Okay, so you walk into a bar and ask the bartender for a Grey Goose martini. And the bartender says, "We don't have Grey Goose. Would you like Ketel One or one of our other fine vodka offerings?" and you tell him no, you want Goose. He repeats--patiently, because he's a nice guy--that they don't have it. That if you insist on a Grey Goose martini, you'll have to go somewhere else, and if you insist on drinking here, you'll have to settle for Ketel (or one of their other fine vodka offerings). So what do you do? Of course you pass a law requiring every bar in town to stock Grey Goose so you can walk in wherever you want and have whatever you want.
NO, YOU DON'T. You decide that Ketel One will make an acceptable martini and order one of those. Or you decide to go down the street to see if another bar has Goose, and you get a martini there. Or you go home, where you have a freezer full of Goose, and you make your own cocktail. Sure, it's disappointing--you wanted that drink at that bar. But you're an adult, so you suck it up and recognize that, in the words of the Prophet, you can't always get what you want.
As of June 4, smoking is forbidden in basically any public area in Birmingham, including less than seven feet from the entrance of any bar or restaurant. In theory, as a dedicated nonsmoker, I should like this. It means I don't cough, I don't get exposed to secondhand smoke, and I can come in after a night out and not have to wash my hair before I go to bed.
But no one has every guaranteed me the right to go wherever I want and not have to wash my hair afterward. And no one has ever marched me into a smoky bar at gunpoint. On nights when I don't feel like getting smoky, I'm perfectly free to NOT GO to any of the establishments where people are smoking. And--up until last week, anyway--no owner of a private business was required to provide me with a smoke-free environment, just because I wanted one.
Showing posts with label governmental cockups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label governmental cockups. Show all posts
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
On the new cola wars
Okay, so in an effort to combat super-sized New Yorkers, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is combating super-sized sodas.
Under the new rule, grocery stores and convenience stores will still be able to carry large-quantity sodas, but places that serve food (rather than just selling it) are restricted to 16 ounces at a time. It doesn't restrict a person's ability to chug down those same 32 ounces in one sitting--it just makes costs the person more money and more hassle. And it also doesn't restrict the size of diet drinks (which can reduce satiation), fruit juices (which can have as much sugar as sodas), or alcohol (which can pickle your liver and make you kill someone with your car or call your ex at 3:00 a.m. and beg him to take you back), because apparently those aren't public health risks.
Gas guzzlers, McMansions, Walmart, Costco: If one thing is certain about American consumer culture is that bigger is better, especially if it is cheaper.
So more than a few New Yorkers took it especially hard Thursday when they learned that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wanted to take away their plus-size sodas in restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, arenas and mobile food carts, as a way, he said, of fighting obesity.
Under the new rule, grocery stores and convenience stores will still be able to carry large-quantity sodas, but places that serve food (rather than just selling it) are restricted to 16 ounces at a time. It doesn't restrict a person's ability to chug down those same 32 ounces in one sitting--it just makes costs the person more money and more hassle. And it also doesn't restrict the size of diet drinks (which can reduce satiation), fruit juices (which can have as much sugar as sodas), or alcohol (which can pickle your liver and make you kill someone with your car or call your ex at 3:00 a.m. and beg him to take you back), because apparently those aren't public health risks.
Monday, November 12, 2007
On a job worth taking seriously
Okay, so if Tom Cruise and I have one thing in common, it's the fact that we both really hate the glib. (If we have three things in common, the other two are our eyebrow-sweeping bangs and the fact that we both like men.) I make it a personal priority to take myself as unseriously as possible -- there is nothing about me as a person that warrants ulcer-inducing image maintenance -- but I take my work very seriously indeed, because I recognize that a lot of other people depend on me doing my job so that they can do theirs. I show respect for others by taking seriously those things that are important to them.
That's why shit like this pisses me off:
"Gu-huck! Gu-huck! I don't know what's goin' on over there in Iraq. One of the perks of the job, I get to hire other people to know stuff for me. Stuff like what laws regulate arguably undertrained and underdisciplined military contractors we've hired to go on over an' maintain the peace using questionable methods. I don't gotta do my own laundry, either; my job is swell."
Now, I don't expect Bush to be able to name the precise statute of federal or international law that tells us precisely how Blackwater is to be supervised and regulated; that really is minutia that the commander-in-chief has every right to delegate out. But with Blackwater being such a controversial presence in the region, he needs to have some vague idea of who is responsible for keeping them in line, and he needs to respect that that is a very important question. That student didn't use her one opportunity to address the president of the United States to ask that question because the one about his favorite color was already taken; she did it because that was a significant concern to her, and out of respect for her, he should have said, at the very least, "That's a good question, and I don't know the answer to it. But I'm going to consult with my secretary of defense and find an answer for you, because it's important that you and all of the American people understand the methods we're using." Because it's important, and his not knowing is not funny.
Bush is a big fan of laughing at his own ignorance.
"Gu-huck! I don't know nothin' about the economy! I got people to know stuff about that, too. I just keep your taxes low and let some economyologist clean up the mess."
This is the man who told the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia that we are "kicking ass" in Iraq. The man who says that, when he was running for the highest office in the country, he "never really thought about the decision to put men and women in harm's way. I never thought that that would happen." The man who has so much respect for his Secretary of State that he's said, "She's the Ph.D. and I'm the C student, and just look at who's the president and who's the adviser."
"Gu-huck! Maybe you got a Ph.D. and all that, Condi, but you still ain't the president! Ain't it just a hoot that we got a moron in charge of our whole entire country?"
I know I'm not the first to observe that, while Bush does a middling-to-respectable job at scripted events that don't include the word "nuclear," he's absolute crap when let off the leash. Well, here's a tidbit for our president that might improve his skills at extemporaneous speaking: You are the only person amused by your own idiocy. You find it hilarious, and the rest of us are appalled. The rest of us are standing slack-jawed at the flippant yokel who don't know nothin' bout no military contractors/economy/war casualties and don't particularly care none.
Your job isn't just important, Mr. President, it's the most important. You are the leader of the most powerful country in the world and the commander-in-chief of a military at war. Even if you don't particularly care about any of that, we do, and out of respect for us, you need to at least pretend it bothers you that you suck noisily at every aspect of your job. Appear to take it as seriously as we do. Pretend. If you have to stand in front of a mirror for hours upon hours until you've mastered the art of simulated gravitas, then do it, because it's hard enough just knowing you're ignorant and apathetic without having to see reminders of it daily on CNN.
That's why shit like this pisses me off:
"Gu-huck! Gu-huck! I don't know what's goin' on over there in Iraq. One of the perks of the job, I get to hire other people to know stuff for me. Stuff like what laws regulate arguably undertrained and underdisciplined military contractors we've hired to go on over an' maintain the peace using questionable methods. I don't gotta do my own laundry, either; my job is swell."
Now, I don't expect Bush to be able to name the precise statute of federal or international law that tells us precisely how Blackwater is to be supervised and regulated; that really is minutia that the commander-in-chief has every right to delegate out. But with Blackwater being such a controversial presence in the region, he needs to have some vague idea of who is responsible for keeping them in line, and he needs to respect that that is a very important question. That student didn't use her one opportunity to address the president of the United States to ask that question because the one about his favorite color was already taken; she did it because that was a significant concern to her, and out of respect for her, he should have said, at the very least, "That's a good question, and I don't know the answer to it. But I'm going to consult with my secretary of defense and find an answer for you, because it's important that you and all of the American people understand the methods we're using." Because it's important, and his not knowing is not funny.
Bush is a big fan of laughing at his own ignorance.
"Gu-huck! I don't know nothin' about the economy! I got people to know stuff about that, too. I just keep your taxes low and let some economyologist clean up the mess."
This is the man who told the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia that we are "kicking ass" in Iraq. The man who says that, when he was running for the highest office in the country, he "never really thought about the decision to put men and women in harm's way. I never thought that that would happen." The man who has so much respect for his Secretary of State that he's said, "She's the Ph.D. and I'm the C student, and just look at who's the president and who's the adviser."
"Gu-huck! Maybe you got a Ph.D. and all that, Condi, but you still ain't the president! Ain't it just a hoot that we got a moron in charge of our whole entire country?"
I know I'm not the first to observe that, while Bush does a middling-to-respectable job at scripted events that don't include the word "nuclear," he's absolute crap when let off the leash. Well, here's a tidbit for our president that might improve his skills at extemporaneous speaking: You are the only person amused by your own idiocy. You find it hilarious, and the rest of us are appalled. The rest of us are standing slack-jawed at the flippant yokel who don't know nothin' bout no military contractors/economy/war casualties and don't particularly care none.
Your job isn't just important, Mr. President, it's the most important. You are the leader of the most powerful country in the world and the commander-in-chief of a military at war. Even if you don't particularly care about any of that, we do, and out of respect for us, you need to at least pretend it bothers you that you suck noisily at every aspect of your job. Appear to take it as seriously as we do. Pretend. If you have to stand in front of a mirror for hours upon hours until you've mastered the art of simulated gravitas, then do it, because it's hard enough just knowing you're ignorant and apathetic without having to see reminders of it daily on CNN.
Friday, November 09, 2007
On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten
Idiot kings are only funny when they're fictional
Okay, so after the Florida victory, I said (publicly, if not online) that if we only won one game for the rest of the season, and that game was against Georgia Tech, I'd be a happy camper.
Of course, that wasn't taking into consideration the Through the Looking Glass Season of 1999, in which, despite the Bulldogs' spotty performances and ongoing tendency to play down to the level of our opponents, Georgia could still take the SEC East if we win out the rest of the season and Tennessee gets a loss. It's funny how having nothing to lose can change your outlook on things; I find myself having to swallow my breezy acceptance of a Georgia loss against Auburn this weekend and lining up all of my football superstitions in preparation for a fight. This weekend, I'm going to be in Athens with Doug, watching the game from Tent City, with Jenna, who will be wearing her Georgia sweater, and I'll be wearing my black Georgia t-shirt, which I'd be wearing anyway, because of the superstition, but it works because Geogia is planning to black out the stadium, but I'd be wearing it anyway because of the superstition, and good golly, being a football fan is more exhausting than one might think. I love it, I'm always glad to see football season roll around, but this might be the first year that I'm also glad to see the end of the season.
Too much pressure. Gah.
The good (for the week ending 11/9):
- the Blackberry 8100
- Local coffee shops that know you by sight and start pouring your skim latte before you even get to the counter
- Locomotive breakdancing:
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail screened a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- working together to actually accomplish something (Nice work, guys! Now let's see what you can do about stem cell research, reproductive rights, and ENDA)
The bad:
- wife-slapping as a socially redeeming quality (warning: logic-free logic may cause nausea and dizziness)
- suspending constitutional rule in the face of national security threats
The Ten:
1. U2, "Numb"
2. Sarah Brightman, "Nella Fantasia"
3. Johnny Cash, "Highwayman" (with Willie Nelson)
4. Tim McGraw, "It's Your Love" (with Faith Hill)
5. The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"
6. Diane Schuur, "Easy to Love"
7. Portishead, "It Could Be Sweet"
8. Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Peek-A-Boo"
9. Jump, Little Children, "All Those Days Are Gone"
10. Diane Schurr, "I Can't Believe You're In Love With Me"
How about you? What's good for you this week?
Friday, October 26, 2007
On the good, the bad, and the Friday Random Ten: Twice As Nice (Or, As Applicable, Not Nice) Edition
Okay, so in lieu of delivering a late Friday Random Ten last week, I opted to skip it entirely, which had the dual side effects of depriving you of its Friday Random Goodness and saddling you with a Friday Random Superten this week. Don't you just hate me? Don't you just?
So here it is:
What's good (for the two-week period ending 10/26):
- health insurance for children whose parents can't afford health insurance but don't qualify for Medicaid
- cold, rainy days and warm wool coats
- cocoa and Bailey's Irish Cream
- the Miracle Beer Diet:
Miracle Beer Diet - Click here for another funny movie.
- "out" fictional wizards
- wingnuts peeing themselves over "out" fictional wizards
- this puppy (I want!)
- this puppy (couldn't you just eat those ears? No? Just me? Moving on)
- punk covers of pop songs
- Now poop on them, Oliver!
What's bad:
- having to give the "it's not you, it's me" speech and actually meaning it
- continuing to blame natural disasters on teh gheys
- taking a nap when it's probably not the best time to take a nap:
(A spokesman for Cheney insists that he was merely "meditating.")
- mal-malapropoisms:
Mitt, to make that one fly, you're gonna want to start with the wrong name and then finish with the right one. 'Sides, it was a whole lot funnier when 30 Rock did it.
The Ten (x2, which makes Twenty):
1. Tina Turner, "The Best"
2. Cherry Poppin' Daddies, "Zoot Suit Riot"
3. 311, "Amber"
4. Sarah McLachlan, "Blackbird"
5. Nina Simone, "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair"
6. Steve Tyrell, "Smile"
7. Sarah Brightman, "Nella Fantasia"
8. The Thompson Twins, "Doctor! Doctor!"
9. Fuel, "Sunburn"
10. Ella Fitzgerald, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"
11. John Coltrane, "Equinox"
12. Claude Debussy, "Fireworks"
13. Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite"
14. Coldplay, "Speed of Sound"
15. Berlin, "Take My Breath Away"
16. South Park, "I've Got Something in My Front Pocket for You"
17. Jump, Little Children, "Mother's Eyes"
18. Howie Day, "Sorry So Sorry"
19. Drowning Pool, "The Game"
20. Annie Sellick, "Everything Happens to Me"
Holy crap, that's the last time I'm doing that. What's good for you this week? What was good for you last week? Or did I lose you back at "Now poop on them"?
So here it is:
What's good (for the two-week period ending 10/26):
- health insurance for children whose parents can't afford health insurance but don't qualify for Medicaid
- cold, rainy days and warm wool coats
- cocoa and Bailey's Irish Cream
- the Miracle Beer Diet:
Miracle Beer Diet - Click here for another funny movie.
- "out" fictional wizards
- wingnuts peeing themselves over "out" fictional wizards
- this puppy (I want!)
- this puppy (couldn't you just eat those ears? No? Just me? Moving on)
- punk covers of pop songs
- Now poop on them, Oliver!
What's bad:
- having to give the "it's not you, it's me" speech and actually meaning it
- continuing to blame natural disasters on teh gheys
- taking a nap when it's probably not the best time to take a nap:
(A spokesman for Cheney insists that he was merely "meditating.")
- mal-malapropoisms:
Mitt, to make that one fly, you're gonna want to start with the wrong name and then finish with the right one. 'Sides, it was a whole lot funnier when 30 Rock did it.
The Ten (x2, which makes Twenty):
1. Tina Turner, "The Best"
2. Cherry Poppin' Daddies, "Zoot Suit Riot"
3. 311, "Amber"
4. Sarah McLachlan, "Blackbird"
5. Nina Simone, "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair"
6. Steve Tyrell, "Smile"
7. Sarah Brightman, "Nella Fantasia"
8. The Thompson Twins, "Doctor! Doctor!"
9. Fuel, "Sunburn"
10. Ella Fitzgerald, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"
11. John Coltrane, "Equinox"
12. Claude Debussy, "Fireworks"
13. Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite"
14. Coldplay, "Speed of Sound"
15. Berlin, "Take My Breath Away"
16. South Park, "I've Got Something in My Front Pocket for You"
17. Jump, Little Children, "Mother's Eyes"
18. Howie Day, "Sorry So Sorry"
19. Drowning Pool, "The Game"
20. Annie Sellick, "Everything Happens to Me"
Holy crap, that's the last time I'm doing that. What's good for you this week? What was good for you last week? Or did I lose you back at "Now poop on them"?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
On information straight from the horse's ass
Okay, so in a staggering display of self-nonawareness, former FEMA director Michael "Heckuvajob" Brown(ie) is offering himself for interviews on the California wildfires. In an even staggeringer display of self-nonawareness-squared, he invokes, in his press release, memories of Hurricane Katrina. On purpose.
I've got to tell you, though, that that part of the state is prime territory for wildfires, not to mention earthquakes and severe weather. I can't imagine that people weren't aware of that risk when they chose -- chose -- to buy property there. And those 10,000 people taking shelter at Qualcomm Stadium, did they not hear about the encroaching fires? How long has this been in the news? How much time has there been for them to evacuate to safe areas? Were they in denial, or were they just too lazy to get out of there when there was time to move to safer ground?
I've got to tell you, I'm not sure that Malibu really deserves any kind of federal relief funds. People had to have known the dangers of the area when they moved there. And considering the little that southern California contributes to society -- overpaid movie stars, disgusting liberal celebrities who don't know when to keep their mouths shut, the distinct lack of traditional American values that is Hollywood -- I really can't say that that area is worth rebuilding when this is all over.
Mr. Brown can speak to the turmoil being caused by the California wildfires as well as to some of the new processes in disaster relief efforts that will help to restore California communities. He can offer advice to residents and businesses on proper relief and recovery efforts and provide suggestions for future disaster preparedness.
[…]
Currently, the brush fires are affecting hundreds of local businesses and have forced more than 500,000 people out of their homes. Of these 500,000 people, an estimated 10,000 of them have taken shelter at the local NFL stadium, Qualcomm, vaguely reminiscent of circumstances of Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years ago.
I've got to tell you, though, that that part of the state is prime territory for wildfires, not to mention earthquakes and severe weather. I can't imagine that people weren't aware of that risk when they chose -- chose -- to buy property there. And those 10,000 people taking shelter at Qualcomm Stadium, did they not hear about the encroaching fires? How long has this been in the news? How much time has there been for them to evacuate to safe areas? Were they in denial, or were they just too lazy to get out of there when there was time to move to safer ground?
I've got to tell you, I'm not sure that Malibu really deserves any kind of federal relief funds. People had to have known the dangers of the area when they moved there. And considering the little that southern California contributes to society -- overpaid movie stars, disgusting liberal celebrities who don't know when to keep their mouths shut, the distinct lack of traditional American values that is Hollywood -- I really can't say that that area is worth rebuilding when this is all over.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
On a final observance
Okay, so this is going to be my last post on 9/11. It's sort of become a requirement among even the most vaguely political bloggers to post on September 11 and remember where we were when we heard about the attacks, whether or not we knew or thought we knew someone in the towers or the Pentagon, what happened in the immediate aftermath, what's happened since, what's happened with the families of the victims, why those attacks are such a vital (if you're blogging from the right) or ridiculous (blogging from the left) justification for our current war, and why everyone on the other side of the argument obviously hates America. And then it's pointed out that 9/11 changed everything.
Except the more I thought about it today, the more I realized: 9/11 changed nothing.
Now, don't get me wrong; there are people whose lives are deeply and irreconcilably different since those attacks. The families of these people, for instance. They had to deal with the fear to begin with, and then the pain of losing a loved one, and have since been bombarded with constant images of the attacks and been dragged around and used - by both sides - as political tools and pawns. And the workers who helped to treat survivors and clean up and rebuild, the ones who are now sick after being assured by the government that they were in absolutely no danger, many of whom are being denied affordable treatment for those same illnesses because God forbid we should have anything approaching universal health care. Those people who were directly and immediately touched by the attacks have their own unique experiential set resulting from that day, a set with which I sympathize and which I hope never to be able to fully understand. I begrudge those people no amount of grief or anger, and however they choose to mourn, publicly or privately, I offer no argument.
But for the vast majority of Americans, 9/11 changed nothing. And not just because so many of us were merely riding the grief train in the months following the attacks, manufacturing grief and fear beyond what we sincerely felt so that we could feel like a part of this national outpouring of emotion. And not because nothing changed. Our world right now is, in fact, quite different from the way it was before the attacks.
Since the attacks, Americans have become more jingoistic. We've lashed out at well-meaning allies. We've alienated just about every other country in the entire world with our foreign policy. In the co-opted name of the victims of the attacks, we've sent the men and women who've vowed to keep us safe to invade another, un-9/11-adjacent country without provocation. We're embroiled in a war seemingly without end. We've renamed "French fries" "Freedom fries" and then changed the name back. We've held up the families of 9/11 victims as justification for war, and then we've chastised them when they protested such exploitation or grieved in a government-nonapproved fashion. We've attacked Arabs for possibly being Muslims, and we've attacked Sikhs for looking like Arabs. We've decried the abuses of women in Arab countries, and then we've spat on women on our own city streets for daring to wear the hijab. We've convinced ourselves that the Iraqi people are innocent and worthy of our help and simultaneously ungrateful wretches who deserve anything that comes to them. We've made it okay, even admirable, to be xenophobic and hateful. We've normalized racial profiling. We've criminalized dissent. We've submitted to unconstitutional government invasions of our privacy. We've consented to torture. We've reduced the American flag to an item of apparel and the attacks of September 11 to a smoking-tower logo and "We'll Never Forget" suitable for t-shirt, bumper sticker, snow globe, or Commemorative Coin Forged From Genuine Ground Zero Salvaged Steel. Between American casualties in Iraq and lives lost in the attacks themselves, we're nearly 7,000 fewer than we were six years and a day ago.
But those changes aren't because of 9/11. Correlation vs. causation; those changes happened after the September 11 attacks, but not because of them. Those changes happened because someone - lots of someones - saw an opportunity to turn a tragedy into a campaign.
The 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, but we're not at war with Saudi Arabia. The attacks were coordinated by Osama bin Laden, but we're no closer to capturing him than we've ever been. Our airport security is and has been weak as water, but the best efforts made for our safety involve putting our travel-sized shampoo bottles in Ziploc bags. The terrorist cells that constantly threaten our safety are holed up on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but our troops are too bogged down in Iraq and our global diplomacy cred is so shot that we can't get into other countries to punish those responsible for the attacks. We're told that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, and all the while the government is systematically stripping those freedoms away unquestioned. We've given complete control of our lives to a man who takes vacations during natural disasters and hasn't mastered the pronunciation of "nuclear" yet and has fed us one untruth after another to justify his war, because he looks convincing in a cowboy hat, and because anyone preaching reason and moderation is far too removed from the "boot in the ass" misguided-revenge-seekers who appeal to the lesser angels of our nature.
But 9/11 didn't do any of that. We did that. We just used 9/11 as an excuse.
You know what would be awesome? If 9/11 really did change everything. If we took that feeling of global unity - "We are all Americans" - that immediately followed the attacks and ran with it. If, instead of alienating our allies and neighbors by lashing our randomly, we worked together to rout out the true causes of global terrorism. If we made it a priority to understand other cultures instead of demonizing them. If we reached out to grieving families instead of using them for our own purposes. If we stepped outside of our own personal bubbles and looked to happiness other than our own. If we reacted with compassion instead of fear. If, instead of playing directly from the terrorists' script and letting our lives turn into a reactionary chaos of fear and mistrust and hatred, we resolved to make our country, and our place in the world, stronger, safer, more welcoming, more understanding, more open. If we realized that life is precious and can be gone in an instant, and that the only way to honor that is to live life, with others, rather than cowering in fear.
We've been there. I've seen it. Right after the attacks, back before those in power set to really cultivating the fear that the attacks seeded, blood banks were overflowing with donors and state troopers were running bucket-brigade relays to get that blood where it needed to go. Anyone grieving or afraid had a set of available arms nearby. Some churches and synagogues and mosques were hosting seminars and gatherings to promote understanding and correct misconceptions between faiths. Firefighters held out boots at traffic lights, and those boots were always full to overflowing with donations. During that first flush, when news coverage showed nothing but disaster footage, for whatever reason we turned to each other in the US and in the rest of the world, and the sheer potential of it all was amazing. Back before it all got really dirty, it was the one shining hope that could arise from the rubble like the clichéd flower poking out of a crack in a sidewalk.
We can be that potential. We can choose, even at this late and seemingly immutable point, to go back and find that place where we could make a good thing out of something that seemed completely devoid of any goodness. And when we do that, you'll get another September post for me saying that I knew all along how 9/11 changed everything.
Except the more I thought about it today, the more I realized: 9/11 changed nothing.
Now, don't get me wrong; there are people whose lives are deeply and irreconcilably different since those attacks. The families of these people, for instance. They had to deal with the fear to begin with, and then the pain of losing a loved one, and have since been bombarded with constant images of the attacks and been dragged around and used - by both sides - as political tools and pawns. And the workers who helped to treat survivors and clean up and rebuild, the ones who are now sick after being assured by the government that they were in absolutely no danger, many of whom are being denied affordable treatment for those same illnesses because God forbid we should have anything approaching universal health care. Those people who were directly and immediately touched by the attacks have their own unique experiential set resulting from that day, a set with which I sympathize and which I hope never to be able to fully understand. I begrudge those people no amount of grief or anger, and however they choose to mourn, publicly or privately, I offer no argument.
But for the vast majority of Americans, 9/11 changed nothing. And not just because so many of us were merely riding the grief train in the months following the attacks, manufacturing grief and fear beyond what we sincerely felt so that we could feel like a part of this national outpouring of emotion. And not because nothing changed. Our world right now is, in fact, quite different from the way it was before the attacks.
Since the attacks, Americans have become more jingoistic. We've lashed out at well-meaning allies. We've alienated just about every other country in the entire world with our foreign policy. In the co-opted name of the victims of the attacks, we've sent the men and women who've vowed to keep us safe to invade another, un-9/11-adjacent country without provocation. We're embroiled in a war seemingly without end. We've renamed "French fries" "Freedom fries" and then changed the name back. We've held up the families of 9/11 victims as justification for war, and then we've chastised them when they protested such exploitation or grieved in a government-nonapproved fashion. We've attacked Arabs for possibly being Muslims, and we've attacked Sikhs for looking like Arabs. We've decried the abuses of women in Arab countries, and then we've spat on women on our own city streets for daring to wear the hijab. We've convinced ourselves that the Iraqi people are innocent and worthy of our help and simultaneously ungrateful wretches who deserve anything that comes to them. We've made it okay, even admirable, to be xenophobic and hateful. We've normalized racial profiling. We've criminalized dissent. We've submitted to unconstitutional government invasions of our privacy. We've consented to torture. We've reduced the American flag to an item of apparel and the attacks of September 11 to a smoking-tower logo and "We'll Never Forget" suitable for t-shirt, bumper sticker, snow globe, or Commemorative Coin Forged From Genuine Ground Zero Salvaged Steel. Between American casualties in Iraq and lives lost in the attacks themselves, we're nearly 7,000 fewer than we were six years and a day ago.
But those changes aren't because of 9/11. Correlation vs. causation; those changes happened after the September 11 attacks, but not because of them. Those changes happened because someone - lots of someones - saw an opportunity to turn a tragedy into a campaign.
The 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, but we're not at war with Saudi Arabia. The attacks were coordinated by Osama bin Laden, but we're no closer to capturing him than we've ever been. Our airport security is and has been weak as water, but the best efforts made for our safety involve putting our travel-sized shampoo bottles in Ziploc bags. The terrorist cells that constantly threaten our safety are holed up on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but our troops are too bogged down in Iraq and our global diplomacy cred is so shot that we can't get into other countries to punish those responsible for the attacks. We're told that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, and all the while the government is systematically stripping those freedoms away unquestioned. We've given complete control of our lives to a man who takes vacations during natural disasters and hasn't mastered the pronunciation of "nuclear" yet and has fed us one untruth after another to justify his war, because he looks convincing in a cowboy hat, and because anyone preaching reason and moderation is far too removed from the "boot in the ass" misguided-revenge-seekers who appeal to the lesser angels of our nature.
But 9/11 didn't do any of that. We did that. We just used 9/11 as an excuse.
You know what would be awesome? If 9/11 really did change everything. If we took that feeling of global unity - "We are all Americans" - that immediately followed the attacks and ran with it. If, instead of alienating our allies and neighbors by lashing our randomly, we worked together to rout out the true causes of global terrorism. If we made it a priority to understand other cultures instead of demonizing them. If we reached out to grieving families instead of using them for our own purposes. If we stepped outside of our own personal bubbles and looked to happiness other than our own. If we reacted with compassion instead of fear. If, instead of playing directly from the terrorists' script and letting our lives turn into a reactionary chaos of fear and mistrust and hatred, we resolved to make our country, and our place in the world, stronger, safer, more welcoming, more understanding, more open. If we realized that life is precious and can be gone in an instant, and that the only way to honor that is to live life, with others, rather than cowering in fear.
We've been there. I've seen it. Right after the attacks, back before those in power set to really cultivating the fear that the attacks seeded, blood banks were overflowing with donors and state troopers were running bucket-brigade relays to get that blood where it needed to go. Anyone grieving or afraid had a set of available arms nearby. Some churches and synagogues and mosques were hosting seminars and gatherings to promote understanding and correct misconceptions between faiths. Firefighters held out boots at traffic lights, and those boots were always full to overflowing with donations. During that first flush, when news coverage showed nothing but disaster footage, for whatever reason we turned to each other in the US and in the rest of the world, and the sheer potential of it all was amazing. Back before it all got really dirty, it was the one shining hope that could arise from the rubble like the clichéd flower poking out of a crack in a sidewalk.
We can be that potential. We can choose, even at this late and seemingly immutable point, to go back and find that place where we could make a good thing out of something that seemed completely devoid of any goodness. And when we do that, you'll get another September post for me saying that I knew all along how 9/11 changed everything.
On a question: How many Capitol police officers does it take to take down a minister?
Okay, so the answer: Six.
Our rights to peacefully assemble and to petition our government for redress now in the crapper, I propose we move on to that whole "quartering soldiers" thing. That'n's been begging to be discarded for a while now.
Our rights to peacefully assemble and to petition our government for redress now in the crapper, I propose we move on to that whole "quartering soldiers" thing. That'n's been begging to be discarded for a while now.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
On shrinking the government
Okay, so I'm an enthusiastic and unashamed therapygoer myself, and what's more, I don't think I've ever met a single person who wouldn't benefit from a couple or five couch sessions with a professional to help straighten out their heads and articulate the truth that they've been unwilling to tell themselves. And no one would benefit more from a little head-straightening and truth-articulating than the folks currently in charge of our government. Now, I won't pretend to be a licensed therapist, but I've spent enough time with them to have picked up a thing or two to my own benefit and the benefit of others.
I will dispense this advice now.
1. You can't control anyone's actions but your own.
A progress report due out this week is expected to report no progress in Iraq since the surge. The president has said that he doesn't intend to withdraw troops or even shift his strategy in light of the new information and that critics should just wait for General Petraeus's report in September. Then he once refreshed the tired old implication that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks. But mostly, the message was "stay the course and give the surge a chance to work."
Here's the problem, six months into the surge: It's not not-working because of the troops (although their very presence is seen as an irritant by many of the people they're bound to protect). It's not-working because of the Iraqi government. We can send as many or as few troops as we want, but the progress that needs to be made needs to be made by Nouri al Maliki and his pals. More Iraqi police and soldiers need to be trained, but they also need to be held accountable, to be required to show up for work, to be properly armed and armored, and to be loyal to the government and the people of Iraq rather than to the militias - and that's something that Iraq has to do. The militias themselves need to be put down and Muqtada al Sadr stripped of his power and his influence instead of just shuffled around until the heat is off and his armies can rise again - and that's something that Iraq has to do. The government needs to find a way to deal with religious freedom, civil conflict, and oil revenues - and that's something Iraq has to do.
George, you can plead with them. You can bargain with them. You can threaten to withdraw troops or withhold aid. You can negotiate with them. You can send advisors to help them plan to disarm and dissolve the militias, to build the police forces and the Army, and to distribute oil revenues, and they might be good plans. But what you can't do is make them do what they need to do. You can only control what you do. And when they choose not to do what they need to do, as they have been doing for two years now, you have only two choices: to keep troops there or to begin a phased withdrawal. You can't make the Iraqi government do what they're supposed to do, but you can control whether or not American troops are in danger while they don't do it.
2. If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting.
In an effort to shake us up and keep us good and scared when we might start to be not-scared, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that chances are good for a terrorist attack this summer. He said there wasn't evidence of imminent attack, but that his "gut feeling" and past terrorist activity patterns made a "spectacular" attack more likely.
"We strike at them, we degrade them, but they rebuild." It's a pattern. "[Y]ou see an enemy that is improving itself just as we're improving ourselves." Pattern. We're in a war with the sole purported goal of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, and what we get is... patterns. Terrorist activity in north Africa, Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, "spectacular" summertime terror threats in the US, and we degrade them, but they rebuild. Over and over and over.
Do something different, y'all. If what you're doing only knocks them down a little bit, and then they come back with a new plan or strike from a different direction or, heck, rebuild exactly where they were before with nobody saying a thing about it (Taliban, I'm looking at you), then what you're doing isn't working. We've been "staying the course" since 2003, and since 2003, we've been getting the same dismal results. Don't stick with a bum plan. My dad likes to say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I'm just sayin'.
3. You teach people how to treat you.
If you insist on being treated with respect, people will treat you that way. If people give you crap and you take it, they'll learn that you accept crap, and they'll continue giving you crap. If Alberto Gonzales lies on the stand and otherwise obstructs justice, Congress, and you don't call him on it, he's going to keep lying. Because he knows he can get away with lying to you. When Bush tells you you can't talk to his aides because he's extra special and above the law, Congress, you know that he isn't, but if you don't tell him otherwise, he's going to keep stonewalling you. Because he knows he can get away with stonewalling you. When the White House continues pushing the myth that Iraq had a hand in the September 11 attacks, new media, and you don't call them on it, they're going to keep lying to you. Because they know that can get away with lying to you.
The only way to stop the lying, to make them respect you and stop treating you like an idiot and/or particularly gullible toddler, is to call them on it. Call them on it every time. Let them know that you're paying attention and that you aren't afraid to use the brains God gave you and the free speech the Constitution guarantees you. You have to respect yourselves before anyone else will respect you.
4. When you find yourself on the wrong road, the worst thing you can do is keep driving.
Listen, President Bush, we know you've got a lot on your mind right now. You're in the middle of this war that isn't going nearly as well as Dick and Karl told you it would, and you're getting the blame for it. You're trying your hardest to show up your daddy and prove to him that you're just as smart and competent and take-charge as your brother Jeb, but every time you do, you end up screwing it up and looking even more incompetent in a real sitcom kind of way. Your supporters are shearing off. You recently pardoned Scooter Libby so that Dick Cheney, your surrogate father figure, won't be mad at you. George, you made a little girl cry.
You know that something is wrong. You can surely sense that something is very, very wrong. And I know that right now, you're trying to go along to get along, to do whatever you can to skate until the inauguration in 2009 when you officially won't have to worry about any of this terrorism crap or immigration crap or healthcare crap or global warming crap or any of the other crap that people seem to want you to care about. But putting on the blinkers and driving resolutely forward is not the way to go, George. Right now, you're gearing yourself up for a legacy as The President Who Screwed Everything Up So Badly We're Still Trying to Quantify the Fallout. If you want to avoid that fate, the only way to do it is to stop dead in your tracks this second and reevaluate. You need to talk with some people who know how to deal with these things - swallow your pride and talk to your dad's folks, for God's sake - and figure out what you want your legacy to be and how you can get there from where you are.
I can recommend a couple of therapists, if you'd like.
I will dispense this advice now.
1. You can't control anyone's actions but your own.
A progress report due out this week is expected to report no progress in Iraq since the surge. The president has said that he doesn't intend to withdraw troops or even shift his strategy in light of the new information and that critics should just wait for General Petraeus's report in September. Then he once refreshed the tired old implication that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks. But mostly, the message was "stay the course and give the surge a chance to work."
Here's the problem, six months into the surge: It's not not-working because of the troops (although their very presence is seen as an irritant by many of the people they're bound to protect). It's not-working because of the Iraqi government. We can send as many or as few troops as we want, but the progress that needs to be made needs to be made by Nouri al Maliki and his pals. More Iraqi police and soldiers need to be trained, but they also need to be held accountable, to be required to show up for work, to be properly armed and armored, and to be loyal to the government and the people of Iraq rather than to the militias - and that's something that Iraq has to do. The militias themselves need to be put down and Muqtada al Sadr stripped of his power and his influence instead of just shuffled around until the heat is off and his armies can rise again - and that's something that Iraq has to do. The government needs to find a way to deal with religious freedom, civil conflict, and oil revenues - and that's something Iraq has to do.
George, you can plead with them. You can bargain with them. You can threaten to withdraw troops or withhold aid. You can negotiate with them. You can send advisors to help them plan to disarm and dissolve the militias, to build the police forces and the Army, and to distribute oil revenues, and they might be good plans. But what you can't do is make them do what they need to do. You can only control what you do. And when they choose not to do what they need to do, as they have been doing for two years now, you have only two choices: to keep troops there or to begin a phased withdrawal. You can't make the Iraqi government do what they're supposed to do, but you can control whether or not American troops are in danger while they don't do it.
2. If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting.
In an effort to shake us up and keep us good and scared when we might start to be not-scared, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that chances are good for a terrorist attack this summer. He said there wasn't evidence of imminent attack, but that his "gut feeling" and past terrorist activity patterns made a "spectacular" attack more likely.
You look at their activities around the world: bombings in North Africa from Al Qaeda, conflict in Somalia with radical Islamist groups contending for control over Somalia, training activity taking place in South Asia, the Taliban continuing to try to regain control of parts of Afghanistan.
I think if you look at that picture you see an enemy that is improving itself just as we're improving ourselves. They can't afford to remain static just as we can't afford to remain static. Our edge is technology and the vigilance of the ordinary citizen.
....
I think we do see a greater span of activity in South Asia, so we do worry about whether they are rebuilding their capabilities. We strike at them, we degrade them, but they rebuild. All these things give me kind of a gut feeling, not that I have a specific threat that I have in mind right now, but we are entering a period of increased vulnerability.
"We strike at them, we degrade them, but they rebuild." It's a pattern. "[Y]ou see an enemy that is improving itself just as we're improving ourselves." Pattern. We're in a war with the sole purported goal of fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, and what we get is... patterns. Terrorist activity in north Africa, Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, "spectacular" summertime terror threats in the US, and we degrade them, but they rebuild. Over and over and over.
Do something different, y'all. If what you're doing only knocks them down a little bit, and then they come back with a new plan or strike from a different direction or, heck, rebuild exactly where they were before with nobody saying a thing about it (Taliban, I'm looking at you), then what you're doing isn't working. We've been "staying the course" since 2003, and since 2003, we've been getting the same dismal results. Don't stick with a bum plan. My dad likes to say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I'm just sayin'.
3. You teach people how to treat you.
If you insist on being treated with respect, people will treat you that way. If people give you crap and you take it, they'll learn that you accept crap, and they'll continue giving you crap. If Alberto Gonzales lies on the stand and otherwise obstructs justice, Congress, and you don't call him on it, he's going to keep lying. Because he knows he can get away with lying to you. When Bush tells you you can't talk to his aides because he's extra special and above the law, Congress, you know that he isn't, but if you don't tell him otherwise, he's going to keep stonewalling you. Because he knows he can get away with stonewalling you. When the White House continues pushing the myth that Iraq had a hand in the September 11 attacks, new media, and you don't call them on it, they're going to keep lying to you. Because they know that can get away with lying to you.
The only way to stop the lying, to make them respect you and stop treating you like an idiot and/or particularly gullible toddler, is to call them on it. Call them on it every time. Let them know that you're paying attention and that you aren't afraid to use the brains God gave you and the free speech the Constitution guarantees you. You have to respect yourselves before anyone else will respect you.
4. When you find yourself on the wrong road, the worst thing you can do is keep driving.
Listen, President Bush, we know you've got a lot on your mind right now. You're in the middle of this war that isn't going nearly as well as Dick and Karl told you it would, and you're getting the blame for it. You're trying your hardest to show up your daddy and prove to him that you're just as smart and competent and take-charge as your brother Jeb, but every time you do, you end up screwing it up and looking even more incompetent in a real sitcom kind of way. Your supporters are shearing off. You recently pardoned Scooter Libby so that Dick Cheney, your surrogate father figure, won't be mad at you. George, you made a little girl cry.
You know that something is wrong. You can surely sense that something is very, very wrong. And I know that right now, you're trying to go along to get along, to do whatever you can to skate until the inauguration in 2009 when you officially won't have to worry about any of this terrorism crap or immigration crap or healthcare crap or global warming crap or any of the other crap that people seem to want you to care about. But putting on the blinkers and driving resolutely forward is not the way to go, George. Right now, you're gearing yourself up for a legacy as The President Who Screwed Everything Up So Badly We're Still Trying to Quantify the Fallout. If you want to avoid that fate, the only way to do it is to stop dead in your tracks this second and reevaluate. You need to talk with some people who know how to deal with these things - swallow your pride and talk to your dad's folks, for God's sake - and figure out what you want your legacy to be and how you can get there from where you are.
I can recommend a couple of therapists, if you'd like.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
On (non-celebrity) criminals walking
Okay, so I toldja, I toldja, I toldja I toldja I toldja. And I wish I could get some kind of pleasure out of "I told you so," but it sucks being right in this political climate.
My bitter tea comes courtesy of reader Duff, who points us to this:
Born in Qatar, al-Marri lived with his wife and children in Peoria, Illinois, where he was pursuing a master's degree and where he was arrested in 2001 as a"material witness" and al-Qaeda collaborator with Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He has been held without charges in various locations since then, most recently a brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Though he never personally took action against the United States, it's arguable that he participated in and assisted actions threatening to national security.
But because our president has declared himself above and untouched by the Constitution, Ali al-Marri may get to walk.
Al-Marri could be a real threat. He has been in government custody. It's probably better for everyone that he remain in government custody. The United States has numerous legal, ethical, constitutionally sound mechanisms by which he could remain in custody, if only George Bush hadn't gotten all "I'm the decider," declared him an "enemy combatant," and held him outside of those legal options.
The next steps will, most likely, be those legal, ethical, constitutionally sound mechanisms. With the civilian trial of Jose Padilla currently underway, we have proof that we can, in fact, bring terrorists to justice and keep our country safe without violating the Constitution that defends the rights of every U.S. citizen and legal resident. We can protect our country from terrorists and protect civil liberties at the same time. It just makes you wonder why, if those mechanisms are in place, our own president - who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution - continues to insist on using unconstitutional, illegal tactics that only endanger national security and give Americans reason to fear their own government.
And that, really, is what makes the ruling from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals so valuable. With this ruling, we have evidence that someone out there, some branch of the government, is interested in protecting Americans from being rounded up by the government and held without trial. If our president isn't going to do it, someone has to.
My bitter tea comes courtesy of reader Duff, who points us to this:
The Bush administration cannot legally detain a U.S. resident it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday. The court said sanctioning the indefinite detention of civilians would have "disastrous consequences for the constitution—and the country."
In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident, of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court.
It ruled the government must allow al-Marri to be released from military detention."
Born in Qatar, al-Marri lived with his wife and children in Peoria, Illinois, where he was pursuing a master's degree and where he was arrested in 2001 as a"material witness" and al-Qaeda collaborator with Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He has been held without charges in various locations since then, most recently a brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Though he never personally took action against the United States, it's arguable that he participated in and assisted actions threatening to national security.
But because our president has declared himself above and untouched by the Constitution, Ali al-Marri may get to walk.
Al-Marri could be a real threat. He has been in government custody. It's probably better for everyone that he remain in government custody. The United States has numerous legal, ethical, constitutionally sound mechanisms by which he could remain in custody, if only George Bush hadn't gotten all "I'm the decider," declared him an "enemy combatant," and held him outside of those legal options.
"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians . . . would have disastrous consequences for the constitution -- and the country," U.S. Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority.
The next steps will, most likely, be those legal, ethical, constitutionally sound mechanisms. With the civilian trial of Jose Padilla currently underway, we have proof that we can, in fact, bring terrorists to justice and keep our country safe without violating the Constitution that defends the rights of every U.S. citizen and legal resident. We can protect our country from terrorists and protect civil liberties at the same time. It just makes you wonder why, if those mechanisms are in place, our own president - who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution - continues to insist on using unconstitutional, illegal tactics that only endanger national security and give Americans reason to fear their own government.
And that, really, is what makes the ruling from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals so valuable. With this ruling, we have evidence that someone out there, some branch of the government, is interested in protecting Americans from being rounded up by the government and held without trial. If our president isn't going to do it, someone has to.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
On a great time to stick with tried-and-true methods
Okay, so I've observed in the past, with regard to both the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and to the warrantless wiretapping program, that one of the dangers of breaking the rules in those ways is that when it comes to pursuing actual justice, we may find ourselves painted into a corner. It happened with Mohammed al-Qahtani, it nearly happened with Jose Padilla, and now it's happened again:
The problem they ran into? The Military Commissions Act specifically applies to "unlawful enemy combatants." Bush's Combatant Status Review tribunals? Only classified the Guantanamo detainees as "enemy combatants" - without specifying "lawful" or "unlawful." And while the administration obviously felt that, since the commissions and tribunals were creations entirely of their own imaginations to begin with, specific laws were immaterial, the military judges obviously felt otherwise and dismissed the cases, without prejudice, citing lack of jurisdiction.
The question of military tribunals and commissions was raised in the first place because of the Bush administration's assertion that the US lacked a judicial system equipped for dealing with the "irregular circumstances" of terrorism and conflict such as we've seen in Iraq. ACLU blog Find Habeas points out that that's not necessarily the case:
At the very least, it's comforting to know that there are judges out there who respect the rule of law, even if our own president won't.
So what's next for our intrepid administration? Plenty. The DoD does plan to appeal the dismissal, but since at this point, a court does not exist to which they can appeal, they'll have to wait for the Pentagon to establish a Court of Military Commission Review, as authorized by Congress. In the meantime, further Combatant Status Review tribunals may be held to re-classify the fourteen "high-value" detainees currently at Guantanamo, among them suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
My advice to the government (and IANAL)? Just stick with what you know, y'all. They're a little bit trickier and pickier, since provisions would have to be made to keep top-secret information top-secret and prosecutors would have to make efforts to, like, follow the Constitution and stuff, but regular ol' trials within the current justice system are demonstrably suitable for terrorism suspects. They're not as fancy or Tom-Clancy-sexy as military tribunals, but they have the advantage of being constitutionally sound and being a tool with which the government has considerable experience. And trials like these are just too important to screw up.
In other habeas corpus news,
The Habeus Corpus Restoration Act of 2007, a bill "to restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States," is expected to see a floor vote within the month.
Feel free to give your senator a call and encourage him/her to vote for this very important measure. Remember that it's not just foreign nationals who are affected by this bill - under the Military Commissions Act, the next "unlawful combatant" could be you.
The Capital Switchboard:
1 (800) 828 - 0498
1 (800) 459 - 1887
1 (800) 614 - 2803
1 (866) 340 - 9281
1 (866) 338 - 1015
1 (877) 851 - 6437
The government’s new system for trying Guantánamo detainees was thrown into turmoil Monday, when military judges in separate decisions dismissed war crimes charges against two of the detainees.
The rulings, the latest legal setbacks for the government’s effort to bring war crimes charges against detainees, could stall the military’s prosecutions here.
The decisions did not turn on the guilt or innocence of the detainees, but rather made essentially the same determination that the military had not followed procedures to declare the detainees “unlawful enemy combatants,” which is required for the military commission to hear the cases.
Pentagon officials described the rulings as raising technical and semantic issues, and said that they were considering appeals. If appeals failed, they said, they could go through the process of redesignating the detainees.
But military lawyers said the rulings exposed a flaw that would affect every other potential war-crimes case here. And the rulings brought immediate calls, including from some on Capitol Hill, for Congress to re-examine the system it set up last year for military commission trials and, perhaps, to consider other changes in the legal treatment of Guantánamo detainees.
The problem they ran into? The Military Commissions Act specifically applies to "unlawful enemy combatants." Bush's Combatant Status Review tribunals? Only classified the Guantanamo detainees as "enemy combatants" - without specifying "lawful" or "unlawful." And while the administration obviously felt that, since the commissions and tribunals were creations entirely of their own imaginations to begin with, specific laws were immaterial, the military judges obviously felt otherwise and dismissed the cases, without prejudice, citing lack of jurisdiction.
The question of military tribunals and commissions was raised in the first place because of the Bush administration's assertion that the US lacked a judicial system equipped for dealing with the "irregular circumstances" of terrorism and conflict such as we've seen in Iraq. ACLU blog Find Habeas points out that that's not necessarily the case:
In February 2003, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, known more ominously by the Spanish acronym FARC (a moniker outdone in being scary-sounding only by the Haitian Tonton Macoute), kidnapped three American counter-narcotics contractors, which it then attempted to exchange for prisoners and a chunk of Columbian territory. All three remain captive.
Though FARC’s involvement in the drug trade has traditionally been its claim to infamy, recent administrations have increasingly focused on its use of terrorism (as well as its recruitment of child soldiers). It is currently designated a terrorist organization by both the State Department here and the European Union.
...
Notably, the parameters of the [senior leader Ricardo] Palmera case look a heck of a lot like the parameters of your mine run al-Qaeda criminal indictment. Most folks are going to be charged with material support, or some other catch-all-esque charge. Most are not going to face conspiracy, attempted murder or murder charges. The government has successfully prosecuted cases where training camp attendance alone constituted “material support” under the statute.
Contrary to [Pentagon deputy general counsel Daniel] Dell’Orto’s talking points, the civilian justice system is well equipped to handle these types of cases, which make up the vast majority of the alleged misconduct of the Gitmo detainees. The FARC trial underscores this point.
At the very least, it's comforting to know that there are judges out there who respect the rule of law, even if our own president won't.
So what's next for our intrepid administration? Plenty. The DoD does plan to appeal the dismissal, but since at this point, a court does not exist to which they can appeal, they'll have to wait for the Pentagon to establish a Court of Military Commission Review, as authorized by Congress. In the meantime, further Combatant Status Review tribunals may be held to re-classify the fourteen "high-value" detainees currently at Guantanamo, among them suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
My advice to the government (and IANAL)? Just stick with what you know, y'all. They're a little bit trickier and pickier, since provisions would have to be made to keep top-secret information top-secret and prosecutors would have to make efforts to, like, follow the Constitution and stuff, but regular ol' trials within the current justice system are demonstrably suitable for terrorism suspects. They're not as fancy or Tom-Clancy-sexy as military tribunals, but they have the advantage of being constitutionally sound and being a tool with which the government has considerable experience. And trials like these are just too important to screw up.
In other habeas corpus news,
The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted for the Specter/Leahy habeas restoration bill. The committee sent it to the floor with no amendments, no debate and on almost a party line vote (with the GOP sponsor, Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania voting in favor).
The Habeus Corpus Restoration Act of 2007, a bill "to restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States," is expected to see a floor vote within the month.
Feel free to give your senator a call and encourage him/her to vote for this very important measure. Remember that it's not just foreign nationals who are affected by this bill - under the Military Commissions Act, the next "unlawful combatant" could be you.
The Capital Switchboard:
1 (800) 828 - 0498
1 (800) 459 - 1887
1 (800) 614 - 2803
1 (866) 340 - 9281
1 (866) 338 - 1015
1 (877) 851 - 6437
Friday, May 11, 2007
On George "Pants On Fire" Bush: This Is Your Soundtrack
Stay classy, George.
Okay, so President Bush is a lying liar who lies.
I hate that. Of all the things that could possibly be done to me, being lied to bothers me more than just about anything. When I was growing up, pretty much the only offense considered worthy of a spanking in our house was lying, because it was just that important to my parents. And I feel the same way. There's so much that is involved in a lie: the assumption that you're dumb enough to fall for it, the assumption that you don't deserve the truth (or the paternalistic assumption that you just can't handle the truth), the arrogant assumption that the liar isn't held to the same standards of honesty as the rest of society. Trust is a long time in growing and hard to win back when you screw up once; violate that trust, unashamedly, a dozen times, and there's no going back.
Bush lied about why we were going to war. Weapons of mass destruction, liberation, just stay for a few months, greeted as liberators, all lies, liar. He lied about "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." He lied like a dog during the presidential debates in 2004. A couple of years ago, he lied big about the Social Security trust fund in order to defend his privatization plan. He lied about not being warned about Hurricane Katrina. He lied about the "stay the course" thing. He lied about actually following the Constitution for once and calling off his warrantless wiretapping program.
And on it goes. This time it's not actually him saying the words - it's his favorite defense secretary, Robert Gates - but it's still Bush's lie: We're extending tours of duty in Iraq from twelve to fifteen months, but in return, we're going to guaran-damn-tee that you'll get at least a full twelve months at home between deployments to "provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families."
Except... Kidding! Just kidding:
The Army is sending a company of Europe-based soldiers back to Iraq before the unit has had a full 12 months of "dwell time," or at-home rest.
Members of the 1st Armored Division's 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, Company A, learned Tuesday that they are scheduled to head back to Iraq in November, just nine months after the 150-soldier company left the combat zone in February after a 13-month deployment.
Liar.
See, this is why I oppose Bush's so desperately desired blank check for Iraq funding. This is why benchmarks and timetables and accountability are so crucial. This is why Congress has not only the right but the responsibility to keep track of what he's doing with the money after he gets it: Because he lies. He lies all the time. And whatever it is he says he's going to do with the money, you can't be sure that that's actually what's going to be done, because he's a liar.
Oh that makes me so mad.
All off that that's why this Friday Not-Even-Random Ten is dedicated to George W. Bush, The Decider, The Comander Guy, the guy who was totally going to bring dignitude back to the presidency. Not holding my breath, there. Honestly.
The Ten:
1. Ice Cube, "Don't Trust 'Em"
2. Endo, "Simple Lies"
3. Lenny Kravitz, "Believe In Me"
4. Sting, "Big Lie, Small World"
5. P.M. Dawn, "Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine"
6. Joss Stone, "Dirty Man"
7. Dashboard Prophets, "Dismissing the Myth"
8. The Chemial Brothers, "Dig Your Own Hole"
9. Public Enemy, "Don't Believe the Hype"
10. Guster, "Two Points for Honesty"
Your Ten, random or otherwise, goes in comments. But don't let me catch you making stuff up.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
On fighting them there while they fight us everywhere else
So, flypaper strategy, huh.
Okay, so anyone still convinced that the war in Iraq is going to save the rest of the world from the scourge of terrorism might want to pour a cup of lukewarm tea and sit down before continuing. You ready? Okay. The State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism, released yesterday, shows that worldwide, terrorism has increased by a whopping 25 percent, that al-Qaeda remains "the most immediate national security threat to the United States," and that Iraq reported a 300 percent increase in terrorism. A total of 74,217 civilians became the victims of terrorism in 2006.
Kind of throws the "flypaper strategy" concept into a whirl.
The report does show that terrorism outside of the Middle East and Southeast Asia is on the decline, with only Cuba and Venezuela significantly supporting terrorism from the western hemisphere. But the government's claim that our actions in Iraq aren't contributing to the creation of new terrorists is belied by the fact that terrorist incidents in Iraq nearly doubled in the past year and incidents in Afghanistan increased by 50 percent. Nonvehicular suicide bombings rose 25 percent. Incidents trend toward more sophisticated and better coordinated attacks.
I don't know, really, what the US is doing in Iraq, because the government has not felt it necessary to share their plan with the American people, or even to give anything beyond a verbal confirmation that a plan exists at all. Whatever was working so well before has been reinforced as Bush surged more troops, and then even more troops. And in the grand traditon of doin' what he's doin', Bush has continued to get what he's gettin'.
So here's what hasn't happened. Osama bin Laden hasn't been captured, and al-Qaeda hasn't been weakened. Iraq has held democratic elections, but its democratically elected prime minister hasn't done anything to indicate his intent to take over responsiblity for Iraq from the US. Muqtada al Sadr hasn't been convinced that he's not in charge, and his militias haven't been disarmed. Maliki has purged Iraqi security officials for combatting said militias too aggressively, and the Pentagon has decided that training Iraqi troops isn't the priority it once was, so I guess that's something.
Doug has the question of the day: If this is the progress that we're making in Iraq, what is wrong with timetables? What is wrong with holding the Iraqi government to account for their failure to govern Iraq - and to hold the US government to account for their failure to accomplish freaking anything since "Mission Accomplished" was declared four years ago? What is it about the Bush administration's "keep chugging, give it a chance to work" strategy that they think will provide impetus for the Iraqi government to start taking responsibility?
I truly believe that, once upon a time, Bush thought he was doing a good thing. I don't know about his motives; maybe he was trying to avenge Saddam's threats against Bush Senior, maybe he was just trying to establish a legacy of Global Peacemaker to follow him into history. But at this point, it's apparent - obvious, even - that he's just trying to slow-walk the Iraq conflict until his term is up and it's not his problem anymore. It's a precariously balanced sinkful of dishes, and if he can just not touch anything, it may just hold for the next year and a half.
What's more, Bush has backed himself into a corner where he can't pull out. He and his friends in government and media have so thoroughly associated redeployment with cowaradly retreat and surrender that even if he acknowledged that it's actually a good strategy and wanted to do it, he couldn't without losing face and shattering the legacy. He's the Decider, and his decision has been made. The difficult step, redeployment, will have to happen sooner or later, but Bush will be safely out of the way.
The State Department's report shows that, whatever the administration has been hoping to accomplish in Iraq, it has not made things any better. One can project from this that, if the current strategy remains in place, things will continue to not get any better and will likely get worse. The Democrats' plan for troop withdrawal may not be perfect, but it's the only plan out there right now that removes the troops from harm's way and gives Maliki and the Iraqi government a reason to start getting their stuff together. And as an added bonus, it frees American troops to address rising threats elsewhere, like al-Qaeda - which has been spreading and growing far and wide as US efforts remain myopically focused on Iraq.
It's a cliche because it's true - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. But then try something else. There's no reason to be stupid about it.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
On Morals Week: The morality of war
Okay, so as we continue with Morals Week, the UNC-Greensboro College Republicans celebrate Support Our Troops Day, and so do we.
We here at Practically Harmless, of course, believe that supporting our troops means not bombing a country into a chaotic hellpit and sending them in undermanned, underarmed, and underarmored. But if you're going to be a doofus and do that anyway, we further believe that supporting our troops means taking care of them while they're there and after they come back. Which makes us really wonder about the morality of screwing with a veteran's medical diagnosis to deny him disability benefits:
He was fit enough to serve when he signed up in the first place, but by gum that deafness-depression-and-memory-failure-inducing personality disorder turned into a bitch when he got back from Iraq. Too bad, really. Morality's hell.
But that's only for soldiers who're injured badly enough to get booted out of the Army without benefits.
If you're only kinda injured, like, say, injured enough to need surgery, recovery, and physical therapy, your reward is... well, one out of three ain't bad.
This is in addition to all of the seriously injured troops whose conditions are being downgraded in order to make them deployable. Which sucks for them. But seriously, people, I think we need to start questioning the quality of our military recruiting efforts when we're getting folks who'll let weenie problems like broken bones and spine injuries and freaking narcolepsy slow them down. What a bunch of pansies. Walk it off, guys. Rub some dirt in it.
But you know what is even more moral than getting troops shot and blown up, denying them benefits, and sending them back into battle when they're too injured to go? Keeping them there indefinitely. That's way moral. Totally, totally, totally moral. Moral like whoa.
We here at Practically Harmless, of course, believe that supporting our troops means not bombing a country into a chaotic hellpit and sending them in undermanned, underarmed, and underarmored. But if you're going to be a doofus and do that anyway, we further believe that supporting our troops means taking care of them while they're there and after they come back. Which makes us really wonder about the morality of screwing with a veteran's medical diagnosis to deny him disability benefits:
on Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion's headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head....
Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.
But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.
Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits....
He was fit enough to serve when he signed up in the first place, but by gum that deafness-depression-and-memory-failure-inducing personality disorder turned into a bitch when he got back from Iraq. Too bad, really. Morality's hell.
But that's only for soldiers who're injured badly enough to get booted out of the Army without benefits.
If you're only kinda injured, like, say, injured enough to need surgery, recovery, and physical therapy, your reward is... well, one out of three ain't bad.
Last November, Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, a communications specialist with a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had surgery on an ankle he had injured during physical training. After the surgery, doctors put his leg in a cast, and he was supposed to start physical therapy when that cast came off six weeks later.
But two days after his cast was removed, Army commanders decided it was more important to send him to a training site in a remote desert rather than let him stay at Fort Benning, Ga., to rehabilitate. In January, Hernandez was shipped to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., where his unit, the 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, was conducting a month of training in anticipation of leaving for Iraq in March. ...
Hernandez had served two tours in Iraq, where he helped maintain communications gear in the unit's armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles. But he could not participate in war maneuvers conducted on a 1,000-square-mile mock battlefield located in the harsh Mojave Desert. Instead, when he got to California, he was led to a large tent where he would be housed. He was shocked by what he saw inside: There were dozens of other hurt soldiers. Some were on crutches, and others had arms in slings. Some had debilitating back injuries. And nearby was another tent, housing female soldiers with health issues ranging from injuries to pregnancy. ...
A military official knowledgeable about the training in California in January and the medical processing of the injured soldiers at Fort Benning in February told Salon that commanders were taking desperate actions to meet an accelerated deployment schedule dictated by President Bush's so-called surge plan for securing Baghdad. "None of this would have happened if we had just slowed down a little bit," the military official said. "A lot of people were under a lot of pressure at that time."
This is in addition to all of the seriously injured troops whose conditions are being downgraded in order to make them deployable. Which sucks for them. But seriously, people, I think we need to start questioning the quality of our military recruiting efforts when we're getting folks who'll let weenie problems like broken bones and spine injuries and freaking narcolepsy slow them down. What a bunch of pansies. Walk it off, guys. Rub some dirt in it.
But you know what is even more moral than getting troops shot and blown up, denying them benefits, and sending them back into battle when they're too injured to go? Keeping them there indefinitely. That's way moral. Totally, totally, totally moral. Moral like whoa.
Friday, March 23, 2007
On healing
Okay, so you're stumbling to the bathroom, half-asleep, in the middle of the night, and in the process, you bark the hell out of your shin on the corner of the dress. Merciful saints, it hurts, you're wide awake now, and you've managed to scrape a not-inconsiderable chunk of skin off of your leg. Remembering your high school health classes, you wisely clean the wound up with some hydrogen peroxide, slap on one of those big Band-Aids, pop an Advil, and head back to bed.
In the coming days, you're vigilant about wound care - bathing suit season approaches, and you don't want that huge scar on your leg - so you check the wound daily, touching it up with some more peroxide and changing the bandage. But the wound just doesn't seem to be getting any better. Frustrated, you switch to a more concentrated hydrogen peroxide gel. Still, the wound isn't healing. You start cleaning the wound twice a day, and not only is it not getting any better, it's getting worse. What had started as a scrape down the front of your shin is now an angry sore, and finally, you take it to the doctor.
You're shocked when the doctor tells you what's wrong: You're what's wrong. As well-meaning as you were, it was your constant application of hydrogen peroxide that was keeping the wound from healing. While the peroxide was the ideal first step to disinfect the wound before applying the dressing, your subsequent applications have actually been hindering healing by killing off new, healthy tissue along with any bacteria. If you want that wound to get better, not worse, you're going to have to change strategy. The doctor applies a strong tribiotic gel and sends you on your way with a fresh pack of those big Band-Aids and instructions to change the dressing daily and keep an eye on the wound but not disturb things.
You meant well. You thought you were helping. You weren't. If you'd kept going the way you were going, you'd have ended up with a massive wound and may have even lost your leg. By changing your approach, by admitting that your original strategy was actually doing more harm than good and not using it anymore, you've made it possible for healing to truly begin.
In the coming days, you're vigilant about wound care - bathing suit season approaches, and you don't want that huge scar on your leg - so you check the wound daily, touching it up with some more peroxide and changing the bandage. But the wound just doesn't seem to be getting any better. Frustrated, you switch to a more concentrated hydrogen peroxide gel. Still, the wound isn't healing. You start cleaning the wound twice a day, and not only is it not getting any better, it's getting worse. What had started as a scrape down the front of your shin is now an angry sore, and finally, you take it to the doctor.
You're shocked when the doctor tells you what's wrong: You're what's wrong. As well-meaning as you were, it was your constant application of hydrogen peroxide that was keeping the wound from healing. While the peroxide was the ideal first step to disinfect the wound before applying the dressing, your subsequent applications have actually been hindering healing by killing off new, healthy tissue along with any bacteria. If you want that wound to get better, not worse, you're going to have to change strategy. The doctor applies a strong tribiotic gel and sends you on your way with a fresh pack of those big Band-Aids and instructions to change the dressing daily and keep an eye on the wound but not disturb things.
You meant well. You thought you were helping. You weren't. If you'd kept going the way you were going, you'd have ended up with a massive wound and may have even lost your leg. By changing your approach, by admitting that your original strategy was actually doing more harm than good and not using it anymore, you've made it possible for healing to truly begin.
Monday, March 19, 2007
On this day in history
Okay, so on March 19, 2003, President Bush pulled weapons inspectors out of Iraq and sent bombs in.
In the past four years, we've seen:
- 3,217 American troops deaths
- 258 Coalition troop deaths
- 59,000+ Iraqi civilian deaths
- 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system, 87,000 diseases of the musculoskeletal system, and 7,000 "signs of ill-defined conditions" in American troops lucky enough to make it home
- $400 billion+ spent
- $95.5 billion more on the way
- $8.8 billion lost or misplaced
- 29,984 chemical munitions never found in Iraq
- 6.6 hours of electricity per day
- 38 percent of Iraqis who think Iraq is better off than before the war
- 26 percent of Iraqis who feel safe in their own neighborhoods
- 140,000 American troops currently in Iraq
- 21,500 more troops promised in Bush's "surge"
- 28,700 troops actually being sent into the line of fire
- Countless al-Qaeda "number twos" captured
- Countless detainees in Gitmo held without charges, evidence, or legal representation
- Little to no sacrifice on the part of the American people
- Zero sign of Osama bin Laden
- Zero government accountability
- Zero plans for success from the Bush administration
- Zero respect for the lives of American troops or Iraqi civilians
Doug has said it far better than I could:
Right now, the Senate is debating legislation that would insist on evidence of progress in return for all of the lives and money that have been invested in this war, and that would keep the war from lasting another four years if that progress isn't being made. Bush has promised to veto that legislation because he needs this war, because it's the only legacy he'll have, because this war, he insists, "will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through."
Resolve. That's the ticket. And money. And blood. And miles and miles and miles of heart. We've got plenty of it all.
In the past four years, we've seen:
- 3,217 American troops deaths
- 258 Coalition troop deaths
- 59,000+ Iraqi civilian deaths
- 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system, 87,000 diseases of the musculoskeletal system, and 7,000 "signs of ill-defined conditions" in American troops lucky enough to make it home
- $400 billion+ spent
- $95.5 billion more on the way
- $8.8 billion lost or misplaced
- 29,984 chemical munitions never found in Iraq
- 6.6 hours of electricity per day
- 38 percent of Iraqis who think Iraq is better off than before the war
- 26 percent of Iraqis who feel safe in their own neighborhoods
- 140,000 American troops currently in Iraq
- 21,500 more troops promised in Bush's "surge"
- 28,700 troops actually being sent into the line of fire
- Countless al-Qaeda "number twos" captured
- Countless detainees in Gitmo held without charges, evidence, or legal representation
- Little to no sacrifice on the part of the American people
- Zero sign of Osama bin Laden
- Zero government accountability
- Zero plans for success from the Bush administration
- Zero respect for the lives of American troops or Iraqi civilians
Doug has said it far better than I could:
Look, I know that September 11 changed a lot of things about this country and how we perceived our need to act in the world, and I'm not saying that all war has to be dismissed out of hand; the invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, was immediately needed to oust a regime that had directly assisted al-Qaeda and aided in carrying out their terrorist attacks. But war is something that should be wielded only as a last resort, and it's clear that that's not how it was viewed with respect to Iraq. Bush continues to claim to this day that all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted with Iraq and that the country presented an imminent threat, but the example he uses to prove this point -- Saddam Hussein supposedly kicking out the UN weapons inspectors -- isn't even true, because it was the Bush administration who ordered the inspectors out so that they could start bombing. We could've pulled up short of an all-out invasion of Iraq; we just didn't want to. Why?
Now the target du jour is Iran, and we have people both in the blogosphere and in the government insisting that "all options remain on the table" with regard to attacking that country -- all options, evidently, except negotiation. There may yet come a time when relations with Iran deteriorate to the point where war becomes the only option, but how can anyone say that we're at that point already? And how can anyone who says that be considered "serious" about national defense when we're already overextended by major military operations in two other Middle Eastern countries?
Just think about what war means is all I'm asking, people. War is never an easy thing. War means thousands of people getting killed; war means billions, if not trillions, of dollars getting thrown into the fire; war means entire societies getting scarred for generations. As Sadly, No! so succinctly put it three years ago, War never doesn't hurt. If we've learned nothing else after four years of agony in Iraq, I hope we've learned that. But I wouldn't even be bothering to repeat this if I thought everybody had.
Right now, the Senate is debating legislation that would insist on evidence of progress in return for all of the lives and money that have been invested in this war, and that would keep the war from lasting another four years if that progress isn't being made. Bush has promised to veto that legislation because he needs this war, because it's the only legacy he'll have, because this war, he insists, "will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through."
Resolve. That's the ticket. And money. And blood. And miles and miles and miles of heart. We've got plenty of it all.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
On updates: Iranian IEDs and American squalor
Okay, so it's time to follow up on a few stories we've been covering.
- Update: On theprobable suspected IEDs from the Iranian government someone Iraqis
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at assertions from the Bush administration that IEDs recently used against American troops were unequivocally provided by the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Then we looked at assertions that the previous assertions may have been overstated, and then we looked at further assertions that those IEDs weren't really the biggest problem the troops were dealing with.
Today, we look at assertions that the IEDs weren't so much "provided by Iran" as they were "built in southern Iraq using parts purchased on the open market":
March 2, 2007 (projected): Tony Snow briefs the White House press corps: "What I had meant to say was..."
- Update: Onserving punishing and neglecting those who serve
More recently, we took a look at the horrible conditions for injured troops at Walter Reed and at efforts by the Army to short them on disability benefits. We now know that many conditions have changed as a result of the WaPo story. For instance, troops now get to wake up every day at 6 a.m. and have their rooms ready for a 7 a.m. inspection, never speak to the media, and take all problems, complaints, or paperwork questions up through their chain of command. This is, of course, an attempt to bring a sense of normalcy and consistency to men who would appreciate such an environment, and not a form of punishment for talking to the media.
Of course, talking to the media wouldn't have been an issue for them if Rep. Bill Young (R-FL), who had known about the horrific conditions for years but hadn't said anything because hospital officials "made him feel very uncomfortable," had pushed through the discomfort and actually said something. It turns out that Young was BFF with Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, a key figure in the Walter Reed scandal, and still finds him "committed to providing our war heroes with the very, very best medical care that is possible," despite the fact that Young's wife Beverly had complained to Kiley about conditions (like one soldier lying on a urine-soaked mattress pad) and Kiley had done nothing about it.
Oh, and this is where Kiley lives:
It's directly across the street from Building 18, where the rats live. Kiley's house is, one can assume, urine-soaked-mattress-pad free.
But we can all take comfort in the fact that, of the 200,000 Iraq veterans seeking treatment at the VA, a lot of them come in for dental problems, others come in for a lot of the normal things that people have," according to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. So outside of the 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system, 87,000 diseases of the musculoskeletal system, and 7,000 "signs of ill-defined conditions," we're really just dealing with a whole lot of root canals. Horrific, brain-injury-causing root canals.
Yellow ribbon magnets all around!
Donate to the Wounded Warrior Project.
- Update: On the
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at assertions from the Bush administration that IEDs recently used against American troops were unequivocally provided by the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Then we looked at assertions that the previous assertions may have been overstated, and then we looked at further assertions that those IEDs weren't really the biggest problem the troops were dealing with.
Today, we look at assertions that the IEDs weren't so much "provided by Iran" as they were "built in southern Iraq using parts purchased on the open market":
Well. A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case. There, The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.), troops "uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran." The main feature of the find were several copper liners that are the main component of EFPs. But, The New York Times reports, "while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue."
Among those cloudy items were "cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran."
March 2, 2007 (projected): Tony Snow briefs the White House press corps: "What I had meant to say was..."
- Update: On
More recently, we took a look at the horrible conditions for injured troops at Walter Reed and at efforts by the Army to short them on disability benefits. We now know that many conditions have changed as a result of the WaPo story. For instance, troops now get to wake up every day at 6 a.m. and have their rooms ready for a 7 a.m. inspection, never speak to the media, and take all problems, complaints, or paperwork questions up through their chain of command. This is, of course, an attempt to bring a sense of normalcy and consistency to men who would appreciate such an environment, and not a form of punishment for talking to the media.
Of course, talking to the media wouldn't have been an issue for them if Rep. Bill Young (R-FL), who had known about the horrific conditions for years but hadn't said anything because hospital officials "made him feel very uncomfortable," had pushed through the discomfort and actually said something. It turns out that Young was BFF with Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, a key figure in the Walter Reed scandal, and still finds him "committed to providing our war heroes with the very, very best medical care that is possible," despite the fact that Young's wife Beverly had complained to Kiley about conditions (like one soldier lying on a urine-soaked mattress pad) and Kiley had done nothing about it.
Oh, and this is where Kiley lives:
It's directly across the street from Building 18, where the rats live. Kiley's house is, one can assume, urine-soaked-mattress-pad free.
But we can all take comfort in the fact that, of the 200,000 Iraq veterans seeking treatment at the VA, a lot of them come in for dental problems, others come in for a lot of the normal things that people have," according to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. So outside of the 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system, 87,000 diseases of the musculoskeletal system, and 7,000 "signs of ill-defined conditions," we're really just dealing with a whole lot of root canals. Horrific, brain-injury-causing root canals.
Yellow ribbon magnets all around!
Donate to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
On les bon temps
Okay, so Ash Wednesday is tomorrow (and I'll be giving up booze for Lent, so everyone brace), which makes today Mardis Gras. I personally will be celebrating this with the traditional overindulgence in food, alcohol, and general merriment that precedes the 40-day Festival of Nada that is Lent, and down in New Orleans, folks are doing the same, even if the post-Katrina celebrations don't quite match the pre-Katrina ones.
Back when I was living in Atlanta and writing about clothes, I interviewed a woman who made her living creating fantastic masks and accessories for Mardi Gras, Halloween, and all of the multitudinous holidays that require costumes and glorious excess in New Orleans. Rosemary Kimble escaped to Atlanta before Katrina hit, but her studio and much of her work were damaged by the storm. At the time, she had plans to return to New Orleans for Carnival - her livelihood, after all, depended on revelers buying her work, and Atlanta doesn't have a huge market for peacock-feather masks and fairy wings - but she wasn't sure what she'd do after that. She loved New Orleans, and it was her home, but she didn't feel safe there. She didn't trust the levees, didn't trust FEMA to do what it had promised to do, just didn't feel welcome in a town that was more open to drunk frat boys on Bourbon Street than it was to native New Orleanians trying to start over.
Rosemary has returned to New Orleans for Carnival this year, and anyone hanging around Jackson Square Friday night might have seen her marshalling her Krewe du Faye parade. But the future remains up in the air as the real New Orleans - the non-touristy areas, the areas where people live and work and try to rebuild their homes and their lives - tries to rebuild, forgotten by the people and agencies and administrations that promised to help.
On a similar note, new Pandagonian Roxanne brings us a video from a ridiculously precocious ten-year-old blogger named Kalypso who lives in the city proper and documented the first Mardi Gras after Katrina as well as her own family's struggle to rebuild.
Her father also expressed his frustrations on his own blog.
The whole point of Mardi Gras is that it's supposed to be a period of unrestrained revelry in preparation for a period of self-deprivation, but I think there's no harm in taking a few minutes out of our heavy partying schedule to remember that, seventeen months later, there are still people desperately in need of help - and to recognize that New Orleans is home to lots of people who deserve a home, and not just some city that deserves to be abandoned because fixing it is too hard.
Back when I was living in Atlanta and writing about clothes, I interviewed a woman who made her living creating fantastic masks and accessories for Mardi Gras, Halloween, and all of the multitudinous holidays that require costumes and glorious excess in New Orleans. Rosemary Kimble escaped to Atlanta before Katrina hit, but her studio and much of her work were damaged by the storm. At the time, she had plans to return to New Orleans for Carnival - her livelihood, after all, depended on revelers buying her work, and Atlanta doesn't have a huge market for peacock-feather masks and fairy wings - but she wasn't sure what she'd do after that. She loved New Orleans, and it was her home, but she didn't feel safe there. She didn't trust the levees, didn't trust FEMA to do what it had promised to do, just didn't feel welcome in a town that was more open to drunk frat boys on Bourbon Street than it was to native New Orleanians trying to start over.
Rosemary has returned to New Orleans for Carnival this year, and anyone hanging around Jackson Square Friday night might have seen her marshalling her Krewe du Faye parade. But the future remains up in the air as the real New Orleans - the non-touristy areas, the areas where people live and work and try to rebuild their homes and their lives - tries to rebuild, forgotten by the people and agencies and administrations that promised to help.
On a similar note, new Pandagonian Roxanne brings us a video from a ridiculously precocious ten-year-old blogger named Kalypso who lives in the city proper and documented the first Mardi Gras after Katrina as well as her own family's struggle to rebuild.
Her father also expressed his frustrations on his own blog.
The whole point of Mardi Gras is that it's supposed to be a period of unrestrained revelry in preparation for a period of self-deprivation, but I think there's no harm in taking a few minutes out of our heavy partying schedule to remember that, seventeen months later, there are still people desperately in need of help - and to recognize that New Orleans is home to lots of people who deserve a home, and not just some city that deserves to be abandoned because fixing it is too hard.
Monday, February 19, 2007
On serving those who serve
Okay, so I know I've been taken to task for ignoring all of the great news that's coming out of Iraq, and gosh-golly-gee, I fully intend to get on that right away, but there are a couple of other things I wanted to get to first:
These are the parts of Walter Reed the public doesn't get to see. President Bush's photo ops all take place in shiny, modern Ward 57. During his last visit, Bush said, "We owe them all we can give them. Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."
We're doing a great job.
Building 18, the building that the politicians never visit, is where most of the psych patients are sent because, apparently, nothing says "peace of mind" like cockroaches, rats, black mold, and traffic noise, and nothing says "we heart our troops" like dumping them, drugged, disoriented, and frequently suffering from brain injuries, to find their way around the 113-acre campus without help. Because the horrors of getting blown up in Iraq weren't traumatic enough.
And this is yet another direct result of Bush's stupid, poorly planned, poorly conceived war. Walter Reed - and VA hospitals across the country - is overburdened, underfunded, and taxed by a constant influx of serious injuries from a war that was supposed to be a cakewalk. It was supposed to last a matter of weeks, shock and awe, candy and flowers. Now the hospitals don't know what to do with the 23,000 troops it has to take care of - 96 percent of whom were injured after "Mission Accomplished."
And what's worse, Bush proposes to balance the budget on the backs of our troops by further cutting health care in 2009 and 2010. That means that as the number of injured veterans - soldiers and Marines coming home from the Iraq war - rises five percent a year, the VA will have nearly $40 billion less to care for them each of the next two years.
It's a fine and patriotic thing to wave flags and slap yellow "I support our troops" ribbons on the backs of our Tahoes, but it's another thing entirely to actually have to care for those troops or even look at them when they come back home all busted up:
We tuck them away in squalor, lose track of them, forget about them entirely - and then we screw them out of their disability benefits:
A 30 percent disability rating would have gotten him a disability retirement check based on time in service, rank, and rating. Less than 30 percent means that he goes home with a one-time check and the thanks of the Army for his sacrifices.
So there you have it. There's the news out of Iraq. There's "supporting our troops." There's what they give to us, and what we give back to them. There's the flag-waving, patriotic glory of fighting for our freedoms in the Global War on Terra. There's what this guy has to look forward to if, God forbid, he should be injured.
But don't worry. If that makes you sacrifice your peace of mind, I'll hunt down some happyganda to make it all better.
Donate to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These are the parts of Walter Reed the public doesn't get to see. President Bush's photo ops all take place in shiny, modern Ward 57. During his last visit, Bush said, "We owe them all we can give them. Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."
We're doing a great job.
Building 18, the building that the politicians never visit, is where most of the psych patients are sent because, apparently, nothing says "peace of mind" like cockroaches, rats, black mold, and traffic noise, and nothing says "we heart our troops" like dumping them, drugged, disoriented, and frequently suffering from brain injuries, to find their way around the 113-acre campus without help. Because the horrors of getting blown up in Iraq weren't traumatic enough.
And this is yet another direct result of Bush's stupid, poorly planned, poorly conceived war. Walter Reed - and VA hospitals across the country - is overburdened, underfunded, and taxed by a constant influx of serious injuries from a war that was supposed to be a cakewalk. It was supposed to last a matter of weeks, shock and awe, candy and flowers. Now the hospitals don't know what to do with the 23,000 troops it has to take care of - 96 percent of whom were injured after "Mission Accomplished."
And what's worse, Bush proposes to balance the budget on the backs of our troops by further cutting health care in 2009 and 2010. That means that as the number of injured veterans - soldiers and Marines coming home from the Iraq war - rises five percent a year, the VA will have nearly $40 billion less to care for them each of the next two years.
It's a fine and patriotic thing to wave flags and slap yellow "I support our troops" ribbons on the backs of our Tahoes, but it's another thing entirely to actually have to care for those troops or even look at them when they come back home all busted up:
Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.
David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.
" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "
David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.
We tuck them away in squalor, lose track of them, forget about them entirely - and then we screw them out of their disability benefits:
A pale scar creates a deep furrow connecting Van Antwerp’s eyebrows. Doctors replaced bone with titanium after he fractured his skull. Bare-chested as he trimmed, Van Antwerp has a deep, laddered line from beneath his sternum to at least the top of his sweatpants. A blast ruptured his spleen and ripped out his colon. Pushing up his left pant leg as he told his battle story, Van Antwerp showed where three ligaments tore away from his knee, and then pointed out the scar from his broken tibia.
Above his heart, the ranks and last names of two dead friends are etched in ink. But he calls a friend to ask their first names. Short-term memory loss arrived for Van Antwerp in the same attack that killed his buddies.
In Bayji, Iraq, a suicide bomber drove a vehicle beside the truck Van Antwerp drove for the 101st Airborne Division and set off an improvised explosive device, killing Pfc. Alex Gaunky and Spc. Vernon Widner on Nov. 17, 2005. Van Antwerp said he believes in one of the Army’s oft-repeated mottoes: “No soldier left behind.”
He will always carry his friends with him.
Yet when it was time for the Army to take care of him, one of its wounded warriors, Van Antwerp gave up before he even began. Rather than fight for a higher disability rating, he quietly signed for 20 percent — and no medical benefits — saying he knew he couldn’t do better. He inherited his father’s stubbornness, he said, and refused to ask anyone to pull strings based on his dad’s rank. Then his first medical board counselor, the person who would help him make his way through the medical evaluation board system, left. The second, he said, “wasn’t on the ball.”
“The Army is trying to give you the lowest amount of money possible,” he said. “A lot of people are appealing, but I’ll be going to [the Department of Veterans Affairs]. I want to go home.”
A 30 percent disability rating would have gotten him a disability retirement check based on time in service, rank, and rating. Less than 30 percent means that he goes home with a one-time check and the thanks of the Army for his sacrifices.
So there you have it. There's the news out of Iraq. There's "supporting our troops." There's what they give to us, and what we give back to them. There's the flag-waving, patriotic glory of fighting for our freedoms in the Global War on Terra. There's what this guy has to look forward to if, God forbid, he should be injured.
But don't worry. If that makes you sacrifice your peace of mind, I'll hunt down some happyganda to make it all better.
Donate to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
On something slightly more serious than losing your wallet
Okay, so Fightin' Joe Lieberman has recently suggested that American citizens be assessed a war tax to offset the cost of the war which he helped start without our freaking permission and which he continues to champion despite the fact that seventy freaking percent of Americans are against it.
If the government is so strapped for cash in this time of war, they might want to try tracking down the 363 tons of American currency they shipped to Iraq in 2004 and promptly lost:
In all, a total of $8.8 billion (that's billion, with a b) is unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqis.
But that's not important now. What's important right now is... well... something else, anyway.
But what does $8.8 billion mean in real dollars?
- It could restore Bush's proposed funding cuts for Homeland Security 17 times.
- It could restore Bush's proposed cut in preventive health services to prevent obesity and other chronic conditions 88 times.
- It could buy 36,800 lawyers for Bush to defend himself against legal challenges from Gitmo detainees who have been wrongful held.
- It could restore 11 percent of Bush's proposed Medicare and Medicaid cuts over the next five years.
- It could restore Bush's proposed funding cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program 39 times, his proposed cuts to Head Start 88 times, his proposed cuts to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program 22 times, or his proposed cut in funding for housing for low-income seniors 51 times.
So while a "blame meeting" might not be the most constructive activity in the world, a meeting to discover where the hell 726,000 pounds of American currency might have buggered off to could be, in fact, rather productive indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen, your United States government.
If the government is so strapped for cash in this time of war, they might want to try tracking down the 363 tons of American currency they shipped to Iraq in 2004 and promptly lost:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.
...
Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
In all, a total of $8.8 billion (that's billion, with a b) is unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqis.
But that's not important now. What's important right now is... well... something else, anyway.
Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.
"We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.
But what does $8.8 billion mean in real dollars?
- It could restore Bush's proposed funding cuts for Homeland Security 17 times.
- It could restore Bush's proposed cut in preventive health services to prevent obesity and other chronic conditions 88 times.
- It could buy 36,800 lawyers for Bush to defend himself against legal challenges from Gitmo detainees who have been wrongful held.
- It could restore 11 percent of Bush's proposed Medicare and Medicaid cuts over the next five years.
- It could restore Bush's proposed funding cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program 39 times, his proposed cuts to Head Start 88 times, his proposed cuts to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program 22 times, or his proposed cut in funding for housing for low-income seniors 51 times.
So while a "blame meeting" might not be the most constructive activity in the world, a meeting to discover where the hell 726,000 pounds of American currency might have buggered off to could be, in fact, rather productive indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen, your United States government.
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