Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®
I was just curious what everyone felt about Lebanon, and what isgoing to happen. It seems clear (to me, at least), that the American position is to appear to want hostilities to stop, but to give behind the scenes support for Israel to solidify her position and eradicate Hezbollah, while not doing anything to actually stop the hostilities (hence Condi’s refusal to pressure israel).
My question- what is the endgame scenario here?
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics, Science & Technology
I really don’t know how I feel about this:
A 16-year-old cancer patient was headed to court Tuesday with his lawyers to try to block a judge’s order requiring him to report to a hospital the same day for treatment as doctors deem necessary.
A juvenile court judge on Monday denied a request by lawyers for Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his parents to stay his order pending an appeal in a higher court, said John Stepanovich, attorney for Jay and Rose Cherrix.
Lawyers also asked the Accomack County Circuit Court to take over the case and grant the stay, and a hearing was set for noon Tuesday in that court, Stepanovich said.
Abraham and his parents will appear at the hearing with their lawyers, Stepanovich said. He said the Circuit Court was aware that the order required Abraham to be at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk – about 80 miles from the courthouse – by 1 p.m. Tuesday.
“I’ll fight until I do die. I’m not going to let it go,” Abraham said Monday by phone from his home in Chincoteague on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
“I would rather die healthy and strong and in my house than die in a hospital bed, bedridden and unable to even open my eyes,” said Abraham, who was so weakened by three months of chemotherapy last year that at times he could barely walk.
He refused a second round of chemotherapy when he learned early this year that his Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes, was active again, choosing instead to go on a sugar-free, organic diet and take herbal supplements under the supervision of a clinic in Mexico. A social worker then asked a judge to require the teen to continue conventional treatment.
“I’ve got nothing to lose by what I’m doing,” Abraham said. “I truly do believe that this (alternative treatment) is going to cure me.”
This is one of those wierd issues that cuts across so many things I can not seem to get my bearings. My gut instinct is that I detest the notion of the government ordering anyone to receive treatment they do not what or have decided is not in their best interest. At the same time, I think anyone who thinks that alternative holsitic health programs will cure cancer over modern medical practices is an insane crazy person.
I am going to have to mull this one over, but for now, while I disagree with the patient and his parents on their course of action, I oppose the government getting involved. There are a lot of issues here wrapped up in one, and I need to think about this.
by John Cole| 24 Comments
This post is in: Military, War, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
This WaPo report from yesterday outlining the heavy-handed tactics of the 4th ID is pretty disturbing:
its first days in Iraq in April 2003, the Army’s 4th Infantry Division made an impression on soldiers from other units — the wrong one.
“We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly,” recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. “They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians. . . . What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong.”
Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.
The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for “grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers [were] unable to figure out who was of value and who was not,” according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division’s detainee operations by the Army inspector general’s office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.
Of course, as we all know, there is nothing to any of this, as this is merely the liberal media once again attacking Bush through the military. Or, on plane earth, it might be a pretty scary tale that could help to explain how a ‘get tough’ mentality, combined with Rumsfeld’s (“I stand for 8 hours so waterboarding can not possible be torture”) urging, complete and total abdication of oversight by the Republican Congress, as well as a few other variable, helped to turn Iraq into the mess it is today. But, again, don’ worry- things are actually going pretty well in Iraq, it is just that the press only reports the bad things. Like the 100 dead every day.
There are a lot of things that upset me about this article, but I think the one that makes me the angriest is how certain individuals in the leadership have managed to turn the perception of these well meaning American kids- guys and girls from small towns that you and I know, from that of soldiers there to help the Iraqi citizens to a group of thugs. These kids joined the military for all the right reasons- to serve their country, because they believed in the War in Iraq, to help pay for college and cement a successful future, and they, in the process of following orders and doing what they were told to do and probably believe are the ‘right’ things to do, were misused this way in Iraq.
And before Michelle Malkin or one of the other crazies reads this website and sends 9 million irate Rush Limbaugh listeners here to tell me I hate america, I am not calling our troops thugs. I am stating that the leadership has failed them, and that pisses me off.
And before someone defends the practices, read the entire article:
Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division’s approach was indiscriminate. “With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: ‘Round up all the military-age males, because we don’t know who’s good or bad.’ ” Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry’s approach. “Every male from 16 to 60” that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. “And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency.”
The unit’s tactics were no accident, given its commanding general, according to his critics. “Odierno, he hammered everyone,” said Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., a retired Army general who was at Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation agency.
***In July, a member of a psychological operations team attached to the 4th’s artillery brigade, which was known as Task Force Iron Gunner, filed a formal complaint about how its soldiers treated Iraqis.
“Few of the raids and detentions executed by Task Force Iron Gunner have resulted in the capture of any anti-coalition members or the seizure of illegal weapons,” wrote the soldier, whose name was blacked out from documents released by the Army.
Those were the folks (the worst of the worst) that we had in Abu Ghraib. I fully understand that some of them were a menace, but like Gitmo and some detention centers in Afghanistan, I can’t help but feel that more often than not, it is turning out that many of the people we did detain and subsequently abuse were innocents.
I don’t know what to believe anymore, but this is ust another depressing chapter.
by John Cole| 28 Comments
This post is in: Politics
This is odd:
A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.
“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.
Specter’s announcement came the same day that an American Bar Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.
Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds.
“That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement,” said ABA president Michael Greco. The practice, he added “is harming the separation of powers.”
Bush has challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers compiled by Specter’s committee. The ABA estimated Bush has issued signing statements on more than 800 statutes, more than all other presidents combined.
We have discussed the signing statements before, but what I found interesting was that you can actually sue the President. For some reason, I was under the impresssion you could not. Let me rephrase- I though the President could be sued for personal issues, but I was unaware he/she could be sued for official behavior.
by Tim F| 18 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Politics
Bush forgot to tell Congress that Pakistan’s nuclear program has ramped up and begun work on a plutonium bomb:
The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan’s plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal.
[…] The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos. Snow said the administration had “known of these plans for some time.”
The acknowledgment came as arms-control experts and some in Congress expressed alarm about a possible escalation of South Asia’s arms race. Some also sharply criticized the administration for failing to disclose the existence of a facility that could influence an upcoming congressional debate over U.S. nuclear policy toward India and Pakistan.
“If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of a House bipartisan task force on nonproliferation. “The Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely.”
So, why does Pakistan need 50+ plutonium bombs a year when a few is probably enough to keep India off the lawn? Maybe somebody can locate A.Q. Khan and ask him.
One has to wonder how Congress will react to this blatant disregard for its constitutional role in government. Will they convene hearings? Demand accountability? Ha ha, I made a funny. Of course the few who bother to respond will specter.
by Tim F| 34 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
DOJ Civil Rights Office, RIP (via Steve Benen).
At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.
“There has been a sea change in the types of cases brought by the division, and that is not likely to change in a new administration because they are hiring people who don’t have an expressed interest in traditional civil rights enforcement,” said Richard Ugelow, a 29-year career veteran who left the division in 2002.
If the government has stopped litigating traditional civil rights cases, that means the problem must be over! Ken Mehlman should go tell black America so that they can start voting Republican.
The same logic suggests that we defeated terrorism once and for all in early November, 2004. After all, why would those weekly DHS terror warnings just cease like that? Al Qaeda must have given up.
Also, global warming must no longer be a problem because NASA doesn’t plan on studying it anymore (slight exaggeration, although the cynical would argue that the groundwork is clearly being laid).
***Update***
And, we have finally ended the problem of estate tax evasion. Presumably the guys who used to pursue estate tax cheats will spend their valuable government salary pursuing minimum wage cases.
Something Bush Didn’t Bring Up At The NAACPPost + Comments (34)
by Tim F| 23 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
What’s up? I mean other than my lazy-ass beerblogging schedule.