Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq.
One of the most powerful videos I have seen for a long while. It is a stunning argument for understanding our own weaknesses and the fallacy of absolute knowledge. Standing in the wintry fields of Auschwitz Bronowski surrounds himself the horrors that are wrought by ideology.
The ADL has released a statement about Sasha “Is it coz i iz black?” Bar0n Cohen’s latest. Basically their fear is that people might be too dumb to get his jokes:
When approaching this film, one has to understand that there is absolutely no intent on the part of the filmmakers to offend, and no malevolence on the part of Sacha Baron Cohen, who is himself proudly Jewish. We hope that everyone who chooses to see the film understands Mr. Cohen’s comedic technique, which is to use humor to unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear.
We are concerned, however, that one serious pitfall is that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.
The sad truth is that I have come across some very smart and supposedly sophisticated people who are bigots as well. While I find Baron Cohen funny because I know he’s white and Jewish I don’t think that knowing that would spark a change in attitudes with some people. The thing that I have found about bigotry is that it’s not rational and that sophistication is not always an inoculation against stupid ideas.
A senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China.
Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China.
“Things are getting bad… and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,” he told a conference in Athens.
“We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it’s unacceptable to do business there.”
Keith Olbermann has a lengthy discussion with Jonathan Turley about todays events:
Turley: “People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It’s otherworldly..People clearly don’t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I’m not too sure we’re gonna change back anytime soon.”
And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant” — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?
The stand-out theme, for me, of the last few months has been the leading role that the US military has taken in trying to protect human rights and solving the Iraq problem. While George was pimping his torture bill the US Army issued a amendment to their manuals that enforced the Geneva Conventions. While George is backing Don Rumsfeld the are numerous officers who are pointing out his multitudinous failings. While George has taken his eye off the ball and is engaging in the election season attacks on the Democrats, the US Army and Marines are doing the research required to ensure that they solve the problem (the very real problem) they are embedded in:
The United States Army and Marines are finishing work on a new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard-learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.
The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.
I’m not naive enough to think that we’re on the road to peaches and cream, but an organization that learns from it’s mistakes and adapts to new situations impresses the hell out of me!
Listening to: Music In My Mind (Soul Avenderz Remix) - Craig Obey
As I have mentioned before one of the most shocking things about the war in Iraq is the fact that it has left so many young kids mangled. I’m glad to see that there is something good emerging from the human carnage… research into limb re-growth and progress in the area bionic limbs. From Wired:
The two groups are sharing $7.6 million in grants for a year to find a way to give humans salamander-like abilities. According to Army Medical Command, 411 soldiers who fought in Iraq and 37 in Afghanistan are amputees as a result of combat wounds. If preliminary research is successful, the scientists could receive more funding for up to four years.
Mitchell, who lives in Ellicott City, is the fourth person — and first woman — to receive a “bionic” arm, which allows her to control parts of the device by her thoughts alone. The device, designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.
It looks like another thread in Bush’s poorly woven anti-terror fabric is being unpicked (and maybe the sensible Republicans are getting their party back from the extremists???):
“It would be unacceptable legally in my opinion to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never had heard the evidence against them,” Lindsey Graham, a former military judge and a Republican senator from South Carolina who is a member of the armed services committee, told the New York Times yesterday. “Trust us, you’re guilty, we’re going to execute you, but we can’t tell you why’? That’s not going to pass muster.”
UPDATE: *Sigh* … the revolt has been averted, to the benefit of an ailing Republican party and few others. I am currently reading The One Percent Doctrine. One of the many interesting points of this book is how violently the FBI recoiled from being involved in the torture of captives.
