May 14, 2009
There have been two recent torture related debates floating around that I have wanted to add my two-cents to. 1. Obama's U-turn on the photos of detainees. Look; I understand the "don't release" side of this argument. I see that...
June 12, 2008
From the NYT story on the Supreme Court rulings that struck down most of the Bush Administration's attempts to keep Al Qaeda out of our courts, comes this wonderful quote by our fearless Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: And...
January 29, 2008
As just about everyone who blogs on military issues has discovered, there is a fascinating Tom Ricks nugget in the Washington Post yesterday. The Air Force (our Air Force) notes that "the budget battle is zero sum - others gain...
November 30, 2007
Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, afraid of being tortured in the United States: The United States is not a safe country for refugees, the Federal Court said Thursday as it ruled that Canada will no longer...
November 01, 2007
I'm just completely reprinting this entire George Packer post from his blog over at Vanity Fair. My level of frustration at our conduct in this war (both on this issue and others - how can America possibly be having a...
August 17, 2007
So last night I also read this piece on torture/interrogation that recently received such high praise. I don't know how much of it is "new" news, but that's perhaps largely immaterial. It's an extremely well written and truly disturbing article....
June 18, 2007
What happens when a state can't - or won't - rely on a standing army to accomplish its security objectives? Privatization. In the case of the war in Iraq, it looks like the private sector has found new and improved...
June 17, 2007
The New Yorker has a depressing profile of the man behind the Taguba report. It's worth a look.By the way, the article also mentions Gen. Bantz Craddock a few times. As he is a WVU graduate it seems entirely possible...
June 16, 2007
With rape an ongoing threat to women serving the United States in uniform, the Bush administration has shown its indifference to truly supporting the troops, demanding that EC be taken off the list of medicines required at military facilities. Apparently...
April 25, 2007
Great story in the Washington Post about the absurdities, tragedies, comedies, triumphs and defeats of being the US Army trying to "win" in Iraq....
April 17, 2007
I was struck by the fact the three of the first four names I've seen listed as killed in Blacksburg were faculty members. Though of course Virginia Tech isn't the only place where professors have been killed this week.In Mosul,...
February 28, 2007
Would someone please explain this to me: After 28 months of incarceration, Jabour -- who was described by a counterterrorism official in the U.S. government as "a committed jihadist and a hard-core terrorist who was intent on doing harm to...
November 02, 2006
In general I think the media is neither liberal nor conservative. It's sensationalist: it wants to sell advertising space (its a business, after all), and the more people who want to read their stories, the more they can charge to...
September 17, 2006
We blew up a country, parked 130,000 of our own troops (and several tens of thousands of our allies) on it, declared we owned the place, and then hired politically loyal but supremely incompetant idiots to rebuild it: Many of...
July 24, 2006
Kung Fu Monkey tells a story about a bar, patriotism, and morality....
July 20, 2006
Yeah, it is oh so arrogant, isn't it? I guess atheists also don't deserve a little hustle on the part of investigators to actually find out who shot them: According to the Army officer who directed the first official inquiry,...
July 18, 2006
As Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes, some 3100 Iraqi civilians died in June alone. Of course, this is either good news or bad news - depending on your ideological position. The Right Wing will argue that this result is good...
July 11, 2006
It's all over the news, and I'm sure we're not the first blog to put it up, but the US government (specifically, the White House via a DoD memo) announced that all detainees worldwide will be treated according to the...
March 25, 2006
I finally finished the most recent issue of The Atlantic today. If there's one article in it you should read, I'd say it's the cover story. It's a chilling (and sometimes nauseating) tale of the British infiltration of the IRA....
March 19, 2006
Long New York Times story today about the "secret" US prison/interrogation facility in Baghdad. Suffice it to say, the abuse their was on par with (or exceeded) the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It gets harder and harder to argue that...
February 15, 2006
It's our responsibility... Via Body and Soul....
February 13, 2006
I've blogged on this before, but recent events demand I alert you to the latest in the story - because the irony is enough to make you fall to the floor laughing, if you can manage to hold back the...
February 10, 2006
Juan Cole has created a post (with photos!) in which he connects the dots in despicable abuses of Lewis Libby (et al.?)....
January 16, 2006
I'll make the assertion that Mohammed Yousry should not be in prison. Read the article yourself, and tell me what you think. I'll also assert that "juror 39" is a moral coward. I can't adequately express my feelings for people...
January 07, 2006
Question 1: Provide a wingy rationale for how discussing the patent failure by the government to equip American servicemen and women with proper armor is equivalent to: a) being un-American b) supporting al Qaeda c) delighting in American Failure in...
January 05, 2006
I happened to be in a different radio market this morning, and as is my wont, tuned into talk radio to see how their local hour was different from ours. The talk down here, of course, was focused on the...
December 08, 2005
Even Torquemada considered water-boarding to be torture. But not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, etc., etc., etc. ... Why in the world do people defend these barbaric and dangerously incompetent fools? Well, I know...
November 19, 2005
An excerpt from ABC News' report on CIA interrogations: According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say...
September 25, 2005
What leads to the kinds of things Billmon describes in these posts? At what cost do we the people ignore the consequences of our foreign policy? At the cost of the humanity of people who learn to find these things...