The Wingnut Joke, Part 2

Funny Of The Day

The cartoonist is in fact wrong or running a ten year old strip. This does not show the future of politics in America but rather the present and recent past, brought to us by the Clintons and their beloved DLC.


Link.

What's Really Happening At Gitmo

A psychiatrist who has treated former military personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there, recounted to him by a National Guardsman who worked at Guantánamo just after it opened.

Dr. John R. Smith, 75, is a Oklahoma City psychiatrist who has done worked at military posts during the past few years. He is also a consultant for the University of Oklahoma's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services, and is affiliated with the Veteran's Affairs Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City. The court-appointed psychiatric examination of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, was conducted by Smith. A few years ago, he became a contract physician, treating active duty members of the US military in need of psychotherapy.

Smith spoke on February 22, 2008, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, held in Washington DC. His presentation dealt with the psychological impact on guards of working at Guantánamo . He focused on a chilling case history, of a patient he called "Mr. H."
.
Smith described Mr. H as a blue-collar Latino in his 40s who had done routine service in the National Guard for years before being called up to Kuwait. Then, shortly after 9/11, he was diverted from Kuwait to Guantánamo . The detention camp had just opened. Mr. H was deployed there to work as a guard.

Untrained for the job, Mr. H was taken aback by the detainees. They threw feces and urine on him, said Smith, and tried to get him to sneak letters out, telling him that if he didn't, "they would see to it that his family suffered the consequences." The prisoners also mocked Mr. H, that his being in the military made him "a traitor" to Latinos and other minorities. Mr. H was confused and terrified.

Meanwhile, according to Smith, "this good Catholic man with a family who had pretty much always followed the rules" was called on to participate in torture. One of his jobs was "to take detainees to certain places and see that they were handcuffed in difficult positions, usually naked, in anticipation of interrogation." Mr. H often watched the questioning. He saw prisoners pushed until they fell down, then cut. They responded to the torture with "defecation, vomiting, urinating," and "psychotic reactions: bizarre screaming and crying."

Smith noted that Mr. H said he was "required to handcuff and push to the ground detainees who were naked." The prisoners were also made to "remain on sharp stones on their knees." Detainees, Mr. H told Smith, would try to avoid interrogation by rubbing their knees until they bled in order be taken to the prison hospital.

According to Smith, Mr. H's comment about these events "was poignant and simple: 'It was wrong what we did.'" While still at Guantánamo , he responded to being a participant in torture "with guilt, crying and tears. But of course it was forbidden to talk with anyone about what he was experiencing." He "became more and more depressed." Apparently, so did other military personnel. Smith said Mr. H told him that in the first month he was at Guantánamo , two guards committed suicide.

Smith said that by the time he saw Mr. H, he "had become very ill. He was suicidal, terribly depressed, anxious," and "riddled with insomnia and horrible dreams and flashbacks." He had already seen two military therapists and not improved. But those therapists "were active duty and he didn't dare tell them" what had happened at Guantánamo . Smith was not active duty, and after two or three sessions Mr. H opened up. With medication and psychotherapy, he became less suicidal but was still too sick to do any more military service.

Three years later after treating Mr. H, Smith got three new patients who were guards at Guantánamo on later tours. They said conditions were much improved --"they loved it at Guantánamo and went swimming in the Caribbean." Still, one guard was having problems directly related to his work there. He "described having to cut down a detainee" who tried to hang himself after chewing through an artery in his own arm. There was blood everywhere. When the guard left Guantánamo , he was suffering from "anxiety attacks, panic attacks."

Smith said his presentation at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting was the first time he'd ever spoken publicly about his Guantánamo patients. He decided to talk, he said, because he is concerned that veterans are generally ineligible for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) disability benefits if the condition is not caused by combat. He considers the guards of Guantánamo "an overlooked group of victims." But in making that case, Smith stepped into a unique role. Heretofore, almost all accounts of torture at Guantánamo have come from non-governmental human rights groups or detainees and their defense lawyers. The FBI accounts in 2004 were contradictory. Smith, a prestigious physician, relayed accounts from inside the military.

Link.

A Wingnut Joke

The Saint Has Flip-Flopped So Often, So Many Times, He's Forgotten What He Is

More Secure, More Ripped Off

Huh? Read how now.

The Lies of Micro$oft

I've ranted for years about the constant dishonesty that comes from M$. During a stint following the tech industry, I found honesty and factual honesty from the company maybe, and I do not exaggerate, three times. Less, I believe. Then, so much of its billions in profit comes from forcing crap down people's throats. Contrary to the geeks, there is no free market for OSes to any significant degree and therefore Windows has not been really tested in the marketplace.

But that was then, this is now.

And see recent lies here.

Another Sign Of Hopelessness For Iraq

I was going to say that this is all part of a deliberate plan to pass the Iraqi mess to Iran and let responsibility for it undermine the Irani regime.

But that's silly. Our two primary goals in Iraq are controlling the oil and establishing permanent bases. Neither of which Iran would support.

No, all this is a sign of how uncontrolable what we created in Iraq is.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Sunday in Baghdad for the first-ever visit by an Iranian president to Iraq, walking a red carpet past Iraqi troops to meet the president of a once-bitter enemy nation that's now under growing Iranian influence.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani greeted Ahmadinejad at his car and the two kissed four times on the cheeks in the traditional fashion. A military honor guard saluted the two and a band played the two countries' national anthems as they walked slowly down the red carpet at Talabani's headquarters.

The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq while also serving as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq.

[more]

Hil Entertains

You know, I run these Dem viddies for entertainment and in no way as an endorsement. Fun is fun.... (Of course, the Saint is a visceral issue... well, I mean, he's evil or at least completely inept and well, at risk of vulgarity, he did far more good for this country during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton than he ever would as prezzy.)

All The Mandarin You Need For Beijing 2008

This is not original. I would never stoop to something so low. But it is fu kin su pa.

That's not right! Sum Ting Wong
Are you harbouring a fugitive? Hu Yu Hai Ding
See me ASAP Kum Hia Nao
Stupid Man Dum Fuk
Small Horse Tai Ni Po Ni
Did you go to the beach? Wai Yu So Tan
I bumped into a coffee table! Ai Bang Mai Fu Kin Ni
I think you need a face lift! Chin Tu Fat
It's very dark in here! Wai So Dim
I thought you were on a diet! Wai Yu Mun Ching
This is a tow away zone! No Pah King
Our meeting is scheduled for next week!  Wai Yu Kum Nao
Staying out of sight Lei Ying Lo
He's cleaning his automobile Wa Shing Ka
Your body odour is offensive Yu Stin Ki Pu
Great Fa Kin Su Pa

Another Sign Of The, Well, Lack Of Success In Iraq; How And Why The Surge Is A Failure

Why was President Bush's decision a year ago to send another 30,000 troops to Iraq called the "surge"? I don't know who invented this label, but the word surge evokes images of the sea: a wave that sweeps in, and then sweeps back out again. The second part was crucial. What made the surge different from your ordinary troop deployment was that it was temporary. In fact, the surge was presented as part of a larger plan for troop withdrawal. It was also, implicitly, part of a deal between Bush and the majority of Americans who want out. The deal was: Just let me have a few more soldiers to get Baghdad under control, and then everybody, or almost everybody, can pack up and come home.

In other words: You have to increase the troops in order to reduce them. This is so perverse on its face that it begins to sound zenlike and brilliant, like something out of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. And in Gen. David Petraeus, the administration conjured up its own Sun Tzu, a brilliant military strategist.

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his gamble. The surge is a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled. Skepticism seems like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One is to admit that you were wrong, wrong, wrong. The other is to sound as if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many opponents of the war have chosen option No. 2.

But we needn't quarrel about all this, or deny the reality of the good news, to say that the surge has not worked yet. The test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? The answer is no.

In fact, President Bush laid down the standard of success when he announced the surge more than a year ago: "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home." At the time, there were about 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Bush proposed to add up to 20,000 more troops. Although Bush never made any official promises about a timetable, the surge was generally described as lasting six to eight months.

By last summer, the surge had actually added closer to 30,000 troops, making the total American troop count about 160,000. Today, there are still more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq. The official plan has been to get that number back down to 130,000 by July and then to keep going so that there would be about 100,000 American troops in Iraq by the time Bush leaves office. Lately, though, Gen. Petraeus has come up with another zenlike idea: He calls it a "pause." And the administration has signed on, meaning that the total number of American troops in Iraq will remain at 130,000 for an undetermined period.

So, the best that we can hope for, in terms of American troops risking their lives in Iraq, is that there will be just as many next July—and probably next January, when time runs out—as there were a year ago. The surge will have surged in and surged out, leaving us back where we started. Maybe the situation in Baghdad, or the whole country, will have improved. But apparently it won't have improved enough to risk an actual reduction in the American troop commitment.

And consider how modest the administration's standard of success has become. Can there be any doubt that they would go for a reduction to 100,000 troops—and claim victory—if they had any confidence at all that the gains they brag about would hold at that level of support? The proper comparison isn't to the situation a year ago. It's to the situation before we got there. Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "de-Baathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium. You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them.

Link.

Just Imagine; Iraq May Get Even Worse

Maybe the Saint knows something, maybe there's a reason to stay in Iraq for 100 years besides permanent bases to extend and deepen our hegemony over the Middle East: it'll take at least that long to fix the mess (to say the least) Our Leaders created there. Beloved Leader was right to dis nation building; all "his" administration is capable of is nation-destroying, but morality requires making good....

The next president, it now seems likely, will inherit a situation in Iraq that's as dreadful as any time since late 2006, before the troop surge and Gen. David Petraeus' new set of strategies.

Three stories in today's papers forebode grimness.

First, as is widely reported, Iraq's three-man presidential council vetoed a law that called for provincial elections in October. Mike McConnell, President Bush's director of national intelligence, called the veto "somewhat of a setback"—an understatement of staggering proportion.

When the parliament passed that law two months ago, Bush and his supporters—including Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain—heralded the vote as a major sign of reconciliation among Iraq's sectarian factions and thus a vindication of the surge. The point of the surge, as Gen. Petraeus and others have said, was to create enough security in Baghdad that Iraq's political leaders could get their act together. The vote suggested some accommodation might be in the offing. The veto dashes those hopes.

As Richard Oppel and Khalid al-Ansary report in the New York Times, the veto isn't a whim that might be reversed with some suasion. Rather, it reflects a serious power struggle not only between Sunnis and Shiites, but also among the various Shiite parties.

Unless the veto is somehow reversed, its effects may unravel the tenuous alignments that have helped to reduce the mayhem and casualties these last few months. On one level, the veto might spur Muqtada Sadr, the powerful Shiite militia leader, to suspend his six-month moratorium on violence. It is widely believed that Sadr called this moratorium in order to pursue power through political means. Now that this route has been blocked, he may resort to his earlier methods. (The Times reports that the Sadrists "were furious at the veto.") On another level, it is bound to infuriate Sunni groups, who had hoped that provincial elections would boost their political power in Ninevah and Diyala, which are fairly calm today but have been scenes of riotous violence in the recent past.

This development feeds into the day's second unsettling news story, in the Washington Post, which reports that many volunteer forces of the "Sunni Awakening"—the tribal militias in Anbar, Diyala, and other provinces that have formed alliances of convenience with U.S. forces to defeat al-Qaida jihadists—are backing away from the arrangements.

As the Post's Sudarsan Raghavan and Amit Paley report, the Sunnis are increasingly frustrated by the Iraqi government's refusal to recognize their political clout—especially reneging on its promise to let more than a handful of their militias into the national army and police—and by what they see as the U.S. commanders' insufficient advocacy on the Sunnis' behalf. The story notes:

Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province's Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met. In Babil province, south of Baghdad, fighters have refused to man their checkpoints after U.S. soldiers killed several comrades in mid-February in circumstances that remain in dispute.

Before the U.S.-Sunni alliances were formed in late 2006 (before the American surge, by the way), many of these tribesmen fought alongside al-Qaida. The Post story notes that while a lot of the alliances with America are intact, they are increasingly fraying. One Sunni commander in Diyala is quoted as saying, "Now there is no cooperation with the Americans. … We have stopped fighting [against] al-Qaida."

And so the biggest success of the U.S. operation in Iraq—which was always a gamble, one very much worth taking but not very likely to endure beyond its tactical aims—may be teetering on the verge of collapse before even those tactical aims (the defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq) are achieved.

To sum up, then, two points can be inferred. First, Iraq's sectarian factions are nowhere near reconciliation. The point of the surge was to create enough "breathing space" to allow for such a political goal. If the goal isn't reached by July—that is, within the 15-month span that was always, inexorably, the duration of the surge—then, in strategic terms, the surge will not have succeeded.

Second, there are many reasons for the reduction in violence and casualties these last few months. The surge and, still more, Gen. Petraeus' counterinsurgency tactics are among them. So are Sadr's cease-fire and the Sunni Awakening—neither of which has much to do with the surge, one of which (the Awakening) was initiated by the Sunnis before the surge was even announced. And now, both Sadr's cease-fire and the Awakening are imperiled.

What to do about these trends?

This conundrum takes us to the third news story of (dissonant) note, in the New York Times, which reports that the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Adm. William J. Fallon, thinks there should be a "pause" in troop withdrawals from Iraq after the last of the surge troops depart this July—but that this pause should be brief and that the withdrawals should resume soon after.

The first part of Fallon's idea—the pause—is nothing new. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called for such a pause in December after returning from a trip to Baghdad. Before the trip, Gates had been talking about continuing the drawdown of troops from today's 20 combat brigades to the 15 that would remain after the surge brigades go back home in July and to 10 by the end of the year. He changed his tune after Gen. Petraeus told him that he might not be able to keep securing the Iraqi people with such a small force. Hence the "pause."

But the second part of Fallon's remark—the idea that the pause should be brief, just long enough to allow "all the dust to settle," after which the drawdown will resume—is a new wrinkle. Perhaps reflecting Petraeus' caution that 10 brigades won't be enough to sustain the U.S. mission in Iraq, Fallon says that the U.S. mission will be scaled back along with the forces. In an interview with the Times' Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, Fallon says that he is advocating a strategy that would "transfer more and more responsibility for security in Iraq to Iraqi security forces and, at the same time, withdrawing a substantial amount of our combat forces." The U.S. troops remaining in Iraq, he added, would mostly play the roles of "supporting, sustaining, advising, training, and mentoring"—not so much fighting or providing security.

This is a major distinction. Do Fallon's remarks reflect the views of the Bush administration or of Secretary Gates? Certainly there is, and has long been, a tension between the institutional Army and some of the commanders in the field over this very question. The former has always been skeptical about extending the war in Iraq. Senior officers are concerned that the lengthy and repeated tours of duty, especially the toll it has taken on the retention of junior officers and the recruitment of new enlistees, might break the Army. The latter brush aside those concerns and focus on what they need to accomplish their combat missions. Gates has found himself straddling this tension—very concerned about the health of the Army but also worried about the chances of failure in Iraq.

Fallon occupies an in-between position on the bureaucratic chart. He's a sort of warrior-executive—the commander of U.S. Central Command, with headquarters in Tampa, Fla.—but, as such, he's also the senior-most combatant commander, ranking just above Petraeus. (It's unusual that the head of CentCom is a Navy admiral, but that may have reflected a desire to put an officer of broader standing in charge.)

Do Fallon's statements herald a victory for the institutional Army—and a confirmation of Gates' initial instincts? Or do they mark a ratcheting-up of the tension?

In any case, if Fallon's strategy does prevail, the next president—whoever he or she is—may be relieved. A decision will have been made, under George W. Bush's tenure, to scale back America's military mission and to keep drawing down its military forces after the surge.

But two bits of caution should be noted. First, this does not necessarily mean a winding-down of the war—or of America's involvement in it. Gates and others, in fact, have favored significant troop reductions from Iraq precisely in order to build popular support for a long-term U.S. military presence there.

Second, the question remains: What happens if, after the withdrawals, all hell breaks loose—an especially likely prospect if the Sunni Awakening collapses and Sadr calls off his cease-fire? Do we send more troops back in? Do we accelerate the withdrawal? Do we engage in diplomacy to lure neighboring countries to help tamp down the violence? And what do we offer them in exchange for finally helping us out?

John McCain has said he wouldn't mind staying in Iraq for 100 years. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to pull out a brigade or two a month though ultimately keep some of them in Iraq—and still others in the region—to keep fighting al-Qaida, training the Iraqi security forces, and so forth.

The way things are going, the next president, whatever his or her preferences, may be stuck with more severe problems than Bush ever was—and will almost certainly have to make decisions that are harder.

Link.

I Herein Confess My Childhood Love For Bosco

It was the best in milk (but U-bet was the best -- and necessary -- for egg creams).

Triumph Of The Christofascists In Their War Against Free Expression

Here.

Paradise, Texas

(Get it?)

See the paradise that is Texas.

The Saint's Radical BFF

Like this? The Saint does.





Greenwald has it all about the Saint's newest BFF here and here.

It's Back! Score One For Freedom Of Information!

Wikileaks.Org is back in business!

One Man's Dream

Entertainment Today

Life In These United Christofascist States

Teaching the world tolerance; no wonder we're succeeding in Iraq.

A Delaware school district has agreed to revise its policies on religion as part of a settlement with two Jewish families who had sued over the pervasiveness of Christian prayer and other religious activities in the schools.

One family said it was forced to leave its home in Georgetown because of an anti-Semitic backlash.

***

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and defendants said their clients were satisfied with the settlement. On local blogs, the anger many people felt toward the families for protesting Christian prayer at school events has flared anew.

Mona Dobrich, 41, whose family was a plaintiff in the suit, said such a furious reaction had exacted a profound toll on her family and might indicate that the settlement would alter little on the ground.

“I feel that it is a good settlement because the rules are out there,” Mrs. Dobrich said in a telephone interview, referring to new policies the board has agreed to adopt. “Do I think life is going to change in Sussex County or all the other Sussex Counties in the country? No.”

Mrs. Dobrich, an Orthodox Jew, grew up in Sussex County. Though often the lone Jewish student in school, she said, she did not have problems with Christians or others. For years, while her daughter, Samantha, now 21, attended local schools, Mrs. Dobrich said, she listened to Christian prayers at school potluck dinners, award dinners and meetings of parent-teacher groups.

At Samantha’s high school graduation in 2004, a minister’s prayer proclaiming Jesus as the only way to the truth nudged Mrs. Dobrich to ask the school board to consider more generic and less exclusionary prayers, she said.

As news of the request spread, many local Christians saw it as an effort to limit the free exercise of religion, residents said. Anger spilled onto talk radio, in letters to the editor and at school board meetings attended by hundreds of people carrying signs praising Jesus.

***

Her son, Alex, then 11, had written a short statement that said in part: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”

After the family received threats, Mrs. Dobrich said, she and Alex moved to Wilmington. Her husband, Marco, stayed in his local job to make sure that the family had health insurance.

They sold their house. But rent and expenses in Wilmington consumed their money.

Samantha dropped out of Columbia University because of the financial problems. Alex, who had attended public school, did not fit into to the Orthodox day schools he was attending and left, his mother said.

The financial settlement, which will be paid by the district’s insurer, will pay off the debt that the Dobriches accrued as they moved. The family has settled in Dover, Mrs. Dobrich said.

The Dobriches tried once to take Alex back to live in Georgetown and understood that they could not return.

“We tried to have Alex live with my sister in Georgetown,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “Alex was in the yard, and some kids came up and said, ‘There’s that boy who’s suing Jesus.’ ”

Link.