June 2007

And today we have more evidence that gung-ho “unabashed conservative” Justin Higgins never met a fabrication he couldn’t love with all his heart. He’s desperate to find a good reason for the war in Iraq, and so he burbles:

We can look back and remember that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, trained in Baghdad with direct oversight from Iraqi Intelligence forces. The justification for war continues stacking.

Huh. Silly me. I thought the thing to do was to determine the justification and then go to war, not go to war first and fill in the justification as an afterthought. Oh well. If you follow his link, you end up back at a post he made last October, and thence to an article published in Britain’s Telegraph in late 2003, claiming that “Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist”.

There is one teeny-tiny problem, of course: The document on which the Telegraph story was based is almost certainly a forgery, and it places Atta in Baghdad at a time when the FBI knows he was actually in the US:

A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents…

The document, which according to Coughlin was supplied by Iraq’s interim government, doesn’t say exactly when Atta was supposed to have actually flown to Baghdad. But the memo is dated July 1, 2001, and Coughlin himself places the trip as the summer of 2001.

The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta’s movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn’t begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.

One FBI document, labeled “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” states that during the summer of 2001, Atta “conducted extensive travel” that included visits in Florida, Boston, New York, New Jersey and Las Vegas. Indeed, this and other FBI documents show that during the last few days in June—when the presumed Iraq trip would appear to have occurred—almost all of Atta’s movements are accounted for: On June 27, 2001, Atta flew from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Boston. On the morning of June 28, he traveled from Boston to San Francisco (flying first class) where he switched planes and landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m. That afternoon, he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office, set up an account at an Internet café called the Cyber Zone and checked into the EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, a cheap motel in a neighborhood of seedy strip joints that is located barely two blocks from the local FBI office.

The FBI records show Atta logged onto his Cyber Zone Internet account five times over the next two days and then checked out of the EconoLodge at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1. He then returned his rental car and boarded a flight to Denver at 5:59 a.m., landing in Boston later that day. A week later, on July 7, Atta boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich—the first leg on his trip to Spain. He returned to the United States on July 19, 2001.

It’s bad form amongst the wingnuts to let the facts get in the way of a good, juicy lie. Justin is just doing his part to uphold the proud traditions of invincible ignorance and blatant dishonesty for which he and his kind are so justly renowned.

Hoo boy. As the first entry in his “ROTR Summer”, our little “unabashed conservative” Justin Higgins has plopped out a post entitled “A Lesson For The Save Darfur Movement”. Let’s take a look at this masterpiece of fuzzy thinking and fact-free sloganeering…

During their fighting, hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, many at the hands of the Janjaweed, and millions have been displaced. That’s the short version, and the version many are being sold on.

“Sold on” implies that there’s something “wrong” with this version of the Darfur story. What, exactly, is wrong, Justin? It looks very much like you used the phrase “sold on” to insinuate that this capsule description is somehow incorrect without actually having to say what is incorrect.

The first thing you need to know is who is selling the watered down and factually inaccurate version of what’s happening in Darfur. Let me introduce you to the group leading the charge, Amnesty International.

Justin claims that Amnesty International is “selling [a] watered down and factually inaccurate version of what’s happening in Darfur”. But he never bothers to explain what is “watered down and factually inaccurate” about their account. Are we supposed to just take your unsupported word for this, Justin? Why, might I ask, should anyone do such a thing? Read the rest of this entry »

Following the example set today by Ed Brayton, I reproduce here Mildred Loving’s statement [PDF] upon the fortieth anniversary of the Loving v Virginia decision:

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “”Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” a “basic civil right.”

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Justin Higgins, a practicing chickenhawk,is going to give us his “action plan” for the Mideast tomorrow. Yowza. Who wants to bet it includes the killing of a lot of Terrifying Brown People™ by someone other than Justin Higgins?

UPDATE 06/18/07 7:51 AM EDT: Justin says “It’s coming”. We’ll see…

Justing Higgins has published a big list that carefully explains what an “unabashed conservative” does. It’s all very impressive, but he left one item out.

On January 12th, 2008, his eighteenth birthday, does Justin “Unabashed Conservative” Higgins plan to enlist in the military and personally fight the war that he has supported so vehemently?

He claims to be fighting an “information war” while he sits at home. Uh huh. The truth is probably far more venal…

I have, of course, pointed out before that Cao of Caosblog.com is a lying, clueless hack. Once again she proves her willingness to promulgate one of the favorite fantasies of the far right wingnuts: that the mainstream media (what they call ‘the MSM’) doesn’t cover terrorist plots. Today’s lie is:

…the media has buried the news reports of the plot to blow up JFK that emerged within the past few days.

Hmm. How does that stand up to a cursory examination of reality?

• ABC News: Feds Claim to Bust NY Airport Terror Plot: ABC News
• Houston Chronicle: 3 arrested in JFK Airport terror plot
• CBS News: 4 Charged In JFK Airport Terror Plot
• Los Angeles Times: Alleged plot: A potential threat seen in America’s backyard
• Boston Globe: US charges 4 men in plot to blow up JFK airport

• New York Times: 4 Men Accused of Plot to Blow Up Kennedy Airport Terminals

  …and over 2200 more stories as of 11:32 AM EDT this morning.

  The fantasy world that fabulists like Cao inhabit is rife with an array of enemies poised to deny them the news of terrorism, death, and destruction that they crave. Unfortunately, out here in the real world, we hear about these things all the time. Too bad Cao and her ilk prefer to spew their lies, rather than conduct an honest discussion about the dangers faced by this country.

Remember Andrew “I DO NOT LIE” Richardson, aka Gribbit? He’s still around, and still as stupid and dishonest as ever. He provides further proof of this today, in a StopTheACLU post entitled “Proof That Romero Loves Terrorists More Than America”.

Referring to the lawsuit that was recently filed by the ACLU on behalf of three individuals who were kidnapped by the CIA and shipped to countries where they were tortured, Gribbit states that:

The CIA transports suspects back to their country of origin. If that country, under its laws, uses methods which some people consider torture, that is beyond our control once they’ve been repatriated.

Um, no. As the article makes very clear, the CIA does not necessarily ”[transport] suspects back to their country of origin”:

Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, was transported to Morocco, where he spent 18 months in prison in what the suit asserted included torture by the intelligence services of the North African kingdom. In 2004, he was taken by the CIA to a secret U.S. detention facility in Kabul, Afghanistan, and then to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains.

[emphasis mine]

Gribbit invents this claim that “CIA transports suspects back to their country of origin” out of whole cloth. The article he cites directly contradicts this claim, but that’s okay. Like most wingnuts, Gribbit prefers his own feeble lies to the facts.

The ease with which Gribbit accepts torture as a technique is sickening, and serves to demonstrate the moral incompetence of wingers of this sort. Eschewing the use of torture used to distinguish Western countries (the putative “good guys”) from the rest of the world. No more. Gribbit and his kind have allowed their moral sense to be strangled by their own fear.