Terrorists, Lies, and Videotape December 10, 2007

What I want to know is why this is just supposed to be OK, supposed to be an acceptable exercise of executive power.

This past weekend (because things like this always get published on Saturdays), it was brought to light that, despite being warned by the Justice Department and the White House against doing so, the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first three terror suspects to be detained and interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret prisons after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hundreds of hours of video were destroyed in 2005, with the videos showing “severe interrogation techniques” used on the two alleged al-Qaeda operatives. Apparently psychologists were also involved.

The House Intelligence Committee warned against destroying the tapes, as did the White House and Justice Department, but Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, didn’t even respond to their directive, reversed Congress’ decision, and ordered the tapes destroyed. The tapes were ordered to be destroyed in November 2005 because, as the New York Times reports, the tapes “could have set off controversies about the legality of the interrogations and generate a backlash in the Middle East.”

CBS News’ Kevin Drum speculates as to what the tapes would have shown, quoting a gloss to Ron Suskind’s One Percent Doctrine:

They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep.

Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each…target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

Then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, three officials have said, knew about the videos and urged the CIA not to destroy them:

Intelligence officials say the decision to destroy the tapes was made by Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s covert-operations division. Even former CIA director Porter Goss did not know the tapes were destroyed. The White House said today President Bush didn’t know either.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asked, “What would cause the CIA to take this action? The answer is obvious — coverup.”

Attorneys for one Yemeni detainee pointed to a June 10, 2005 directive which requires that the government “preserve and maintain all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees.”

But Mr. Rodriguez somehow circumvented all of that.

And now the White House is all of a sudden going silent as to why the CIA would do this. What are they trying to coverup?

Don’t tell me it’s torture, because that’s old news. Abu Ghraib resulted in court martials and convictions, and Gitmo has become a household word in most politically aware circles. Perhaps we have no real idea as to the extent of the torture which was being employed in these interrogation techniques. If the CIA was so concerned that there would be “controversies as to the legality” of these techniques worldwide, setting off a backlash, that they would destroy videos in defiance of the White House, Justice Department, and Congress, maybe waterboarding is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Some officials are saying Rodriguez only acted to protect subordinates, that he was a good guy (hero, even) “concerned about how all this would end,” that he didn’t want some “GS-12s” to get in trouble. (This obviously conflicts with the “legality-slash-backlash” official story. But this is politics — we can’t get bogged down by truth and consistency.)

And, in the end, it’s still possible that two tapes still exist. If this is true, if they ever come to light, this will all have been for naught and Mr. Rodriguez’s boys could still go down for 20 years, and the protesting from Jakarta to Jenin could still happen.

Abu Zubaydah may never recover from his experiences. Will our country ever recover from the tarnished image we’ve given ourselves worldwide?

Rare Music Post: Amy Martin’s “All About Oil” November 8, 2007

As I do not know who this woman is, for me, there is, according to all opinions, no issue of kol ishah, but this song is a very potent synopsis of why we’re in Iraq, why our national debt has hit an unprecedented $9 trillion, why the US dollar is in the toilet, why social programs get the ax while Iraq spending is set to increase, why Bush can screw over the S-CHIP program while simultaneously not providing medical coverage for hundreds of thousands of veterans.

Allow Amy to state the reasoning simply for you. It’s about oil, greed, and old-boy systems.

Lyrics to the song are available here.

More Veterans On the Streets

A disturbing story from the New York Times today, “Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans”, highlights some of the plight of post-9/11 veterans, who have been turning up homeless or in need of assistance in greater numbers:

More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.

[…]

The National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington will release a report on Thursday saying that among one million veterans who served after the Sept. 11 attacks, 72,000 are paying more than half their incomes for rent, leaving them highly vulnerable.

Mr. Dougherty of the V.A. said outreach officers, who visit shelters, soup kitchens and parks, had located about 1,500 returnees from Iraq or Afghanistan who seemed at high risk, though many had jobs. More than 400 have entered agency-supported residential programs around the country. No one knows how many others have not made contact with aid agencies.

More than 11 percent of the newly homeless veterans are women, Mr. Dougherty said, compared with 4 percent enrolled in such programs over all.

Veterans have long accounted for a high share of the nation’s homeless. Although they make up 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless on any given day, the National Alliance report calculated.

While veterans are returning, by and large, to more private welcomes than Vietnam veterans received during the 70s, 72% of Americans believe that the government should be doing more for its veterans, according to a March 2007 survey from the Pew Research Center. The founder of New Directions, a treatment center for veterans in Los Angeles, says that he foresees a bleak future for Iraq and Afghanistan vets:

“When the Vietnam War ended, that was part of the problem. The war was over, it was off TV, nobody wanted to hear about it,” said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which provides substance abuse help, job training and shelter to veterans.

“I think they’ll be forgotten,” Keaveney said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. “People get tired of it. It’s not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They’ll just be veterans, and that happens after every war.”

The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness — mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA’s homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness and more than three out of four have a substance abuse problem, while 35 percent have both, Dougherty said.

Iraq veterans have a higher incidence of post-traumatic stress than their counterparts from previous wars. The VA has been slow to respond to cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a fact which came to light after one veteran seeking treatment for the disorder was found hanging from an electrical cord at his Minnesota home after being put on a waiting list at a VA hospital.

Aid agencies expect a “tsunami” of new cases as time goes on. Indeed, as David W. Gorman, Executive Director of the Washington Headquarters of Disabled American Veterans (DAV) attests, while the media is touting a “30,000 injured veterans” number, the real number of injured vets is much higher:

On Veterans Day, politicians will praise the 30,000 troops “officially wounded” in action in Iraq and Afghanistan as if this “statistic” were some kind of “fact.” In doing so, they’ll harm the men and women who carry the burden of our nation’s defense in today’s very dangerous world.

That 30,000 number is a fantasy.

Here’s the truth about the human cost borne by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as shown by data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Of the 1.5 million troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 720,000 (48%) are now veterans in the civilian population.

Of these, 202,000 have filed claims for VA disability benefits. The VA granted benefits in more than 90% of the cases processed so far, and will grant more upon appeal or presentation of additional evidence.

In other words, real statistics show that one out of four veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan is disabled in military service. This should shock no one as troops return to the war zones for their third, fourth, and now fifth tours of combat duty.

Of the 720,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, a quarter million have turned to the VA for treatment - more than one out of every three veterans of the combat theaters.

Gorman’s piece also highlights perhaps the crux of this entire issue — why are so many veterans being screwed by the very country we went out defend, and why is it happening at such a higher incidence lately?

Our government tried to do war on the cheap, failing to recognize the back-end cost of veterans with disabilities. True, it increased funding for VA programs each year - by amounts far below the rapidly increasing needs of our disabled heroes.

And it is these “back-end costs” which are going to continue to haunt us. Yet another example of the short-sightedness of starting a war with no foreseeable end, in a conflict where no one knows what constitutes “winning” anymore.

Iraq: 46 billion, Kids: Zero October 23, 2007

In what’s being called a new Iraq showdown with Congress by US News & World Report, Bush, in a move of gargantuan audacity, requested an additional $46 billion in Iraq war and overseas military funding. This request comes on the heels of Bush’s hotly contested veto of $33 billion in health care funding for the S-CHIP program, which would have been expanded to cover children not covered by Medicaid but who could not afford private insurance. The request for additional funding, in light of the recent veto, caused Democrats to react with dismay:

Representative David R. Obey, Democratic of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, criticized Mr. Bush for pushing the extra financing even as the president attacked Democrats as spendthrifts.

“It’s amazing to me that the president expects to be taken seriously when he says we cannot afford $20 billion in investments in education, health, law enforcement and science, which will make this country stronger over the long term,” Mr. Obey said in a statement.

“But he doesn’t blink an eye at asking to borrow $200 billion for a policy in Iraq that leaves us six months from now exactly where we were six months ago.”

…The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said that the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq would pay for health-care coverage for 10 million children for a year.

Currently the war in Iraq costs American taxpayers, on average, $330 million a day.

The funding is not all slated to go to Iraq, as the New York Times tells us:

While the bulk of the money requested would go to the Defense Department, the proposal also includes nearly $800 million to support a United Nations peacekeeping mission and elections in Sudan; $106 million for fuel oil under a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program; and more than $400 million in assistance to the Palestinians as part of the administration’s efforts to nurture a peace treaty with Israel.

Were this funding request to pass, it would bring the grand total spent on Iraq and Afghanistan military operations to $806 billion, almost ten times as much as Gulf War I and almost $300 billion more than Vietnam, in today’s dollars.

I am inclined to react like Rep. Obey, how could the President even expect to be taken seriously , when he turns down healthcare for children and advocates increased military spending? Are we suffering under a leader with such callous disregard for his citizens that he would doom them to waste away to their deaths in hospital beds on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?

(As an aside, the fact that Darfur funding AND North Korea’s nuclear disarmament fuel-oil trade program are bundled in with this is yet another slap in the face. No funding for war, no funding for Darfur? And this is the president whose “good moral character” was touted by Republicans?)

Perhaps The Seattle Timescan give us a bit of insight:

The Defense Department’s new Iraq war funding request proposes upgrading the B-2 stealth bomber to carry the military’s largest satellite-guided bomb capable of penetrating deeply buried bunkers. The Pentagon’s proposal is one sentence in the measure seeking $45.9 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush gave to Congress Monday. The extra money would be on top of $150.5 billion in previously requested war spending.

The new 30,000-pound bomb is six times bigger than the Air Force’s current 5,000-pound bunker-buster. Chicago-based Boeing is developing the bomb for the Pentagon agency that researches technology to counter weapons of mass destruction. The bomb was first successfully detonated in March.

Ah yes, where there’s Bush foibling, you’re bound to find some smidgeon of corporate cronyism.

Boeing gets 53% of its sales from its defense unit, a unit which had forecasted sales of $31 billion this year, down from $32 billion in 2006. They are looking to “generate foreign sales of F-15s and other fighters as the U.S. curbs spending on large aircraft programs.” (Wow! A huge aircraft sale just in the nick of time for Boeing! Good thing they don’t have to post that $1 billion loss from their forecasted figure!)

The death toll in Iraq currently stands at over 3,830 American soldiers.

So more important than S-CHIP is this bill. Granted, the White House did state that the only reason that S-CHIP was vetoed was because it was “poorly written legislation,” even though they had called it “expensive” at the time. If by bringing the troops home, such legislation could finally find its place on our lawbooks, then for every military servicemember who comes home alive, another child can make it through childhood alive and healthy. Saving 2 lives for the price of one.

Surely that’s got to be “common-sense” enough for the President.

Rare Music Video Post October 2, 2007

Rarely do I post a music video from a band that I like on this blog. Unless it’s something particularly newsworthy or political.

In this case, though, there’s another reason to make an exception. Serj Tankian, the vocalist from System of a Down, has released a couple videos on YouTube, promoting singles from his upcoming solo album. One of them, “Empty Walls” is transparent in its intent: to redirect our attention away from the rhetoric and towards the tragic losses of humanity in our invasion of Iraq.

Of course, it’s nothing less than the politically supercharged wake-up call we’ve come to expect from System of a Down and Serj Tankian.

This video leaves little left unsaid and bears reposting and replaying. Bring the troops home…if not immediately, then at least bring them home alive.

Iraq Death Toll Passes The 3,000 Mark January 1, 2007

From CBS News:

American deaths in the Iraq war reached the sobering milestone of 3,000 on Sunday even as the Bush administration sought to overhaul its strategy for an unpopular conflict that shows little sign of abating.

The latest death came during one of the most violent periods during which the Pentagon says hate and revenge killings between Iraq’s sects are now a bigger security problem than ever.

The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000, according to an Associated Press count, since the war began in March 2003.

Spc. Dustin Donica (inset above) was death number 3,000.

See the corroborating story at The Boston Globe, and from The Houston Chronicle:

At the time of his death Thursday, Spc. Dustin Donica, 22, was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. “Dustin had a tremendous sense of duty, both to his family and his country,” according to a statement released Sunday by his family. “He will be missed by his family and all those that knew him.”

I’m sure he will. The Houston Chronicle also gives us some statistics to “put things in perspective” (as if the loss of three thousand American lives is something which can be placated by an argument of “hey, but at least it’s not as bad as…”):

Three thousand deaths are few compared with casualties in other protracted wars America has fought in the last century. There were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean conflict, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I, according to Defense Department figures.

Even so, the steadily mounting toll underscores the relentless violence that the massive U.S. investment in lives and money — surpassing $350 billion — has yet to tame, and may in fact still be getting worse.

Why are we still in Iraq, again? Especially considering the “mission” has long been “accomplished”?

More Americans Killed in Iraq Than On 9/11 December 26, 2006

Yahoo!News brings us the macabre milestone:

The latest deaths also brought the number of U.S. military members killed since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 — five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

President Bush has said the Iraq war is part of the United States’ post-Sept. 11 approach to threats abroad. Going on the offense against enemies before they could harm Americans meant removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, pursuing members of al-Qaida and seeking Saddam Hussein’s ouster in Iraq, Bush has said.

There has been no direct evidence of links between Saddam’s regime and the Sept. 11 attacks. Democratic leaders have said the Bush administration has gotten the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, retracting from efforts against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

The “accomplishments” of this mission just keep piling up.

US Soldiers taunting children with water? What is this? November 30, 2006

As is well-known, the American-led War in Iraq has led to the interruption of utilities for many Iraqi civilians. So, many people find themselves — intermittently at a minimum, permanently at worst — without water service.

So then, what kind of cruelty does THIS have to be? WTF is this?

Hat tip to Kool-Aid.

Bush Adviser: “We are part of the solution in Iraq” October 24, 2006

As if anyone is still giving creedence to Bush Administration assessments of “how we are doing” in the Iraq War. CNN reported today an interview with Dan Bartlett, senior White House adviser. Mr. Bartlett, as the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 86, the highest monthly total this year, stated that we should not set a timetable for a troop drawdown, and instead, that “[j]ust because we have taken some serious sacrifices this month and that the fighting has been remarkably violent, that doesn’t make it any less necessary for us to be there and make sure we prevail.”

Mr. Bartlett also said that “[m]ost people would argue we are part of the solution in Iraq, not part of the problem,” Bartlett said.

Oh really? (Or perhaps, O’Reilly?)

The quite progressive web journal Electronic Iraq.net, billing itself as “a supplementary news portal committed to providing a uniquely comprehensive look at Iraq and the violence that has engulfed it,” printed an article from yesterdays London Independent with a quite blunt title: “We have done as much harm to Iraqis as Saddam”.

In the article, columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown makes quite powerful — and audacious — statements:

As the land they say they freed runs red, Blair and Bush don’t notice the stain either. Besotted with themselves and each other, what these leaders have done to the people of Iraq is at least as bad as what Saddam Hussain did to his own citizens.

Whoa! Care to elaborate?
(more…)

Oops…Did I say “Arrogance”? October 23, 2006

Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, officially apologized for his public comments criticizng the Iraq War, the Washington Post reported today. Speaking to the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera, Mr. Fernandez said our actions in Iraq reflected “arrogance and stupidity”:

Speaking in Arabic, Fernandez discussed topics such as the United States’ willingness to talk with insurgent groups in an effort to advance national reconciliation in Iraq.

“We tried to do our best,” he said during the interview, which aired late Saturday. “But I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq.”

Now, after official State Department statements (undoubtedly combined with some flack at the office):

“Upon reading the transcript of my appearance on Al-Jazeera, I realized that I seriously misspoke by using the phrase ‘there has been arrogance and stupidity’ by the U.S. in Iraq,” Fernandez said in the statement. “This represents neither my views nor those of the State Department. I apologize.”

We’ll just add Mr. Fernandez to the growing swell of Iraq war criticism.

US Attempts to Control Iraqi Opinion: Al-Arabiya Ousted from Iraq September 8, 2006

Today Reuters reported the closing of the Baghdad office of UAE-based TV station Al-Arabiya, accusing it of inciting sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias.

“We have noticed the clear intention of your channel in inciting sectarianism and promoting violence,” a statement from the cabinet of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said, adding the station’s Baghdad bureau would be closed for a month.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, in remarks broadcast on state television, said: “Closing Al Arabiya for one month is a warning for the unprofessional conduct of their correspondents in covering events in Iraq.”

The article goes on to note that al-Jazeera remains barred from Iraq since 2004. And in April 2004, USA Today noted when publishing its poll gauging Iraqis’ reaction to the coalition forces:

Although most Iraqis watch the local, U.S.-sponsored broadcast television station, which doesn’t require a satellite dish, Iraqis in the poll say the Arab satellite networks are the most trusted and break the hottest stories.

The two main pan-Arab news sources now, the most trusted by Iraqis, are barred from Iraq with no branch office there. Now the average Iraqi has absolutely one source for his or her news.

US-sponsored, US-funded broadcasters such as Springfield, Virginia-based Al-Hurra, a division of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) like Voice of America.

I find it hard to believe that a government as US-controlled as Nouri al-Maliki’s fledgling Iraqi one is acting without some sort of American “go-ahead”. Especially considering that the US General Accounting Office just released a scathing report about al-Hurra’s market share:

“[W]e were unable to determine the accuracy of MBN’s [Middle East Broadcasting Network, parent agency of al-Hurra, division of the BBG] reported audience size and program credibility estimates due to weaknesses in MBN’s methodology and documentation.”

Apparently, when the BBG was reporting on how it was doing in getting the message out to the Arabic-speaking public, a.k.a. ratings, it did things like surveying only certain governorates of Jordan or samples corresponding to only 19% of the Egyptian public. The BBG produced rebuttal arguments, “defending the professionalism and quality of its audience research, comparing it favorably to other surveys (like Pew and Zogby)”.

The US spent $62 million in 2004 to create al-Hurra. As LA Times columnists Lieven and Chambers note, this leaves President Bush with a bit of egg on his face:

President Bush has requested a 13% spending increase for Al Hurra. Yet, according to a recent Zogby poll, only 1% of Arab viewers watch it as their first choice. Al Hurra claims 21.3 million viewers, but it will not publish the Nielsen survey that supposedly supports this figure…

Because these stations opposed and strongly criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and have given prominence to negative stories about U.S. policies, they and the Arab media in general have been treated as enemies by the Bush administration, the U.S. media and many U.S. politicians.

The article goes on to note that al-Arabiya once lost its Baghdad office to a suicide bombing for criticizing terrorists.

It’s all about the ratings, it’s all about the propaganda. And make no mistake, just like with al-Hurra in Egypt, this is propaganda:

From the beginning, al-Hurra’s operation in Egypt was subject to the covert control of the security services, a fact that is not always apparent to those who oversee the station from Washington. The services have close ties to some of the station’s directors and handpick many correspondents. They even have final say over which guests appear on programs.

Al-Hurra has even been compared to the old Soviet Pravda and one Lebanese woman said, “I think it is aimed more at Christians” when asked what she thought of the station.

Now we’re going to make sure that our message gets through. As soon as American-controlled media came in, al-Jazeera had to leave. Now al-Arabiya has to leave. This is even more fair and balanced than FOX News!

(cross-posted from Jewschool)

More Iraq Murder Charges - The Camp Pendleton 8 August 30, 2006

A series of Article 32 hearings began today in Camp Pendleton, California for a group of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman accused of murder.

The case, whether or not the killing of 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania in rural Iraq was murder or a justifiable act of war.

Ireland On-Line reports:

Iraqi witnesses today recounted how seven US Marines and a Navy corpsman kidnapped an Iraqi man from his home and shot him dead. Their testimony came during the first public airing of a case that has again highlighted allegations of abuse by US forces in Iraq.

It formed part of a pre-trial hearing at Camp Pendleton, California, for two of the men accused of participating in the shooting of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, in Hamdania in rural Iraq. At issue is whether the shooting was murder or a justifiable act of war.

The witnesses said the eight grabbed Awad on April 26, bound his feet, dragged him from his home and shot him in a roadside ditch.

Defence lawyers are expected to argue that Awad was trying to plant an explosive device when the servicemen found him. They also question the credibility of the Iraqis who reported the incident to US authorities.

A conviction could mean the death penalty.

The US Marines maintains an Iraq Investigations website contains (in MS Word .DOC format) the timeline of the Hamdania investigation.

As the Washington Times explains, the soldiers are charged with allegedly taking a disabled Iraqi villager from his home, kidnapping him, placing him in a hole, shooting him repeatedly and staging the scene to make it appear he was an insurgent planting a bomb.

The San Jose Mercury News says:

Prosecutors say Magincalda, Thomas, Pennington and Barcos went into a house and kidnapped 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad on April 26. Magincalda, Thomas, Pennington bound his feet and, together with Barcos, the four took Awad to a roadside hole where Hutchins, Thomas, Shumate, Jackson and Jodka shot him, according to charging documents. Barcos fired an AK-47 in the air and Magincalda put the spent bullet casings by Awad’s body, according to prosecutors. Pennington wiped fingerprints off the AK-47 and put it in Awad’s hands, the charging documents state.

THE DEFENSE: Denfense attorneys say the troops are innocent and question the credibility of the Iraqis who reported the incident to U.S. authorities.

It may be the case that we will never know exactly what happened to Mr. Awad. Indeed, as one veteran noted:

“These guys are not getting a fair shake at all,” said retired World War II Marine Sgt. Maj. “Iron” Mike Mervosh of Oceanside. “I’m for them. All we’re getting is one side of it.”

Mervosh, who retired in 1977 as the most-senior enlisted man in all the armed forces after 35 years in the Corps, said he is inclined to believe his fellow Marines rather than Iraqi witnesses. “We trust those people, but not our Marines,” he said.

That is one trait which lamentably plagues the left-wing. So disgusted over the lies and hypocrisy exhibited by our disputed President, we often allow the troops to bear the brunt of our frustration.

I also, for one, hope that the Marines get a fair trial. And, in interest of fairness to the Iraqis, I hope justice is dispensed. But we are dealing with a president who has bent over backwards to keep Americans immune from war crimes charges, has unapologetically held thousands of Arabic-speaking people in secret jails around the world with no hope of due process, and has turned a blind eye as his cronies systematically engineered an ethnic cleansing campaign in the wake of a natural disaster. (see here, and also DailyKos — some are even calling it American genocide.)

In light of these things I am afraid for the perversion of justice, and equally afraid as to in which direction it will be twisted.