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Isn’t this the sort of tactic we expect from gangsters, rather than the US military?

U.S. forces in Iraq, in two instances described in military documents, took custody of the wives of men believed to be insurgents in an apparent attempt to pressure the suspects into giving themselves up.

Both incidents occurred in 2004. In one, members of a shadowy military task force seized a mother who had three young children, still nursing the youngest, “in order to leverage” her husband’s surrender, according to an account by a civilian Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer.

In the other, an e-mail exchange includes a U.S. military officer asking “have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?”

“Nice family ya got there. Be a shame if anyt’ing wuz ta happen to ‘em…”

Judas Priest on a pogo stick. Are these the “values” we’re supposedly fighting to defend?

In a recent comment on her blog, Kit Jarrell at Euphoric Reality admonished me that

In a debate, people defend their own beliefs and counter the other person’s beliefs with facts.

Does this requirement extend to Kit’s own co-blogger, Heidi? Apparently not… Read the rest of this entry »

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” — Dwight David Eisenhower

“I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.” — Douglas MacArthur

“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” — General William Tecumseh Sherman

“Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else, and that’s the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result. I can’t think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what’s the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that’s getting just as many troops killed?” — General Anthony Zinni

“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” — Ronald Reagan

“Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” — Otto von Bismarck

“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” — John F. Kennedy

“A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” — German proverb

“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.” — Omar Bradley

“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.” — Robert E. Lee

Kit Jarrell just does not know when she’s made her point. Speaking of the Palestinians, she asks:

Can we please bomb them now?

Enough already, Kit. We know you hate Muslims. We know you believe that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. Your bigotry is an established fact. Do you really think anyone needs to be reminded what a hateful piece of work you are?

There’s no denying the fact that political discourse has become far more heated in recent years, on all sides. The Internet has only added fuel to this fire. With the ability to mask one’s identity in an online conversation comes the temptation to abandon responsibility for one’s own words. In some cases, a participant in an online debate will abandon even the pretense of honesty. Herewith, a case in point…

I figure that if you are arguing for your viewpoint and someone threatens you with legal action to shut you up, you gotta be doing something right. That’s what just happened to me. My buddy Kender has decided he cannot argue with me, so he’ll just try to sic the law on me. Imagine how terrified I must be. Read the rest of this entry »

Digby nails the state of political discourse in the US today:

Please, please spare me the crocodile tears about leftist incivility. We are living in a political world formed by rightwing commentators who have made a fetish of harsh eliminationist rhetoric hammered over and over again into the ether until it sounds like normal discourse. And we’ve been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths… Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture.

Kit Jarrell, net bigot extraordinaire, says we should commit mass murder to “win” the war on terror. She suggests that we should murder everyone in Iran:

Bush needs to call the President of Iran and say very calmly:

“Currently there are aircraft on their way to you. They are fully loaded. They will be over your city, over your palace/home/cave/goat pen in approximately 24 hours. You have until they get there to make a statement agreeing to end your research.

If you do make this statement of intent, there will be a team of people from the countries you’ve pissed off that will come there and dismantle your research plants. If you give them any problems, you will learn what real problems are.

If you have not made a statement of intent to end all nuclear research by the time my aircraft get there, then I will unleash a rain of hell on your country like you have never seen. I will wipe out you, your family, your people, your buildings, and your research plants. In fact, when I’m done, your little piece of shit country will not even be inhabitable by humans. There will not be two of you left to breed. And just in case you think I’m kidding, take a look at your map. See that town right there? That one? Yeah. Well, in the time it took me to tell you this, that town ceased to exist. Oh, and by the way. Every single Iranian prisoner in our custody is now dead. We’ll drop off their bodies (from 30,000 feet) on our way through.”

Let’s be perfectly precise about what Kit proposes: Everyone — every man, woman, and child — in Iran should be killed unless Iran halts its nuclear development program. Kit wants the US to commit an act of mass murder.

The prospect of a nuclear Iran is undoubtedly frightening. It may, indeed, be necessary at some point to take military action — targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear devlopment facilities, for instance. But Kit’s “solution” isn’t motivated merely by the desire to keep nukes out of Iran’s hands. It’s motivated by Kit’s deep, irrational hatred of all Muslims, a hatred that leads her (in violation of all Christian principles) to advocate mass murder.

Religious bigotry has no place in a discussion of national security. Voices like Kit’s must be opposed, and opposed loudly, in the debate over what to do about Iran. The problem of a nuclear Iran is a serious one, and the debate over what to do about it is not advanced by hatemongering. Indiscriminate murder is not a legitimate form of self-defense, ever. We cannot demonstrate the ideals of freedom and democracy by unleashing a nuclear holocaust.

Cao’s at it again. She’s either lying, or damned careless when it comes to checking the facts. Not that the facts matter to her, of course.

In a recent post entitled Rosenberg’s granddaughter sues NSA over "spying", Cao quotes a January 17th AP article (mirrored here) about a lawsuit being brought against President Bush, the head of NSA, and other, in response to the Bush administration’s illegal wiretaps.

I’ve mirrored Cao's post here, as well, since she may decide to change the article after reading this and claim that she never published the falsified version of the AP story.

Leave aside for the moment the fact that Cao is taking part in yet another vicious character assassination of someone who’s committed the heinous crime of disagreeing with Our Sainted President. Leave aside for the moment that she as much as accuses Rachel Meeropol of conspiring with Al Qaeda without a shred of evidence. Read the rest of this entry »

Kender again demonstrates an inability to grasp the core of the debate over Bush’s warrantless wiretaps:

Wiretaps are bad, right? Well then why I am giving a big tip o’ me tam to my bud Ric at Release the Hounds for a story out of Italy about terrorists that were not only caught planning attacks in the U.S., but caught with WIRETAPS???? Because WIRETAPS WORK!!!

No, Kender, wiretaps in and of themselves are not bad. Clearly, they can and do provide valuable intelligence on the actions and intent of terrorists. No mainstream politician has, to my knowledge, argued for a blanket ban on all wiretaps.

There’s a much bigger issue here, one that Kender and his ilk steadfastly refuse to perceive: Are we to become a society ruled by fear? Read the rest of this entry »

Daily Kos has a side-splitting example of how conservatives "argue" (and yes, “argue” is used in its loosest sense here)...

Liberal: Look, I’m just trying to say the USA has fifty states!

Conservative: According to YOUR sources!

Liberal: MY sources?! What are you talking about? Look it up!

Conservative: I told you, I don’t have time to spend all day cruising the internet, looking up geography questions! Maybe if you were busier at your job, trying to live the American Dream, you wouldn’t have time for all this hate!

Liberal: I work hard at my job!

Conservative: Then why are you spending all day downloading Michael Moore?

Liberal: I don’t spend all day downloading Michael Moore! I don’t even know what you mean by that! All I’m saying is that the USA has fifty states!

Conservative: Again, according to YOU!

Chip Gibbons at The Binary Circumstance makes an excellent point regarding the religionists’ tendency to pooh-pooh science because it does not explain absolutely everything:

Discounting science because it has not yet explained everything in nature is a rather odd position to for believers in Intelligent Design to take. Intelligent Design explains nothing, so shouldn’t it be completely discarded?

It’s true: Science cannot explain everything we observe in the universe around us. Some proponents of “intelligent design” would have us believe that this is proof that there is some deep flaw in the scientific method, that the materialistic methods of science should be abandoned. The scientific method can’t give us all the answers. Why should we continue to place our trust in it?

But this claim — that there are gaps in science, and that therefore science cannot be relied upon to explain the universe adequately — is a subtle cariacature of science. Science is not our body of knowledge about the universe. It is not the state of our understanding of the natural world. Science is the means we use to reach that state of understanding. Read the rest of this entry »

Count on a radical rightwinger to blatantly lie when the mood strikes.

At the rightwing group blog “The Wide Awakes”, "Ogre" posts this claim:

In the process of the hearings on Judge Alito, the Democrats revealed that they are opposed to the government being able to listen in on telephone conversations between Americans and known terrorist enemies.

The Fox News article he references has a single sentence regarding wiretaps:

Democrats argue that recent news, such as President Bush authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct warrant-less wiretaps on some Americans if they are calling known Al Qaeda operatives outside of the country, is a prime example of what they consider a dangerous resurgence of presidential power.

Not one word about any Democrat being “opposed” to legitimate NSA wiretaps targeting Al Qaeda. Not one. The concern — shared by Republicans and Democrats alike — is that El Presidente Bush has decided that the law known as FISA does not apply to him, and that he has the unilateral right to ignore the law whenever he sees fit.

Being a radical rightwing pundit has to be the easiest job in the world. You don’t have to do any research. You can just make shit up and publish it as if it were fact.

Here’s a challenge, Ogre: Retract your claim. Admit you published a falsehood. Do the honorable thing — just this once.

Harper’s has a cartoon that is the perfect counterpoint to Kit Jarrell’s obvious-to-everyone-but-her bigotry.

When do you plan to answer the extremely simple questions I asked you about the Islamic Association of Cincinnati, Kit? Never, of course. The inability to answer simple questions about your accusations is one of your hallmarks.

Jay at Stop the ACLU has yet another screed about the terrible thing the ACLU is doing by holding up President Bush’s use of warrantless wiretaps to the cold light of scrutiny.

The point, as always, is carefully and deliberately missed. Of course phone calls into and out of the US are being wiretapped. We expect the administration, regardless of its political affiliation, to gather intelligence in this way in order to catch the bad guys. But every administration has the duty to operate within the law. The President takes an oath to that effect on Inauguration Day. The Bush administration seems prone to ignoring the law whenever it deems fit. Is this truly how Americans want their government to operate: as a government of men, not laws?

After reviewing the latest ACLU ad (also in PDF format) and the accompanying press release, there are a few questions I would pose to those who defend the President’s actions and claim that the ACLU is engaging in a smear campaign:

1. What does the ACLU say in the ad or press release that is demonstrably false?
2. Why is it ‘propaganda’ to note that the actions of the president may be illegal?
3. How is national security harmed by revealing that the President ordered wiretaps without getting warrants, a requirement clearly spelled out in FISA?

Anyone care to answer these questions?

A recent James Wolcott article notes that the radical rightwingers in this country are more and more agitating for actual violence against those with whom they disagree:

More and more the rightwing militant “anti-idiotarians” (as they deludedly think of themselves)have been relishing the prospect of antiwar figures undergoing the Daniel Pearl treatment. They keep bringing it up as the retribution that’ll deliver certain choice heads on a platter… The Islamic terrorists serve as proxies and stand-ins in this imaginary theater of cruelty, enacting what they (the warbloggers) would like to mete out to us (their domestic adversaries).

There is no doubt that the online radical rightwingers are encouraged by the appearance of eliminationist rhetoric (a term coined by David Niewert) in the mainstream media. Read the rest of this entry »

GM Roper, who claims to be a “Mental Health professional”, argues that anyone on the left is insane, suffering from a “severe form of mental illness”.

What does this tell us? It tells us that GM Roper would have made a top-notch Soviet psychiatrist.

In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were used by the authorities as prisons for forced treatment of political prisoners in order to isolate them from “normal” society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. The official explanation was that “no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism”.

If Roper is a “mental health professional”, he is an exceedingly dangerous one. Let us all hope that no one he deals with is ever singled out for his attention because he finds out their political views.

UPDATE 01/02/06: Roper has posted a long response to a series of comments (which, inexplicably, he deletes and then quotes). The key phrase in his meanderings is this:

Secondly, there was seldom, if ever, any recognized symptomology of mental illnes of these unfortunate individuals; they had merely come crosswise with the Soviet (read evil) Empire.

Well, that’s exactly the methodology that Roper, an alleged “mental health professional”, has followed. He cites no “recognized symptomology of mental illnes” (sic) ... merely an invented series of imaginary mental ailments, all of which boil down this: When he sees that someone disagrees with his political views, he assumes they must be mentally ill.

That’s exactly what the Soviet psychiatrists did. Despite all Roper’s tap-dancing, he’s using the same tactic: declare any dissent to be the result of derangement. This view is far too prevalent amongst the radical right on the Web, who are utterly uninterested in reasoned debate.