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January 31, 2006
Alito Confirmed
Alito Jr., the man who believes that the President is king, is confirmed for life.
Wohoo. Now, if whatever the king says is the law, shouldn't the Supreme Court abolish itself? I guess they need the fifth judge confirmed before they can do that.
Posted by zeynep at 02:29 PM | Comments (1)
January 28, 2006
Chavez Bad! We are Good!
Why is it bad for PDVSA (Venezuela's national oil company) to provide heating fuel to the needy through CITGO, but okay for USAID to be folded into the State Department -- where it will become an even more blatant tool of our foreign policy? (Besides, PDVSA does not require that people who purchase oil from CITGO also buy other Venezuelan products at arbitrary prices -- the way USAID forces "aid" recepients to purchase U.S. grains. Not only does this mean the aid money does not help the local economy and local production, it often results in great waste and expense as grains get transported accross oceans.)
Posted by zeynep at 09:35 AM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2006
Oops. Hamas Gets a Majority
Now, what was that about our commitment to spreading democracy in the Middle East?
Posted by zeynep at 05:47 PM | Comments (1)
January 24, 2006
Well, Here's The Sentence!
No jail. None.
A military jury has recommended that an officer once facing up to life in prison for the interrogation death of an Iraqi general be given only a reprimand, a decision that drew applause from soldiers.Initially charged with murder, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. now faces no jail time, the forfeiture of $6,000 in salary and what amounts largely to a barracks restriction for 60 days.
What is there to say?
Posted by zeynep at 07:29 AM | Comments (3)
January 23, 2006
Kill an Iraqi...
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer will be sentenced later this month, for the killing of Iraqi General Mowhoush. Placing someone in a sleeping bag (after being severly beaten and tied up), and suffocating him by sitting on the sleeping bag doesn't seem to count as murder, only negligent homicide.
A six-member court-martial board acquitted Welshofer Saturday of the original charge of murder, but found him guilty of the lesser offenses of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty. He faces 39 months in prison.Welshofer, an Army interrogator, was accused of binding suspected insurgent leader Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag during an interrogation session, sitting on him, and placing his hand over Mowhoush's mouth and nose, causing him to suffocate.
Murder charges against three other soldiers in the room with Welshofer during the interrogation were dropped.
Two reached plea agreements and testified against Welshofer in exchange for reductions in their charges.
A murder charge against the third was determined to be unwarranted after an evidentiary hearing last March.
Now, the same six officers who convicted Welshofer will hear testimony from his family, friends and fellow soldiers about his character before deciding on his sentence.
There could be clues in the board's verdict to its feelings about Welshofer's actions on and before the Nov. 26, 2003, interrogation in a Qaim, Iraq, detention facility operated by Fort Carson's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
In handing down the verdict of negligent homicide rather than murder, the panel seemed to side with Welshofer, who testified about the confusion and lack of command guidance on interrogation techniques for enemy captives.
Welshofer admitted only to "straddling" the sleeping bag on his knees, not pressing his full weight on the general, and covering his mouth to keep him from talking but never cutting off his air supply.
Testimony by prosecution witnesses implied that Welshofer intentionally caused Mowhoush's death and knowingly disregarded Army memoranda on interrogation regulations, which did not include the sleeping bag technique.
The panel's decision also discounted testimony from a secret witness from the CIA who said that Welshofer admitted knowledge of interrogation rules the day before Mowhoush's death and told him he was "pretty sure they were breaking the rules every day."
This, of course, seems to be a pattern. The very few charges that were brought against soldiers implicate in relatively high profile deaths end up with convictions on reduced charges and sentences that range from light to none (you'd do more time in jail in this country for not feeding your dog properly).
Welshofer is not the first Fort Carson soldier to be charged with illegally killing Iraqis during the 2003-04 deployment by more than 12,000 Fort Carson troops.First Lt. Jack Saville and Staff Sgt. Tracy Perkins of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were charged with manslaughter after 19-year- old Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun allegedly drowned when the soldiers ordered him and his cousin to jump into the Tigris River after stopping them on a curfew violation in Samarra.
Hassoun's family recovered his body and buried him a few days later, but Army investigators never exhumed or positively identified the body to provide evidence that a death actually occurred.
Saville pleaded guilty to assault last March and was sentenced to 45 days in prison. Perkins was acquitted of the manslaughter charge last January.
Another Fort Carson soldier, Staff Sgt. Shane Werst, was charged with murdering Naser Ismail during a house search for insurgents and weapons in Balad in January 2004.
Werst argued that he shot Ismail in self-defense after Ismail lunged at the weapon of one of his soldiers. He was acquitted in a court-martial at Fort Hood, Texas, last May.
This weekend I was reading in the Washington Post that the Army had been incorporating counter-insurgency lessons into classes:
And because insurgencies are always political, politics can be more important than combat. "We can go in and kill insurgents, but it's the political piece that will bite you on the butt," noted another officer.Most of all, they said, the key to victory is not defeating the enemy but winning the support of Iraqis and making the insurgents irrelevant. "When the people start ratting out the insurgents, that's a quantifiable way of measuring your support," said a third officer.
How do they think this support is going to materialize as long as Iraqis know that their lives are worth so little?
Posted by zeynep at 07:22 AM | Comments (3)
January 20, 2006
What Are They Justified to Do, Then?
A comment from UTSS reader Michael:
In other news today, Indian government officials have expressed regret over the loss of innocent life after their missile strike on the US House of Representatives. Two hundred fifty-four members of Conmgress and a school group from Boise, Idaho, were among the dead."We had good intelligence that the former CEO of Union Carbide was in the building," said a government spokesperson. "This man is wanted in India for the deaths of thousands killed by poisonous gas in the city of Bhopal, and he has been in hiding ever since he was indicted. It would have been far more regrettable to have let him get away."
So, what is our argument then?
Posted by zeynep at 07:19 AM | Comments (1)
January 18, 2006
Who's Number Two
The arguments that defend the missile strike in Pakistan, which killed at least 18 civilians, seem to center around the idea that it would be a "regrettable" but worthwile result if Ayman Al-Zawahiri was killed in the process.
Here's a pretty succint explanation why I think that line of reasoning is wrong (even at its face value):
Posted by zeynep at 09:27 AM | Comments (4)
January 16, 2006
Unequal Lives
Comment left on my last post by the Rambling Taoist:
"If an American is only concerned about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?" Martin Luther King Jr. 1963
Posted by zeynep at 11:00 AM | Comments (3)
January 15, 2006
It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do
So, what are we to do if we killed some kids? ::shrug::
<Link>Senator Lott, a former Senate majority leader, and another member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, did not shrink from the CNN interviewer's premise that the raid had been carried out by a C.I.A. Predator.While saying that more information was needed, Senator Lott said that "my information is that this strike was clearly justified by the intelligence."
Senator Bayh also expressed confidence on the CNN program that the attack had been carefully planned and based on "solid information."
"The standard of proof before an operation of that type is extraordinarily high," he said. Of the civilian casualties, he said, "It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?"
Here's Shah Zaman, looking at the rubble of his house, clutching to his two surviving kids. We killed the other three (but what else are we supposed to do?)
And, the moral questions aside, from a purely selfish standpoint, does it make sense to alienate millions of people in that part of the world? Even if we accept the premise that Al-Zawahiri was there, this method makes no sense -- morals aside. What is the point of killing one high level person, who will now be revered as a holy martyr, by a method that makes enemies of millions?
Here are some scene from today's protests in Pakistan which drew tens thousands of people:
Posted by zeynep at 07:40 PM | Comments (2)
January 14, 2006
Who Are We Killing? And Is Anyone Counting?
Imagine a regular day. It's winter so it's cold. Other than that, it's a regular day. Your children are running around. The little one is still coughing so you make sure he puts his hat on. You worry about how to keep the house warm. You go about your business.
Except some people in the other side of the planet have sent a personless machine to kill you and your childern. And that's that.
Al-Qaida's second-in-command was the target of a U.S. airstrike near the Afghan border but he was not at the site of the attack, two senior Pakistani officials said Saturday. At least 17 people were killed.Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that a CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike in the Bajur tribal region of northwestern Pakistan. The two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and Ayman al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola when it came under attack
...
An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours later saw three destroyed houses hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.
...The official added that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at the home of one tribesman named Shah Zaman.
Zaman, whose home was destroyed, told AP he was a "law-abiding" laborer and had no ties to militants. He was not hurt but said three of his children were killed.
...
Doctors told AP that at least 17 people died in the attack. But at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.
"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," Ullah said. "I only seek justice from God."
Zaman said he heard planes at around 2:40 a.m. and then eight explosions. Speaking as he dug through the rubble of his home, he said planes had been flying over the village for the last three or four days.
"I ran out and saw planes were dropping bombs," said Zaman, 40, who lost two sons and a daughter. "I saw my home being hit."
The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants.
...
Will anyone investigate? Will there be compensation -- even though neither would comfort these distraught parents. Will there even be an "oops, sorry about that" ever uttered?
How can we just kill dozens of people like that? No accountability, no remorse. What would the officials who make these decisions say? That war on terror is complicated and sometimes civilians get in the way? Would that be what Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the alleged target of yesterday's attack, would say about attacking the Towers on 9/11?
If these decision to destroy villages on the other side of the world are defendable, let the men and women who make these decisions please stand up and defend them.
P.S. I'm sorry. The missile had hit a "compound." That explains it all. ::slaps forehead::
Great reporting Knight-Ridder journalists!
A CIA-controlled unmanned aircraft fired a missile Friday into a compound just inside Pakistan's border with Afghanistan after the CIA received intelligence that Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant and other senior al-Qaida members were inside, U.S. intelligence officials said.
Do you notice how what the CIA says is reported as fact --it was a compound-- what the people affected say is always hearsay --the villagers said women and children were killed--.
Posted by zeynep at 08:33 AM | Comments (2)
January 08, 2006
A Great American Hero Dies
Hugh Thompson, the army helicopter pilot who turned his guns on the American soldiers who were murdering the villagers in My Lai, and thereby stopped the massacre at that point, died yesterday:
On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally
coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. The second time, he
touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being
menaced by American troops. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the
Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot
any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. None did...
When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party.
"I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy."
I believe that everytime we excuse soldiers who misbehave with feeble excuses --they are untrained, they were following orders, they were scared-- we dishonor the true heroes. This is not to say that those reasons are untrue -- many are untrained, scared and following orders. It is just that such reasons may explain why someone bungles up paperwork required, say, for the Red Cross. It does not explain how someone could possibly not know that it is not right to hang a person by their arms and beat him to a pulp and leave him to die.
And, perhaps most important lesson from Mr. Thompson's life was this: there is something a soldier can do when faced with an atrocity, but only if they have integrity and genuine courage -- the real thing, not something that is assumed to have been handed out to every soldier as standard issue.That's what I'm going to remember the next time someone mentions our brave men and women in harm's way.
Posted by zeynep at 08:34 PM | Comments (3)
January 05, 2006
Because I Found Some Bread in the Garbage Today.
[Rough Translation ]
I am a son in a poor family. I have no father, my mother is ill. We had two liras for bread [about $2] but I am sending you one lira. Because I found some bread in the garbage today. We will break our ramadan fast with that bread in the evening. With this lira, please buy bread for the children in the earthquake. This money is helal [an islamic/folk term meaning untainted, freely given]. I had to pay for the postage so I couldn't send you the whole amount. I apologize.
[Letter, along with a single Lira, sent to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf from a schoolchild from Kutahya, a mid-sized city in central Turkey. The letter was not signed. They have not been able to locate or identify the child.]
Posted by zeynep at 09:15 AM | Comments (1)
January 02, 2006
Would Be Funny If It Weren't So Scary
It's scary how accurate this "parody" is:
A Brief Primer Designed to Help You Understand the Workings of Our New, Streamlined American System of Governmentby Jon Carroll
Perhaps you have been unable to follow the intricacies of the logic used by John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who has emerged as the president's foremost apologist for all the stuff he has to apologize for. I have therefore prepared a brief, informal summary of the relevant arguments.
* * *
Why does the president have the power to unilaterally authorize wiretaps of American citizens?
Because he is the president.
Does the president always have that power?No. Only when he is fighting the war on terror does he have that power.
When will the war on terror be over?
The fight against terror is eternal. Terror is not a nation; it is a tactic. As long as the president is fighting a tactic, he can use any means he deems appropriate.
Why does the president have that power?
It's in the Constitution.
Where in the Constitution?It can be inferred from the Constitution. When the president is protecting America, he may by definition make any inference from the Constitution that he chooses. He is keeping America safe.
Who decides what measures are necessary to keep America safe?
The president.
Who has oversight over the actions of the president?
The president oversees his own actions. If at any time he determines that he is a danger to America, he has the right to wiretap himself, name himself an enemy combatant and spirit himself away to a secret prison in Egypt.
But isn't there a secret court, the FISA court, that has the power to authorize wiretapping warrants? Wasn't that court set up for just such situations when national security is at stake?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court might disagree with the president. It might thwart his plans. It is a danger to the democracy that we hold so dear. We must never let the courts stand in the way of America's safety.So there are no guarantees that the president will act in the best interests of the country?
The president was elected by the people. They chose him; therefore he represents the will of the people. The people would never act against their own interests; therefore, the president can never act against the best interests of the people. It's a doctrine I like to call "the triumph of the will."
But surely the Congress was also elected by the people, and therefore also represents the will of the people. Is that not true?
Congress? Please.It's sounding more and more as if your version of the presidency resembles an absolute monarchy. Does it?
Of course not. We Americans hate kings. Kings must wear crowns and visit trade fairs and expositions. The president only wears a cowboy hat and visits military bases, and then only if he wants to.
Can the president authorize torture?
No. The president can only authorize appropriate means.
Could those appropriate means include torture?
It's not torture if the president says it's not torture. It's merely appropriate. Remember, America is under constant attack from terrorism. The president must use any means necessary to protect America.
Won't the American people object?
Not if they're scared enough.
...
On it goes...
Posted by zeynep at 07:45 PM | Comments (1)
January 01, 2006
It's All Very Simple, Really.
It just never ceases to amaze me how they can twist issues with such a straight face:
On Sunday, the president strongly defended a program that allows domestic spying on those suspected of having ties to terrorist groups. "If somebody from al-Qaida is calling you, we'd like to know why," Bush said in San Antonio.
As if that was ever the question. What they are doing is thwarting what weak oversight there was over domestic spying. Honestly, which judge in the United States would have denied the government the right to wiretap an actual terrorism suspect?
Further, their reckless and illegal domestic program spying program also endangers everyone for a very simple reason. Such a large dragnet is impossibly large to sift through in a meaningful way in real time. If they had a effort targeted at actual terror suspects, they might actually catch someone planning something.
Posted by zeynep at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)