Tony Blair makes one last run at the football . Having whiffed every time so far, this may be the British PM’s last chance for even the tiniest American concession to justify his unwavering loyalty over Iraq. If and when he fails that poodle image will find itself indelibly etched on Blair’s gravestone.
Archives for 2007
No Leniency For Libby
Via Atrios, Dick Cheney’s former top aide can look forward to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by two years’ probation.
Patrick Fitzgerald considered the Cheney-led effort to spread around Plame’s name to be a crime but he lacked the evidence to convict because of false and contradictory statements by the key witness, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The graveness of Judge Walton’s sentence reflects how seriously Walton takes the potential crime that Libby helped to cover up.
Mocking The Letters
Unless you live under a rock, you are probably aware that Scooter Libby is being sentenced today. Prior to the sentencing, friends of Libby submitted letters on his behalf and supprting leniency, and those letters have been made publicly available. I am not devoid of a sense of humor, so I recognize that letters from disgraced pols like Paul Wolfowitz in support of leniency can be unintentionally funny, but I am not going to partake in the mayhem.
A little story- I once worked in a probation office, and one of my chief responsibilities was pre-sentence investigations. When someone was convicted of a crime, it was my job to investigate them, interview them, and write up a detailed report for the court so that they could have some information prior to sentencing. Because of this, I also always attended the sentencing hearings in case any questions about my report would arise. Invariably at every sentencing hearing, even the lowest of the low would trot a bunch of people forward to tell the judge and everyone listening that the convicted was the nicest person this side of Mother Theresa.
After a few months of this, you get jaded. You spend hours with them, are intimate with their transgressions (molestation, child predation, etc.), and then have to suffer through all these people telling you how wonderful the pervert who has been convicted of raping a nine year old is and that the judge should be lenient.
Finally, I had enough one day and I was talking to the judge after the sentencing of one of the more obnoxious offenders, and I asked him- “Doesn’t it make you sick to hear all these people, week after week, vouching for these scum?”
The Judge (who is now on the State Supreme Court), looked at me and said- “I don’t see anything wrong with our system in which even the lowest of the low can have their friends and family vouch for them. If they don’t have their family, what do they have?”
He was right.
A Journey Into the Mind of a Nanny Statist
In the aftermath of a ruling against the FCC, the FCC chairman tells us what really scares the hell out of him:
In a major victory for TV networks, a U.S. appeals court on Monday overruled federal regulators who decided that expletives uttered on broadcast television violated decency standards.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, in a divided decision, said that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was “arbitrary and capricious” in setting a new standard for defining indecency.
The court sent the matter back to the commission for further proceedings to clarify its indecency policy. The FCC, which said it was still studying the opinion, could decide to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court.
The FCC ruled in March 2006 ruling that News Corp.’s Fox television network had violated decency rules when singer Cher blurted “fuck” during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards broadcast and actress Nicole Richie used a variation of that word and “shit” during the 2003 awards.
No fines were imposed but Fox had challenged the decision to the appeals court, arguing that the government’s decency standard was unclear, violated free speech protections and that the rulings had contradicted findings in past cases.
Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin angrily retorted that he found it “hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”
“If we can’t restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want,” Martin said in a statement.
Notwithstanding the fact that the networks were not intentionally broadcasting obscenities, so what if they were? Mr. Martin and everyone else is, to my knowledge, free to turn their tv off or change channels. And should the presence of four letter words become so prevalent, it would be foolish to think that new channels that cater to those with virgin ears would not pop up. They could call them “Family Friendly” channels.
Look at that- the market might take care of things. Republicans did used to believe in that, didn’t they?
A Journey Into the Mind of a Nanny StatistPost + Comments (34)
“Sahel” Long
PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.
The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.
It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.
Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.
“Other Arabs say, ‘You are the country of sahel,’ ” Razzaq said. “It has always been that way in Iraq.”
But in this war, the moment of sahel has been elusive. No faction — not the Shiite Arabs or Sunni Arabs or Kurds — has been able to secure absolute power, and that has only sharpened the hunger for it.
Listen to Iraqis engaged in the fight, and you realize they are far from exhausted by the war. Many say this is only the beginning.
The most depressing thing I have read about Iraq in a long while, courtesy of the Belgravia Dispatch, who also notes the casualty rate for our forces is increasing with the surge.
Buh-Bye
The teevee says that Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) will be indicted this afternoon. Why the delay? Who knows, maybe the paperwork got forgotten behind some kielbasa in the freezer.
America Does Not Torture
Tony Lagouranis, an interrogation specialist for the Army in Iraq, earned his discharge in 2005 and came home. Then the anxiety began. Struggling with the memory of what he did, Lagouranis eventually wrote a book.
In Mosul, he took detainees outside the prison gate to a metal shipping container they called “the disco,” with blaring music and lights. Before and after questioning, military police officers stripped them and checked for injuries, noting cuts and bumps “like a car inspection at a parking garage.” Once a week, an Iraqi councilman and an American colonel visited. “We had to hide the tortured guys,” Lagouranis said.
Then a soldier’s aunt sent over several copies of Viktor E. Frankel’s Holocaust memoir, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Lagouranis found himself trying to pick up tips from the Nazis. He realized he had gone too far.
The roots of principled, humane behavior run deep in America. But given a certain kind leadership and a convenient national emergency they can be torn out.
***Update***
In a second article the New York Times does a disturbingly good job explaining how the Soviet Union’s preferred torture policies became our torture policy. Read the article and then these two posts by Andrew Sullivan. It has become practically impossible to prpoerly my contempt for those who continue to defend this behavior as fine and normal for a country of America’s stature.
That hardly means that I want to suppress the torture-craving audience members who hooted and cheered when Rudy Giuliani endorsed any abuse “that his interrogators could think of.” Just the reverse, for far too long people with this sick mentality have passed themselves off as normal Americans. This fully explains how an utterly amoral, narcissistic son of privilege president and the pathological cases who permeate his administration credibly ran for office. The more people like this hold up their hands and voluntarily identify themselves the easier we can exclude them from polite society. Frankly, I want a party that explicitly supports torture of American detainees, and endorses endless military adventurism as a foreign policy. Throw in the Dobsonsonite christianists and you have a convenient catchbasin for the 26% nutters who wreck the country when they win elections under the guise of reasonableness.
In oher words, I want the modern GOP to stay just like it is.