Arbitrary Deadline Extended

I see that the arbitrary deadline for Iraq's Constitution has been arbitrarily extended by Iraq's Parliament.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

A Promise

What We Did on Summer Vacation--A Ghost Town Orange Mini-series will start soon.

Forgiving God,
you do not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is your steadfast love toward those who fear you;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far you remove our transgressions from us.

--from Psalm 103

Arbitrary Deadline for a Shotgun Constitution

As we eagerly await the unveiling of the Iraqi 'Shotgun Constitution' [not to be confused with this Shotgun Constitution], we are busy reading the weekend's revelations and opinion pieces about Iraq:

• US Lowers Sights on What Can Be Achieved in Iraq by Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer [Washington Post]--Note that this is one of those stories that relies entirely on anonymous government sources.
• Someone Tell the President the War Is Over by Frank Rich
  --Mr. Rich reminds us of the lies that Mr. Bush told about Iraq's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction [for example October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati]
  Mr. Rich is convinced that

  Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja...

Apparently, President Bush has not been told that expectations in Iraq have been lowered and that 'the war is over,' since Saturday's radio address was yet another stale recap of the 'we are fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here' meme. [Tell that to people in Indonesia, Spain, and the United Kingdom--Osama bin Ladin's minions are still at work.]

Let's examine a quote or two from Mr. Bush's latest propaganda piece:

Our approach can be summed up this way: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.

--This sounds like Vietnamization--and we all know how well that turned out for Vietnam.

Another quote:

This war on terror arrived on our shores on September the 11th, 2001.

--Mr. Bush can not stop repeating the lie that Iraqis were involved in the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

It's like making sausage

Today's essential reading on politics in these United States: Four Amendments & a Funeral: A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress By MATT TAIBBI [Rolling Stone]

The election process is broken--and it appears nothing will be done to insure true elections--but pork-barrel politicians can build bridges to nowhere in Alaska...

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Cuban Five

NEWSFLASH [AP]:

A federal appeals court threw out the convictions and sentences of five men accused of being Cuban spies, ruling Tuesday that their trial was not fair because of community prejudice and extensive publicity.

Several days ago, I stumbled upon a Cuban website dedicated to the Miami 5 [Spanish] [Miami 5 - English (as of post time the English site had not been updated since June 20; sloppy propaganda, comrades!)] not knowing that a decision in their legal appeal was pending.

Here is a link to the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in the Cuban Five case: USA v. Ruben Campa 01-17176 [PDF] [Why don't reporters include the name of the case when they report on a legal decision?]

Of course, changing the venue from Castro-hating Miami in a case involving Cuban spies is a no-brainer. How many Miami jurors would risk the wrath of the anti-Castro Cubans to aquit suspected Cuban spies?

The defendents have several other issues with the fairness of their trial:

Campa, Gonzalez, Guerrero, Hernandez, and Medina argue prosecutorial misconduct regarding the misconduct of a government witness and during closing argument, improper use of the Classified Information Procedures Act, improper denial of a motion to suppress fruits of searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Batson violations, insufficiency of the evidence regarding the conspiracy to transmit national defense information to Cuba, improper denial of a jury instruction regarding specific intent, and sentencing errors. Campa, Gonzalez, and Medina contend that the evidence was insufficient on the counts relating to violations of the Foreign Services Registration Act. Campa and Guerrero maintain that the district court improperly denied their jury instruction on necessity and justification. Hernandez raises the denial of a motion to dismiss Count III based on Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act jurisdictional grounds and insufficiency of the evidence for conspiracy to commit murder. Because we reverse their convictions based on the denial of their motions relating to change of venue, we do not address these additional issues.

The five admitted to being Cuban agents--spying on 'terrorist' Cuban exile groups opposed to Castro, not the U.S. government. All five were accused of "conspiring to act as agents of the Republic of Cuba without registering with the Attorney General of the United States." I wonder how many CIA agents register with foreign governments? Why would we expect foreign spies to follow this law?

Duelling links--we link, you decide:
National Committee to Free the Five
Cuban American National Foundation

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Steven Vincent

September 11, 2001 changed art critic Steven Vincent into a war correspondent. Mr. Vincent 'fully supported the Iraq war, believing it was part of a much larger campaign being waged by the United States against "Islamo-fascism."' Go read The Tragedy of Steven Vincent [swopa at Needlenose] for more. Recently, Mr. Vincent reported about off-duty police officers in Basra who ride around assassinating their religious and political enemies. A few days ago, he was apparently kidnapped and killed by these very people.

It appears that the training of Iraqi police officers lacks something--"rule of law?" Well, at least they have learned from US leaders that "indictments" are effeminate; in time of war you kill your enemies.

UPDATE 11:50 am

The late Mr. Vincent would probably have dismissed me as a western-civilisation-hating leftist but in his blog he agreed with me that Iraqi police should be trained in liberal democratic principles:

The fact that many, if not most, of Basra's constabulary harbour primary loyalties to the city's religious parties is a serious problem. To the despair of many secular-minded residents, the British are doing a crackerjack job of teaching Iraqi police cadets close-order drills, proper arrest techniques and pistol marksmanship, without, however, including basic training in democratic principles and a sense of public duty. As a result, our Anglo allies may be handing the religious parties spiffy new myrmidons to augment their already well-armed militias.

[For 'militias' read 'Shia religious police.']

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Dirty war

Read Above the rule of law by Sidney Blumenthal in today's Guardian.

Since September 11, Bush proposed a sharp dichotomy between "war" and "law enforcement". In his 2004 State of the Union address, he ridiculed those who view counter-terrorism as other than his conception of war: "I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime, a problem to be solved mainly with law enforcement and indictments ... The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got."

During the presidential campaign, vice-president Dick Cheney contemptuously criticised the application of law enforcement as effeminate "sensitivity". In June of this year, Bush's deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, attacked the very idea of "indictments" as a symptom of liberal weakness.

The Bush Administration is truly evil as it pursues "concentrated executive power above the rule of law."

Of course, other dirty wars [Vietnam, Algeria and Argentina] have shown us that this is counterproductive:

For every militant abused or killed, a community of like-minded militants is inspired. Hatred, resentment and vengeance are the natural outcomes. There has never been a victory through a dirty war over these forces. To the extent that Britain responds with the assertion of the rule of law it serves as a notable counter-example to Bush's dirty war.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Reagan, King Fahd, and the creation of our enemy

Juan Cole reminds me of one of the reasons I loathed President Reagan: his role in the creation of Islamic extremists. Go read about it at the link.

Allow me to comment about this sentence: "In the US, the Christian Right adopted the Mujahideen as their favorite project."

In the early 1980s, I attended a meeting of the Young Americans for Freedom in Los Angeles. A video was shown promoting the Mujahidin, who were fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The US government was supporting them, apparently on the assumption that the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend.' We were encouraged to support these fellow freedom fighters. (My memory is a little hazy--was a collection taken up to support these proto-terrorists?) Even then, I knew that these Mujahidin were not democrats; they were Islamic radicals similar to those that had seized control in Iran. [At the time I was ignorant of the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims.]

I wondered at the time how freedom-loving young Christian Americans could support terrorists that oppose almost everything [except anti-Communism] we supposedly stand for. I still don't understand it.

The Young Americans for Freedom neglect to mention their proud support of the Mujahidin on their history page. They seem to be prouder of their role in evicting homeless demonstrators from Lafayette Park in Washington DC.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Scorpions

Two examples from Iraq:

• Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs [Josh White at the Washington Post]
• I found myself... [Khalid Jarrar at Tell Me a Secret]

Guess which link provides this excerpt:

When I was in jail I cried twice, one of them was when Nathom came to the toilets from an interrogation session, and I was in the toilets at that time, and he started crying hard, he said that they beat him so much to the point that he had to say that his brother killed 300 people and stole many cars.

He came to the toilets while they started to torture his brother to make him confess of these crimes, I went back to the cell and cried for minutes, it was so unfair, so unfair.

That night we made jokes about it, and that since we all are supposed to be "terrorism experts" we knew that a sword can kill up to 50 people, so he must have used so many swords, or maybe he used chainsaw? How else would anyone kill 300 people with his own hands?

Yes, we made jokes about that, in prison, and when it's such a silly situation, you learn to joke about it.

So the interrogator said: "so he killed 300 people?"
"yes sir" Nathom answered, and the interrogator writes the confession.
"and he stole an Opel Car?"
"yes sir"
"a yellow one?"
"yes sir"
And then the interrogator put down the pen and said "you son of a b****, it has been more that two years since the war and I never saw one yellow Opel car"
(And it's true, for some reason all Opels in Iraq are grey, some are black or blue but it's rare, but no yellow ones!) All of that interrogation happened while Nathom is hanging upside down, and being hit at the same time.

And which provides this one:

At Blacksmith, according to military sources, there was a tiered system of interrogations. Army interrogators were the first level.

When Army efforts produced nothing useful, detainees would be handed over to members of Operational Detachment Alpha 531, soldiers with the 5th Special Forces Group, the CIA or a combination of the three. "The personnel were dressed in civilian clothes and wore balaclavas to hide their identity," according to a Jan. 18, 2004, report for the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

If they did not get what they wanted, the interrogators would deliver the detainees to a small team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads, code-named Scorpions, according to a military source familiar with the operation. The Jan. 18 memo indicates that it was "likely that indigenous personnel in the employ of the CIA interrogated MG Mowhoush."

Sometimes, soldiers and intelligence officers used the mere existence of the paramilitary unit as a threat to induce detainees to talk, one Army soldier said in an interview. "Detainees knew that if they went to those people, bad things would happen," the soldier said. "It was used as a motivator to get them to talk. They didn't want to go with the masked men."

The Scorpions went by nicknames such as Alligator and Cobra. They were set up by the CIA before the war to conduct light sabotage. After the fall of Baghdad, they worked with their CIA handlers to infiltrate the insurgency and as interpreters, according to military investigative documents, defense officials, and former and current intelligence officials.

Soon after Mowhoush's detention began, soldiers in charge of him "reached a collective decision that they would try using the [redacted] who would, you know, obviously spoke the local, native Iraqi Arabic as a means of trying to shake Mowhoush up, and that the other thing that they were going to try to do was put a bunch of people in the room, a tactic that Mr. [redacted] called 'fear up,' " Army Special Agent Curtis Ryan, who investigated the case, testified, according to a transcript.

Classified e-mail messages and reports show that "Brian," a Special Forces retiree, worked as a CIA operative with the Scorpions.

On Nov. 24, the CIA and one of its four-man Scorpion units interrogated Mowhoush, according to investigative records.

"OGA Brian and the four indig were interrogating an unknown detainee," according to a classified memo, using the slang "other government agency" for the CIA and "indig" for indigenous Iraqis.

"When he didn't answer or provided an answer that they didn't like, at first [redacted] would slap Mowhoush, and then after a few slaps, it turned into punches," Ryan testified. "And then from punches, it turned into [redacted] using a piece of hose."

"The indig were hitting the detainee with fists, a club and a length of rubber hose," according to classified investigative records.

Soldiers heard Mowhoush "being beaten with a hard object" and heard him "screaming" from down the hall, according to the Jan. 18, 2004, provost marshal's report. The report said four Army guards had to carry Mowhoush back to his cell.

Two days later, at 8 a.m., Nov. 26, Mowhoush -- prisoner No. 76 -- was brought, moaning and breathing hard, to Interrogation Room 6, according to court testimony.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. did a first round of interrogations for 30 minutes, taking a 15-minute break and resuming at 8:45. According to court testimony, Welshofer and Spec. Jerry L. Loper, a mechanic assuming the role of guard, put Mowhoush into the sleeping bag and wrapped the bag in electrical wire.

Welshofer allegedly crouched over Mowhoush's chest to talk to him.

Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer, a linguist, stood nearby.

Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Williams, an intelligence analyst, came to observe progress.

Investigative records show that Mowhoush "becomes unresponsive" at 9:06 a.m. Medics tried to resuscitate him for 30 minutes before pronouncing him dead.

As expected, the torturers lie:

Hours after Mowhoush's death in U.S. custody on Nov. 26, 2003, military officials issued a news release stating that the prisoner had died of natural causes after complaining of feeling sick. Army psychological-operations officers quickly distributed leaflets designed to convince locals that the general had cooperated and outed key insurgents.

It is obvious that US military personnel, CIA agents, and their Iraqi allies are torturing people in Iraq. How this furthers the rule of law, democracy, etc. in the Middle East is beyond me. I am ashamed to be an American today.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

By far the best news of the week: the confirmed sightings of the once-thought-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker by John James Audubon, ca. 1829.
Source: Audubon gallery at Haley and Steele
[dealer in antique prints and maps].
More resources:

• Science magazine's freely available article "Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America" [YES!! Information wants to be free!] and supporting online materials.
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of America Online for the freely available pages about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
• And check out the links on this page and this page too!
• National Public Radio has several reports on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker here, including a "Radio Expedition" from March 2002 about the search for the elusive bird in Louisiana.
• New York Times editorial [with a nearly blasphemous title] "The Lord God Bird."

If I ever drive off the road and have a terrible wreck, it will be because I was distracted by a bird. Yesterday I spotted a wild turkey crossing the road about a block from my home. My son Tim asked "Oooh! What's that? A road-runner?" and I shouted "No! It's a turkey!--a road-running turkey!"

We are planning our annual camping trip. This year we will be heading east and north, in a loop through Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. [Depending on how things go, we may go as far as Virginia.] Tim wants to search for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park--and I am going to resist the temptation to flock to the Big Woods with other birders and disturb their habitat. It is not known if there are any breeding populations--but the key to their survival will be preservation of habitat. See this map:
'In the "Big Woods" region of eastern Arkansas, USA, mature or sub-mature bottomland forest covers more than 220,000 ha (red-shaded area), and substantial additional land is being reforested.'
Source: the supporting materials in Science magazine.
I've added a green square to mark the county where we will be hunting for diamonds and other rocks and minerals.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Ideologies of Power

Ever alert to the intersection of religion and politics, Ghost Town Orange noticed the Pope's installation homily (Sunday, April 24):

The symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the Ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished. When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals himself to be the true shepherd: "I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my life for the sheep", Jesus says of himself (Jn 10:14f). It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God's sign: he himself is love. How often we wish that God would make show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God's patience. And yet, we need his patience. God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.

Additional resource: The (unofficial) Pope Blog.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Two for the filing cabinet and an observation

Filing cabinet entries:

1. Recent volumes of the State Department's massive series Foreign Relations of the United States are available on-line. Cold war historians--take note and dig in!
2. The USDA's new "My Pyramid Plan"

Observation:

The sidebar feature "Today in History" has an obvious right-wing bias. For example, one of today's items reads "1983 President Reagan signs a $165B bail out for Social Security." It seems that when a Republican president signs a massive tax increase it is a "bail out," not a tax increase.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988