Friday, April 15, 2005
David Hasselhoff is the AntiChrist
How can one explain the phenomenal global success of one of this country's least talented individuals? There are only three ways.
* Mr. Hasselhoff actually is talented, but this goes unnoticed in his own country.
* Mr. Hasselhoff has sold his soul to Satan in return for global success.
* David Hasselhoff is the AntiChrist.
I vote for the latter -- and perhaps, after seeing the facts involved, the rest of the world will agree....
Thursday, April 14, 2005
It's the end of the world -- on NBC
'Revelations' a mini-series of religion-flavored drama
NEW YORK (AP) -- For some viewers, NBC's miniseries based on the Book of Revelation may seem the latest signpost on the road to Armageddon....
...Frederick Schmidt, a biblical scholar at Southern Methodist University, calls "Revelations" the latest pop-culture agent of "speculation that veers away from theory into superstition."
A similar assessment comes from Jerry B. Jenkins, who with Tim LaHaye co-authored the hugely popular "Left Behind" novels, chronicling the fate of those stranded on Earth after Christ lifts the faithful up to heaven at the end of the world. Jenkins has described "Revelations" as "a mishmash of myth, silliness and misrepresentations of Scripture (which) seems to draw from everywhere and nowhere."...
Homo economicus?
SINCE the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, advocates of free trade and the division of labour, including this newspaper, have lauded the advantages of those economic principles. Until now, though, no one has suggested that they might be responsible for the very existence of humanity. But that is the thesis propounded by Jason Shogren, of the University of Wyoming, and his colleagues. For Dr Shogren is suggesting that trade and specialisation are the reasons Homo sapiens displaced previous members of the genus, such as Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man), and emerged triumphant as the only species of humanity....
...One theory is that Homo sapiens had more sophisticated tools, which gave him an advantage in hunting or warfare. Another is that the modern human capacity for symbolic thinking (manifest at that time in the form of cave paintings and carved animal figurines) provided an edge. Symbolic thinking might have led to more sophisticated language and better co-operation. But according to Dr Shogren's paper in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, it was neither cave paintings nor better spear points that led to Homo sapiens's dominance. It was a better economic system.
One thing Homo sapiens does that Homo neanderthalensis shows no sign of having done is trade. The evidence suggests that such trade was going on even 40,000 years ago. Stone tools made of non-local materials, and sea-shell jewellery found far from the coast, are witnesses to long-distance exchanges. That Homo sapiens also practised division of labour and specialisation is suggested not only by the skilled nature of his craft work, but also by the fact that his dwellings had spaces apparently set aside for different uses....
...According to the model, this arrangement resulted in everyone getting more meat, which drove up fertility and thus increased the population. Since the supply of meat was finite, that left less for Neanderthals, and their population declined. ...
Jesus, the talking doll version
Company also plans dolls of Mary and Moses at start, with dolls able to recite Bible verses.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families.
The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse.
Joshua Livingston, one of the original founders of Valencia, Calif.-based Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co. has returned to the company to head its new Biblical doll unit, One2Believe. In the past, Beverly Hills Teddy Bear mostly manufactured bears and other plush toys on a contract basis for other retailers. ...
Let them eat bombs
The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
Terry Jones
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.
A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."
But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks - but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly baffling. ...
Theology, Not Politics
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Members of Congress from both political parties outdid themselves last week in heaping praise upon Pope John Paul II in the wake of his passing. Many spoke at length on the floor of the House of Representatives, and some even flew to Rome for his funeral.
I’m happy to witness so many politicians honoring a great man of God and peace. The problem, however, is that so few of them honored him during his lifetime by their actions as legislators. In fact, most members of Congress support policies that are totally at odds with Catholic teachings.
Just two years ago conservatives were busy scolding the Pope for his refusal to back our invasion of Iraq. One conservative media favorite even made the sickening suggestion that the Pope was the enemy of the United States because he would not support our aggression in the Middle East. The Pontiff would not ignore the inherent contradiction in being pro-life and pro-war, nor distort just war doctrine to endorse attacking a nation that clearly posed no threat to America – and conservatives resented it. September 11th did not change everything, and the Pope understood that killing is still killing. The hypocritical pro-war conservatives lauding him today have very short memories.
Liberals also routinely denounced the Pope for refusing to accept that Catholicism, like all religions, has rules that cannot simply be discarded to satisfy the cultural trends of the time. The political left has been highly critical of the Pope’s positions on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, feminism, and contraception. Many liberals frankly view Catholicism as an impediment to the fully secular society they hope to create.
Both conservatives and liberals cannot understand that the Pope’s pronouncements were theological, not political. He was one of the few humans on earth who could not be bullied or threatened by any government. He was a man of God, not a man of the state. He was not a policy maker, but rather a steward of long-established Catholic doctrine. His mission was to save souls, not serve the political agendas of any nation, party, or politician.
To the secularists, this was John Paul II’s unforgivable sin – he placed service to God above service to the state. Most politicians view the state, not God, as the supreme ruler on earth. They simply cannot abide a theology that does not comport with their vision of unlimited state power. This is precisely why both conservatives and liberals savaged John Paul II when his theological pronouncements did not fit their goals. But perhaps their goals simply were not godly.
Unlike most political leaders, the Pope understood that both personal and economic liberties are necessary for human virtue to flourish. Virtue, after all, involves choices. Politics and government operate to deny people the freedom to make their own choices.
The Pope’s commitment to human dignity, grounded in the teachings of Christ, led him to become an eloquent and consistent advocate for an ethic of life, exemplified by his struggles against abortion, war, euthanasia, and the death penalty. Yet what institutions around the world sanction abortion, war, euthanasia, and the death penalty? Governments.
Historically, religion always represented a threat to government because it competes for the loyalties of the people. In modern America, however, most religious institutions abandoned their independence long ago, and now serve as cheerleaders for state policies like social services, faith-based welfare, and military aggression in the name of democracy. Few American churches challenge state actions at all, provided their tax-exempt status is maintained. This is why Washington politicians ostensibly celebrate religion – it no longer threatens their supremacy. Government has co-opted religion and family as the primary organizing principle of our society. The federal government is boss, and everybody knows it. But no politician will ever produce even a tiny fraction of the legacy left by Pope John Paul II.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Wisconsin supports making feral cats an unprotected species
MADISON, Wis. -- Despite passionate opposition from cat lovers, Wisconsin residents supported a plan that would allow hunters to take out wild felines that kill birds and other small mammals.
Residents who attended Wisconsin Conservation Congress meetings Monday night voted to allow hunters to kill cats at will, just like skunks or gophers — something the Humane Society of the United States called cruel and archaic.
The idea still faces several hurdles before it could become law. The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board at its May meeting will decide whether to order the Department of Natural Resources to ask the Legislature to support the change. Lawmakers would have to then pass a bill and get Gov. Jim Doyle to sign it.
A total of 6,830 people voted yes while 5,201 voted no. Fifty-one counties approved the plan, 20 rejected it, and one had a tie, according to results released Tuesday evening by the DNR.
Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, co-chairman of the Legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee, said he will "work against any proposed legislation to legalize the shooting of feral cats.''
The congress, a citizens group that advises the Wisconsin DNR, is considered a strong lobby on behalf of the state's hunters, but members were met by a coalition of cat lovers outraged by the plan proposed by Mark Smith, a La Crosse firefighter. Smith had faced death threats — and the clout of several national animal rights groups strongly denouncing his idea.
Smith proposed that the state should classify wild cats as an unprotected species. The proposal defined such cats as those not under the owner's direct control or wandering by itself without a collar and noted that "feral domestic cats killed millions of small mammals, song and game birds'' every year....
Environmental Heresies
Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. The structure of such reversals reveals a hidden strength in the environmental movement and explains why it is likely to keep on growing in influence from decade to decade and perhaps century to century.
The success of the environmental movement is driven by two powerful forces—romanticism and science—that are often in opposition. The romantics identify with natural systems; the scientists study natural systems. The romantics are moralistic, rebellious against the perceived dominant power, and combative against any who appear to stray from the true path. They hate to admit mistakes or change direction. The scientists are ethicalistic, rebellious against any perceived dominant paradigm, and combative against each other. For them, admitting mistakes is what science is.
There are a great many more environmental romantics than there are scientists. That’s fortunate, since their inspiration means that most people in developed societies see themselves as environmentalists. But it also means that scientific perceptions are always a minority view, easily ignored, suppressed, or demonized if they don’t fit the consensus story line.
Take population growth. For 50 years, the demographers in charge of human population projections for the United Nations released hard numbers that substantiated environmentalists’ greatest fears about indefinite exponential population increase. For a while, those projections proved fairly accurate. However, in the 1990s, the U.N. started taking a closer look at fertility patterns, and in 2002, it adopted a new theory that shocked many demographers: human population is leveling off rapidly, even precipitously, in developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow. Most environmentalists still haven't got the word. Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Nations already in a birth dearth crisis include Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia—whose population is now in absolute decline and is expected to be 30 percent lower by 2050. On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon), birthrates are headed down. They reach replacement level and keep on dropping. It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason. Any variation from the 2.1 rate compounds over time.
That’s great news for environmentalists (or it will be when finally noticed), but they need to recognize what caused the turnaround. The world population growth rate actually peaked at 2 percent way back in 1968, the very year my old teacher Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. The world’s women didn’t suddenly have fewer kids because of his book, though. They had fewer kids because they moved to town.
Cities are population sinks-always have been. Although more children are an asset in the countryside, they’re a liability in the city. A global tipping point in urbanization is what stopped the population explosion. As of this year, 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, with 61 percent expected by 2030. In 1800 it was 3 percent; in 1900 it was 14 percent.
The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities. My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated. They became more independent, as they became less fundamentalist in their religious beliefs. Urbanization is the most massive and sudden shift of humanity in its history. Environmentalists will be rewarded if they welcome it and get out in front of it. In every single region in the world, including the U.S., small towns and rural areas are emptying out. The trees and wildlife are returning. Now is the time to put in place permanent protection for those rural environments. Meanwhile, the global population of illegal urban squatters—which Robert Neuwirth’s book Shadow Cities already estimates at a billion—is growing fast. Environmentalists could help insure that the new dominant human habitat is humane and has a reduced footprint of overall environmental impact.
Along with rethinking cities, environmentalists will need to rethink biotechnology. One area of biotech with huge promise and some drawbacks is genetic engineering, so far violently rejected by the environmental movement. That rejection is, I think, a mistake. Why was water fluoridization rejected by the political right and “frankenfood” by the political left? The answer, I suspect, is that fluoridization came from government and genetically modified (GM) crops from corporations. If the origins had been reversed—as they could have been—the positions would be reversed, too....
Two Years Later
Remember the live coverage of the deconstruction of the Saddam statuary and the allegedly "MASSIVE CROWD" a celebratin' his downfall?...
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
In Contempt of Courts
Michael Schwartz must have thought I was just another attendee of the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference. I approached the chief of staff of Oklahoma's GOP Senator Tom Coburn outside the conference in downtown Washington last Thursday afternoon after he spoke there. Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!"
For two days, on April 7 and 8, conservative activists and top GOP staffers summoned the raw rage of the Christian right following the Terri Schiavo affair, and likened judges to communists, terrorists and murderers. The remedies they suggested for what they termed "judicial tyranny" ranged from the mass impeachment of judges to their physical elimination.
The speakers included embattled House majority leader Tom DeLay, conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly and failed Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Like a performance artist, Keyes riled the crowd up, mixing animadversions on constitutional law with sudden, stentorian salvos against judges. "Ronald Reagan said the Soviet Union was the focus of evil during the cold war. I believe that the judiciary is the focus of evil in our society today," Keyes declared, slapping the lectern for emphasis.
At a banquet the previous evening, the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka, called the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube "an act of terror in broad daylight aided and abetted by the police under the authority of the governor." Red-faced and sweating profusely, Peroutka added, "This was the very definition of state-sponsored terror." Edwin Vieira, a lawyer and author of How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, went even further, suggesting during a panel discussion that Joseph Stalin offered the best method for reining in the Supreme Court. "He had a slogan," Vieira said, "and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: 'No man, no problem.'"
The complete Stalin quote is, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."
The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution." ...
The Crusaders
Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image
It's February, and 900 of America's staunchest Christian fundamentalists have gathered in Fort Lauderdale to look back on what they accomplished in last year's election -- and to plan what's next. As they assemble in the vast sanctuary of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, with all fifty state flags dangling from the rafters, three stadium-size video screens flash the name of the conference: RECLAIMING AMERICA FOR CHRIST. These are the evangelical activists behind the nation's most effective political machine -- one that brought more than 4 million new Christian voters to the polls last November, sending George W. Bush back to the White House and thirty-two new pro-lifers to Congress. But despite their unprecedented power, fundamentalists still see themselves as a persecuted minority, waging a holy war against the godless forces of secularism. To rouse themselves, they kick off the festivities with "Soldiers of the Cross, Arise," the bloodthirstiest tune in all of Christendom: "Seize your armor, gird it on/Now the battle will be won/Soon, your enemies all slain/Crowns of glory you shall gain."
Meet the Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich's Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation's courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a "faith-based" government that will endure far longer than Bush's presidency -- all the way until Jesus comes back....
...The godfather of the Dominionists is D. James Kennedy, the most influential evangelical you've never heard of. A former Arthur Murray dance instructor, he launched his Florida ministry in 1959, when most evangelicals still followed Billy Graham's gospel of nonpartisan soul-saving. Kennedy built Coral Ridge Ministries into a $37-million-a-year empire, with a TV-and-radio audience of 3 million, by preaching that it was time to save America -- not soul by soul but election by election. After helping found the Moral Majority in 1979, Kennedy became a five-star general in the Christian army. Bush sought his blessing before running for president -- and continues to consult top Dominionists on matters of federal policy.
"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."......To implement their sweeping agenda, the Dominionists are working to remake the federal courts in God's image. In their view, the Founding Fathers never intended to erect a barrier between politics and religion. "The First Amendment does not say there should be a separation of church and state," declares Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a team of 750 attorneys trained by the Dominionists to fight abortion and gay marriage. Sears argues that the constitutional guarantee against state-sponsored religion is actually designed to "shield" the church from federal interference -- allowing Christians to take their rightful place at the head of the government. "We have a right, indeed an obligation, to govern," says David Limbaugh, brother of Rush and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. Nothing gets the Dominionists to their feet faster than ringing condemnations of judicial tyranny. "Activist judges have systematically deconstructed the Constitution," roars Rick Scarborough, author of Mixing Church and State. "A God-free society is their goal!"...
...It helps that Dominionists have a direct line to the White House: The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove. "We've got the Holy Spirit's wind at our backs!" Land declares in an arm-waving, red-faced speech. He takes particular aim at the threat posed by John Lennon, denouncing "Imagine" as a "secular anthem" that envisions a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."
The Dominionists are also stepping up efforts to turn public schools into forums for evangelism. In a landmark case, the Alliance Defense Fund is suing a California school district that threatened to dismiss a born-again teacher who was evangelizing fifth-graders. In the conference's opening ceremony, the Dominionists recite an oath they dream of hearing in every classroom: "I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."...
...Speaking to the group, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay -- a winner of Kennedy's Distinguished Christian Statesman Award -- called Bush's faith-based initiatives "a great opportunity to bring God back into the public institutions of our country."
The most vivid proof of the Christianizing of Capitol Hill comes at the final session of Reclaiming America. Rep. Walter Jones, a lanky congressman from North Carolina, gives a fire-and-brimstone speech that would have gotten him laughed out of Washington thirty years ago. In today's climate, however, he's got a chance of passing his pet project, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which would permit ministers to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, effectively converting their tax-exempt churches into Republican campaign headquarters.
"America is under assault!" Jones thunders as his aides dash around the sanctuary snapping PR photos. "Everyone in America has the right to speak freely, except for those standing in the pulpits of our churches!" The amen chorus reaches a fever pitch. Hands fly heavenward. It's one thing to hear such words from Dominionist leaders -- but to this crowd, there's nothing more thrilling than getting the gospel from a U.S. congressman. "You cannot have a strong nation that does not follow God," Jones preaches, working up to a climactic, passionate plea for a biblical republic. "God, please -- God, please -- God, please -- save America!"
Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.
"We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."
Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.
During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.
Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake. ...
Monday, April 11, 2005
US accused of seizing Iraqi women to force fugitive relatives to give up
American forces were yesterday accused of violating international law by taking two Iraqi women hostage in a bungled effort to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender.
US soldiers seized a mother and daughter from their home in Baghdad two weeks ago and allegedly left a note on the gate: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention."
It was signed Bandit 6, apparently a military code, and gave a mobile phone number. When phoned by reporters an American soldier answered but he declined to take questions and hung up.
Salima al-Batawi, 60, and her daughter Aliya, 35, were blindfolded, handcuffed and driven away in a Humvee convoy on April 2, leaving the Arab Sunnis of Taji, a suburb north of the capital, incandescent.
Instead of surrendering, her three sons, Ahmad, Saddam and Arkan, alerted the media. None of them are called Muhammad, but it is believed that the note referred to Ahmad and that the Americans wanted all three brothers.
The brothers have spent time in Abu Ghraib jail, but have never been charged and say they are citrus farmers with no connection to the insurgency. ...
An Old U.S. Foe Rises Again in Iraq
Shiite Mahdi Army Growing Bolder in South
GHARAF, Iraq -- Over the loudspeakers set up in this small town in a backwater of southern Iraq, the commands came in staccato bursts. "Forward!" a man clad in black shouted to the militiamen. "March!"
Column after column followed through the dusty, windswept square. Some of the marchers wore the funeral shawls of prospective martyrs. Others were dressed in newly pressed camouflage. Together, their boots beat the pavement like a drum as they goose-stepped or double-timed in place.
Over their heads flew the Iraqi flag, banners of Shiite Muslim saints and a portrait of their leader, Moqtada Sadr -- symbols of their militia, the Mahdi Army, twice subdued by the U.S. military last year but now openly displaying its strength in parts of the south.
"At your service, Sadr! At your service, Moqtada!" the men chanted in formation. "We hear a voice calling us!"
"The tanks do not terrify us," others joined in. "We're resisting! We're resisting!"
The military parade this week lasted an hour, long enough for 700 men brandishing swords, machetes and not a few guns to pass a viewing stand of turbaned clerics and townspeople gathered in front of low-slung brick buildings.
It was also long enough for the militiamen to deliver the message that has distinguished their organization from Iraq's other Shiite groups -- implacable hostility toward the U.S. occupation. They delivered it far beyond the purview of the U.S. military, in one of the many towns and cities in southern Iraq where the Mahdi Army has emerged as kingmaker, and where the lines between authority and lawlessness are still ambiguous. ...
Thousands Protest on Baghdad Anniversary
On Anniversary of Baghdad's Fall, Thousands of Radical Cleric's Supporters of Demand U.S. Pullout
Apr. 9, 2005 - Tens of thousands of Shiites marked the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with a protest against the American military presence at the square where Iraqis and U.S. troops toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein two years ago.
The protesters back Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric whose militia led uprisings against U.S. troops last year, and their large numbers reflected frustration both with the U.S. government and anger toward the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
"This huge gathering shows that the Iraqi people have the strength and faith to protect their country and liberate it from the occupiers," said Ahmed Abed, a 26-year-old who sells spare car parts....
Record number of prisoners
UNITED States and Iraqi forces are holding a record 17,000 men and women - most without being formally charged - and with those in Iraqi-controlled jails living often in deplorable conditions, said US and Iraqi officials.
About two-thirds are locked up as “security detainees” without any formal charges in US-run facilities, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, the US military spokesman for Iraqi detention operations, told AFP.
The rest are incarcerated in Iraqi-run jails in conditions that fall well below any international standard and are in dire need of reform, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's outgoing human rights minister.
“None of the Iraqi detention centres meet international standards for cleanliness, food and the treatment of prisoners.
“Neither are the buildings up to standard....
Records Give Voice to Guantanamo Detainees
WASHINGTON - In a development the Bush administration had hoped to avoid, the stories of about 60 detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base have spilled out in court papers.
A U.S. college-educated detainee asks plaintively in one: "Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?"
In another transcript, the unidentified president of a U.S. military tribunal bursts out: "I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."
Expressing defiance in some instances and stoic acceptance of their fate in others, the once-nameless and still-largely faceless detainees appeared last year before tribunals that, after quick reviews, declared they were unlawful enemy combatants who could be held indefinitely.
The government is holding about 550 terrorism suspects at the Navy base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the prison opened in January 2002 — some into the custody of their home governments, others freed outright.
Little information about them has been released through official channels. But stories of 60 or more are spelled out in detail in thousands of pages of transcripts filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, where lawsuits challenging their detentions have been filed.
Omar Rajab Amin, a Kuwaiti who graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1992, wanted to see the evidence. The tribunal president — the de facto judge for the proceeding — said he could review only unclassified evidence.
Some of the exchanges grew heated.
"You are not the master of the Earth, sir," Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman, told a tribunal president.
Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his September hearing because he repeatedly challenged the legality of his detention.
"I have the right to speak," Abbasi said.
"No, you don't," the tribunal president replied.
The tribunal found Abbasi to have been "deeply involved" in the al-Qaida terror network. Yet four months later, the government released him, saying his home country of Britain would keep an eye on him. ...
US 'smuggles wounded troops home' under cover of darkness
The Pentagon has been accused of smuggling wounded soldiers into the US under cover of darkness to avoid bad publicity about the number of troops being injured and maimed in Iraq. The media have also been prevented from photographing wounded soldiers when they arrive at hospital.
Records show that flights from military bases in Germany arrive in the US only at night. Officials say this is purely the result of flight-scheduling pressures and is not a deliberate tactic to minimise detrimental publicity. They also say that by leaving Europe later in the day soldiers are given a better chance to sleep well the night before.
But many campaigners believe otherwise. Just as the Bush administration has banned the media from taking photographs of the coffins of American troops killed in Iraq as they arrive in the US, opponents say it is now trying to cover up the number of wounded.
"The American public has very limited information about the real impact of this war," said Ellen Taylor, a spokeswoman for Code Pink, a peace group that has been protesting outside the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington, where the bulk of the wounded are taken. "I think that a lot of information about this war is being kept from the public. That is what we are protesting about."
It is not even clear how many troops have been injured since the start of President Bush's "war on terror". The Pentagon says that around 12,000 troops have been evacuated from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, though because officials only list as casualties those soldiers directly hurt by bombs or bullets, the actual total of injured and wounded is believed to be closer to 25,000. Walter Reed says it has treated 4,000 troops injured in Iraq....
Do you hate freedom, hate your family, and families in general?
Do you hate children and hate American values?
Do you just plain hate America?
Do you love terrorists?
Do you want to move to Afghanistan and pal around with Osama?
Of course you do!
WeHateFreedom.com (DemocracyMeansYou.com) is organizing a national day to PROTEST FREEDOM in AMERICA! Protest FAMILIES! Protest AMERICA! Protest CHILDREN! And even PUPPIES and APPLE PIE!...
From Congress Daily:
Christian conservatives and a core group of congressional supporters are launching a significant new push to restructure the federal judicial system to reflect a more explicitly biblical world view, in the hopes that these changes will pave the way for broader social and political changes, leaders of the movement said.
Some of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country -- including Vision America's Rick Scarborough, Coral Ridge Ministry's James Kennedy and the Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich -- launched the effort Thursday in Washington.
Members of the new coalition said they would immediately focus on bringing an end to Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees before pushing Senate Majority Leader Frist to enact sweeping changes in the judiciary.
They also warned that Frist and other politicians who have thus far been reluctant to force a confrontation with Senate Minority Leader Reid over the nominations would be held accountable if Democrats continue to block conservative judges.
Participants at this week's Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration meeting said the group also will focus on forcing Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against any judge who does not conform with their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution, as well as permanently curb judicial authority over matters of church and state, marriage and governmental acknowledgement of a Christian deity.
"What it is time to do is impeach justices," Texas Justice Foundation President Allan Parker extolled a crowd of a hundred or so conservative lobbyists, attorneys and activists. "The standard should be any judge who believes in the 'living constitution' should be impeached."
Senate Republicans are split on Schiavo decision
Last week, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said federal judges ''thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.'' He warned: ''The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.''
Still, Republicans - conservatives in particular - increasingly are accusing judges of making political decisions, circumventing legislative decisions and ignoring the public.
On Monday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, delivered a half-hour Senate floor speech denouncing a Supreme Court decision that limited the death penalty to convicts 18 or older.
He began by suggesting that recent cases of violence against judges may be rooted in their lack of accountability.
''The increasing politicization of the judicial decision-making process at the highest levels of our judiciary has bred a lack of respect for some of the people who wear the robe,'' Cornyn said. ''I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters . . . where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds and builds to the point where some people engage in violence, certainly without any justification.'' ...
Sunday, April 10, 2005
The evangelical pope?
No one would mistake John Paul II for an evangelical Protestant. But he contributed to a dramatic warming of relations between evangelicals and Catholics that may mark a turning point not only in American politics but in the history of Christianity.
...''When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech that the Vatican would not tell him what to do,'' Bauer told USA Today, ''evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do.''
The deep suspicion that in 1960 characterized evangelical attitudes toward Catholics - and Catholic attitudes toward evangelicals - has moderated considerably. What has changed? Why have the changes taken place? And how did Pope John Paul II contribute to those changes over the past quarter-century?
The most obvious indication of change is political. Catholics who attend church regularly and who embrace traditional moral stances on abortion, gay marriage, and other issues, voted almost as strongly for the Bush-Cheney ticket as churchgoing white evangelical Protestants who embraced the same traditional positions.
What Timothy George, founding dean of the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., once called an ''ecumenism of the trenches'' - that is, an ecumenism forged in political action - has forever altered evangelical-Catholic relations in the United States. Catholics and evangelicals who advocate conservative convictions on chastity, family, and community have found each other as co-belligerents, and this co-belligerency has eased much of the hostility that once separated the two movements. President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, has worked hard at nurturing cooperation with conservative Catholic leadership.
But politics is only part of the story....
...Multiple forces lie behind these developments, the most important being the ongoing effect of the Second Vatican Council, the great conclave of all Catholic bishops convened by Pope John XXIII shortly before his death in 1963. After the Council was over, the evangelical theologian David Wells, who now teaches at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, concluded that the Council's actions had ''rendered the vast majority of Protestant analysis of Catholic doctrine obsolete.'' Wells correctly predicted that the Council would push change among Catholics in many different directions, with some moving toward social radicalism and theological liberalism and some moving closer to evangelical theology and practices.
As a result of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics sought ecumenical dialogue with many other Christian bodies, including evangelicals. The Council's stress on encouraging the laity and on opening the Scriptures to the whole church also led to new points of contact with evangelicals. These developments are not leading to a formal union of churches. But they have led to much better communication and a general relaxation of mutual suspicion....
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!
People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.
We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.
Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.
We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.
We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.
Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.
People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.
Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."
Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.
The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence....
Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war
Washington dismissed Iraq's peace feelers, including elections and weapons pledge, put forward via diplomatic channels and US hawk Perle
In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks....
...Iraqi intelligence was also offering privately to allow several thousand US troops into the country to take part in the search for banned weapons.
Baghdad even proposed staging internationally-monitored elections within two years. ...
Friday, April 08, 2005
Man says 3 Minutemen near border made him pose with mocking T-shirt
Three volunteers patrolling the border for illegal immigrants were being investigated after a man told authorities he was held against his will and forced to pose for a picture holding a T-shirt with a mocking slogan.
The volunteers said they were members of the Minuteman Project - a monthlong effort that has people from around the country fanned out along the border to report undocumented migrants and smugglers.
Law enforcement officials have said they fear the project will lead to vigilante violence. Mexico's foreign relations department pledged in the days leading up to the civilian operation to pursue all legal and diplomatic means to stop the volunteers and ensure that they do not violate the rights of Mexican citizens.
Border Patrol agents called in deputies from the Cochise County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday afternoon to report that an immigrant was detained by three men who identified themselves as project volunteers.
Carol Capas, a sheriff's office spokeswoman, said the 26-year-old Mexican man told agents he was physically restrained and forced to hold a shirt while his picture was taken and he was videotaped.
The shirt read: "Bryan Barton caught an illegal alien and all I got was this T-shirt." ...
BUSH ATTENDS FUNERAL FOR POPE JOHN PAUL II
President Bush's appearance in Vatican City hasn't gone over well with many in the crowd gathered for the pope's funeral.
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Some people outside St. Peter's Square booed and whistled when the president's face was shown on giant video monitors set up for the thousands who couldn't get into the square....
Church seeks to blend religion, retail
WASILLA - A Wasilla church is working to bring its burgeoning house of worship into one of the hottest commercial districts in the Mat-Su, known as the "million-dollar mile."
Crossroads Community Church is trying to finalize a deal by this summer to purchase Cottonwood Creek Mall, across the street from Fred Meyer, where it plans to hold massive Sunday services while running the rest of the mall as a retail hot-spot.
The purchase is not yet complete but the church has already put earnest money down and is moving fast to close the deal.
While church leaders are excited about the prospects of weaving religion into a prime business area, the idea has so far received mixed reviews from mall vendors. Many have a wait-and-see attitude.
"We don't know what it will be like; that's the big question," said Steve Hickok, who co-owns Alaska Charm with his wife, Terri Hickok. "I can't prejudge. We're just going to have to wait and see what happens."
Sam Richardson, owner of Sammy's Pizza, said he has no problem with a church owning the mall.
"It will be nice to have local owners in the mall," he said. "I just hope it starts bringing people back into the mall."...
...Wick wouldn't say exactly what the church is paying for the mall, but Mat-Su Borough Assessor Allen Black said the 250,000-square-foot property is valued at $14.8 million and includes the land on which Taco Bell and Wells Fargo Bank are located.
Currently, 21 businesses operate within the mall. If the finances work out, the church will soon join them. The church's 1,200 worshipers now meet Sundays in the Teeland Middle School gymnasium.
Pam Ockerlander, manager of Waldenbooks, is a little leery about the prospect of renting from a church. Ever since the mall first opened, in 1984, Waldenbooks has been there. Ockerlander, who's managed the store for 19 years said she hopes to stay but worries about what a business relationship with a church might look like.
"We're a bookstore and we sell lots of different things that the church might not approve of," Ockerlander said. "What happens when our lease expires? I would hate to see us close because we lost our spot in the mall."
Wick said the church wants to keep the mall as a mainstream commercial building and has no plans to fill the mall with primarily Christian stores. The church wants to see at least one more anchor store - such as Barnes & Noble, Best Buy or The Sports Authority - to help increase foot traffic.
"We're excited about being shoulder to shoulder with the community," Wick said. "Obviously with the church, we probably don't want a liquor store, but if there's a restaurant that wants to come into a back pad and serve liquor, I don't think we would have a problem with that."...
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Will Old Rulings Play a Role In Terror Cases?
In the annals of law, the case of Masatomo Kikuchi is all but forgotten.
The former Japanese prison guard was tried by the Allies after World War II for war crimes. In 1947, a U.S. military commission, citing the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, convicted him of compelling prisoners of war to practice saluting and other military exercises for as long as 30 minutes when they were tired. His sentence: 12 years of hard labor.
For decades, records of the Kikuchi case and hundreds of other postwar tribunals lay forgotten in archives and government offices around the world. But now they could assume new significance for one of the most contentious aspects of the war on terrorism: the U.S.'s treatment of prisoners.
Hundreds of suspected terrorists and enemy fighters have been captured since the fall of 2001 and housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. The Bush administration has determined these captives aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions. But the administration has faced a wave of legal challenges to that view, and suffered several defeats so far. Today, government lawyers will ask a federal appeals court in Washington to reverse a November ruling that found the Geneva Convention protects prisoners held at Guantanamo and ordered an immediate halt to military commission proceedings against detainees because they didn't comply with the treaty.
The legal battle is likely to end up at the Supreme Court, and, depending on its outcome, could compel the U.S. to devise a new road map for prisoner treatment. The rulings from the years immediately after World War II lay out the most complete picture available of the way the U.S. viewed treatment of prisoners of war back then, when modern international humanitarian law was laid down. The question is, do these cases apply today?
Critics of the Bush administration's policy on terror-related prisoners argue they do. "These are the foundational cases," the first to apply international law to questions of prisoner treatment during armed conflict, says David Cohen, a 56-year-old professor of classics and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, who also teaches classes on war crimes. He has spent the last 10 years collecting the documents from archives and government offices, adding millions of pages to existing records and unearthing the case of Mr. Kikuchi.
The records make it clear that after World War II, U.S. military prosecutors and judges set out to establish a precedent barring any prisoner mistreatment, by aggressively pursuing and punishing even comparatively small offenses.
"These things of minor importance are the very things which caused the Allied prisoners of the Japanese so great discomfort," prosecutor Robert Neptune told a military commission in October 1948. Army judges agreed. One wrote, "Extreme brutality or serious injury to the victim is not a necessary element" for guilt....
...U.S. tribunals dismissed defense arguments that Japanese practices were necessary for disciplinary or interrogation reasons, that American prisoners were treated no worse than Japanese soldiers, that Japan hadn't ratified the Geneva Conventions and wasn't therefore bound by them and that, in any event, many American prisoners had forfeited POW status by bombing cities or committing acts of sabotage.
The U.S. also held senior officials accountable for actions of their underlings; the Tokyo tribunal, for instance, sentenced former Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu to seven years even though he was an acknowledged leader of the Japanese peace faction and had sought to investigate Allied complaints of prisoner mistreatment during the war. The tribunal found punishment warranted because "he should have pressed the matter, if necessary to the point of resigning."
Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix
IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.
The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the patent claims.
While brain implants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the only non-invasive ways of manipulating the brain remain crude. A technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation can activate nerves by using rapidly changing magnetic fields to induce currents in brain tissue. However, magnetic fields cannot be finely focused on small groups of brain cells, whereas ultrasound could be....
Who’s Better Off?
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Before the US House of Representatives, April 6, 2005.
Whenever the administration is challenged regarding the success of the Iraq war, or regarding the false information used to justify the war, the retort is: “Aren’t the people of Iraq better off?” The insinuation is that anyone who expresses any reservations about supporting the war is an apologist for Saddam Hussein and every ruthless act he ever committed. The short answer to the question of whether the Iraqis are better off is that it’s too early to declare, “Mission Accomplished.” But more importantly, we should be asking if the mission was ever justified or legitimate. Is it legitimate to justify an action that some claim yielded good results, if the means used to achieve them are illegitimate? Do the ends justify the means?
The information Congress was given prior to the war was false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; the Iraqis did not participate in the 9/11 attacks; Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were enemies and did not conspire against the United States; our security was not threatened; we were not welcomed by cheering Iraqi crowds as we were told; and Iraqi oil has not paid any of the bills. Congress failed to declare war, but instead passed a wishy-washy resolution citing UN resolutions as justification for our invasion. After the fact we’re now told the real reason for the Iraq invasion was to spread democracy, and that the Iraqis are better off. Anyone who questions the war risks being accused of supporting Saddam Hussein, disapproving of democracy, or “supporting terrorists.” It’s implied that lack of enthusiasm for the war means one is not patriotic and doesn’t support the troops. In other words, one must march lock-step with the consensus or be ostracized.
However, conceding that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein is a far cry from endorsing the foreign policy of our own government that led to the regime change. In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself. The interventionist policy should be scrutinized more carefully than the purported benefits of Saddam Hussein’s removal from power. The real question ought to be: “Are we better off with a foreign policy that promotes regime change while justifying war with false information?” Shifting the stated goals as events unravel should not satisfy those who believe war must be a last resort used only when our national security is threatened.
How much better off are the Iraqi people? Hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants of Fallajah are not better off with their city flattened and their homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands are not better off living with foreign soldiers patrolling their street, curfews, and the loss of basic utilities. One hundred thousand dead Iraqis, as estimated by the Lancet Medical Journal, certainly are not better off. Better to be alive under Saddam Hussein than lying in some cold grave.
Praise for the recent election in Iraq has silenced many critics of the war. Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system and more recently in Lebanon. Why is it that what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander?
Our government fails to recognize that legitimate elections are the consequence of freedom, and that an artificial election does not create freedom. In our own history we note that freedom was achieved first and elections followed – not the other way around.
One news report claimed that the Shiites actually received 56% of the vote, but such an outcome couldn’t be allowed for it would preclude a coalition of the Kurds and Shiites from controlling the Sunnis and preventing a theocracy from forming. This reminds us of the statement made months ago by Secretary Rumsfeld when asked about a Shiite theocracy emerging from a majority democratic vote, and he assured us that would not happen. Democracy, we know, is messy and needs tidying up a bit when we don’t like the results. ...
...One of the most significant consequences in times of war that we ought to be concerned about is the inevitable loss of personal liberty. Too often in the patriotic nationalism that accompanies armed conflict, regardless of the cause, there is a willingness to sacrifice personal freedoms in pursuit of victory. The real irony is that we are told we go hither and yon to fight for freedom and our Constitution, while carelessly sacrificing the very freedoms here at home we’re supposed to be fighting for. It makes no sense.
This willingness to give up hard-fought personal liberties has been especially noticeable in the atmosphere of the post-September 11th war on terrorism. Security has replaced liberty as our main political goal, damaging the American spirit. Sadly, the whole process is done in the name of patriotism and in a spirit of growing militant nationalism.
These attitudes and fears surrounding the 9-11 tragedy, and our eagerness to go to war in the Middle East against countries not responsible for the attacks, have allowed a callousness to develop in our national psyche that justifies torture and rejects due process of law for those who are suspects and not convicted criminals.
We have come to accept pre-emptive war as necessary, constitutional, and morally justifiable. Starting a war without a proper declaration is now of no concern to most Americans or the U.S. Congress. Let’s hope and pray the rumors of an attack on Iran in June by U.S. Armed Forces are wrong.
A large segment of the Christian community and its leadership think nothing of rationalizing war in the name of a religion that prides itself on the teachings of the Prince of Peace, who instructed us that blessed are the peacemakers – not the warmongers. ...
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
For evangelicals, a bid to 'reclaim America'
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. - For the Reback daughters, the big attraction was the famous Ten Commandments monument, brought to Florida on tour after being removed from the Alabama judicial building as unconstitutional. The youngsters - dressed in red, white, and blue - clustered proudly around the display.
For more than 900 other Christians from across the US, the draw at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church last month was a national conference aimed at "reclaiming America for Christ." The monument stood as a potent symbol of their hopes for changing the course of the nation.
"We have God-sized problems in our country, and only God can solve them," Richard Land, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), told the group.
Their mission is not simply to save souls. The goal is to mobilize evangelical Christians for political action to return society to what they call "the biblical worldview of the Founding Fathers." Some speak of "restoring a Christian nation." Others shy from that phrase, but agree that the Bible calls them not only to evangelize, but also to transform the culture.
In material given to conference attendees, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge pastor wrote: "As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government ... our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors - in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Onward Christian soldiers
But is it wrong for a fighting man to enjoy his work?
Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight," Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis of the U.S. Marine Corps said in a panel discussion in San Diego. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling."
That admission, from a "fighting general" who led combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—including the Battle of Fallujah—caused an uproar. How terrible! How insensitive! The mentality that gave us Abu Ghraib! He must be disciplined! He should be thrown out of the military!
But if we are going to fight a war, we need to understand what war entails. The public supports our troops, but mainly by feeling sorry for them and their familes. We also should appreciate our troops' facility in fulfilling their purpose, namely, killing the enemy.
There is a pleasure in battle. ...
...Soldiers, Luther says, should go "forward with joy!" As in other vocations, so in the military, there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's work.
MANAGEMENT THEORY AND THE CHURCH
Imagine several young men gathered around a table discussing management and leadership practices. Several of them quote the newest books on The Wall Street Journal’s best seller list and others discuss the newest book published by the Harvard Business school. Typical strategic session in corporate America? Perhaps, but it is just as likely a conference for strategy for the local church or perhaps a church planting conference seminar. Sadly in these meetings, the Word of God seems to be mentioned very little except to a token degree so those involved won’t appear unspiritual.
I recently attended a two-hour leadership seminar on “Leading Your Churches Arts Ministry” at an Arts conference by a key Christian organization where not one scripture was referenced.
Are my friends in ministry well-intentioned? I’m sure they are. But the dangers of trusting in leadership and management theory to lead and shepherd our churches far outweigh the costs.
What is management theory? Management theory can be defined as applying management principles and organizational behavior for businesses to optimize the performance of the organization.
Now few pastors and church leaders would ever claim to trust in such management theory, but their actions speak louder than their words....
...With the increase of second-career pastors (including myself), we are seeing an increase in management theory seeping into the church under the guise of strategy. From $3000 a day capital fundraising campaign seminars to strategic church conferences, management theory (sometimes under the guise of “leadership development”) is becoming a big business in evangelical circles....
The cold embrace
A number of observers, both right and left, have concluded that the Terri Schiavo case was a watershed moment, a turning point of sorts in the national discourse.
On the right, they see it as the moment when the left's "culture of death" was seriously confronted for the first time. On the left, it's being hopefully viewed as the moment when the right finally jumped the shark and revealed their ugly, intrusive underside to the public at large.
It will take some time, of course, to ascertain which of these views is closer to the truth, though obviously I've already endorsed the latter wholly.
However, I think that we can defintively say that it was a watershed event in a gathering trend we've been observing for some time here: It clearly marked the open embrace of extremists by the mainstream Republican Party.
It was apparent that the "fight for Terri" attracted a large number of extremists to the cause, notably Bo Gritz and Hal Turner. But they were not as openly adopted by the supposedly mainstream conservatives who joined in the fray as the anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry.
Terry, of course, was everywhere: Popping up on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and various local networks as the chief spokesman for the Schindler family, who sought him out for support.
Numerous others have remarked on Terry's long career in anti-abortion radicalism, including Media Matters, Mark Kleiman, World O'Crap, and TalkLeft. Sean Baptiste has put together a six-part series on Terry that has even greater detail. ...
...Terry also has a thing about insisting on masculine leadership:
"The greatest crisis we face is not child killing, it's not the sodomites, it's not land tax, it's not the intrusion of the federal government into our lives, our families, as they crush our liberties. The greatest crisis we face tonight is a crisis of leadership. We are facing a crisis of righteous, courageous, physically oriented, male leadership. Male leadership!
"God established patriarchy when he established the world. God established a patriarchal world. If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testosterone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of the contempt of their contemporaries. They are not here to get along. They are not even here to take issue. They are here to take over!"...
DVD - EXTREME TESTIMONIES
(Hardcore Salvation Action: Too Shocking For Church!)
Landover Baptist Ministries Private Video Collection (featuring an introduction from Pastor Deacon Fred)...
Monday, April 04, 2005
The Cannibal Flesh Donor Program is an organization modelled upon the organ donor program, the basics of which you are no doubt familiar with. However, this program is designed with a much wider focus than saving individual human lives. As an organ donor, your sacrifice benefits only humans. But as a flesh donor, you would be reducing animal suffering, saving natural habitat from being cleared for agriculture, and saving human lives. How is this possible? ...
Green light for Iraqi prison abuse came right from the top
Classified documents show the former US military chief in Iraq personally sanctioned measures banned by the Geneva Conventions. Andrew Buncombe reports from Washington
America's leading civil liberties group has demanded an investigation into the former US military commander Iraq after a formerly classified memo revealed that he personally sanctioned a series of coercive interrogation techniques outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. The group claims that his directives were directly linked to the sort of abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib.
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveal that Lt General Ricardo Sanchez authorised techniques such as the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners, stress positions and disorientation. In the documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Gen Sanchez admits that some of the techniques would not be tolerated by other countries.
When he appeared last year before a Congressional committee, Gen Sanchez denied authorising such techniques. He has now been accused of perjury....
Sunday, April 03, 2005
U.S. Forces May Have Beaten Iraqi General
FORT CARSON, Colo. (AP) - Previously secret court testimony indicates an Iraqi general imprisoned by U.S. forces was badly bruised and may have been severely beaten two days before he died of suffocation during interrogation.
References to the alleged beating appear in a transcript, released under court order, from a military preliminary hearing for three soldiers charged with murder and dereliction of duty in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Mowhoush on Nov. 26, 2003. A fourth soldier faces the same charges but waived a hearing.
During the interrogation, Army prosecutors claim Mowhoush was put headfirst into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord and knocked down before the soldiers sat and stood on him, prosecutors said. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation.
The defendants - Chief Warrant Officers Lewis Welshofer and Jefferson Williams, Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer and Spc. Jerry Loper - have all denied wrongdoing, saying commanders had sanctioned their actions.
According to the transcript, witnesses said others had also beaten Mowhoush days before the Army interrogation. Their names and agencies were blacked out.
Col. David A. Teeples, the men's commander, said during the closed hearing: ``My thought was that the death of Mowhoush was brought about by .... (blacked out) and then it was unfortunate and accidental, what had happened under an interrogation by our people.'' ...
Why is it, I wonder, that those identified as secular humanists, who express grave doubts about the reality of life after death, seem almost universally to favor allowing Terri Schiavo to die in peace; while those identified as members of religious communities, who claim to believe firmly in life after death, seem so eager to keep bodies alive long after meaningful life has departed?
-- John Shelby Spong
Saturday, April 02, 2005
...Randall Terry and his cohort are theocrats. They believe in the implementation of "Biblical law" in a Christian Nation. A narrow, sectarian version of Christianity to be sure: one rooted in religious bigotry and the most outrageous religious supremacism.
If Terry's vision of Christian theocracy gains traction, we will see increasing vigilante interference in the private lives of private citizens -- not unlike the religious police in Saudi Arabia. We will also see rising bigotry against people of other faiths; aggression against those whose idea of Christianity differs from Terry and his theocratic allies; and relentless efforts to damage the constitutional protections of equal rights under the law gained by women, and gays and lesbians, among others.
Terry, the founder of the militant antiabortion group, Operation Rescue, has made a career of exploiting the circumstances of others to promote his religious and political agenda. He has led militant efforts to directly interfere with people exercising their constitutional right to receive and to provide abortions. And now he has used his considerable demagogic skills to interfere with the court-recognized, private decisions of a husband seeking to honor his wife's wishes that extraordinary means be not be used to keep her alive.
In each case, Terry and his cohort have sought to impose their religious beliefs on others either through mob action, or through inciting government officials to use the power of the state or federal government to override the power of the courts to protect the rights of citizens.
There is much that could be said about Mr. Terry, but let's just take a sampling of his views. Unlike some in the Christian theocratic movement, he does not mute his true colors. In a 1995 speech titled Our Goal: A Christian Nation, he declared among other things:
"You better believe that I want to build a Christian nation, because the only option is a pagan nation. Not that the government can make someone a Christian by decree. A Christian nation would be defined as 'We acknowledge God in our body politic, in our communities, that the God of the Bible is our God, and, we acknowledge that His law is supreme.'"
Referring to abortion providers he declared:
"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it." He added, "I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed."
"You say, 'This is extreme!'" he continued, "Yeah, you're right. But imagine God Almighty sending people to hell just because they didn't follow His son? That's extreme. That's intolerance. Imagine Jesus saying that all other religions are false. Christianity claims to be the only way."...
At Least 20 U.S. Troops Hurt in Mass Iraq Jail Attack
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Dozens of insurgents mounted a sustained attack on Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad on Saturday, detonating two suicide car bombs and firing rocket- propelled grenades before U.S. troops repelled the assault.
At least 20 U.S. soldiers and 12 detainees were wounded in the carefully planned attack, which began at around 1500 GMT and lasted for around an hour, the U.S. military said.
"A group of between 40 and 60 insurgents attacked the U.S. forward operating base at Abu Ghraib," Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, spokesman for detainee affairs, told Reuters.
"They detonated two VBIEDs (suicide car bombs) and also fired rocket-propelled grenades into the prison camp ... it was a sustained attack," he said. Mortars and small arms fire were also directed toward the prison, on Baghdad's western edge.
"The attacks were intermittent. They would fire RPGs and then stop, then they would attack again," Rudisill said.
U.S. forces responded with heavy weapons, eventually bringing the situation under control. It was not known how many insurgents were wounded or killed in the battle.
Witnesses said the second car bomb was detonated against U.S. forces as they were trying to evacuate casualties from the first. U.S. troops sealed the prison grounds. It was not believed any insurgents penetrated the perimeter.
Abu Ghraib, notorious for the U.S. prisoner abuse scandal that emerged last year, is one of three U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq and holds around 2,000 prisoners.
The jail has been attacked in the past, but the latest assault was believed to be the largest and most determined. It is also the first against the prison for some time, and comes amid recent signs that Iraq's insurgency was calming down. ...
'Curveball' Debacle Reignites CIA Feud
The former agency chief and his top deputy deny reports that they were told a key source for Iraqi intelligence was deemed unreliable.
WASHINGTON — A bitter feud erupted Friday over claims by a presidential commission that top CIA officials apparently ignored warnings in late 2002 and early 2003 that an informant code-named "Curveball" — the chief source of prewar U.S. intelligence about Iraqi germ weapons — was unreliable.
Former CIA Director George J. Tenet and his chief deputy, John E. McLaughlin, furiously denied that they had been told not to trust Curveball, an Iraqi refugee in Germany who ultimately was proved a fraud.
But the CIA's former operations chief and one of his top lieutenants insisted in interviews that debates had raged inside the CIA about Curveball's credibility, even as then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for the defector's claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war.
"The fact is there was yelling and screaming about this guy," said James L. Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer.
"My people were saying: 'We think he's a stinker,' " Pavitt said. But CIA bioweapons analysts, he said, "were saying: 'We still think he's worthwhile.' " Pavitt said he didn't convey his own doubts to Tenet because he didn't know until after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that Curveball was "of such import" in prewar CIA assessments provided to the president, Congress and the public.
"Later, I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said, 'How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy? … He wasn't worth [anything] in our minds," Pavitt said....
..."Believe me, there are literally inches and inches of documentation" including "dozens and dozens of e-mails and memos and things like that detailing meetings" where officials sharply questioned Curveball's credibility, Drumheller said....
...After the meeting in May 2000, the DIA medical technician questioned the validity of Curveball's information. Another warning came in April 2002, when a foreign spy service told the CIA it had "doubts about Curveball's reliability," the commission reported.
With skepticism rising about Curveball, Drumheller said he arranged a lunch meeting with a German counterpart at Pavitt's behest in late September or early October 2002 to ask for an American meeting with Curveball.
By then, Drumheller said, German intelligence officials were increasingly wary of Curveball. But he said they didn't want to acknowledge their doubts in public and risk embarrassment.
Drumheller said the German intelligence officer used the lunch to convey a stark warning: "Don't even ask to see him because he's a fabricator and he's crazy."
Drumheller said he passed that warning up to Pavitt's office. He said he also informed another senior official in the European division and sent a notice to WINPAC, where the chief bioweapons analyst was considered the Curveball expert....
Friday, April 01, 2005
U.S. Soldier Convicted of Killing Iraqi Walks Free
BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. army tank company commander convicted of shooting dead a wounded Iraqi walked free from court on Friday, although he was dismissed from the army for what he called a "mercy killing."
Army Captain Rogelio Maynulet had faced up to 10 years in jail after a court martial at a U.S. army base in Wiesbaden, Germany, found him guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter.
"He was sentenced with dismissal from the United States Army ... there will be no confinement time," a military spokesman said.
Prosecutors had pressed for conviction on a more serious charge of assault with intent to commit murder, which carries a maximum 20-year jail sentence.
The shooting occurred last May when U.S. troops were pursuing suspected militiamen supporting Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr near the Iraqi city of Najaf, the court was told.
U.S. soldiers fired on a car, wounding the driver and a passenger. Maynulet said he then shot dead the driver to put him out of his misery.
"He was in a state I didn't think was dignified. I had to put him out of his misery," Maynulet said in his defense according to U.S. military's Stars and Stripes magazine.....
Of Fools and Curveballs
...Quoth the Commission: "Virtually all of the Intelligence Community’s information on Iraq’s alleged mobile biological weapons facilities was supplied by a source, codenamed 'Curveball,' who was a fabricator." (Or, in the real world, a "liar" or a "con artist.")
Curveball was an Iraqi chemical engineer who was sent to American intelligence through a "foreign liaison." But, in a way that wouldn't be admissible in any court of law because we'd call it "hearsay," the U.S. didn't formally interview the obliging Curveball because, it seems, Mr. Ball wouldn't speak to Americans and, besides, it was claimed, Curveball didn't speak English. "That liaison service debriefed Curveball and then shared the debriefing results with the United States. The foreign liaison service would not, however, provide the United States with direct access to Curveball. Instead, information about Curveball was passed from the liaison service to DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service, which in turn disseminated information about Curveball throughout the Intelligence Community."
From January 2000 to September 2001, the U.S. got 100 reports from Curveball's keepers about the magical biological weapons labs in Iraq. Yes, the Commission says, Curveball's lies were incorporated into the National Intelligence Estimate, which goes to "senior policymakers," but that NIE, under Clinton, contained this caveat: "[w]e cannot confirm whether Iraq has produced . . . biological agents." Notice the way that works: the Intelligence people actually put in that they were unsure.
The Commission then says, "By 2001, however, the assessments became more assertive." Yup, with the rise of the Bush regime, they were pushin' that biological weapons story like so much coke to college students. The tone of the reports changed to more definite assessments, based solely on Curveball's tales, that Iraq was producing biological weapons from these roving labs. This change in tone was most clearly reflected when George Tenet said to Congressional committees, "We know Iraq has developed a redundant capability to produce biological warfare agents using mobile production units." All info courtesy of you-know-who.
"The October 2002 NIE reflected the shift from the late-1990s assessments that Iraq could have biological weapons to the definitive conclusion that Iraq 'has' biological weapons, and that its BW program was larger and more advanced than before the Gulf War," says the Commission. And the emphasis on "could" is the Commission's. It continues, "For this conclusion, the NIE relied primarily on reporting from Curveball." CB hit the big time when Colin Powell used CB's info in his big ol' pack o' lies he shat in front of the U.N. General Assembly in February 2003.
But, alas, sweet Curveball was not what he seemed. He was not straight and down the middle. He . . . how shall this be put . . . curved. The Defense Department sent a "detailee" to meet with Monsieur Ball way back in May 2000 to see if Le Ball was telling le truth about being in a biological weapons accident. Oh, let's let the Commission speak for itself here:
"First, the detailee observed that Curveball spoke excellent English during their meeting.286 This was significant to the detailee because the foreign service had, on several earlier occasions, told U.S. intelligence officials that one reason a meeting with Curveball was impossible was that Curveball did not speak English. Second, the detailee was concerned by Curveball’s apparent 'hangover' during their meeting. The detailee conveyed these impressions of Curveball informally to CIA officials, and WINPAC [the Center for Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control] BW analysts told Commission staff that they were aware that the detailee was concerned that Curveball might be an alcoholic."
Said the poor detailee in a hurried e-mail sent to the CIA Directorate of Operations, "I do have a concern with the validity of the information based on Curveball having a terrible hangover the morning of [the meeting]. I agree, it was only a one time interaction, however, he knew he was to have a [meeting] on that particular morning but tied one on anyway. What underlying issues could this be a problem with and how in depth has he been vetted by the [foreign liaison service]?" When was this sent? The night before Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. In 2003....
The Pentagon's Secret Stash
Why we'll never see the second round of Abu Ghraib photos
...Legalities are one thing, but the real motivation for choking off access is obvious: Torture photos undermine support for the Iraq war. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
The Abu Ghraib photos did more to kneecap right-wing support for the Iraq war, and put a dent in George Bush's approval ratings, than any other single event in 2004. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote two glum pieces about "the failure to understand the consequences of American power"; The Washington Post's George Will called for Rumsfeld's head; blogger Andrew Sullivan turned decisively against the president he once championed; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned: "We risk losing public support for this conflict. As Americans turned away from the Vietnam War, they may turn away from this one."...
...As is, no doubt, a good percentage of the U.S. population. Public opinion of journalism has long since plummeted below confidence levels in government. Prisoner abuse wasn't remotely an issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, let alone an electoral millstone for the governing party. The mid-January discovery of photographs showing British soldiers abusing Iraqis barely caused a ripple in the States. Neither did the Associated Press' December publication of several new photos of Navy SEALs vamping next to injured and possibly tortured prisoners (prompting the New York Post to demand an apology from...the Associated Press).
As The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto put it, with great cynicism and possibly great accuracy, "if the Democrats really think that belaboring complaints about harsh treatment of the enemy is the way to 'score points with the public,' they're more out of touch than we thought."
Looking ahead to the next four years, there is little doubt that the administration, its supporters, and Congress will use whatever legal means are available to prevent Abu Ghraib—the public relations problem, not the prisoner abuse—from happening again. The Defense Department has commissioned numerous studies about America's problem with "public diplomacy" since the September 11 massacre; all those compiled since last May hold up the iconic torture images as the perfect example of what not to let happen again.
"The Pentagon realizes that it's images that sell the story," Aftergood says. "The reason that there is a torture scandal is because of those photographs. There can be narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren't accompanied by photos, they somehow don't register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don't know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind."
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