Out to Lunch...

Conservative Prof here, sitting in for the Liberal JAG. He's going to be away from the blog for a while, at an undisclosed (but work-related) location. As you know, he's opposed to the war. However, he is doing his sworn duty despite that fact, and that integrity is one of the reasons I love him (you know, like a Viking!).

So anyway, keep him in your thoughts and prayers, and look forward to when he comes home safely and begin hectoring those of us on the right again. I know I will.

-CP

Jonah Goldberg

Libs, hold your nose, we're going to discuss an article from the National Review, graciously forwarded by Conservative Prof.

Most of it I did have to hold my nose on - say the first 13 paragraphs. But then Goldberg goes on to kinda criticize the president. Not in the, hey your policies were terrible, kind of way, but more in the, well if he'd just played a little nicer with those bad, bad Democrats, things would have been a lot better, kind of way. For instance, rather than saying that warrantless wiretapping is bad, in and of itself, he says

If we are in a generations-long battle against an existential foe, then you can’t define domestic success as merely steamrolling this or that amendment to the FISA law through Congress. You need to define success as making such reforms uncontroversial. Better to have things be a little more difficult for the CIA, have a bit more oversight at the FBI, if in exchange Democrats see this as their war too.

well actually he doesn't really touch on the fact that the administration wiretapped without warrants and when discussions arose early on about changing FISA, the adminstration said we didn't need to change it and also the fact that the president assured the public that wiretaps of Americans did include warrants, when he knew they didn't--but hopefully you get my point.

And then there's this excerpt

This might sound unfair, but if George Bush had been a better president, John Edwards would never have dreamed of calling the war on terror nothing but a bumper sticker. As it stands right now, if any Democratic candidate other than Joe Biden or maybe Hillary Clinton (!) gets elected we will bug out of Iraq so precipitously it will be indistinguishable from abject defeat in the eyes of the world. And under any of them, the war on terror will become a glorified Elliot Spitzer style legal campaign. That is not a sign that President Bush has adequately led the country or prepared it for the struggles ahead.

First, if Bush had been a better president, the fight never would have been put in terms of a war on a tactic, so Edwards definitely would not have needed the bumper sticker quote. Second, memo to Jonah, in the eyes of the world, it's already an abject defeat. They'd view a withdrawal as the first step in our 12 step recovery from neoconaholism.

The curious case of the smuggled underwear

and speedos? More goings on at Guantanamo in this article by the Independent. Here's a little snapshot about one of the detainees

The second detainee accused of wearing the contraband underwear is a juvenile named Mohammed El Gharani, a Chad national, who was just 14 years old when he was seized by the Pakistani authorities and sold to the US military.
Reprieve say there is no evidence that Mohammed ever travelled to Afghanistan, nor that he intended to do so. Nevertheless, he is now one of 20 juveniles Reprieve has identified as being held in Guantanamo Bay. In interviews with his lawyers he claims he has been terribly abused, including having a cigarette stubbed out on his arm by an interrogator. He states that much of the abuse stems from his vocal objection to being called a "nigger" by US military personnel.

Quote of the day

Stolen from Political Wire...

"The President has been allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, and our U.S. Senate is letting it continue... You know something is wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush."-- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, quoted by NBC News.

Wiretapping only with a warrant, please

So say 64% of Americans anyway. So it's not just us dirty fucking hippies, I guess.

Muslims v. Christians and The Existential Threat

In light of previous posts and comments on these issues, I want to link approvingly to a couple of articles from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. He's had 2 posts which talk about the double standard in dealing with christians versus muslims in this country the last couple of days, stemming from the Kathy Griffin incident. As many of you know, Kathy Griffin won an Emmy for some show (I think it's her D-list show, but that doesn't really matter). Her acceptance speech, at least in part was:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus," an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now."

So Glenn has had 2 posts on the topic, yesterday's "Selective defenders of free expression" and today's "Jamie Kirchick's fantasies of the grave Muslim threat."

In the first post, Glenn points out the hypocrisy of the right's fighting for not allowing Griffin's statement to be broadcast and then exulting in the fact of their successful fight, as compared to the furor over publication of some cartoons which supposedly insulted Mohammed (when they were indignant that such cartoons absolutely, positively should be published - how could they not be?)

The second post points out Jamine Kirchick's statement

The perpetually-outraged Donohue does have a salient point, though I'm not sure he was conscious of making it: There certainly "would have been a very different reaction" had Griffin said, "Suck it, Muhammad." Not only would the liberal PC police be after her head (figuratively), but she would have a fatwa placed on her head (literally), would be placed under 24-hour armed guard and would have to limit any public appearances, if even make them at all. In other words, the Rushdie treatment.
That a comedian cannot make an innocent joke with the word "Muhammad" in it out of fear of getting killed -- and not a supposed ban on "blasphemy" against Catholics, who don't, as a matter of course, burn effigies, destroy buildings, or murder people when someone says or writes something they don't like -- seems to be the larger outrage.

and then goes on to show the irrationality of her "literal fear" by pointing out the many instances of well-known people taking on or otherwise offending islam, yet somehow not having a fatwa placed on their heads or needing 24-hour guard.

I thought he put a good stamp on the article with the following:

Their need to victimize themselves and demonize some Enemy is impossible to overstate. American Muslims live in isolated enclaves, with their communities far and away the most common targets of all the new surveillance powers Kirchick and his comrades have vested in the federal government. There is a grand total of 1 Muslim member of Congress out of 535.
By contrast, entire television networks and talk radio shows and huge political blogs and our country's dominant political party are devoted to a platform of opposing Islam. Yet in Kirchick's mind, it is Muslims who are the all-powerful, oppressing faction, while he and his friends live in tragic oppression under the tyrannical rule of the "liberal PC police" and violent Islamic armies who punish any anti-Islamic commentary, with stigma if not with beheadings. As his comments yesterday demonstrate, that really is the world he inhabits.
They freely traffic on a daily basis in the most strident anti-Muslim commentary with no consequences of any kind, yet simultaneously insist, with operatic melodrama, that anyone who does so is subject to fatwas and must live in seclusion, fearing for their lives. And, of course, whole new wars -- as well as endless expansions of government power -- are justified, actually compelled, by these imaginary threats.

I realize this post may actually touch on 2 ideas, but since the Kathy Griffin story was the genesis for both, I guess I'll go with it. On the first, I agree with Greenwald, who thinks both the Mohammed cartoons and Griffin's comments should have seen the light of day. It's a matter of free expression for me and both sides ought to see that.

On the second, obviously this is a topic heard before on this blog and I agree with Greenwald's take on the irrational fear that folx on right have for muslims. I'm not sure I'm going to get anywhere by making the point that the so-called "islamofascists" are actually a teeny, tiny subset of all of the practitioners of islam and that the fear ought to be focused more on folx that actually are terrorists, rather than, you know, just adherents of a religion.

Notice how Gen (ret) Colin Powell, in an interview with GQ magazine, refers to the threat in terms of terrorism, not muslims. Also notice how he doesn't even see terrorism as the greatest threat facing us.

Isn’t the new global threat we face even more dangerous?

What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?

I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there—ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.

Where does the Right Wing draw the line in political debate?

Evidently, somewhere in the realm of Ronald Reagan.

So first there was a diary posted at DailyKos that was bumped to the front page by one of the editors. It offended by stating:

So is Osama bin Laden truly "evil?" Most people who lost family members at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 would probably consider him to be evil. Was President Ronald Reagan evil? Most residents of Beirut who lost family members when the USS New Jersey rained 2,700 pound Mark 7 shells on residential neighborhoods in 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War probably considered Reagan to have been evil. Bottom line? Bin Laden is no more evil than other revolutionary leaders in other times or even than ordinary national leaders who propel their countries to war for "national honor," or to acquire the resources of others, or even to "do good."

One offended person on the right, Bill Hobbs, considered that this post meant

To translate Kos-speak: Osama bin Laden isn't a terrorist, he's a freedom fighter. And Reagan wasn't a freedom fighter - he was a terrorist.

You can also tell he's really mad that Reagan was compared to bin Laden because of the following paragraph:

DailyKos' attempt to assert moral equivalence between a terrorist leader who masterminded the slaughter of thousands of innocents while aiding a regime that slaughtered women for showing an angle or wearing lipstick and a former American president whose tireless efforts lead to the freedom of millions from Soviet oppression is disgusting.

Actually, when I read the whole article, I see someone who sees bin Laden as "a serious and wily adversary who knows how to manipulate the Arab "street." He analyzes bin Laden's statement out of concern that people will underestimate him simply because he is viewed as being "crazy" or "evil." Seeing that and looking back at the offending paragraph, I see an author who is pointing out different perspectives on how a person can be viewed as "evil," even when that person's supporters might view that person as a hero.

I'm not arguing I agree with everything the guy says, but I definitely agree with his overall aim - to examine the statements of someone who might be considered to be an enemy of the U.S. Still, it's interesting how folx on the right allow themselves to make similar comparisons, such as comparing Al Gore to Hitler or calling John Kerry a traitor, but are then so offended when someone criticizes Reagan or General Petraeus.

Maybe the title of this post should be One-sided rules of political debate, as is Glenn Greenwald's. I quite agree with the points he made in that article, like:

The right-wing site "American Thinker" -- proudly included on Fred Thompson's short blogroll, among most other places on the Right -- published an article in 2005 entitled "Is Jack Murtha a Coward and a Traitor?" (answer: "Any American who recommends retreat is injuring his own country and calling his own patriotism into question"). Here is John Hinderaker of Powerline -- Time's 2004 Blog of the Year -- on our country's 39th President (and, unlike the non-serving Hinderaker, a former Naval officer): "Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side."
When Howard Dean pointed out (presciently) in December of 2005 that the Iraq War cannot be won, Michael Reagan called for Dean to "be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war," and the next day, on Fox News, alongside an approving Sean Hannity, he said: "I have no problem at all, no problem at all, with what this guy is doing, taking him out and arresting him."

He ends with:

But as petty as the story is [referring to the moveon.org ad story], it is also revealing. It has been perfectly fine for decades to impugn the patriotism of those who think the U.S. should stop invading and bombing other countries (how could anyone possibly think such a thing unless they hate America?), while it is strictly forbidden to do anything other than pay homage to the Seriousness and Patriotism of those who advocate wars. Hence, the very people who routinely traffic in "unpatriotic" and even "treason" rhetoric towards the likes of Jack Murtha, John Kerry and war opponents generally feign such pious objection to the MoveOn ad without anyone noticing any contradiction at all.

Appeals Court Vacancies

One of the main reasons I will vote for a Democrat - any Democrat - over a Republican for president is because of how the judicial vacancies have been filled by the current administration and the fact that a future Republican administration would likely do it the same way.

Here's a link to Carpetbagger Report with an article on the most recent incident in this area. Boil it down to the following: Traditionally, a senator from the state where a vacancy is located will get a chance to vet a potential nominee in their state. In this case, the 4th Circuit is located in Virginia. 5 of the 15 seats in the 4th Circuit are vacant. The Republican and Democratic Senators from Virginia, Warner and Webb, agreed on a list of 5 candidates considered qualified and confirmable. Nice bi-partisan solution, right? If you really care about filling the seats with qualified folx, seems easy to choose someone one of your Republican senators has signed off on, eh? Not good enough for the current administration, though. Instead, the president selected 2 guys not on the list, never been judges, both members of the Federalist Society and one was affiliated with the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization known for nominating Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So rather than actually getting something done, the administration would rather pick a fight in order to be able to play some political games and/or rile up its right wing base.

Does Osama deserve due process of law?

I believe even the worst people deserve this - even Osama. So hat's off to Fred Thompson for saying so as well (via Crooksandliars). I also learned that Fred doesn't really go to church all that much. Maybe I really need to give this sexy guy another look?

A Priceless photo side-by-side on Fred Thompson

It's hilarious. Go check it out.

Military slimes Democratic Members of Congress

Here's a link to the WaPo article. Kinda shameful, but at the same time, the PA folx I've known would never do this kind of thing

Interview with Senator Lindsey Graham

I would not normally link to a war-cheerleader site like the National Review, but Senator Graham is about the most high-profile AF JAG out there, so it's interesting to see some of the things he says. I have to say I'm a little intrigued and a little disturbed by what I read. I admit I don't have first hand info on some of things he says, but I do have a little insight I'd like to share.

First, the interviewer points out

His time spent in-country is hardly “the dog and pony show” suggested by Democrat Sen. (and former Marine officer) James Webb on Meet the Press. Graham has worked in Iraq’s backcountry, and he’s been heavily involved in that country’s fledgling judiciary and penal/reconciliation systems

The interviewer also notes that he met the "uniformed and armed Graham last month while having lunch at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad."

First off, Graham was in Iraq, as I understand, on his 2 week reserve tour. A far cry from the 15 months that soldiers and marines pull over there and not even comparable to the 4 or 6 months that Airmen do. Second, even a regular JAG over there is actually in very little actual danger. Of course it's a war zone, but JAGs are almost always in a support or HQ position which is relatively safe. It ain't convoy duty. Furthermore, we're talking about a senior JAG who also happens to be a U.S. Senator. C'mon dude.

Next take this exchange:

W. THOMAS SMITH JR: How many prisoners do we currently hold in Iraq? SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: We’ve got 21,000 prisoners at Camp Bucca [the detainee facility in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border], the theater internment facility. We’ve got another few thousand at Camp Cropper near Baghdad. Three or four years ago, we were projecting to have fewer than 2,000 prisoners. At this rate, we’ll have 30,000 easily by the end of the year.

Two things here: First, holy crap are we holding a lot of prisoners. I'm very disturbed by the numbers we're holding. Second, look at how he projects the numbers to grow. I just don't know a lot about this issue, but I'm going to endeavor to find out.

I'm also very interested in the reasons for the detentions. Senator Graham talks about this a little:

One of my concerns has been — and I’ve been working on this since April — is what kind of process is required to hold someone indefinitely? We’ve got people who have been there for three-and-a-half years. Until recently, they’d never seen a panel. Never had a hearing. It was all done by paper file reviews. They were security detainees, and under the U.N. and article 78 of the Geneva Convention, an occupying force can detain people either in their homes or in an internment facility to protect the population as a whole. A couple years ago, however, we changed our status from being occupiers to allies. Occupation has ended, but we were holding these people as if we were still occupiers.So we needed a process that the U.N. couldn’t undercut — a bilateral process between us and the Iraqis — if we were going to hold these people for years, and some of them we may have to.

Where do I start? So Senator Graham is working on a process to hold someone indefinitely? How exactly is that working to instill the rule of law in a country we're supposedly trying to democratize? And he says that we've been holding people for 42 months as security detainees as an occupying force, but then he also says we stopped being an occupying force about 24 months ago. He makes it sound like we changed something to adjust, but doesn't say exactly what. From reading his remarks, I suspect we did some sort of paperwork transfer to "Iraqi control," but that it's still U.S. soldiers doing the holding. Oh yeah and we only needed to make this change because otherwise the evil U.N. would "undercut" us.

Congressman found dead was a former JAG

Hey, that's the AF Times/AP headline to the article - not mine. Moment of silence for a dearly departed former AF JAG.

Haditha Marine JAG censured by Secretary of Navy

Not much to comment here. Looks like Col. Robert G. Sokoloski, former chief of staff of 2nd Marine Division (Forward) and staff judge advocate general for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, has received a letter of censure from the Secretary of the Navy, Donald Winter. Two other senior officers involved in the incident received such letters, which are

expected to end the military careers of the three officers. When they file for retirement, their request will be reviewed by Winter, who will determine if they will retire at their current ranks or at the last rank at which they served satisfactorily, Marine officials said.

The Republican Credo

Here's a line I heard from Bill Maher that pretty much sums up the Republican Credo in appealling to their base. "We'll kill or deport anyone that scares you." It fits perfectly.

Potemkinskaya Derevnya, aka Potemkin Village

I wanted to highlight a few articles which kind of have a thread running through them. Via Carpetbagger Report, I came across an article from the Washington Post which used the title term in reference to a market in Iraq which is, as a true Potemkinskaya Derevnya (I don't get to show off my russian very often), just a show piece. The article points out

The U.S. military hands out $2,500 grants to shop owners to open or improve their businesses. The military has fixed windows and doors and even helped rebuild shops that had burned down, soldiers and others said...
Some shopkeepers said they would not do business in the market without U.S. support. "The Americans are giving money, so they're opening up stores," said Falah Hassan Fadhil, 27, who sells cosmetics.
1st Lt. Jose Molina, who is in charge of monitoring and disbursing the grant money, said the U.S. military includes barely operating stores in its tally. "Although they sell dust, they are open for business," said Molina, 35, from Dallas. "They intend to sell goods or they may just have a handful of goods. But they are still counted."

Carpetbagger Report notes that before the war this market had 850 shops and now it has 349 (based on the dubious counting referenced above).

Then there's another article, not about the market, but about another kind of Potemkinskaya Derevnya, the dog and pony show. Carpetbagger links to the video of Wolf Blitzer calling a Republican congressman on his talking points of evidence of how the surge is working. The congressman cites the fact that he could walk down the street in Fallujah, but Wolf points out that he did it with a "platoon of Marines" and "a platoon of Marines is a lot of Marines." Just so you know, here's what a platoon of Marines looks like:

In the United States Marine Corps, platoons are commanded by a platoon commander, usually Second Lieutenant,even though the position is intended for a First Lieutenant. The billet of Platoon Sergeant is a position intended for a Gunnery Sergeant, but it is often is held by a Marine ranking from Corporal to Gunnery Sergeant. In Marine infantry units, referred to as regiments, rifle platoons usually consist of three rifle squads of 13 men each, usually lead by a Sergeant or Corporal, with a Navy corpsman, a Platoon Commander, and a Platoon Sergeant. Each squad is further divided into 3 fireteams. Each fireteam consist of 4 marines lead by a fireteam leader, usually a Corporal or Lance Corporal. Each fireteam consists of a rifleman with M16A4, fireteam leader with M16A4 and M203 grenade launcher attachment, an automatic rifleman with a M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), and an assistant automatic rifleman that carries a M16A4 and the extra barrels and ammo drums for the automatic rifleman. A weapons platoon replaces the 3 squads with a 60 mm mortar section, an assault section, and a medium machine gun section (using M240G 7.62 mm machine guns).