GOP: No, we have no shame -- what is it?
...Will it help us win the election? Well, who needs it, then

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank provides example after example of the Republican "a vote for Kerry is a vote for terror" strategy:

George W. Bush, 9/22: "Kerry's words can embolden an enemy."

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), 9/21: "[Terrorists] are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry."

Senate candidate John Thune (R-SD), 9/19: "[Kerry's] words embolden the enemy."

Speaker Dennis "Smear" Hastert, 9/18: "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think [terrorists] would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

(You know, I might just send him some soap in the mail, with a nice note like "One bar soap: use after smearing someone," or "Here's some soap to clean up with after a hard day's work of smearing," that kind of thing.)

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, 9/17: terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush."

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), March 2004: "If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election."

(via Unfogged) Milbank also alludes to Dick Cheney's infamous 9/8 statement: "It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

For what it's worth, the only terrorist-linked statement I've found on the subject says they're with Cheney: they want Bush to win, too. According to reports by the International Herald Tribune and Fox News (Islamists Declare Spain Truce, Endorse Bush), a Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade release on March 18 stated:

We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections.

Addressing Bush directly, they continue:

We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don't want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you.

I'd never thought Bush being an idiot was keeping me safer -- that's so persuasive I may have to vote for him after all. On the other hand, the Abu Hafs folk fear Kerry:

Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation.

Dang! They're on to us. But that will only prolong their agonizing defeat by our cunningly embellished blasphemy -- it's that good. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:03:00 PM -- |    

 
Figures
Portrait of George Bush in '72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time (Sara Rimer, New York Times):

After the election, Mr. Bush returned to Houston, moving out of his small rented bungalow in Montgomery. He left the place a mess, with a broken light fixture and piles of debris, according to Mary Smith, whose husband was the bungalow's caretaker. Ms. Smith said her husband, who has since died, sent Mr. Bush a bill for professional cleaning but never heard back.

(via Farber)
posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:37:00 PM -- |    

 
Yet more bad apples

On March 1, 2003, U.S. Special Forces arrested eight Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint on a remote mountain pass in South-Eastern Afghanistan. The men were members of the Afghan army, supposedly allies of the United States in the fight against al-Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban forces. Nevertheless they were taken for interrogation at a U.S. firebase near the town of Gardez. Seventeen days later, seven of the men were transferred to custody of the local Afghan police. Many were suffering from serious injuries - the result of what they later described as torture at the hands of American interrogators. The other detainee was dead.

-- from the introduction to A Torture Killing by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, by Craig Pyes writing for the Crimes of War Project. I learned of this story via Phillip Carter of Intel Dump, who read the Los Angeles Times version of the story that Pyes co-authored with Mark Mazzetti. Based on documented investigations by Afghan authorities as well those by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Pyes and Mazzetti report:

Alleged American mistreatment of the detainees included repeated beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks, being hung upside down and toenails being torn off, according to Afghan investigators and an internal memorandum prepared by a United Nations delegation that interviewed the surviving soldiers.

Some of the Afghan soldiers were beaten to the point that they could not walk or sit, Afghan doctors and other witnesses said.

Afghan military prosecutors looking into the incident privately recommended more than a year ago that the Afghan attorney general's office pursue a murder case against unnamed American soldiers at the Gardez firebase. No action on the recommendation was taken, but the prosecutors say the case is still open.

The unit involved may have been the 20th Special Forces Group, a National Guard unit based in Birmingham, Alabama. (Ironically, that unit's motto is "De oppresso liber" -- "To Liberate the Oppressed.") Specifically, one "Major Mike" -- a.k.a. "Crazy Mike" -- was involved in the original arrest and later personally led attempts to intimidate Afghan police, doctors, and officials to cover up the story.

The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) had not taken action on earlier allegations out of Gardez for lack of evidence. But even now the "Gardez 7" case (named for the 7 surviving witnesses, I presume) may be surprisingly hard to pursue. The L.A. Times:

[Army detective Christopher] Coffey said that with the new information, the CID would pursue charges of murder and of abuse of a person in U.S. custody."We're trying to figure out who was running the base," Coffey said. "We don't know what unit was there. There are no records. The reporting system is broke across the board. Units are transferred in and out. There are no SOPs [standard operating procedures] ... and each unit acts differently."

I can't judge whether Coffey's statement is the truth or a cover-up of its own. I'd think "Gardez," and "March 2003" would help narrow things down.* Hey, I have an idea -- maybe the CID could even interview witnesses, show them photographs, that kind of thing; I've seen it on TV. But what do I know. The Times story continues:

Remote bases such as Gardez are usually operated by Special Forces and intelligence agencies and report to special operations commanders. Even representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are not allowed to visit such bases.

Worse than Abu Ghraib?
Phillip Carter comments:

None of these will look as deviant as the Abu Ghraib abuses, and most will not have pictures. But in many ways, the abuses are worse, because they were orchestrated as a concerted effort to gather intelligence from detainees, and because they were all but officially sanctioned by the U.S. chain of command.

I wonder about that. I think that "Abu Ghraib" covers a lot of officially-deniably-encouraged "who will rid me of these insurgents" behavior. The smirking performances by Lynndie England, Charles Graner et al were just the ones preserved on film for posterity. But even those photos and ensuing stories revealed, I think, a misplaced sense of "thumbs up, job well done" pride that's a pretty clear indication those moral zeroes thought they were working for truth, justice, and the United States Army, and not just engaging in their own private S&M fantasies.

The Gardez story is more brutal than most of the photos from Abu Ghraib that were made public. But it's of a piece with the prisoner r_ape, hostage child abuse, and beating death stories there and elsewhere in Iraq. And sexual abuse was alleged by at least one Afghan held at Gardez in a different incident.

A bad apple production line
Writing for the Crimes of War Project, editor Andrew Dworkin points out that the United States still has no "Status of Forces Agreement" governing the relations between American forces and Afganistan. In the absence of such an agreement, the default ought to be to prosecute and punish criminal soldiers under the laws of the country where the offense took place. But Dworkin considers it "politically unlikely" that American soldiers will face Afghan prosecutors. The Afghan authorities, who built an impressive, thorough case that can be seen online at the Crimes of War Project, know that already:

"This is a very good case," Haji Qayum, the current Attorney General for the Armed Forces, told me in an interview. "But the Americans won't accept our legal system. They say we are not allowed to investigate U.S. actions in Afghanistan."

So the Afghans "aren't allowed" to investigate U.S. actions, the reporting system is "broke," every new unit rotating in has a new "S.O.P.," and the U.S. Army CID needs a freelance journalist and the Los Angeles Times to get them a case to work with. It's a wonder there aren't more incidents in Afghanistan. Then again, who knows -- maybe there are. Dworkin believes there will be more stories from beyond Iraq:

Much of the commentary on prisoner abuse by U.S. forces has revolved around the different legal regimes that were set in place to cover the interrogation of suspects in regular detention centers. Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of unconventional measures at Guantanamo, and some of these were later exported to Abu Ghraib in Iraq. But the worst abuses appear to have taken place in much more temporary or secret locations - frontline firebases or CIA interrogation cells, where there was no oversight, no visits by the international Committee of the Red Cross, and no official record of detention.

One recent report dealing with detention in both Afghanistan and Iraq - by Army Inspector General Paul Mikolashek - found that there were no "systemic failures" that led to the abuse of prisoners. The more cases that emerge like the one in Gardez, the more that conclusion seems open to question.

Indeed.


=====
* "Mike," on the other hand does not -- according to the LA Times story it's a generic nom de guerre used by successive Gardez commanding officers. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 AM -- |    

 
The no-longer all-volunteer, combat-ready army
Soldiers are being given the choice between re-enlisting... and being reassigned to units due to ship out to Iraq. From a report by Dick Foster of the Rocky Mountain News:

They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not,' he said.

(Via Southknoxbubba.) Nice move, Pentagon: do everything possible to make volunteers for the armed forces feel like chumps.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Tom Ricks reports that a South Carolina National Guard unit -- the 178th Field Artillery Regiment, which has now shipped out to the Iraq theater -- had been under disciplinary lockdown since after Labor Day, for infractions including alcohol on base, multiple AWOLs (to visit family), and a near-brawl within the regiment that MPs had to break up. Ricks:

This Guard unit was put on an accelerated training schedule -- giving the soldiers about 36 hours of leave over the past two months -- because the Army needs to get fresh troops to Iraq, and there are not enough active-duty or "regular" troops to go around. [...]

These soldiers will be based in northern Kuwait and will escort supply convoys into Iraq. That is some of the toughest duty on this mission, with every trip through the hot desert bringing the possibility of being hit by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire.

As you can tell from the regiment's designation, this is not the duty the unit was designed for. Phillip Carter*, a former Army officer and current "individual ready" reservist, comments:

Sending this unit into harm's way under these conditions would be tantamount to negligence and dereliction of duty — or worse. This is a formula for disaster. A unit without cohesion and good leadership will crumble under the strain of combat, and the daily strain of operations in Iraq. Worse yet, this unit lacks the fundamental discipline to do the right thing in a complex operational environment like Iraq, where the undisciplined actions of one Private First Class (see, e.g., Lynndie England) could have a strategic impact on the world. Discipline is absolutely essential for a unit like this, where live bullets and shifting rules of engagement make every decisions a critical one.
(emphasis added)

Carter feels that this unit should have been broken up and that most of its leaders should have been fired. Instead, they're in Kuwait or on their way there by now, so let's all hope the 178th and other units like them do all right after all. And it could always be worse: Gary Farber sees the portents of a draft in the story, and he may be right.


=====
* Carter's "Intel Dump" is one of the upper tier of worthwhile blogs by and for grown-ups: focused, sensible, and readable. Incidentally, this pull-quote looks like Carter subscribes to the "few bad apples" school of thought about Abu Ghraib, which I don't think is the case. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:36:00 PM -- |    

 
John Kerry at NYU: They were wrong
From John Kerry's New York University address:

In fighting the war on terrorism, my principles are straight forward. The terrorists are beyond reason. We must destroy them. As president, I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies. But billions of people around the world yearning for a better life are open to America’s ideals. We must reach them. [...]

It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it’s essential if we want to correct our course and do what’s right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. [...]

The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people. He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat. [...]

The administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators. They were wrong.

They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure. They were wrong.

They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong.

They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the President has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

I think this is all correct, and I don't know how much clearer Kerry is supposed to be. I wrote this in a comment to Winds of Change.net the other day:

...The facts of the matter remain:
1) There were no WMDs
2) None, zero, nada
3) The best planning for the post-combat phase was ignored, and what was left was insufficient and incompetently executed
4) Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib
5) No one, not Rumsfeld, not Cheney, and certainly not Bush accepts any responsibility for any of that. There's your character issue.
6) 1000 dead American soldiers and counting

If that many Americans die for a screwed up war waged on false premises, at least one should be fired for it.

At least Kerry recognizes there's a problem; our nit-wit president doesn't seem to. Stay the course? You have got to be kidding.
(links added*)

"In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth."


=====
* Incompetence does not refer to "ginmar" in this post, it refers to what Mr. Kuhaida saw, what Mr. Bremer helped trigger, and to "Higher" ordering evacuations across a mined bridge. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 AM -- |    

 
Updates, errata, etcetera
A few updates to items that I've written about over the past few weeks and months:

• RNC private detention camp during convention?, 9/16: countervailing information suggests the Pier 57 "Little Guantanamo" site was apparently leased by the NYPD, not the Republican National Committee.
  
• Great, 9/12: Ken Layne notices that now South Korean officials are denying there was any kind of explosion at all last week. A visit by a diplomatic delegation to the site of a hydroelectric project has turned up nothing yet -- on the other hand, South Korea says they visited the wrong hydroelectric project. At this point I'm guessing this was a South Korean scam.
  
• Beslan attackers may not have included Arabs, 9/9: Actually, there were two, according to an e-mail allegedly sent by Shamil Basayev to an affiliated web site, http://www.kavkazcenter.com. The e-mail included apparently convincing details about the attack. You'll have no luck seeing for yourself; the web site -- based in the home of a Russian dissident -- has been shut down by Lithuanian authorities in what may be a flinching reaction to some of Putin's threats. (Both story links lead to New York Times articles.)
  
• Circuits starts series on electronic voting, 7/9: A Sunday New York Times front page item, "Ready or Not, Electronic Voting Goes National," reports that the truevotemd.org lawsuit to force improvements in electronic voting machines and a paper ballot alternative has been rejected by the Maryland Court of Appeals. Speaking to the Baltimore Sun, truevotemd.org chair Linda Schade said the ruling was not a surprise, since the state had delayed the suit past the point where remedies were possible for the November election, but vowed "This is not the end of the suit." State Election Board Commissioner Linda Lamone has still learned nothing: "I'm very confident [the Diebold voting machines] are accurate and secure."

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:03:00 PM -- |    

 
Now that's organized
"Form for the receipt of telephonic threats" is how I translate the title of "Merkblatt für die Entgegennahme telefonischer Drohungen," a document published to the web by the "Security Forum" of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and publicized by Jochen Bittner of Die Zeit. Some details from the form:

Your behavior:
Listen, don't interrupt at first, take notes, get as much information as possible, use questions to get the speaker to continue talking and reveal more details.

As exactly as possible, the words of the call:
.....................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................

Threat is directed against _____Person ____ Object
.....................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................

Accent
Background noises
Other speech characteristics

...etcetera. It's all sensible stuff, I'm sure -- yet all the sang-froid (well, Kaltbluetigkeit) the telephone threat receipt form user displays here seems to go to waste: I don't see what you're supposed to do with the form once you've filled it out.

Circular file? Post conspicuously? Forward to "telephonic threat receipt department liaison"? There's still plenty left to iron out here -- this looks like another job for Action Item!
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:40:00 PM -- |    

 
30-28!!!

Vols Stun Gators 30-28 with Game Winning Field Goal - Largest Crowd In Neyland History Witnesses Thriller

Woo-hoo!

Looking over the box score and play-by-play, "thriller" sounds about right, even before the last second field goal. Tennessee won despite giving up 3 turnovers to Florida's 1 and missing a point-after. Neither team seemed able to stop the other on third down very consistently; Florida was an impressive 9 of 15, while Tennessee was decent at 6 of 12. Given the score, Florida's missed field goal obviously looms large, as do two Tennessee fourth down conversions that both figured in scoring drives. This one must have been a lot of fun to watch!
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:55:00 PM -- |    

 
Good for a grin

• Tom Burka: "Flip-Floppers Choose Kerry: Bush's Depiction of Kerry As Indecisive Appeals To Voters Having Difficulty Choosing Candidate"
• Matthew Yglesias reporting from New York on the Republican Convention: "Me at a party last night: 'I've never really been around a lot of Republicans before.' 'So now you think better of us?' 'Not really.'"
• The ever modest Neal Pollack: "Writing is always hard for me, because my writing is so good, but these words that I’m about to write are very hard for me. It’s with great sorrow and greater pity that I announce that I cannot support President Bush..." Way too much information ensues.
• FAFBLOG: Well it is an honor to have you on our blog today sir.
  IBM SELECTRIC COMPOSER: *tokka tokka tokka DING tokka tokka*
  FB: Now IBM Selectric, I need to ask you straight out: did you type these documents from the Texas Air National Guard?
  IBM SELECTRIC: *tokka tokka CH-CHUNG tokka tokka DING*
  FB: You are bein a little evasive here IBM.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:06:00 PM -- |    

 
Oklahoma smackdown: The Sterilizer versus Evil!
Oklahoma is home to one of the premier wingnuts of the United States Senate, Senator James "Constitution Restoration Act, What Gets Me about Abu Ghraib is John Kerry" Inhofe. Now the state might elect an even bigger dunce in one Tom Coburn -- a doctor with a past. In Salon.com, Robert Schlesinger reports:

According to records obtained by Salon, Coburn filed an apparently fraudulent Medicaid claim in 1990, which he admitted in his own testimony in a civil malpractice suit brought against him 14 years ago by a former female patient. The suit alleged that Coburn had sterilized her without her consent. It eventually was dismissed after the plaintiff failed to appear for the trial. In his sworn testimony, Coburn admitted he sterilized the then 20-year-old woman without securing her written consent as required by law.

For his part, Coburn claims he had an oral agreement. For her part, Angela Plummer came forward on Thursday to dispute that, saying "Dr. Tom Coburn sterilized me without my consent -- verbal or written -- and I know he's stating that he got oral consent. That is not true." Post reporter Romano adds that Plummer's mother did request the procedure, and that a nurse says Plummer "begged" for the procedure.

Coburn is also on record for favoring the death penalty for doctors performing abortions, and for censuring the showing of "Schindler's List" because it promoted "irresponsible sexual behavior." Schlesinger notes that even noted morals scold William Bennett considered Coburn's comments "very unfortunate and foolish." Not surprisingly, Coburn is also consumed by an antipathy to gays; in comments this spring he said:

The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda.

One of Coburn's signature issues has been health care fraud -- perhaps on the basis that "it takes one to catch one." Schlesinger:

After the operation Coburn admonished both the woman and her mother not to discuss it. "She asked me, since she was under 21, how did I tie her tubes -- since I told her I wouldn't and Title 19 wouldn't pay for it," Coburn said in the deposition. "I said I did it anyway and that she shouldn't talk about it because ... I did a procedure that was not recognized under Title 19 reimbursement." Thus Coburn admitted he had tried to silence his patient because he knew he was billing Medicaid illegally.

According to an expert contacted by Salon -- and simple common sense -- that's health care fraud. The Washington Post's Lois Romano reports that Coburn claims "he withheld the information to ensure the woman was reimbursed for the cost of removing the other fallopian tube in which a fetus was lodged" -- which given the very questionable consent wouldn't have been all that selfless on his part. In a second article, Romano writes that Plummer said in her Thursday statement, " [We] went into a room by ourselves. He said, 'By the way, I tied your tubes. But do not tell anyone, because I will get in trouble.' "

According to the myDD Senate race 9/13 update, Brad Carson is holding a slight lead over Coburn in two early September polls. In keeping with his generally apocalyptic, "my way or the highway" outlook on life, Coburn has declared that the Oklahoma Senate race is about the "battle of good versus evil."

Wow - that makes it tough. I'm usually just 100% dead set against evil.... but I'm also for a United States Senate free of hypocritical, homophobic wingnut health care cheats. So visit Brad Carson's campaign web site and see how you can help him out. Bwahahahaha...

(.siht ekil setator daeh ym nehw ti etah yllaer I ,wonk uoY .ngiapmac sih htiw detailiffa yaw on ni ma I dna ,egassem siht evorppa ton did nosraC darB, yas ot sseldeeN) posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:50:00 PM -- |