In case you were out drinking last night and missed it, the Wikileaks Iraq document dump was released last night. Here’s the Times coverage, and here’s the Guardian’s. One thing that jumps out is the Guardian’s story of how the US ignored torture, or what the Times calls “detainee abuse”.
Wikileaks
Open Thread: Oopsie!
I think it’s the name of the sub that makes this story particularly delightful:
LONDON — The Royal Navy hastened to assemble an official inquiry Friday evening to explore why Britain’s newest nuclear submarine, H.M.S. Astute, ran aground while undergoing sea trials off the coast of northwest Scotland on Friday morning and remained stuck on a bank of sand and shingle for nearly 10 hours before a tug pulled it free at nightfall. A spokesman for the Royal Navy said divers would be deployed to check concerns that the submarine’s rudder had been damaged.
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The episode was particularly embarrassing for the navy because the vessel, one of the most technologically advanced submarines in the world, is designed for maximum stealth and use in such delicate operations as delivering special forces troops secretly and eavesdropping off the coasts of hostile nations. Its design features and propulsion mechanisms are considered top secret, naval experts said, but both were on display during the grounding…
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Residents along the shore of Broadford Bay — close to the spot on the mainland where Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a k a Bonnie Prince Charlie, set sail for Skye after the collapse of his 1745 rebellion against the British monarchy — said the Astute had gone aground well inside red buoys that mark the navigation channel on the approaches to the Skye Bridge….
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Critics noted that another British submarine, H.M.S. Trafalgar, ran aground off Skye in 2002. At that time, an inquiry found that a crewman had placed opaque tracing paper over a navigation chart to protect it, leading to the submarine’s running onto well-charted rocks.
“A Remarkable Invention”
Tim Heffernan, at Esquire, interviews C.J. Chivers about Chivers’ new history of the AK-47, The Gun:
TIM HEFFERNAN: Would you call the AK-47 a great invention?
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C. J. CHIVERS: Without question the AK-47 was a remarkable invention, and not just because it works so well, or because it changed how wars are fought, or because it proved to be one of the most important products of the 20th century. The very circumstances of its creation were fascinating. The rifle is essentially a conceptual knock-off of a German weapon that had been developed by Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the 1930s and 1940s, and it came together through not only the climate of paranoia and urgency in Stalin’s USSR, but also via the ability of the Soviet intelligence and Red Army to grasp the significance of an enemy’s weapon and willingness to replicate it through a large investment of the state’s manpower, money and time. It was a characteristically Soviet process, and an example where centralized decision-making and the planned economy actually combined to design and churn out an eminently well-designed product. We spend a lot of time denigrating the centralized economy, for good reason. But it just so happened that what the centralized economy of a police state really wanted, it got. It couldn’t make a decent elevator, toilet, refrigerator, or pair of boots. But the guns? Another story altogether.
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TH: Is it the signature weapon of the 20th century? The 21st? Will the AK still be killing in 2110?
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CJC: The Kalashnikov was the most important firearm of the last 60-plus years, so much so that there really is no second place. It is not going to be unseated from its place any time soon, certainly not in our lives.
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TH: What’s memorable about being shot at by AKs — what makes it different from, say, being shot at by a sniper? What does an AK bullet sound like when it goes past your ear? When it hits the wall you’re crouched behind?
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CJC: Actually, in a lot of circumstances, the Kalashnikov is poorly used by people who are not especially good shots, or who are outright bad shots. In these cases, the rifle’s weaknesses emerge. As far as accuracy goes, the Kalashnikov is stubbornly mediocre, and the ease with which it can be fired on automatic means that many people fire it on automatic when they would be better served firing a single, aimed shot. These factors combine in a phenomenon many people who have been shot at by Kalashnikovs have come to be grateful for — a burst of bullets cracking by high overhead. There have been many times when we have shaken our heads in relief and gratitude that the nitwits with Kalashnikovs on the other side of a field don’t quite know how to use the weapon in their hands. Getting shot at by a sniper is a much different experience, and far more frightening. But either experience is, to borrow your word, memorable. These memories are pretty much all bad.
Neither hardware nor military history are in my wheelhouse, but this sounds more like the tongue-in-cheek definition of economics: “It’s the study of who eats… and who gets eaten.” I’m going to look for this issue of Esquire when it hits the newstands, and I may have to buy the book, although goddess knows I don’t need any more additions to the unread stacks.
DADT and the Justice Department
This is something I’ve been really interested in the last couple of weeks, and that is the obligation of the Justice Department to defend extant US Law in the court system. My opinion was that it was the obligation of every Justice Department to defend laws, even ones the current administration does not like, and that seems to be true, but this statement from Ted Olson suggests that after the initial defense, they are not obligated to appeal:
“It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law,” said former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Ted Olson, who is leading the legal challenge of California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state attorney general have both declined to defend the law in court.
“I don’t know what is going through the [Obama] administration’s thought process on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Olson said. “It would be appropriate for them to say ‘the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.’”
Anyone have any examples of a Justice Department initially defending a law and then refusing to appeal?
I’m still of the opinion that once the elections are over, DADT will be repealed with the Defense Authorization Act. The recent court rulings will provide enough cover for a few Senators to vote the other way.
They’ve Already Called Him a Pervert, Now What Will They Do
I’m honestly curious to see what effort the smear machine is going to produce after this:
The Pentagon said Sunday that it has a 120-member team prepared to review a leak of as many as 500,000 documents about the Iraq war, which are expected to be released by the WikiLeaks Web site this month.
Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the timing of the leak remains unclear but that the Defense Department is ready for a document dump as soon as Monday or Tuesday, a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.
After you’ve accused someone of rape, what else do you have left? Imply he’s Freemason or something?
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You Can’t Handle the Truth
Why is the first instinct of every military officer to cover things up:
A US soldier who captured a deadly 2009 rampage at Fort Hood with his cell phone camera testified Friday that he was ordered to erase the video by his commanders.
The video could have provided key evidence at the trial of Major Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who faces 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.
Why would you order that? There seriously is something wrong in the military- I have no idea what they are teaching in the military schools or ROTC, but somewhere along the line they have dropped the ball when it comes to honor, integrity, and recognizing there are laws in the land. The officer corps, when you look at the overt politicking, the proselytizing, the rampant cover-ups, and so on, is just rotten to the core.
Hoocoodanode- Military Occupation Edition
In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies”: specifically, “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan” (the full report is here). Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military occupations.
The bombings will continue until morale improves.
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