 18%), Yemen (500 or 17%), Sudan (450 or 15%), Saudi Arabia (350 or 12%), Egypt (400 or 5%), and other countries (150 or 5%).

The Saudi involvement in the Iraqi insurgency is overestimated, but does have an impact that goes beyond the number of insurgents involved: "Unlike the foreign fighters from poor countries such as Yemen and Egypt, Saudis entering Iraq often bring in money to support the cause, arriving with personal funds between $10,000-$15,000. Saudis are the most sought after militants; not only because of their cash contributions, but also because of the media attention their deaths as "martyrs" bring to the cause. This is a powerful recruiting tool. Because of the wealth of Saudi Arabia, and its well developed press, there also tends to be much more coverage of Saudi deaths in Iraq than of those from poorer countries." On the question of motivation and public support, the report asserts "If one talks about the sources of broader public support for the insurgency, Sunni nationalism seems to be the strongest contributing factor fueling the unrest."

Another snip that caught my eye:

Extremism and terrorism are not particularly expensive. They also can cloak their identity under a host of religious and charitable covers, or exploit "arm chair militantism" throughout the Arab and Islamic world. No amount of Saudi, US, or international activity to limit fund transfers, or activities like money laundering, is going to halt a substantial flow of money and weapons to terrorist and extremist groups. As long as religious extemism, and Arab and Islamic anger, ac as a strong political and ideological force, enough private money will flow to allow such groups to continue to function and act. This is particularly true when, as in the case of Iraq, they can exploit significant popular sympathy and support.

I do recommend reading John Burgess' whole post. It's not too long, well-written and full of content.

The Saudis, it seems, are doing all they can (those kings and princes who run the country) to keep home-grown insurgent wannabes inside their borders. Think about that for a moment. Our allies, the Saudis -- representing anything but democratic idealism, whose connection with the US is a nakedly market-driven pragmatism -- are assisting the US in a hot war for "freedom and democracy" in Iraq! Go figure. Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose.

The second item is more interesting than the first.
From Asharq Al-Awsat the following story.

Saudi citizens detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay will soon be released and handed over to the Saudi authorities, as talks between US officials and their counterparts in the Kingdom reach the final stages, Asharq al Awsat has learned.

Ahmad Mazhar, head of a team of lawyers hoping to return the detainees to Riyadh told Asharq al Awsat his country had taken large steps towards ensuring its 121 detainees are handed back. He hoped US/Saudi discussions would conclude after the last details are agreed on and indicated that the Saudi government had been in constant contact with Washington since learning Saudi men were being held at the military base in Cuba.

Meanwhile, the US government and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) discussed how to end the hunger strike [What? Hunger strike? Who knew? Who reported? Who cared? Everyone knew it wasn't going to work, right?] started by a number of detainees, mostly from countries of the Persian Gulf , on the 8 th August, in protest at their continued incarceration without trial. Dr. Amer al Zamaly, advisor to the ICRC on Muslim affairs, told Asharq al Awsat the international organization was closely following the hunger strike and greatly concerned about their health condition. He called upon Washington to ensure the prisoners' health did not deteriorate further and insisted the reasons behind the hunger strikes needed to be addressed. Al Zamaly also said the US government needed to understand the harsh psychological and physical conditions the detainees were suffering from which cause depression, hopelessness, a range of illnesses and epidemics.

With conflicting reports on the number of prisoners on hunger strike, al Zamaly indicated that discussions between the ICRC and the US military authorities were under way to determine how many men were refusing food. Guantanamo's second in command also responsible for the heath care of the detainees, had revealed 87 men were on hunger strike, in what is the largest strike since the detention center opened in 2002.

Currently, 520 men are detained in Guantanamo Bay, some for over three years, following the US war on terror. Several men have refused food and water in the past to protest against their continued incarceration without access to legal counsel and trial in US federal courts.

That's more information than has been spotlighted anywhere in this country by either the much-maligned MSM (that would be mainstream media) or their well focused maligners from the blogworld. I can't believe this all comes as a big surprise. Events like this have to have been in the diplomatic works for some time. Maybe they will catch the importance in a day or so.

Reducing the prisoner population at Gitmo from 500 plus to less than 400 looks like big news to me. [Aside: In light of the other story, I would not like to speculate about the fate of those 121 "detainees" (I guess that is different from "PUC's") getting to go "home".]

If I were a conspiracy nut, I might say this was to divert attention from the abuse story that just broke. I expect there are those in Washington who wish that Time Magazine story had been competing with two hurricanes instead of breaking after the intensity of storm reporting was easing off.

Ar we getting poised for mid-term elections? I hear the vice-president had to have both knees operated on today, no doubt from too much prayer time. (I know - cheap shot. Too good not to put it in.)
Waiting for the spin machines to crank up.
Interesting times. Veeery interesting.

Once again...IRYD.

Mom's advice from Houston

Hint: If you go surfing before a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hits, make sure:

a. you haven’t been drinking (as in drunk)
b. you don’t have a beer belly
c. you really know how to surf
d. you don’t piss off the ems or cops
e. you don’t do it when everyone in the whole area has been evacuated, so every first responder in the county is coming to your “aid”
f. you keep yelling at everyone as they arrest you and take you away

(In my best Napoleon Dynamite voice) IDIOT!

Mom's LINK via Michelle Malkin

Update Saturday

Looks like Mom and company made it through with no problems. Good report card this morning.

I just got back from riding around my area. (Jones Road, FM 1960, Grant Road) We are so fortunate. My God we are so fortunate.
Downed limbs. Leaves and Pine needles everywhere. Wood fences fallen. But no water accumulation. No roofs missing. (The local DPS office (I think) has some metal roof area gone.)
There are a lot of areas with spotty electricity. We are lucky, we have it.
People are already out and about trying to clean up.
The Salvation Army office nearby my home, has a stacked lot full of people and vehicles ready to respond. It was an amazing site to see all those vehicles in one place and people ready to go and help, wherever the help is needed.
There are reports of looting. But this is Texas, folks. We don’t cotton too lightly to looters. The police have been out in force. But of course, I loved this report from Blogs of War. The locals took matters in their own hands. Pretty cool.

Ya'll don't be lootin' in Texas, y'heah?

Cold-blooded justice?

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

1. Put him in the long boat till he's sober...
2. Keep him there and make 'im bale 'er...
3. Shave his belly with a rusty razor...
4. Put him in bed with the captain's daughter...

Things have come a long way since the days of sea shantys. The traditional ways of dealing with drunken behavior was to toss the sod somewhere and let him get sober. Today's more enlightened approach is to criminalize the behavior and let the authorities deal with the problem. Of course we have a different class of drunks now, what with "substance abuse" being the new "drunk" and all. But as in days of yore, we still deal with drunken sailors more harshly than with drunken big shots.

Case in point is a twenty-seven year old quadriplegic drug offender incarcerated for smoking dope.

Magbie, 27, of Mitchellville, was paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a drunk driver when he was 4. On Sept. 20, 2004, he sat in his mouth-operated wheelchair as D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin sentenced him to 10 days in jail for a misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana. He was a first-time offender.

Magbie was taken to the D.C. jail, and within hours he was having difficulty breathing. He was moved to the emergency room at Greater Southeast; the hospital released him to the jail the next day. On Sept. 24, he again was taken to the hospital, where he died that day.

One wonders how he would have faired had he been cut from a different social fabric. And why it took a year and the intervention of the ACLU to get any attention. Those agitators. Always stirrin' somethin' up.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Thanks Jacob, Andrew