What a monster. But NEVER forget, for a split second, that half of the American people agree with her.

I'll be accepting suggestions for good places to live in non-French-speaking Canada if this Administration is returned to power in November 2004.

And don't lead our magnificent General into temptation! Women are attracted to him, but he must deny them his essence.

Billmon,

Why do I feel like I'm living through Vietnam, Watergate and the Rise of the Third Reich ...

All at the same time?!!!

@ norbizness

Yes, very true, and we must also never forget that the primary objective of the the terrorists is to contaminate the purity of our bodily fluids. Evil, pure evil. :)

We must also never forget that the primary objective of the the terrorists is to contaminate the purity of our bodily fluids.

Gen. Ripper: How does THAT conincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, Mandrake?

Why do I feel like I'm living through Vietnam, Watergate and the Rise of the Third Reich ... All at the same time?!!!

I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

"But NEVER forget, for a split second, that half of the American people agree with her."

No they don't. We don't live in Nazi Germany.

People are un-aware. They read about J Lo's ass, and watch Fear Factor, and vote for Star Search or whatever.

If there is ANY bright side to this torture scandal, it's that, for many Americans who were willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, this will force them to squarely consider what sort of man he really is.

Bush? Christian? Give me a fucking break.

Of course, if the prisoner abuse scandal is dead (and it sure seems to be) then Bush may slide on by.

I've taken to printing articles and blog posts like Billmon's above to spread around at work. I live in Texas. It's health for the folks down here to see what BushCo considers "okay".

Another excellent post Billmon.

I just wish one day God would get fed up with people doing stupid shit in his name and start throwing a few well aimed lightning bolts. Or a lot, whatever it takes. ;)

@Billmon-I'm a firm believer in whatever gets you through the night. Is all right. Is all right.
ROTFLMAO!! Thanks, I needed a laugh after the last couple of threads.

Another excellent post Billmon.

Save the praise - this one REALLY was like shooting ducks in a barrel.

I'm wretching again. I really shouldn't read this stuff. It's too strong for my constitution.

Well, Billmon --

It's hotter than hell here in Colorado -- and, Smirk was in state a week ago.

So I'm thinking -- maybe there's a one week lag time, between his presence and his natural element.

Jeez, I hate to nit pick, but Rachel wasn't Abraham's concubine; she married his grandson, Jacob. Jacob had two wives--Rachel and her older sister, Leah--and two concubines--I'm too lazy to go look up there names.

Abraham did have a son with his 'wife's maid', Hagar. That was Ishmael, the father of the Arab race. Which kind of brings us full circle in a way.

Cities Say No to the Patriot Act
By Kim Zetter Wired News

Forget drug-free and nuclear-free zones. A growing
grassroots movement seeks to make the United States a
Patriot Act-free zone, one city at a time.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has said repealing or
changing the Patriot Act would hamper the government's
ability to catch terrorists and protect the public.

But the government may be getting the message that
citizens are unhappy with the legislation. In March,
Chuck Rosenberg, chief of staff to James Comey, the
second-highest official in the Justice Department, told
a reporter in St. Louis, Missouri, "We're losing this
fight."

Talanian said it's important for people to understand
that they, not just Congress, can and should
participate in debates about national security and
legislation that will likely be around a long time.

"Hopefully, the more communities pass resolutions, (the
more it) will help change the laws and make people more
aware of what their rights are and the importance of
protecting them in the future, so that a Patriot Act in
a few years couldn't be passed quietly without being
read," she said.

Good post Billmon. This biach is just incredible. And I was thinking of moving to San Diego...

Whats the story with this http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/fellow? Is he for real? It almost seems like satire, but I'm not sure?

SCARY!!!!! no wonder i could never consider christianity!

I am not sure that 50% of Americans agree with Ms. Walker. However, I think that they could readily be convinced given sufficient propaganda saturation. The far right is willing. Given a second term, bush might just persuade them.

As for extremely religious people like Ms. Walker dusting of the thumbscrews for our ty

you had me at lennon. looks like we both worship at the same church. nice shot.

I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

Half the country will scream that they have to be renamed 'Freedom Amphibians'.

Meanwhile, what the hell's going on in Iraq? Is this the week the war stopped?

I don't have a problem with people having lunatic beliefs. I do, however, have a problem with lunatic believers making policy.

Wait a minute. Aren't religious women supposed to walk 3 steps behind, breed like rabbits and never speak unless spoken to?

An off topic thought -- the GOP's patron took Ronnie home now, to distract attention from Abu Gharib and the Dictator Wannabe's Enabling Act legal memorandum.

I for one, am already sick of this public wallowing in the fictional biography of Ronald Reagan. It was a crock of shit 20 years ago, and it's a crock of shit now.

I only hope most Americans have a similar response, to this GOP orgy in the hog trough of treacley nostalgia.

So anyway -- what is the going rate for a GOP soul these days?

Meanwhile, what the hell's going on in Iraq? Is this the week the war stopped?

No - just a TV timeout.

Anyone have a e-mail address for Ms. Walker so we can directly give her a piece of our mind? Talk about the bankruptcy of (a certain brand) of evangelical Christianity. I'm Christian and folks like Ms. Walker make me want to vomit.

Correction: fundie women, NOT religious women. I shouldn't talk on the phone and type at the same time.

For the record, I know many wonderful women who are religious.

Anyone have a e-mail address for Ms. Walker so we can directly give her a piece of our mind? Talk about the bankruptcy of (a certain brand) of evangelical Christianity. I'm Christian and folks like Ms. Walker make me want to vomit.

@Norbizness,

Check out Vancouver. You have to accept the multi-culturalism - english is becoming a second language here. Other than that, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Actually, even the second language thing means we have better restaurants than New York.

Cheers

Strange spontaneous interuption.

as I was saying, dusting off the thumbscrews for our tyrant in chief, she is just demonstrating a specific talent that is bred into the fundy. I would call it intellectual compartmentalization. There is one set of principles that apply in church and another that apply in the real world. For instance, unquestioning faith applied to God is not a harmful trait. However, unquestioning faith in almost anything on this planet is a sure way to get burned. This same compartmentalization can also be used for moral issues. Torturing an American is bad. Torturing an Iraqi is acceptable under certain circumstances.

You're brilliant. That's a given. But for heaven's sake, don't try to use the Bible until you read it. Rachel was Jacob's second wife (not concubine - he had a couple of those too). Jacob was Abraham's grandson.

The Times jumps on the bandwagon...

Unbelievable.

Just amazing.

I was just telling my wife that I think Billmon and I are both channeling some kind of unprecedented beam, a la Philip K. Dick. Both picking up the same message of truth. I'm a pretty level-headed person. In my work I have helped hundreds of families in very important ways. But I'm exploding this year as the Bush tyranny continues to be unveiled. . . . I've already got my escape route plotted. And I'm never going to rest until the criminals are brought to justice.

Officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

Sounds like a fancy-pants elitist way of saying, "I was just following orders" to me.

Sallyh: Generally, yes. However, being a 24 year old of Texas Southern Baptist origin without even the faintest glimmer of an engagement ring on my hand and noticed that my parents talk about how great my job is and people have stopped asking me if I'm dating anyone, I believe there is almost a third gender, for those of us single women who are ambitious and have some sort of talent to be used "in the service of God." Kind of like being a nun in that you aren't supposed to be having sex and are expected to look a bit on the dowdy side, but if God favors you with wealth for serving Him, well, that's just a sign of His favor and he wants you to have that nice house and fine automobile. Some of "us" do incidentally get married, but our service to the Christian cause outweighs the usual decorum expected of us.

Note that I'm now a pretty darn liberal Episcopalian, and am saddened that women like Mary Walker are considered to be following the same God that I do. Mine seems to be all about us followers visiting those in prison. Not beating the ever-loving shit out of them.

Actions Indicate Administration Has Plan To Reinstate Military Draft if Bush Re-Elected

U.S. Draft in 2005

By Mike Blair

A military draft may be reinstated by mid-2005 if President George W. Bush is re-elected in November. An appropriation of $28 million has been provided in the current defense budget to bring the nation’s Selective Service System up to speed, which many people believe will likely lead to a national draft of young men and women by June 15, 2005.

U.S. military professionals have told American Free Press that due to the Iraq war and large troop deployments in Korea and Europe, a manpower shortage in the armed forces has reached “a state of critical mass.”

Neither Bush nor his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), would dare to push for reinstating the draft during an election year. The draft was ended in 1973. But many people believe Bush has put the machinery in place to begin a draft by June 15, 2005, which includes setting up and staffing local Selective Service boards throughout America.

The Pentagon has begun a program to fill 10,350 local draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board posts as soon as possible.

Whats the story with this http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/fellow? Is he for real? It almost seems like satire, but I'm not sure?

Yes.

Shyte !

Here's the 2005 Draft link

I guess Taliban and Ossama call this Pentagon report a (FATWA).

I'm living the Spanish Inquisition!!
I'm an American in King Arthurs Court.
What is all this medival nonsense?
Is the Iron Maiden a torture device or is it simply sport?

Who is the Cardinal in charge?

Meanwhile, what the hell's going on in Iraq? Is this the week the war stopped?

13 Dead American already in the Month of June (who knows about the number of Iraqis).

http://www.icasualties.org/ (formerly Lunaville)

Billmon, you should change your Iraq Casulaty Url to the abovet - they very recently changed domain names.

More from The Stepford Wives and Ditto Heads of Orange County & San Diego County.
What did Nichols yell in, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?" "We're all filled up with insanity here...You'll have to go elsewhere!"

Alex

for what is haps in iraq

A little humor to lighten the mood:

Bush isn't sleeping well. He tosses and turns, and suddenly a figure moves out of the shadows. It's the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. "Abe," Bush pleads, "what's the best thing I can do right now to help the country?" Lincoln pauses, then replies, "Go see a play."

Billmon

Sorry to have lost the track. Thanks for reminding everyone that Reagan was a simpleton actor. So have been a lot of your recent presidents. The public is aways ahead of the curve. You watch Ophra, you vote dumb.

Problem is that very few of you actually vote, and as the most powerful nation in the world, the winner of that exercise gets to be king of the world. Does that have anything to do with the rest of the worlds' dislike.

To do hearts and minds you have to go back to the first scratch. None of your canidates has the curiousity to ask or explore. We're starting to learn, finally, that we don't have to entertain that boorishness. Which goes back to your post last night about the world economic status.

Thank you, Evilvangelicals.

I'll be accepting suggestions for good places to live in non-French-speaking Canada if this Administration is returned to power in November 2004.

Norbizness,

Don't rule out Montreal just because it's in Quebec. It's by far the best city in Canada to live in. Depending what you do for a living, you may be able to get a job in an English-speaking office. Even if you can't, there's plenty of time between now and the election for you to get a crash course in enough French to get by. Trust me, despite the snooty stereotype, Quebec francophones will be so impressed that an American is even making the effort to learn their language, they will bend over backwards to help you out. And, as I said, Montreal is by far the best place to be. Toronto is a distant second. Vancouver is fine so long as you really, really love the outdoors and don't give a shit about culture. Calgary, well, you might as well be in the U.S. -- given the chance, they'd vote for Bush there, no kidding. Edmonton and Winnipeg are too small and the weather is miserable. Ottawa is too boring. The Maritimes are too poor. Trust me, Montreal is the best.

But Bush and his cronies are going down. They have to. They have to.

Mary L. Walker - Christian, Republican, Patriot, Torture Attorney

She's also the author of "Coercive Interrogation Techniques For Litigators" and "Seven Stress Positions To Shorten Discovery."

As J-Lenn would say:

I need a fix cuz I'm goin' down

Impeach. Try. Convict. Hang.

It used to be simple.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land.
Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew v, 3 - 10.

Since Ms. Walker is a Christian, she should be familiar with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus of Nazareth delivered this magnificent message of hope and kindness, peace and justice to his assembled followers. Notice he makes no mention of justifying pain nor torture. It takes twisted souls like Ms. Walker (probably Torquemada in another life) to pervert what the wonderful Christ was saying. Her way is that of the evil one and her fruits are bitter indeed. Watch for her on judgment day; she will be the one on the left screaming in despair.

Since she's so religious, someone should point out to this lady that she's going straight to hell. I'd like to see her explain to Jesus and St. Peter the legal arguments for torture.

Thad, agreed. Montreal is a wonderful city. Even in November, I found it to have considerable charm.

This fascist point of view is not supported by 50% of us, but it IS supported by a large minority - perhaps 20%. But in addition to that 20% we have to include those who don't pay attention, for they are surely swayed by the noise of the wurlitzer. Regardless, 1/5 of the population in support of the party in power and their actions is more than enough to keep control of the population.

They don't care what we think - in fact, many of them are contemptuous of us. They don't care if we leave - in fact, they tell us to "love it or leave it". What do they care about?

From my observation, they care about the NFL and new cars and being tough and staying in charge. The only way I know to oppose fascism in the US is to stop buying the shiny, noisy crap they sell.

Rent and rice. If that's all we buy we'll have power in the only arena that counts anymore, the economy.

We have Bush, Walker, and Boykin (sp?) - anyone read anything about the church attendence of the guys doing the actual torturing? Is it evilvangelicals all the way down?

Not only will Ms. Walker be in hell, she will not even be at the bar with the rest of us.

God knows, we all need balance, focus and direction in our lives - and I'd be the last person to criticize Ms. Walker for looking for it in Jesus.

Well, allow me to be the first. What she really needs is a 2 X 4 upside her head. That'll make her focus.

'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

No rain of frogs here tonight, but we are having a real frog guzzler. Is that close enough?

Back in Reagan's day I didn't even know that the end-timer menace existed. I just thought they were all stupid. Now they're like the march of the formosan termite. Can't kill them and they ruin everything they touch.

Bilmon,

If I didn't already trust your integrity, I would have thought this was complete bullshit -- and even then I couldn't believe it.

Soooo, I did the right thing and asked Jesus and He told me he has never heard of this Walker lady -- He refered me to St. Peter, who told me that she is a member of a well-known group of forgers who write rubber checks in the Lord's Name.

I asked old Pete what the punishment is for that sort of thing, and he said, "You don't want to know, you don't want to know..."

Rgrds
Crazy

That interview reads like a potential bit from The Onion:

"Ask a whacked- out right-wing Christian political appointee."

CrazyBird:

The punishment is that the forger is led to hell, and is told that it is heaven.

And the forger believes it.

Miss Walker is a Torquemada Christian. Sometimes you have to torture and kill a person to save his/her soul.

I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

Hey, so long as one of them takes out the Chimperor, I'm ok with it. An Aimee Mann soundtrack would be nice, too.

I guess Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, PFC Lyndie England, and now Mary L. Walker have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that women in positions formerly exclusive to men have not improved the world with their superior morality. I never believed that women would raise the tone, but I'm old enough to remember the arguments that when women shared power, there would be more compassion and less cruelty and indifference toward the weak and needy.

I suppose some would argue that entering the competitive fray has coarsened their moral fiber. I think the pedastals they were confined to always had more to do with confinement than elevation.

Another illusion bites the dust definitively. The other one being the idea that Americans fought for a better world.

I've had the argument about torture with my 83-year-old father. He's not an evil man or a stupid man, but he thinks torture might be alright when American lives are at stake. He can't seem to get his mind around the idea that the people being tortured were not convicted of anything in a court of law, and might have been completely innocent of wrong-doing. He can't seem to understand that when we commit mayhem against insurgents we are setting the standards for how our own soldiers are treated when taken prisoner. I know he gets most of his news from talk radio.

It's very depressing.

Vancouver is fine so long as you really, really love the outdoors and don't give a shit about culture.

As my son would say, chao ji da ben dan! Our French-speaking cousins tend to be a tad conceited about "culture" (it doesn't only come packaged in white wrappers, y'know). But we forgive them everything because they make it impossible for the Conservatives to ever get a majority government.

Miss Walker is a Torquemada Christian.

I thought she was channeling Caiphais myself: "it is better that one man die to save the nation."

billmon, man, you're a hero.

Since she's so religious, someone should point out to this lady that she's going straight to hell. I'd like to see her explain to Jesus and St. Peter the legal arguments for torture.

I don't think you get how their cult works- see, it's like this. She accepted the Lord Jeebus Christ as her personal lord and savior. She now has a personal relationship with him and has been saved. Therefore anything she does must be right, cause Jeebus died for her sins and now she's gonna get rapturized.

Now I realize it sounds like I'm being my usual snarky-ass self, but if you asked her if this is how it works, she'd probably say yes with a straight face (except for maybe the rapturized part. )

I hate to admit it, but I know these fucking people up close and personal. They are every bit as crazy as they sound.

Bilhah and Zilpah. Y'all going to HELL!

Ms. Walker made the news last September, also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/politics/23CADE.html?hp

I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

Well, they do have the locusts in DC. Seems like frogs or famine would be a good next step.

Bilhah and Zilpah. Y'all going to HELL!

Not to worry, all the fun people will be there! Who wants to get rapturized with that bunch of torturing fuddy-duddys anyway?

@Sassybelle

Great joke.... already going around here.

Another: Three guys sitting around drinking in a cheap bar: an american, an aussie and a canadian;

Somewhere in the afternoon, Billy-Bob the American drains his mug, tosses the empty back behind his shoulder, whips a .45 out of his jacket, whirls, fires, exploping the glass in mid-air. Sits down his smoking pistol and grins.
Turning to his mates he says: ... In America, we're so rich we never have to drink out of the same glass twice.

Bruce, the Aussie, recognizing bodacious behaviour, finishes his beer, grabs the pistol, tossess his mug, fires and bang. Glass explodes. Bruce twirlls the pistol herorically and explains: ...in Austrialia, we have so much sand that we could make so much glass that nobody would ever have to drink out of the same glass twice.

Doug the Canadian, trying to connect the dots within his head, continues to sip, finally picking up the pistol, pointing and firing across the table, directly between the eyes of American Billy-Bob. Bang. Dead.

Doug takes a few more thoughtful sips then explains to Bruce, his Aussie drinking buddy,...In Canada we have so many Americans you never have to drink with the same ome twice.

What was the significance of that?

Maybe Americans are the butt of this season's Polish jokes. Getting harder and harder to take you seriously.

Cheers

Walker: It's a travesty to be in a place of strategic importance to the world as a business or political leader and not allow God to accomplish the truly significant through you.

ah! Finally we are told where the buck stops: It's all GOD's FAULT. Chain o' command and all.... just blowing off steam...
and, of course, He is
"disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

norbizness: "I'll be accepting suggestions for good places to live in non-French-speaking Canada if this Administration is returned to power in November 2004."

Vancouver BC is loved by Oregonians and Washingtonians.

You may not have to go that far. Portland OR is very liberal, and a good part of the GOP strength in OR is due to libertarians. There are some wingnuts though.

I read somewhere that OR has the lowest ratio of churches to population of any state. A good sign, IMO.

When Iraq War started, I jotted down a quippish little definition:

TYRANNY, n. Government that builds institutions
for the purpose of committing slaughter. It's
counterpart works the other way around.

So far, it's playing out pretty well, but it's looking less amusing with every passing day.

Ms. Walker isn't a Christian, she is a "Kristian." (Christians are to "Kristians" as real crab is to the fake "Krab" meat sold as a cheap and inferior substitute for the real thing.)

I'm also intrigued by the idea that the President can set aside inconvenient laws. Does this mean presidents can only be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors" if they forget to set aside that particular law first? Could Clinton have "set aside" the law requiring his testimony?

Oh, sorry, Ms. Walker's memo forgot to mention this power rests exclusively with Republican presidents.

When Iraq War started, I jotted down a quippish little definition:

TYRANNY, n. Government that builds institutions for the purpose of committing slaughter. Its counterpart works the other way around.

So far, it's playing out pretty well, but it's looking less amusing with every passing day.

(Sorry for the reposting. Spelling correction & sig.)

Scroll down at The Agonist to read...

Richard Clarke Says Threat of Instability in Saudi Arabia More Worrying Than Iraq

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Former U.S counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke said Monday that instability in Saudi Arabia deserves special attention and warned of a repeat of the situation in Iran following the fall of the U.S.-backed shah.

Israeli planes strike Beirut base

08jun04

ISRAELI warplanes have struck deep into Lebanon, blasting a Palestinian militant base south of the capital, in Israel's closest strike to Beirut since it withdrew troops four years ago.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9782698%255E1702,00.html

Ms. Walker isn't a Christian, she is a "Kristian." (Christians are to "Kristians" as real crab is to the fake "Krab" meat sold as a cheap and inferior substitute for the real thing.)

WTGP, that is superb, superb, superb. Gets my vote for next item most deserving of entering the regular blogosphere lexicon.

The regular JAG lawyers at Air Force have been in full rebellion against Ms. Walker for quite a while now.

From The Legal Times, April 12, 2004:

The Air Force's two top lawyers, General Counsel Mary Walker and Judge Advocate General Thomas Fiscus, may have reached a cease-fire in their fight for control of work performed by Air Force attorneys. The pair signed off March 29 on a memo that clarifies the roles of civilian and uniformed lawyers. Unlike a proposal circulated by Walker's office last year, the new guidelines do not require judge advocates in the field to report to the Air Force GC. Tension mounted between Walker and Fiscus over a 2003 order establishing the GC as "solely responsible" for legal issues within the Air Force.

A short time after this 'cease fire' the Air Force JAG released the photos of the servicemen and women's coffins coming off those planes in the dead of night. It seems almost a certainty now that the release of the photos was an attempt to undermine Walker and to keep the Bushites from overrunning the AF JAG office.

I'm sure the rank and file lawyers at Air Force must be thoroughly digusted with Ms. Walker's (to put it mildly) 'creative' lawyering. We can only hope Fiscus will continue to fight tooth and nail to salvage the reputation of the office she has so callously besmirched.

Did I post this before? Hell, I'll post it again. It's a must-read.

The Covert Kingdom by Joe Bageant

there's a damn good reason why the separation of Church and State is A Good Thing (TM)... one of the crushing ironies of our time is that a buncha Shari'a law types of the Kristian persuasion [tip of hat to J Jape, thank you for that handy orthographical convention] are getting all upset about the "religious extremism" of a buncha Shari'a law types of the Islamist persuasion. pots calling kettles black as far as the eye can see and where the heck is a secular humanist to find refuge?

BTW, those who are thinking New Zealand -- better check the really strict immigration requirements first. I've thought about this stuff you know :-) it can be pretty hard to get into NZ or OZ w/permanent residency rights, especially if you are 40 yrs old or above. over 50, fuhgeddaboudit unless you are wealthy -- there is a special clause for wealthy retirees.

While not yet reaching Pentagon Papers levels, it does seem like a lot of secret/confidential documents are finding their way into the open lately, this "presidents are above the law" text being just the latest with many more, I'm sure, to follow.

Night Owl with awesome hat trick!

OOPS, sorry, my thanks went to J Jape for the Kristian-with-a-K meme when it should have gone to WGTP, a slip of the eye when scrolling rapidly. Apologies.

Impeach. Try. Convict. Hang.

Lupin, did you read my kos diary?

:)

Oh, and all the talk of Torquemada made me think to look up the following quote by the Grand Inquistor in Brothers Karamazov:

They will marvel at us, and look upon us as gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and rule over them -- so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! But we shall say that we are obedient to you and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us. […] But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it. For the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something that everyone else will also believe in and bow down to, for it must needs be all together.

And finally

And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts. […] Listen then: we are not with you but with him, that is our secret! […] we took Rome and the Sword of Caesar from him, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, the only rulers, though we have not yet succeeded in bringing our cause to its full conclusion. But whose fault is that? Oh, this work is still in its very beginnings, but it has begun. There is still long to wait before its completion, and the earth still has much to suffer, but we shall accomplish it and we shall be caesars, and then we shall think about the universal happiness of mankind.

(Can't ... stop ... quoting).

At any rate, Dostoyevsky, himself a sort of Russian Orthodox "Christian conservative," was actually making refernce to the much feared future religion of socialism, but it isn't an accident that he equated this with the medieval Catholic Church (he also hated Catholicism) which, in his view, best personified temporal power abusing the forms of religion and people's faith in pursuit of its own vision of how the world should be run.

All of which is to connect to ...

OK, Google searched her and the first thing that came up was a report she wrote for the Air Force Academy on how to deal with their little date rape problem . Oddly enough, she finds that the problem isn't a chauvinistic mindset towards women often found in 'traditional' red state families, no. It's those damn permissive liberals.

http://www.af.mil/policy/letters/pl2003-07.html
--snip--
The most challenging problem for academy leaders will be overcoming an "eroding culture" that promotes behavior counter to Air Force standards, she said.

"We have some cadets who come to the academy out of families and backgrounds that are very consistent with the Air Force values and culture," she said. "We have others who come out of a culture that is very relativistic -- they don't believe in right and wrong and don't see a problem with what we see as 'problematic behavior'"

The Air Force challenge is taking kids who come out of a 'Beavis and Butthead' culture and moving them into a 'Leave it to Beaver' culture, according to Ms. Walker.
--snip--

Yeah, you know—that Beavis & Butthead are the source of so many copycat date rapes (has she even WATCHED the show, those two couldn't get laid in a morgue). I seem to remember rape during the "Leave it to Beaver" era being swept under the rug and the victims shunned (gee, kinda like at the Air Force Academy today).

She seems to want to blame rape on leftists (note the code words "eroding culture"). How sick and pathetic is that? Typical bushshit, take a valid issue and manipulate it into a weapon against your enemies—nevermind those feminists who have been 'eroding' the culture with their eqaulity and their demands for human rights are the ones who have taken rape out of the shadows it occupied when Hugh Beaumont knew best.

I think even my N.O.W. sisters would have to join me in saying, "What a cunt!"

"We have some cadets who come to the academy out of families and backgrounds that are very consistent with the Air Force values and culture," she said. "We have others who come out of a culture that is very relativistic -- they don't believe in right and wrong and don't see a problem with what we see as 'problematic behavior'"

In other words, they weren't tortured enough.

The regular JAG lawyers at Air Force have been in full rebellion against Ms. Walker for quite a while now.

Time to get Lindsay Graham on the case, methinks. Special Senate hearings, anyone?

I never cease to be amazed at the great number of total hacks acting as principal legal advisers to government agencies. Ms Walker appears to be one of the worst I would like to know who she is hacking for, the neo-cons or the Stepford Christians?

Maybe Americans are the butt of this season's Polish jokes. Getting harder and harder to take you seriously.

And it's getting harder and harder to put up with your obnoxious comments, Allen ? Vancouver. Why don't go find yourself a nice Canuck cyberbar to hang in, because you obviously don't have anything constructive to contribute to this one.

OT, and more cheerful--anyone watching Venus transit? It's quite cool.

Rice, rent and whiskey gary. Rice, rent and whiskey.

As far as moving to Canada. I live in Seattle and thank, apparently, the same good lord as Mrs. Walker that, of all the places I would have to live in these states, Seattle is one of them. But even still, I am continually dismayed at persistent gentrification creep up here. Seattle is still okay in pockets, but my sense of the city seems to be that people are getting more aloof, uninvolved and leery of being bothered. Maybe it's just the night-life crowd I run around with and among.

Whenever I begin talking politics and getting people (gasp) excited to merely contemplate becoming involved in the processes of democracy, I get nothing but excuses and hems and haws about what cannot be done. Negativity is in abundance. It's as though our star has set and nobody is willing to come to terms with it. It's a life killer. It drains a community of its vibrancy and brotherhood. Something has to inject some life into this place. Indeed, I'd imagine every city in the union could use some not for profit inspiration right now. But as we know, anything like that would invite suspicion.

What a fucking moral and tepid morass America is right now. It's the rudderlessness that scares me. It signifies that there is a vacuum. For some reason I'm skeptical idealism and fundamentalism are in equal parts blowing down our post 9-11 deflowered canyons to fill the valley with hope. The next generational cycle though, the Great American Awakening of 2050, that will be something else to behold.

Another thing: I grew up being the congential underachiever. I looked to other people to instill hope for the future in me. I relied (or I should say my parents relied) on experts, professionals and ministers of this or that to light the way and provide my moral grounding. All I wanted to do was fly. Of course they tell you: "You can't just fly any old time you want. What are you going to do in those times you can't? What are you going to make of yourself? There are times to be creative and there are times to follow the rules"

Now those motherfuckers are strangely silent -- they're flabbergasted. They recommend we refer to "The Manual" in times like these. We've all seen it, experienced it. But we, haggard and timorous as we might be, represent the hope for the future. It is the flames of life inside each of us, the outcasts and the self-exiled, that will give the next generation hope, if they are to have any hope at all.

It sucks. But it's true. I recommend renting yourself, Carl Sagan's PBS Cosmos series and watching it very closely (my Dad bought it for me two Xmas's ago ;) ). Let it move you, what humanity has always been capable of and has time and again, been assaulted by the fearful mentalfundalists for the natural liberties we are wont to take.

As Kelsey Gramner said in an episode of "Frazier":

"She's the kind that thinks the Inquisition was just 'tough love' for heretics."

What surprises me is that anyone would find this juxtaposition of professed faith and secular action surprising. After all, it's an integral part of Ms. Walker's belief system that everyone who doesn't believe as she does is doomed to the everlasting fires.

And that includes other non-fundie Christians.

So why cavil at a little (or a lot of) torture in the here-and-now, particularly when it involves the Satanic minions of Allah?

4LG's "crazy" is too mild a word for this bunch. I think they're no so much irrational as anti-rational, people who've been scared out of their tiny little minds by the implications of what science tells them. They are Medievalist in their mind-set, and a new Dark Ages would suit them just fine.

KKKristian

allen:
i'm an american, and i thought that joke was pretty good.

Allen in Vancouver,

It's getting harder and harder NOT to take things seriously here. Your joke was amusing, but living this shit isn't.

4LG

Thanks for your summary of her version of Christianity. Jesus was the "sacrifice" so we can be self-aggrandized triumphalists by virtue of our supremacist group identity.

Of course sainthood isn't scary because they don't believe in saints anyway -- you know, too much personal sacrifice, humility, etc. Not enough room for the triumphalist supremacist huckster plan for personal success.

bill,dont get mad,i just saw it as a joke. usually,it was other folks as the butt,just our turn this time. peacemon

OT, and more cheerful--anyone watching Venus transit? It's quite cool.

No. It's been pouring for hours here.

They are Medievalist in their mind-set, and a new Dark Ages would suit them just fine.

Just so, Prof. Fate. These are people who think carbon dating was created by god to test their faith. How do you argue with that? logic is of no use. Dinosaurs! yet another test, and anyway, Noah took some on the ark. Explains everything! (I'm not making that up.) It's hilarious and frightening.

I hereby (and again) nominate Billmon for Editor In Chief of the Universe.

(Then we can all hang out at that happenin' intergalactic bar...)

W, The Great Prevaricator,

Thanks for the invention of the Kristian word. I'd like to have something to distinguish between the Christian that I am and these folks proclaiming to be Christian, because I don't recognize their whacked-out dogma in my view of Christianity. I felt a great affinity for the Texan in Maryland earlier tonight.

From the Army Times (armytimes.com):

June 07, 2004

1st Armored Division troops may have Iraq tours extended again

By Panos Kakaviatos
Associated Press

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday he could not rule out keeping soldiers from the 1st Armored Division in Iraq beyond a previously announced three-month extension.

“I think it is unlikely, but in the end we are going to have to do what is needed to be done — never say never,” Myers told reporters during a visit to Wiesbaden, where the 1st Armored Division is based.

"The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture." It "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

Maybe too obvious to mention, but this just jumped out at me. What the fuck good is pain in interrogation if it is not "difficult to endure"?

"Are you going to keep standing on my foot, its kind of annoying? No? Ok, well then I may as well talk. You already beat me four out of five times in staring contests and I can tell you patience is far greater then mine. The WMD are under my uncle's house. My uncle's name. You have your tablet ready? Ok, Americanassholesaywhat. He was named after a very famous Muslim leader."

Maybe too obvious to mention, but this just jumped out at me. What the fuck good is pain in interrogation if it is not "difficult to endure"?

No, that just means that you resort to trickery.

"OK, Ahmed, now do you not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not know where the WMD is?"

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday he could not rule out keeping soldiers from the 1st Armored Division in Iraq beyond a previously announced three-month extension.

Well, they're fucked.

How long do you think the next extension will be? Till the Iraq is secure? Till the end of the War on Terror? (Or until the Rapture, which ever comes first.)

One more right wing lawyer we can add to the list of those never to sit on the federal bench.

@ Norbizness - re: Thad's comments and others:

I have lived in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver - and a few other places. I'm a transplanted American (dual citizen, actually, live "up here" by choice).

Montreal is definitely the best, even tho' Vancouver is more physically beautiful. Montreal is kinda like a cross between San Francisco and New Orleans in temperament, but with one of the nicest, warmest, cultures I have yet experienced in my many travels around the world. The people are open, and they actually talk to each other ... on the street, in stores, etc.

Toronto is kinda like a polite New York, crossed with Chicago. Vancouver ... hmm.... maybe like San Diego crossed with Minneapolis, but prettier than both, with a healthy helping of Hong Kong and Delhi but no slums.

Only problem with the country is that it's next to the USA and not in Europe. Tho' being in Montreal is more-or-less the next best thing. Dang cold in the winter, but "mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver". Wouldn't be Montreal without the winter.

Beyond the current rotation, the whole Army is fucked, Billmon. It's a VERY bad situation. Personnel shortages in Iraq and Afghanistan are acute, and "breakdown" is now an oft-heard word.

There is simply no way - no way in hell - to sustain the current pace and scope of operations another year. But that is exactly "the plan."

God forbid any more crises are added to the uncontrollable situations already on hand.

I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

Hey, so long as one of them takes out the Chimperor, I'm ok with it. An Aimee Mann soundtrack would be nice, too.

Charles Wain did the score for "The Last Wave". Or were you thinking of another movie?

Cheers,

What's the big deal? This is what corporate lawyers do daily. And yet it is the so called 'trial lawyers,' the ones who represent people against the corporations, who are vilified and loathed even by left leaning folks.

This woman was just doing her job like a good soldier. She was following orders. What's she going to do, throw her career down the toilet? Torture? No problem, sir. Right away, sir. We'll find a way.

Corporate America is the same way. It may be polluting your water, air, lungs, torturing prisoners (contractor interrogators) whatever, they know it will kill people, but hey, there's profits to be made, markets to be conquered.

Dogbreath makes a very good point. So many people are either scared or complacent, even if subconsciously.

This is the way things have been for the last 25 years, ever since (as the barkeep has ably pointed out ) the Great Communicator and the Iron lady rode into town.

It's just that now we are starting to notice, and experience, rapidly compounding effects in many areas of endeavour.

There's a new revelation/crisis/scandal almost every day ... and just think of how many conversations, reports, memos, etc. we DON"T know about.

nhop said (June 7, 2004 11:08 PM)
Good post Billmon. This biach is just incredible. And I was thinking of moving to San Diego...

Coastal San Diego is just fine (if you can afford it). It's inland San Diego County that's the problem: it is infested with wacked-out wingnuts (e.g. Institute for Creation Research in Santee and Tom Metzger in Fallbrook).

sdf: good to hear from another 'Grand Inquisitor' fan... I posted my fave snippet on the 'If the Reich fits' thread.
Ivan Kramazov for President, I say. The world needs more leaders without illusions...

There is simply no way - no way in hell - to sustain the current pace and scope of operations another year. But that is exactly "the plan."

The "plan" is to get Bush re-elected in November. Beyond that there is no plan.

Apropos to the frequent mention of Vancouver here at The Whiskey Bar,The Vancouver Sun had a timely article in the Real Estate Section today about Americans moving to the city.
I hope I don't break Haloscan posting the url,but here goes:

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=a0fab8f3-8e0d-4c62-879a-ff984173727d
Here are a couple of sites about Vancouver that I think give an idea about what the city 'feels' like.
http://www.katkam.ca/

http://www.vancouverscenes.com/

To: Allen in Vancouver
From: Jon in Vancouver
Re: your joke

Shut up

" The report also advised that if an interrogator "has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture."

I weep for my country.
Ken

Is it just me , or does Gen. Richard Meyers really look a lot like Sterling Hayden. I guess I should stop worrying about it and learn to love the Bum.

and just think of how many conversations, reports, memos, etc. we DON"T know about.

Ah, yes. I think about these every day. Surely, as incompetent as Dubyanocchio's Team is, they must have learned something from Nixon's and Reagan's mistakes. The shredders must be running 24/7 so they don't have to (Oliver North-style) smuggle out documents in somebody's underwear, which could prove doubly embarrassing given that panties are now reserved for use as prisoner hoods.

These guys obviously haven't perfected their secrecy cult, but what we've learned about their activities has gotta be a tiny proportion of what they're actually doing.

Decree Outlaws Iraqi Militias In Effort to Bolster Security

Here a minor detail:

The order also stipulated that Sadr and his lieutenants, as members of a now illegal armed group, are barred from holding public office for three years. That put a legal barrier in the path of mainstream Shiite political and religious figures who are seeking to draw Sadr and his followers away from armed resistance and into Iraq's postwar political process.

So, Matthew Matthew 25:36, revised by Ms. Walker:

"When I was in prison, you came to see me, and inflicted pain and suffering which was insufficient to amount to torture because it was not of such a high level of intensity that the pain was difficult for me to endure."

Yeah. That's the ticket.

Billmon,with your indulgence,Sir;(omigodcuthimoffheshadtoomuch)
I fully realize that I might get barred for these drunken elocutions. As always,the only time I really post is when I'm
swacked,because the rest of the time I'm sober enough to keep my mouth shut, hiding in the corner.

I'm a 50 year old man, born in NYC,parochial school,then northern Ohio,and in those days of the rust belt,you couldn't buy a job. So,left for Texas. I was a "hippy" (hippie? I can't remember anymore). Lots of "rednecks" beat me up for having long hair, and playing "Nigra" music...
That's why I left Ohio.
In Texas, was a different world. I was dealing with "just folks", that didn't judge me for my looks(thank god),made a living for a change,and had fun out of my own wallet for the first time in my life. Went on to other places,Fla,Tenn,back to Fla, and assorted stops in between. It's obvious that I don't have the academic/cultural chops that so many posters
here do,(yes,a slight bit of envy), but I do have a library
consisting of about 1200 books,which I'm quite proud of, even tho I've only read about 850 of them.
I am a Union carpenter,(laid-off), I've worked in sawmills,
all types of factories,shipyards(steinbrenner fucked my family)welding shops and what-not.

My point is that I have lived the life of "Middle America",
and have had to deal with folks telling me that I was "too
smart",and had to "come down to their level."

Frightening,no?

Part of my point is the mindset of "middle america",and all
that implies, is a dicey thing. The bell curve is a bitch
to deal with.

The other part is hoping Salleye is still here. You see,there were times in my life that I had troubles,and some folks helped me out. It was help from a church,and I felt like a hippocrite for taking it,for I knew I'd never be back. It wasn't someone like that sanctimonious Govmnt gut-ripping bitch Lawyer that helped me,she would only de-ball me and grin.
It was a true Christian like Salleye that helped.
Thanks,Hon.

and you too,sassybelle

directly between the eyes of American Billy-Bob. Bang. Dead.

Sorry to be rude, Allen. But let's face it, on a site like this your joke doesn't help too much. I critisised you earlier because you weren't doing a good job of representing our community.

It is a funny joke, but we both know that they get staler with each retelling -- that's why one-liners are so funny when you come up with them.

So, all that being said apologies for being way off topic, it's a tailend post anyway. Good to see the bartender throughout, thanks. Also hey Meteor Blades, what's up? I just had to do that ...

Billmon,
Of the justapositions you offer in your post, I found the one about good faith to be particularly pointed:

Walker: "I can't divorce faith from success because God is the foundation for my life."

The report: "Good faith may be a complete defense" to a torture charge."

I don't want to impugn the introspectiveness of religious people in general, but I feel that some (many, perhaps) use their faith more as a crutch than a beacon, and invoke it to avoid addressing the larger questions that might challenge one's worldview. A classic "good faith" defense, I suppose; the pun here runs deeper than it appears at first sight.

Looks she could really use a little of that "naked with a bag over her head in a pile of right wingers with pictures posted all over the world". Have these people ever heard of Jesus or read even one of his teachings in the bible???????? The level of hatred in everything they profess is appalling. Hell is going to be a very crowded place...

Once you have Faith, Ms. Walker the budding theologian-lawyer would teach us, you don't need good works. In fact, you can get away with bad works or, for that matter, anything at all. The same old heresy of "The Perfect" : once you are among The Saved the distinction between moral and immoral simply disappears.
What American politics seems to need at the moment is a massive injection of plain, rational morality and far less
religious fantasies.

Oops, sorry for quoting the garbage above. I should know better. Still embarrassed about him naming my city in his signature. And Montreal is the best city I've known in Canada.

Calgary has great country bars with boots, jeans and dancing, I have no idea about the rest of the Prairies, Toronto you have to judge for yourselves. But Montreal is 20 below celsius and 20 below fahrenheit each Christmas.

I was there once and we just stayed inside for a week, one trip out for supplies to build gifts and the second, a week later, to get more food.

In summer it's like New York with better buildings and nicer people, plus I think it has a longer evening because of the northern midnight sun effect. Fantastic cafes.

If you don't have money it seems pretty good too. Social services are awesome (based on a sample of one) and it used to be the one place to practice film and theatre.

Above someone compared Muntreal to New Orleans and Chicago. I'll add NYC and Jamaica, it's a long story but Montreal is one terminus of the undeground railway according to the jazz radio news. YVR isn't bad either.

Nazism, 1919-1945 (Volume 2: State, Economy, and Society, 1933-1939), Edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham:

Both Hitler personally and Nazism as an ideology and movement were fundamentally hostile to legal processes. The nature of the law as a set of rules regulating human activities with the aim of introducing rationality and predictability into social relationships was totally incompatible with the Fuehrerprinzip which formed the basis of the Nazi concept of authority. For since the Fuehrer regarded himself and was regarded by his movement as a man of destiny, chosen to lead Germany and expressing the will of the nation, any body of laws was viewed with suspicion as a restriction on his freedom of action, particularly since their enforcement was the responsibility of a legal profession which was considered pedantic and tainted with liberalism...(J)ust as Hitler avoided introducing a new constitution, preferring to leave the Weimar constitution as a facade while undermining its substance, similar attempts to formulate a new comprehensive corpus of National Socialist law came to naught. Thus, the attempt to replace the Civil Law Code with a so-called People's Law Code and, more important, the elaborate discussions about a new Nazi penal code, were all eventually shelved. As in the constitutional sphere, this policy of adapting the legal system to suit the requirements of the regime by a series of ad hoc measures over a period of years rather than by speedy and systematic reform, reflected the nature of the Nazi take-over of power, with its quasi-legal emphasis on continuity, its anxiety to avoid serious economic or social disruption, and also its total lack of forward planning, the result of the Party's concern with immediate questions of power rather than with formal structures. Above all, however, it had the advantage of leaving the Nazis free to criticize the existing laws as products of a liberal era without at the same time binding them to new ones which would have had the authority of the regime behind them...

Hitler's view of the law was a cynical one: "There is only one kind of law in this world," he told a meeting in 1928, "and that lies in one's own strength."

Hans Frick [head of the Nazi Lawyers' Association and of the Academy of German Law] summed up [the official view of the function of law] in the phrase: "Everything which is useful for the nation is lawful; everything which harms it is unlawful."

say it out loud:

SHAVE YOUR PUBES,
NO MORE BUSH!!

easy no?

@Pat - There is simply no way - no way in hell - to sustain the current pace and scope of operations another year. But that is exactly "the plan."

@ Billmon - The "plan" is to get Bush re-elected in November. Beyond that there is no plan.

Part of the plan re "stop loss" may be to keep the military vote from counting. How many of those guys do you think are actually going to be voting for bush? How good / secure is the military mail service? Last I heard they weren't getting mail in on a regular basis, so I imagine it isn't getting out either. Also don't want a bunch of Marines/GI's/Guard/Reservists coming back with "stories" just before the election.

Somehow I don't think when Powell said, "You broke it, you bought it." he was referring to the Army.

So now what? The draft resolutions that are sitting in congress have stipulations for all males/females aged 18-45 to be conscripted. There is no "education" exemption, finish out the semester then welcome aboard. They've got the names and numbers of the males through the selective service signup requirement but what about the f's, how have they been gathering that info? Seems if they have gathered that info it would be a violation of privacy laws. And I personally don't know of any young female that will willingly march down to the local induction center because she has been ordered to.

What would be the consequenses of pushing the draft issue out into the light of day BEFORE the election and MAKE bush address it?

I usually try to have an optimistic outlook and keep the negative energy away, but I HATE THESE EVIL FUCKERS!!!!!

that feels better.

say it out loud:

SHAVE YOUR PUBES,
NO MORE BUSH!!

easy no?

sorry, but My bush is fine, it's Bar's that has to go!!!

:-)

MORE TREES, LESS SHRUBS!!!!

Chimp in Charge

sukabi

Actually both pieces of proposed draft legislation have been tabled by Democrats precisely to do as you speculate - to bring the draft issue before the public in advance of the election. However, the Republicans will doubtless turn every discussion into a fillibustering session so that there's no way the two proposed bills get before Congress this side of November.

A lot of people seem to be saying "Oh my God! Did ya know they're secretly preparing legislation for the draft?!!!" as if it's an arcane Republican plot that's being exposed. It isn't, it's a Democrat's tactical move but it's unlikely it's going to achieve much of its original purpose now.

As things stand some people are scared half to death by it, some are blaming Bush and Co. and some are dusting off their road-maps to Mexico. (Canada looks to be closed for draft evaders now). If the debate was properly handled it might concentrate minds wonderfully and force some Republicans to consider the true meaning of casualty lists extending beyond the usual cannon fodder of Blacks, Hispanics and working class Whites. If the price of oil went up that way then maybe the colonial adventure in Iraq would soon be brought to an end.

Actually both pieces of proposed draft legislation have been tabled by Democrats precisely to do as you speculate - to bring the draft issue before the public in advance of the election. However, the Republicans will doubtless turn every discussion into a fillibustering session so that there's no way the two proposed bills get before Congress this side of November.

yes, but is there anything we the real people can do to force the issue?

You could join up sukabi, and help me in a scheme I have to sell all the US Army's Humvees and Strykers to Muqtada al-Sadr. Those Iraqis have got money and oil and with the addition of more advanced equipment they'll soon have us out of there. Hell, we're gonna lose anyway so why not just speed things along a little?

As my son would say, chao ji da ben dan! Our French-speaking cousins tend to be a tad conceited about "culture" (it doesn't only come packaged in white wrappers, y'know).

Touché, mon ami.

Vancouver is definitely more racially diverse than either Toronto or Montreal -- although Quebec's language-based immigration policies have resulted in very strong, visible, and active Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Haitian, Cameroonian, Somali, and Vietnamese communities -- not to mention the historic Jewish, Portugese, Brazilian, etc. presence.

On the other hand my feeling, having grown up in Vancouver, is that the city is very uncomfortable with its diversity. There doesn't seem to be much dialogue between cultures. Maybe this is changing now -- I certainly hope so.

Also, I'm sorry to say that Vancouver -- especially downtown Vancouver -- has the worst architecture in the world. It's as if everyone decided, "Hey, we're surrounded by all these beautiful mountains, and we look out on the Pacific Ocean -- who cares what the buildings look like?" Which may have worked to a point, but Vancouver's gotten too big for that now.

and by real people I mean those of us affected, not the aholes that fucked this up in the first place and don't have or won't have to send their kids.

"What would be the consequenses of pushing the draft issue out into the light of day BEFORE the election and MAKE bush address it?"

Bush will simply say that everyone's quite pleased with the performance of the all-volunteer force; that manpower issues are being looked at and addressed in a variety of ways; blah, blah, blah.

The Joint Chiefs have been vocal in their opposition to a draft. Bitter institutional memory of the damage it caused during Vietnam makes it unlikely, to me, that it will occur. But I just never know anymore. The institution I used to know is disappearing, if not already gone.

no thanks Bilko, did my time 29 years ago and wasn't sorry to get out. My ex stayed in for 17 years so we saw all the changes the army went through up to and including the first gulf war. Morale at that time (pre gulf and post) sucked. I can't imagine what those guys and gals are having to put up with on a good day (are there good days in Iwreck?), let alone a bad one.

Besides, I think the big boys have that taken care of, at least they did before the "war of american aggression".

Looks like another bad day in Iwreck....

Fourteen dead, hundreds injured in Iraq suicide bombings, US military dead and injured in double figures

Bilko, I forgot one, the big boys do have it covered:

Pentagon has lost track of exported missiles

Ashcroft et al must be shitting bricks, they just can't keep this woman quiet. Sibel Edmonds keeps talking.

"The explosion occurred yards from the base's main gate, Hussein said. Hundreds of Iraqis who work at the base were standing in line awaiting security checks"
Shit, this is happening every week now.

Sukabi: So, Edmonds talks about some non-governmental very powerful transnational organisation laundering big money and involved in 9/11? Hmmm, could I venture a guess? Let's say, an organisation who had his board meeting on 9/11, for instance? Let's say, Carlyle Group?
The main argument that would make me dismiss it is that if it was correct, she would already be dead.

march of the formosan termites(4lgood)
One aardvark comin up

sukabi

No problem, those Stingers are probably the ones that the US leaned on China to sell to the Afghan freedom fighters, sorry, Al Qaeda maniacs.

Oh dear

As for the dollars, well when Abu al-Khadami was carrying out terrorist bombings in Baghdad in 1994-1995 he was actually on the CIA payroll. He was bombing on behalf of Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord (INA) so that the CIA guys running Allawi could report back to the USA that Allawi had a 'network' and there was a major underground opposition to Saddam. (There wasn't, of course, so the CIA had to be a little 'creative', right?) Anyway, al-Khadami was running around trying to look like an army, bombing cinemas, mosques, newspaper offices, that kind of stuff (he killed a kid and wounded many passers-by outside the offices of the Baath Party newspaper al-Jumhuriya)

Al-Khadami was reporting to Adnan Nuri, another CIA 'asset' who was a former general in Saddam's army who the CIA recruited in 1992 and gave a mission to work on preparations for a coup inside the Iraqi military.

Now, like so many of these Iraqi plotters Adnan Nuri was very, very concerned with accountancy, creative accountancy that is. And that pissed off al-Khadami no end. "We blew up a car and we were supposed to get two thousand dollars, but Adnan gave us one thousand." he grumbled, as well as complaining about the time that at a supply dump meant to contain two tons of explosives he'd only been given one hundred pounds (the 'keeper of the dump' claimed the rest had been stolen). Al-Khadami hadn't been able to buy a car or pay off the dozen or so guys he had working for him to provide the illusion of a vast, shadowy 'underground'. One time Nuri paid him off in dollars that turned out to be counterfeit (Memo: Ask Chalabi, Allawi, Barzani and Talabani why one of the first items their groups of 'freedom-fighters' demanded from the CIA was always a top-of-the-range color photocopier). Towards the end of his career, apart from turning down a request from Iyad Allawi's INA, via Nuri, that he waste Chalabi with a booby-trapped car, al-Khadami became bitter that even though he was working for the richest intelligence agency in the world he had to go to the souk to buy clocks and turn them into timers.

So you see there were a lot of CIA dollars flowing around Iraq and a lot of creaming off going on among the Kurds, INA, INC etc. And I guess that some of the CIA boys operating in Northern Iraq with bagloads of cash weren't always too fussy about obtaining receipts for every plate of masgouf and 'informer' payments had to be confidential, right?

Over thirty years of clandestine killings and dirty tricks in Iraq, millions of dollars sprayed around to run informers and various 'exile groups', thousands of people ending up in mass graves after being encouraged to rise up in abortive rebellions, prominent Baath officials being slaughtered by the thousand during said 'uprisings' - well, you get the picture. Paperwork was probably not of the highest standard and a lot of people got wiped out who might have known stuff. Just how the CIA likes it.

On the plus side, for all those millions of bucks you did get a lot of fake stories about WMD, a lot of fake incidents about a non-existent military opposition to Saddam, a litany of 'war crimes' to lay at his door once the CIA stooges had prompted people to rise up and slaughter public officials, Iraqi soldiers etc. etc, And you've got to see all the guys that were sharing out the millions with the CIA and making up all the stories and sending all those thousands of people to their deaths now sitting in government in Iraq.

That's a result, right?

Oh dear

Sergeant Bilko, do you have a couple of linkable sources for any of that? I'm not being snarky ... I'd really like to read more.

Speaking of the end times, there is, as I type, a transit of Venus occuring; an event not seen by any (human) eye now alive. Perhaps this is more prophetic than we know. The Justice Department you describe is not any I recognize.

Meteor Blades

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060929839/qid=1086690393/sr=8-4/ref=pd_ka_4/104-1735556-8351938?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 pages 211-213

In 1996 Abu Amneh al-Khadami actually made a vidoetape recounting his time as a bomber on the CIA's payroll

The London Independent of March 26th, 1996 carried a front page article about the American sponsored Iraqi National Accord terrorist bombing campaign in Baghdad as well as the American sponsored bomb attack on Chalabi's American sponsored Iraqi National Congress headquarters in Salahudin that killed twenty eight people on October 31st 1995. Abu Amneh al-Khadami's video features in the story.

Two weeks before the Independent article appeared President Clinton had hosted an 'anti-terror' conference at an Egyptian seaside resort to denounce terrorist bombings in Israel by the radical Palestinian group Hamas.

How embarrassing that the CIA was sponsoring similar terror in Iraq, eh?

Meteor Blades

More here The CIA and the Kurds

The Jesuits of 16th century Spain would have been proud to accept the good counselor into their ranks. I haven't seen such casuistry expressed so boldly in years.

Following up on the up-page discussion of trial lawyers and corporate lawyers, I would ask if anyone can see the moral equivalence in having trial lawyers supporting the Democratic Party and torture lawyers backing the Republican Party. I suppose it depends on what the nature of the "person" being placed on the rack might be.

Multiple Bio's, histories, analysis, open source raw materials and external links: (Middle East Reference UK)

Iraq's political groupings and individuals

Index:
1. Civilian national secular groupings: Iraqi National Congress | Iraqi National Accord | Iraqi Communist Party | Constitutional Monarchy Movement | Democratic Centrist Tendency / Independent Democrats Movement | Free Iraq Council | Ba'th Party - Iraq Command | Revolutionary Workers Party | Iraqi Workers Communist Party | Iraqi Homeland Party | Iraqi National Alliance | National Democratic Party
2. National Islamist groupings: al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya | Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq | Islamic Task Organisation | Jund al-Imam | Iraqi Islamic Forces Union | Sadr II movement | Iraqi Islamic Party
3. National officers' groupings: Free Officers' Movement | Higher Council for National Salvation | Iraqi National Movement | Iraqi National Coalition | Iraqi Officers Movement
4. Predominantly Kurdish groups: Kurdistan Democratic Party | Patriotic Union of Kurdistan | Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party | Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan | Kurdistan Revolutionary Party | Kurdish Revolutionary Hizbullah | Conservative Party of Kurdistan | Kurdistan Islamic Union | Kurdistan National Democratic Union | Kurdistan Toilers' Party | Action Party for the Independence of Kurdistan | al-Ansar / Jund al-Islam | Islamic Group of Kurdistan
5. Other groups based around ethnic identity: Iraqi Turkmen Front | Iraqi Turkoman Democratic Party | Turkoman Islamic Union | Turkoman People's Party | Assyrian Democratic Movement | Assyrian National Congress | Assyrian Patriotic Party | Assyrian Progressive Nationalist Party
6. Civil and minority-rights groups - a listing
7. Political figures of note: Sa'ad Bazzaz | Mahdi al-Dulaimi | Sad'un al-Dulaimi | Munther al-Fadhal | Rend Rahim Francke | Nizar al-Khazraji | Laith Kubba | Kanan Makiya | Ahmad Qubaysi | Sinan al-Shabibi | Muhammad Bahr al-'Ulum | Ibrahim Muhammad Bahr al-'Ulum

This is really scary stuff.
We have religious fanatics here in our own government.

I just hope Nov 3rd we can say

Let it Be. Let it be !

President Kerry ! Let it be!

eeff

It would be even nicer if on November 4th we could have Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al in the dock and dozens and dozens of honorable military men and women and others shouting "Lordy, Lordy, I want to testify!"

Walker's fundamentalist religious convictions empowered her to write such an opinion.Muslims and any person not "saved" are all destined for eternal damnation. Persons not "saved" are disenfranchised and dehumanized by the fact that these people believe themselves to be of a superior class, the ones ensured of going to heaven. They are members of the ultimate clique.It is frightening. Walker isn't looking for Jesus, she is looking for the golden ticket.

Whilst we're on the topic of Evilgelical Kristians in key positions, with interesting direct relationships to the highest positions of the Bush Cabal ... you may recall previous posts where I referred to the significance of the American Aide/Consultant who disrupted the CIA/FBI directed Iraqi raid on Ahmed Chalabi's residence re Iran, cracked codes, espionage/treason, UN oil for Food, INC secret US bio documents (blackmail/coercion)... he's back in the US these days avoiding an Iraqi judge ...

Read on ...

Francis Brooke

Francis Brooke worked in the mid-1990s on the Rendon Group's anti-Iraq campaign in London at a salary of $19,000 a month. He subsequently became the chief assistant in Washington to Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Brooke also was principal founder and director of the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, which favored Hussein's ouster.

In January 2001 the New Yorker's Nicholas Lehmann wrote: "THE WASHINGTON headquarters of the Iraq-liberation cause is located in the basement of a brick town house in Georgetown, where a man named Francis Brooke, who constitutes the entire (unpaid) staff of the Iraq
Liberation Action Committee, lives with his wife and children. Not long ago, I spent a morning with Brooke, who calls to mind a twenty-years-older Holden Caulfield. He has neatly parted blond hair, round wire-rimmed glasses, and a boy's open face, innocent manner, and undimmed capacity for outrage. In 1992, Brooke got a job in London with a
public-relations agency run by a former Carter administration political operative named John Rendon. He was assigned to publicize atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein, and was given a peculiarly high budget
(including compensation for him of nineteen thousand dollars a month);
Rendon wouldn't name the client. Brooke soon realized that he was working for the CIA. He then maneuvered himself into the most sensitive part of the operation, assisting the Iraqi National Congress. The congress had just been set up, with blessings and funding from the Bush Administration, which evidently had spent the better part of the year
following the Gulf War in the hope that Saddam would fall, and then, realizing that he wouldn't, had settled on supporting an armed opposition. ..."[1]

In December 2001, Bloomberg News reported that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other current Bush advisers had advocated Hussein's overthrow since the Gulf War, when they served then-President George H.W. Bush. "Given the passion with which I have heard them argue this point, I would be surprised, now that they are in power, if they didn't eventually get around to it," Brooke told Bloomberg.[2]

Ha'aretz reported in late March 2003 that Brooke had acted as an unofficial U.S. envoy to Iran. "Iranian reports indicate ... that diplomatic messages have been transmitted between the U.S. and Iran via Francis Brooke, the American public relations assistant to Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organization of the Iraqi opposition. Brooke was warmly welcomed in Iran before the war began, mainly thanks to his connections with Condoleezza Rice and with other senior members of the American administration.

Brooke theoretically visited Iran as a participant in the conference of the heads of Iraqi opposition in Iran,
but he was the only American to visit Iran recently who was not fingerprinted, as has become customary in Iran following similar U.S. treatment of Iranian citizens visiting America. Brooke met with the Iranian foreign minister and with other important people and clarified that the U.S. has no intentions of targeting Iranian installations," Ha'aretz wrote.

Brooke was on the ground in Nasiriyah in April 2003 as the U.S. military flew Ahmed Chalabi into southern Iraq over the objections of the State Department and CIA. The Age reported that Brooke "said local Iraqi leaders had brought requests for Mr Chalabi to mediate with US military authorities on matters such as power supplies and people held as prisoners of war. 'We have been receiving delegation upon delegation... we are inundated,' Mr Brooke said."[3]

External links

Steven Mufson, "Iraq Opposition to Get More US Funds," Washington Post, June 14, 2001 (via Global Policy Forum website).

Paul Basken, "Afghanistan War Seen as Model for U.S. Taking on Iraq's Hussein," Bloomberg News, December 13, 2001 (via Global Policy Forum website).

Zvi Bar'el, "The citizens are currently on standby," Ha'aretz, March 25, 2003.

Brian Whitaker, "Is this the end?," Guardian, April 9, 2003.
"
Chalabi welcomed," The Age (Australia), April 10, 2003

Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, "Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding," Newsweek, March 27, 2004.

Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, "Exile group crossed line on lobbying, U.S. believes," Knight Ridder, April 23, 2004.

Jane Mayer, "The Manipulator," The New Yorker, June 7, 2004.

Ah yes, Ayad Allawi, the new Iraqi Interim Governments' Prime Minister, definitely (*cough*) a man of the Iraqi people, a champion for democracy (sic), and one of the controllers/founders of the creation of the CIA backed Iraqi Mukhabarat MkII ...

Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. To Stem Attacks
CIA Said to Be Enlisting Hussein Agents
By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A41

The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.

The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

Badran and Ayad Alawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein. The agency and the two men believe they can effectively screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory, officials said...

To understand what motivates these wackos, it helps to understand the philosophy of Leo Strauss, who is the guiding light for the administration. See the new Harpers for a very readable introduction.

Why do I feel like I'm living through Vietnam, Watergate and the Rise of the Third Reich ...

Shouldn't that be the Fourth Reich? Ah, but who's counting?

Birds of a feather flock together, felons cluster, like seeks like. Notice how the Reagan/Bush II folks continue to follow the dark path. Evil seeks its own level.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around at St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a-time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me

* * *

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

--Mick/Keith, 1968

Aauck, please stop! billmon, you're killin' me. I can't take it any more. Drip drip drip, is this all you ever do? Is there no bottom to your bucket of cruelty? I'll spill the jelly beans for just a breather. Ahhh!

Another teaser on Francis Brooke and his direct associates/masters ... ;)

Francis Brooke actively participated in the following events:

Summer 2002

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz secretly meets with Francis Brooke, the Iraqi National Congress' lobbyist, and Khidir Hamza, the former chief of Iraq's nuclear program. Wolfowitz asks Hamza if he thinks the aluminum tubes (see July 2001) could be used in centrifuges. Hamza—who has never built a centrifuge and who is considered an unreliable source by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (see July 30, 2002) —looks at the tubes' specifications and concludes that the tubes are adaptable. Wolfowitz disseminates Hamza's assessment to several of his neoconservative colleagues who have posts in the administration. [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pg 281]
People and organizations involved: Khidir Hamza, Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Brooke

Mid-December 2003

The existence of a June 2002 memo—revealing that intelligence from the INC was being sent directly to the offices of Dick Cheney and William Luti—is reported in the December 15 issue of Newsweek magazine, which also reports that Francis Brooke, a DC lobbyist for the INC, admits having supplied Cheney's office with information pertaining to Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's supposed ties to terrorists. [Newsweek, 12/15/03 Sources: Francis Brooke, Memo] Furthermore, he acknowedges that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. “I told them [the INC], as their campaign manager, ‘Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that's what the Bush administration is interested in.’ ” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pg 230] Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, “a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm.” [Mother Jones, 1/04] However, an unnamed Cheney aid interviewed by the same magazine flatly denies that his boss' office had received raw intelligence on Iraq. [Newsweek, 12/15/03 Sources: Unnamed staff aid of Dick Cheney's office]
People and organizations involved: William Luti, Francis Brooke, Dick Cheney

Ms. Walker must have read the part of the Old Testament of the Israelites that is was ok in God's eyes to kick a little brown slave ass.

Apropos to the frequent mention of Vancouver here at The Whiskey Bar,The Vancouver Sun had a timely article in the Real Estate Section today about Americans moving to the city.

My wife and I have already agreed that we are moving to Amsterdam should Smirk get re-elected. Almost makes me wish.....on second thought, never mind.

I would just like to remind every military person reading this blog that you took an oath to defend the Constitution (not a person) of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

...including generals and military lawyers and presidents and their lawyers in the military who attempt to subvert our laws and treaties.

Where is the Legislative branch of the govt when they are needed to check and balance an out-of-control executive branch?

Re Leo Strauss and the neocons ...

A Man, a Plan, a Cabal

By Joel Bleifuss

The Office of Special Plans (OSP) formulated a “process of decision making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn to uphold.”

OSP was conceived days after September 11 by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy Secretary of Defense and a protégé of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. OSP’s director was Abram Shulsky, who worked for Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle in the Reagan administration. Both Shulsky and Wolfowitz are Straussians, that is, followers of political philosopher Leo Strauss. He directed both their dissertations at the University of Chicago, and his teachings guide their actions. It was out of the Office of Special Plans that, in the best Straussian tradition, the war in Iraq was conceived, packaged, sold and delivered.

The New York Times has cited OSP in only two news stories. And it is not even mentioned in a Times essay by James Atlas that explores the influence of Leo Strauss, whose followers founded and staff the OSP. Atlas writes, “To intellectual-conspiracy theorists, the Bush administration’s foreign policy is entirely a Straussian creation.”

But to all accounts, the conspiracy is actual not theoretical. Strauss as a political philosopher and follower of Plato advocated the need for an all-knowing elite to conspire to guide public policy.

Shulsky, the OSP director, and Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, co-authored an article, “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence.” They write that Strauss “alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception.”

Shadia Drury, a professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, is the author of The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss and Leo Strauss and the American Right. Straussians both revere Drury for her understanding of his thought and revile “the bitch from Calgary” for letting that understanding see the light of day. “Nothing is more threatening to Strauss and his acolytes than the truth in general and the truth about Strauss in particular. His admirers are determined to conceal the truth about his ideas,” she told Danny Postel in an interview.

And with good reason, Straussians hold profoundly undemocratic views. “The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty,” she said. “Strauss was not as hostile to democracy as he was to liberalism. This is because he recognizes that the vulgar masses have numbers on their side, and the sheer power of numbers cannot be completely ignored. Whatever can be done to bring the masses along is legitimate. If you can use democracy to turn the masses against their own liberty, this is a great triumph. It is the sort of tactic that neoconservatives use consistently, and in some cases very successfully.”

The various fictions about the need for a war in Iraq that emanated from OSP are a prime example of Straussians in action. “Leo Strauss was a great believer in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics,” Drury said. “Public support for the Iraq war rested on lies about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the United States.”

In Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlined why lies were necessary. “He argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons—to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right—the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave, the husband over the wife, and the wise few over the vulgar many,” she said...

Vatican Response to Hitler's evil: "An erring conscience binds." In other words, Hitler's relationship to (A Catholic) God remains intact because he BELIEVED WHAT HE WAS DOING WAS GOOD.

O/T but not really

"U.S. markets will be closed this Friday, June 11, to
observe a national day of mourning for President Ronald Regan."

your country shut down for a day because a (B-)movie star passed away -- speaks volumes to the world

I think I'm gonna be sick

My wife and I have already agreed that we are moving to Amsterdam should Smirk get re-elected. Almost makes me wish.....on second thought, never mind.
Posted by: The Fish at June 8, 2004 09:31 AM

I'd do the same if I could. My girlfriend's from Poland and we both would love to move (back, in her case) to Europe. But she makes more in the USA in one month than her whole family does in a year in Poland. Until we can line up jobs in Europe we're stuck here.

Sigh. Anyone know a good European IT recruiting agency?

Mary Walker = Iron Maiden.

Walker: "Making moral decisions in the workplace where it is easy to go along and get along takes courage. It takes moral strength and courage to say, 'I'm not going to do this because I don't think it's the right thing to do.' "

The report: Officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

WOW...sounds like a defense the will be used by the MPs at Abu Grhaib...and then what sign will be sent to the world after the administration has screamed "7 bad people" for so long...oh what a tangled web we weave...

Not quite as tuneful as Mick n Keef, but as devasting in their own way were Mark E Smith & The Fall back in 1982 asking the musical question, Who Makes The Nazis? Here are some highlights (not for the faint-hearted, sounds of cattle throughout and kazoo solo at end):

Who makes the Nazis?
Bad tele-V ...

Who makes the Nazis?
The Nazis are long-horn
Long-horn breed
Long horn Long-horn breed
Long horns Long-horn breed

Who makes the Nazis? ...

Bad-bias TV
Arena badges
BBC, George Orwell, Burmese police
Who makes the Nazis?

Long horn - Long-horn breed
Long horns - Long-horn breed

Who makes the Nazis?

(Rest rooms)
Black burnt flesh
Hark hark
Crack unit species ...

Who makes the Nazis?
Bad-bias tele-V
You mind tellin me?
Here's a word from Bobby

When you're out of rocks, just give them real soul
Hate's not your enemy, love's your enemy
Murder all bush monkeys

Long horn, Long-horn breed

Who makes the Nazis?
Who makes the Nazis?
Bad-bias TV
Real mould
Real Irish know, Joe.
Who makes the Nazis?
Intellectual half-wits

Long horn - Long-horn breed ...

Once you have Faith, Ms. Walker the budding theologian-lawyer would teach us, you don't need good works.

In fact, in her world, good works don't matter. You can't get to heaven on good works, the only thing that will save you is grace. Grace from accepting the Lord Jeebus as your personal savior.

What a bunch of crap.

Fourteen dead, hundreds injured in Iraq suicide bombings, US military dead and injured in double figures

Darn. That's really going to put a crimp in the Reagan Week festivities.

I've read a lot of condemnation of Ms. Walker, but she's just an underling who was instructed to find a way to make torture legal by twisting existing laws and conventions against torture. She wasn't out there in her own little orbit trying to find legal precedent for it on her own because she's a bitch. She's not evil. I'm sure she's using her religious beliefs to rationalize the unacceptable, though. Typical of monotheism. She's being told by those behind the scenes in some of those cold and calculating think-tanks whose sole jobs are to study the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism and its threat to America and Western Civilization. I've dealt with the mindset of religious fundamentalism probably more than anyone who posts on this blog and most blogs. I know them very well and how they think. They're undeterred by anything. They're dogged in their pursuit of what they believe is true especially when it offers them to such exciting and rich rewards not only in the pursuit but in their death. There will be no "meeting of the minds", "agreeing to disagree", no "live and let live." No economic aid to the Middle East and foreign investment there will change their minds or the dynamics of the culture in those countries. That would make it worse. No Marshal Plan. They're in a death struggle with the liberal West. They're slowly 'losing their religion.' Similar to the cult-like Republican Party fighting harder than ever as their ideology comes to an end. We weren't attacked on 911 because of our foreign policy. We were attacked because we are the great and successful infidels which suggests to them that there is no God. This struggle of attrition will last 200 years if not broken by utterly destroying Islamic extremism. But the West and what it's about can't survive for 200 years like this. I doubt it could last twenty or 1 year with simultaneous nuclear attacks on major Western cities in Europe and here. In Muslim religion, there are precedents for the actions of the Islamic terrorists sanctioned by Mohammed. Most Muslims are peaceful and innocent. We're living in an age where it's possible to hop on a plane and kill millions. I want the West to survive. I don't want to live in the 13th century, which is where fundamentalism relentlessly tries to drag us to.

Be it as it may with Ms. Walker's theological convictions, I would still described her (at the risk of offending my cat who is also a Billmon affecionado) as a pussy with teeth.

Mrs. Walker is a prime example of why I got out of the Christian faith (I mean, other than having problems believing hocus-pocus kind of stuff). Christianity seems to be reverting to a medieval state of mind. Maybe Christians are now competing with Muslims to see who can be the most medieval-like? With people like Walker influencing national policy, the neo-Inquisition has to be just around the corner. Uh, I'm starting to get very nervous.

@ dave from Chicago

We really can't afford to move there either, but I don't want to belong to a country that supports a neo-Nazi for president.

However this has made me think. I have ancestry that goes back to the Revolutionary War...I wonder what they would do? Would they leave...or would they stick it out and fight for truth, justice and the American way?

I do know this, I may have to stay here should Bush get re-elected, but should there be a draft in 2005, I'm sending my stepson 19 & 21, out of the country for sure. God, I hate Bush.

I don't know what's so surprising about Ms. Walker's position — after all, if scourging and torture were good enough for her Lord and saviour, surely they're good enough for heathens or people whom we think might possibly be heathens, right?

Good post, Billmon. Clear, Walker is ... a woman of contrasts.

Here's my two cents on torture etc.

Exactly Ray. That's how she rationalizes it.

My wife and I have already agreed that we are moving to Amsterdam should Smirk get re-elected. Almost makes me wish.....on second thought, never mind.

Forty-five minutes by train out of Amsterdam is the medium sized city of Utrecht.If you are serious about immigrating to The Netherlands don't neglect investigating Utrecht.

Anyone know a good European IT recruiting agency?

I think the Expatica sites have a wealth of info for those who are looking for hints and links relating to immigration to Europe.

http://www.expatica.com/

I'm sure she watched The Passion.

And they have science and history behind them too. From AFP:

The discovery of the transit in the 17th century triggered a quest for glory between Britain and France.

They were eager to be the first to use the event to time the eclipse from different parts of the world and thus calculate the "Astronomical Unit" -- the distance between the Sun and Earth, the fundamentalist unit of measurement in space.

link

The very first link that Billmon provides, the one to the interview with uber-Christian Mary Walker, is to the site of the Professional Woman's Fellowship, San Diego. Before today it would appear that none of the articles published there ever attracted a single comment.

That is no longer the case.

As some of the comments now posted there are, to be blunt, somewhat unpleasant, it may be best that visitors to the link from here stop referring to this thread as a source of information as some posters have done, as the level of critical assessment here is of a quality that should not be associated with some of the commentary now adorning the Professional Woman's Fellowship site.

Darn. That's really going to put a crimp in the Reagan Week festivities.

I've had enough of both the iraqi trainwreck and ronnipalooza. Though I do think that Bush's speech at ronnie's memorial should be high comedy.

The tape of him at his papal audience is just appalling. He looks like a moron.

OT

Turkey snubs Israel, recalls envoy

as the level of critical assessment here is of a quality that should not be associated with some of the commentary now adorning the Professional Woman's Fellowship site.

Tweren't me.

From Andrew Hacker's review (NYRB, 6/24) of recent books on America (who we are, what patriotism is) including Samuel Huntington's "Who Are We?..." and Robert Reich's "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America":

"...Liberals like Reich have long argued that the most important American tradition derives from the Constitution and its protections of dissent and therefore of reform and creative change. Unfortunately, attempts to install a critical, altruistic patriotism along the lines Reich recommends are not likely to be popular among the self-appointed guardians of Huntington's variety. Like it or not, profits, power, and piety are entrenched in what has become a quasi-official delineation of America. The bullying that bothers Reich has been flourishing at home as well as abroad. Conservatives feel free to say that critics even slightly left of center are 'anti-American' and lack some quintessential American quality that they leave undefined. Liberals lack comparable epithets, and were they to be somehow devised, they would have little disposition to use them. The reason for that reluctance, Reich implies, can be found in the word he has chosen for his title..."

I'd only argue with one word, and that's "piety." He should have written "pietism."

More on Brooke :

Chalabi Aides Suspected of Spying for Iran
Raid at Leader's Home Targeted His Associates

and the latest:

Iraqi judge orders arrest of American aide to Chalabi

An arrest warrant has been issued for Ahmed Chalabi's right-hand man in Baghdad, the American consultant Francis Brooke, who tried to stop the recent raid on the politician's headquarters in the Iraqi capital.

I love lefty blogs. They're a response to the hurled news by corporate media and propaganda from the wing nut party in this the 2004 'Year Of Our Media.' The faster they sling it at us, the quicker we're able to disseminate and understand it among ourselves.

@Dan: yes and it's your Kos diary that directed me to the thread; bthankls for the slogan.

I love lefty blogs. They're a response to the hurled news by corporate media and propaganda from the wing nut party in this the 2004 'Year Of Our Media.' The faster they sling it at us, the quicker we're able to disseminate and understand it among ourselves.

For those of us marooned in red states (both Incog and me) it's nice to know we're not alone in the universe.

Of course, after too long, it becomes like a rat in a cage on its exercise wheel. So that's why, after Nov. 5, regardless of the outcome, I'm getting out.

biklett: bad translation from French, I guess.

Hosea: didn't check the site and the comments, but indeed there's no point. It would be like going to LGF and cheer Reagan's death. I can see the point on a progressive site, and I could even post some low-level comments about Ms. Walker and other fundies here, but I won't waste time trolling right-wing sites.

Now, for some time-wasting fun, this quiz from Buzzflash.

Blair urged to protest at 'legalisation' of US torture

The Guardian

Tom Happold
Tuesday June 8, 2004

Amnesty International today called on Tony Blair to protest against the US administration's "supposed legalisation of torture" when he meets the US president, George Bush, at the G8 summit.
The human rights groups was responding to allegations that US justice department lawyers had advised the CIA that torturing al-Qaida suspects "may be justified" if it was "in order to prevent further attacks on the United States".

The legal advice came in a memo, which was today published in the Washington Post. It was drafted by the department's office of legal counsel in August 2002 following a CIA request for guidance.

I was originally trained as an historian, and my focus was modern Europe -- specifically, World War One and the interwar years before WW2. I also have relatives in Germany who were young adults during what Herr Dr. Strangelove would have referred to as "The Unpleasantness".

Watching what's happening now in America, they feel the parallels with the past even if a majority of us can't. They remember the old addage about how to cook a frog: Dropped in boiling water, the frog jumps out; but if the water is heated gradually, well...

Call me paranoid, call me alarmist, but I've felt as if I were living in nazi Germany c.1933 for a while now. It wouldn't surprise me all that much if I woke up one day soon to discover I was living in a country a la Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". Norbizness may be right -- non-French-speaking Canada may have to get ready to recieve a number of us.

Call me paranoid, call me alarmist, but I've felt as if I were living in nazi Germany c.1933 for a while now.

You're not paranoid. I think all the blocks are being stacked up to create a fascists theocracy.

Not a place or society I care to live in, frankly.

Meanwhile, Westerners are now murdered on a nearly daily basis in Saudia Arabia.

God, what a great thread. Billmon, have you ever thought about offering post-graduate degrees from the WBU?

Outraged --

Reading about Francis Brooke, I realized that the Iranians deliberately burned Chalabi with the codes. Not that burning him is what mattered (although reducing his influence is in Iran's interest -- lower probability of nationalist civil war against Chalabi, Inc; higher probability of Iranian friendly Shi'as in government) -- but in burning Chalabi, the Iranians disrupted BushCo's command and control in Iraq. And that, was priceless -- worth far more than any operative; let alone, one as untrustworthy as Chalabi.

Random thoughts on Mary Walker --

Human beings are at their cruel and vicious worst, when they tourture, maim and kill in the name of God. Beware the Avenging Zealots, for their self righteousness gives them license to commit any atrocity.

Random thoughts on the Gipper --

He was the smiley face of self righteous cruelty. There is a direct line from Ronald Reagan to 9/11; Reagan created Osama, and Poppy Bush let him fester into Al Qaeda. The Iraq disaster and the scandal of Abu Gharib are merely the poison fruit of the poison tree, that are the essence of Reaganism.

What about Mexico? Cold weather bothers me, Spanish is easier to learn than French perhaps, mais non?

more of Reagan Legacy can be found here. So does anybody know if there was a REX 84 Program, and if so does it still exist?

BYOB thread open

The very first link that Billmon provides, the one to the interview with uber-Christian Mary Walker, is to the site of the Professional Woman's Fellowship, San Diego. Before today it would appear that none of the articles published there ever attracted a single comment.

That is no longer the case.

As some of the comments now posted there are, to be blunt, somewhat unpleasant, it may be best that visitors to the link from here stop referring to this thread as a source of information as some posters have done

What's depressing is to see people who claim to liberals/progressives/lefties etc. behaving like a bunch of cranked-up freepers. We have our share of the lunatics, I guess.

But I did like this comment:

For the sake of our children and the world we must not allow warped political ideologies to hide behind the name of God. It is never God's will or plan for us that we create a world where torture and killing are done in His Holy name.

Amen.

If I were an american liberal I wouldn't go into political exile to Canada. It's too close (and has a lot of covetable natural gas).

I would chose a country that:

1) Has one billion people.

2) Has nukes.

3)English is one of the official languages.

4)It is democratic.

@ Greco (in rapturable mood)

Thank the Mahatma for his sacrifice ...

four legs, there's a lot of weather where you are. Stay dry. Just heard about a tornado warning in your area. We're bracing for it now.

Ain't Religion & Power grand? Yep, put these into the hands of people who have never learned to get along with others and who wake up every morning with a hankerin' to get even with SOMEBODY, and you get tyranny. Proof all around us.

Scratchin' an itch in November ain't EVER gonna fix this kind of problem.

Preserving CIA Status Will Test New Chief

By Dana Priest and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A01

...Although he keeps a low profile, (Tenet successor John E.) McLaughlin was more substantively involved than Tenet in the problems that led to the writing of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq -- the official prewar assessment of the Iraq threat -- that was based on faulty, outdated and poorly sourced intelligence.

One former official said that McLaughlin is blamed in the West Wing for having signed off on the allegation in Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire "yellowcake" uranium from Africa. Tenet said he had not approved the passage, but White House officials said McLaughlin did.

"That is going to color the relationship, not with the president, but with Condi and [Rice's deputy, Stephen J.] Hadley and Andy Card and the vice president's office," said the former official who, like several other current and former officials, would share candid views of McLaughlin's prospects only anonymously...

(That third paragraph's a real doozy.)

ck, you are good; one of the several reasons I drift through here a couple of times a day.

On Brooke and Chalabi and Iran, there still seems to be a lot of confusion on who did what and when and why, but my favorite revelation is the same as yours; Iran knows how to play the game better than the reptiles and is in a much better board position. I might expect bushco to stay in the game even if they are losing since they have no alternatives. The oil and the ME strategic position will stay in Iraq whether we are there or not.

I am fascinated by it. Certainly Iran is biding its time for the next big move.

Part of the plan re "stop loss"

When my husband was stuck on stop loss, he asked his Colonel to put him in for the POW medal, seeing as he was being held against his will.

He didn't get it though.

Scratchin' an itch in November ain't EVER gonna fix this kind of problem.

We have about a 50/50 chance of making it as a civilization because of monotheism--maybe less. People jumping from 111 floors up above Manhattan wasn't because of the actions of evil. It was by the actions of monotheism.
It's the only threat we as human beings face, now.

The "plan" is to get Bush re-elected in November. Beyond that there is no plan.

More accurately, that's the goal. I'm not even sure (much as Rove is held up as the ultimate political genius) there is any more plan there than there was for running Iraq.

A goal is not a plan.

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings with a few words for Republican-leaning libertarians and Bush-inclined Democrats (which includes no one at the Bar, I believe, but it's interesting nonetheless):

(T)he big thing is this: President Bush is absolutely responsible for everything that happens in his administration, and to the extent that the Pentagon memo conditioned policy, he is first in line for blame. HOWEVER. President Bush is no one's idea of a legal mind. He may have initiated the project that became the memo, but he didn't draft the thing. High-level government lawyers, most of them undoubtedly political appointees, did that. What that means is that there is systemic corruption in the Republican Party as an institution - "Bush's Willing Torturers" we might call them. These are people that came up with the idea that the Constitutional phrase "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" meant

authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

They represent a deadly danger to the American system and they are multiple. It's not one guy somewhere, it's a movement. Until the Republican Party roots them out, that Party is the enemy, not just of libertarians, but of anyone who values individual freedom and republican government. From the standpoint of liberty, there can no longer be any justification for preferring the Republicans to the Democrats.

UPDATE: To clarify, this isn't just another Unqualified Offerings anti-torture item. The issue now goes beyond torture to the very structure of American government. Torture is the symptom. The concept that the President is not just himself above the law, but a supralegal authority, is the malady.

Jim Henley, 08:45 AM

Bean writes: I'd only argue with one word, and that's "piety." He should have written "pietism."

That doesn't seem quite right. Are you meaning to characterize the eighteenth-century German Lutheran movement, or are you making a joke by adding the "ism"?

Pietism has some theological flaws as well as some wacky symptoms, but it's mostly died away as a religious movement. FYI, some notables who flirted with Pietism at some point: Goethe, Schiller, Kant.

A supplement to Night Owl @ 12:51 AM. I apologize for the length of this excerpt, but I cannot provide a link. And RE ahem’s question, Lindsey Graham is on the case. From Inside the Pentagon:

Draft Senate Measure Seeks To Boost Voice Of Military Lawyers

A new measure introduced in the Senate last week would strengthen the independence and clout of military attorneys in each of the services. The proposal -- introduced by Senate Armed Services Committee member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- comes amid growing complaints that uniformed lawyers were shut out of observing wartime interrogations in Iraq and ensuring compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Military and legal officials say these attorneys had limited options for recourse within the Pentagon.

Uniformed lawyers attempted to raise concerns about breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the interrogation of prisoners but were afforded little notice by political appointees, Scott Horton, a lawyer who researched the issue for the City Bar Association in New York, told Inside the Pentagon May 21. The conventions protect prisoners of war and other detainees during conflicts, though the Bush administration has said they do not apply to captured al Qaeda or Taliban fighters.

Horton was quoted in the media last week as saying the exclusion of military attorneys “opened the door for abuse” of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. He chaired a committee that investigated the claims of unnamed uniformed lawyers who met with him last year about the prisoner interrogation procedures in Iraq, which constituted a change from the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The judge advocates reportedly told Horton last year their concerns were being ignored by Defense Department political appointees.

The Graham measure -- offered May 20 as an amendment to the defense authorization bill pending on the Senate floor -- would boost the rank of each service’s top judge advocate general, or JAG, from two stars to three. It also would institute in law a reporting chain in which the top JAGs advise their respective service secretaries and chiefs of staff directly on military justice matters, without having to go through the service general counsel, a politically appointed civilian lawyer.

...The provision to lift the rank of all the services’ top JAGs to three stars is “so that they [have] the status they need to be a player at the table,” one retired judge advocate told ITP this week on condition of anonymity. Functioning at the same level as deputy chiefs of staff, the senior uniformed attorney would have a better chance of being heard by top officials, this former JAG and others opined.

The top physician in each service is a three-star general or flag officer, noted one senior officer on active duty. At the same time, there is no officer at general or flag officer rank advising the defense secretary or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on legal issues, this official said.

...Yet for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and some of his predecessors over the past 14 years, the general counsel should oversee the service JAGs as a matter of civilian control over the military, officials say.

...Although the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal put the JAG issue into the mainstream media, the underlying issue has been brewing for some time, congressional and legal sources say.

In May 2003, Air Force Secretary James Roche issued an order making the general counsel the “sole” authority for legal issues in the service, effectively relegating that service’s JAG to become a military deputy to the civilian general counsel.

The order, obtained by ITP, gave the general counsel the power to “oversee the provision of legal services throughout the Air Force” and “become involved in” virtually any case the JAG corps is working. Meanwhile, the top JAG was stripped of all oversight responsibilities except the administration of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which legal experts say is largely overseen out in the field.

Last June, three former JAGs from the Army, Navy and Air Force appealed to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) to reverse the order, arguing it would “seriously undercut” the ability of both the Air Force chief of staff and secretary to “carry out their functions effectively.”

The order, which still stands, “will greatly increase the risk that military justice decisions will be improperly influenced by political considerations” and “will ultimately damage Air Force mission readiness by undercutting the foundations of good order and discipline,” wrote retired JAGs Army Maj. Gen. John Fugh, Rear Adm. John Gordon and Air Force Maj. Gen. David Morehouse in the June 4, 2003, letter.

...In March, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Nolan Sklute echoed a similar theme in an appeal to Graham, saying Roche’s order “threatens the independence and integrity of the military justice system.”

Although Roche has been the most proactive on the issue among the service secretaries, Rumsfeld would like to similarly strengthen the role of the civilian general counsels DOD-wide, experts say.

...“The essence of the legislation is not to restrict the general counsel’s responsibilities, but to reinforce the independence of the JAGs as a military legal advisory primarily responsible for providing legal advice to commanders in the field,” Graham said in a written statement provided to ITP May 26.

As an Air Force Reserve colonel who spent more than six years on active duty as a judge advocate, Graham is the only senator currently serving in the reserves.

The common theme between the Air Force order and the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is the “pushing aside of the professional judge advocates,” said the retired JAG officer interviewed this week.

“Everything that’s happened in the last two weeks shows why it’s not such a good idea” to subjugate the JAG corps to the direction of a general counsel, Horton, the New York Bar attorney, told ITP. There was “a tremendous amount of friction” between uniformed attorneys and their civilian overseers over the question of judge advocates observing prisoner interrogations and ensuring they adhere to the Geneva Conventions, he said.

...Some experts say Graham’s proposed measure is a good start but does not go far enough, since the top military lawyers still reside solely at the individual services. It may remain difficult to raise serious concerns past a service secretary and up to the defense secretary or Congress, according to some observers.

One alternative may be to create an independent mechanism for top service JAGs to issue a written report periodically to the defense secretary or to Congress, much as does the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, said the senior officer on active duty.

Another potential avenue to address the issue is to create a new top JAG position that answers directly to the secretary of defense, as a co-equal to the Pentagon’s general counsel, said Hutson, now dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH.

Were the defense secretary to select a senior two-star or a three-star general or flag officer for such a new job from among the service JAGs, that attorney would have no other position before retiring from the military and therefore would be “absolutely bulletproof,” he said. The secretary may receive from such an officer candid legal advice he is not hearing elsewhere, Hutson said.

General counsels do not always have military experience and can be “somewhat detached” from operational considerations among the ranks or on the battlefield, said Detlev Vagts, the Bemis chair in international law at Harvard University.

Vagts said a general counsel, whom he declined to name, once complained to him that JAGs are overly “hung up on the rules.” Vagts served briefly in the Air Force in the 1950s.

Eugene Fidell, a former Coast Guard judge advocate now in private practice, said he is taking increased interest in the proposed reforms in light of the apparent breakdown in discipline in Iraq.

“What you’re seeing is a [defense] machine that may have grown unwieldy,” Fidell told ITP in a May 20 interview. “The achievement of accountability for legal matters is impaired. A modern nation-state cannot exist without accountability.”

That last paragraph pretty much sums up the Cabal, doesn't it? They are not interested in a modern state; rather, as Incognito observes, they seek a high-tech version of the 13th century.

You never expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Walker is a member of the California bar (http://www.safgc.hq.af.mil/walker.htm).

A California attorney should move for sanctions or disbarment because of her blatant violation of Rule 3-210 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct. Entitled “Advising the Violation of Law,” it reads: “A member shall not advise the violation of any law, rule, or ruling of a tribunal unless the member believes in good faith that such law, rule, or ruling is invalid. A member may take appropriate steps in good faith to test the validity of any law, rule, or ruling of a tribunal.” http://www.calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/ethics/RPC_2002_Pub.pdf

Some Republican activist moved for sanctions against a member of Senator Kennedy’s Judiciary Committee staff in wake of the “memogate” scandal. There’s no reason we shouldn’t respond in kind, especially since this is one-hundred times worse.

The woman is amoral. Being "Christian" is just a mask, a front, a ploy, a ruse... As with Bush, I might add.

I guess I'm a little more cynical about her religion. Given the torture and rape, and pillaging performed at HIS command by the "Chosen People," and given the fact that the so called all-loving God condemns imperfect creation to an eternity of torture for "sin," how much love is really present in Christianity? The Gnostics have it right, and general Walker is only following the example of the Bible

There are many Christians who take all their beliefs from the Old Testament. It's better for cherry picking cherished fundamental "values". If you don't like what you read on any particular page, there's bound to be another page that will suit your needs.

As for the New Testament, well....

Here's the quote from her bio that got my blood boiling:

We live in a world of terrorism and snipers where personal security is never a sure thing. Life is fragile and it can be cut short at any time. Nobody has any guarantee for the next day, the next month, or the next year. To live your life in that context while depending on God for whatever the outcome takes faith and courage. Making moral decisions in the workplace where it is easy to go along and get along takes courage. It takes moral strength and courage to say, "I'm not going to do this because I don't think it's the right thing to do." I don't believe I would have the courage to live that way if I was not personally connected to the God of the universe.

I guess we're supposed to conclude that she lives with a constant sense of her own mortality, aware that her life might be snuffed out at any moment, and therefore she lives from moment to moment with the moral clarity that people on their deathbeds achieve?

Either she's really blowing smoke up the interviewer's ass, or her notion of moral clarity means having no conscience at all.

By the way, San Diego has a lot of the loony Right residing in that corner of the country, but it's still a great place to live.

For the record, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are all beautiful cities and nice places to live in their own way.

But Halifax, in Nova Scotia is a gem. With only a quarter of a million people, it nevertheless has a vibrant arts and culture community equal to a city twenty times its size. It boasts a mild climate, and an intimate but happening feel. Think Seattle, but smaller and friendlier.

On the other side of the continent is Victoria, capital of BC, green and gorgeous, smaller by far than Vancouver, but at least as rich and twice as civilized.

Edmonton in Alberta is a bastion of liberalism, with a robust economy. Saskatoon and Regina are smaller cities on the Canadian prairie, but charming thoroughly charming. Winnipeg is a sleepy little metropolis but thoroughly user friendly.

Look, face it, it's Canada. You can't go wrong. The health care system works, the roads are well maintained, the social safety net is intact. You can drink water from the tap, the food isn't laced with hormones, herbicides and contaminants, the air is clear and people are friendly. The schools actually teach. Even our grass is greener and more lush, and decriminalized. Our police are mellow and our politicians are honest. We have less crime and more wildlife.

rapt -- thanks for the prop!

RE -- Iran and the Chalabi outing.

I don't think Iran is looking for "the next big move." They are in the game for the long haul, and they understand that a stable Iraq is better for them -- than an Iraq torn apart by an out-of-control civil war. The USA is impatient by nature, and we will leave soon enough; but even worse, BushCo will sacrifice anyone and anything for short term political advantage. In my opinion, that's why Iran chose this move.

By outing Chalabi, they took him down a few pegs in Baghdad -- but they also threw a dead skunk into BushCo's lap. The real Iranian INC agent (Ibrim?) has safely relocated to Tehran, and Chalabi knows how to take care of himself.

All in all, this little dustup has improved the odds of a stable, friendly neighbor on Iran's border. That's what the Iranians want -- sticking it to BushCo is the cherry on top.

Billmon wrote: I'm waiting for it to start raining frogs, myself.

We are WAY past that point:

Fri, Oct. 03, 2003
It's raining frogs in Connecticut
Associated Press

BERLIN, Conn. - Hurricane Isabel brought unholy high winds and lashing rain to the East Coast. It also dumped something almost biblical on Connecticut. Primo D'Agata was startled by what he thought was hail smacking on his porch Sept. 19 as the remnants of Isabel moved through the state. But when he went outside to investigate, D'Agata discovered tiny, gelatinous eggs with dark spots in the middle.

It had apparently been raining frogs.

Since no frogs in Connecticut lay eggs this late in the year, scientists and naturalists speculate they may have come up from North Carolina or another warm location on the winds of Isabel.

What's developing in Iraq.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF09Ak03.html

Basically, Canada is the country that you used to be.
We are who you could have been.

So pretty much any Canadian City or Town is fine.

Basically, Canada is the country that you used to be.
We are who you could have been.

So pretty much any Canadian City or Town is fine.

"In fact, in her world, good works don't matter. You can't get to heaven on good works, the only thing that will save you is grace. Grace from accepting the Lord Jeebus as your personal savior.

What a bunch of crap. "

Sounds like the Texas Republican Party. Only by accepting the GOP platform in every particular and to the exclusion of all others will you be allowed into the kingdom of heaven.

Halifax is indeed a wonderful city. But there are better places to escape to in Nova Scotia, like Liverpool or Truro, IMHO. Lots of places up there, like Cape Breton, are losing population. I expect that's going to reverse if the Bush Crime Family steals it this November.

For a long time I have said those warm weather Christians aren't followers of Christ at all. I mean, "turn the other cheek"..."he who is without sin among you let him cast the first stone"..."forgive one who has transgressed against you seven times seven." This is a foreign language for those people.

I said to a minister of a big church once, "Whatever you think of Jesus' divinity, his nonviolent creed is certainly a great road map for leading your life."

The minister said, "Well, you know you have to be practical..."

That's when I gave up on evangelicals. May they swiftly pass from us. Their creed is "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." and "do unto others before they can do unto you." They are the Pharisees of these times. If Jesus returns, won't they be surprised when, instead of being gathered up in a rapture, they are the ones cast from the temple.

However this has made me think. I have ancestry that goes back to the Revolutionary War...I wonder what they would do? Would they leave...
Posted by: The Fish at June 8, 2004 10:39 AM

I’m always outraged by the “love it or leave it” line from the reactionaries. Recall the preamble of the Constitution;

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution is written in my name, your name, all of our names. We have a right and a responsibility to stand up and be heard.

I just happen to like the European mindset and culture much better than the American one. I’m always shocked by how wasteful and frivolous we Americans are. We have no sense of history or context to put the world in.

On an interesting side note I heard a commentator on NPR explaining why the US is so despised worldwide now. He said it was because we lost our optimism. The doom and gloom spouting from the USA, and in backing that doom and gloom up with real terrifying actions, is what has hurt our standing internationally.

Just a couple of things way up thread that caught my eye while reading through...

The church of Lennon, which Lennon of course would object to... but imagine.

And then raining frogs! Ickes and the film Magnolia... if you haven't seen the scene in the movie where it rains frogs, you're missing a wonderful cinema moment. Today's forecast: Chance of frogs: 80%!

Alex... more Nicholsen, this time the title line from "As Good as It Gets"...

He's in the shrinks waiting room. The shrink has just told him the MAKE AN APPOINTMENT. The waiting room is full. He asks: "What if this is as good as it gets?"

Nicholson (sen) does good goofy! ;-)

The concept that the President is not just himself above the law, but a supralegal authority, is the malady.

It very much looks like Socrates died in vain.

sdf: Dostoevsky, the Grand Inquisitor. Good call.

"No science will ever give them
bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay
that freedom at our feet, and say: "Enslave, but feed us!" That
day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily
bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had
together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two
among themselves."

In fact, in her world, good works don't matter. You can't get to heaven on good works, the only thing that will save you is grace. Grace from accepting the Lord Jeebus as your personal savior.

These people in their supremacist beliefs are unaware that Jesus said he came for the salvation of the whole world, not just those who think like her or belong to her "group". This is just another version of American hucksterism. She really doesn't evince any signs of grace that I have heard of.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues,
but do not have love,
I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy,
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;
if I have all faith so as to move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own,
and if I hand my body over so that I may boast,
but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, it is not pompous,
It is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing;
if tongues, they will cease;
if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child,
think as a child, reason as a child;
when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
At present I know partially;
then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

Pope thinks Bush is the anti-christ

However this has made me think. I have ancestry that goes back to the Revolutionary War...I wonder what they would do? Would they leave...

My family history here also goes back to pre-revolutionary war times, with two family members later fighting directly under Washington. What would they do? Well, they left pretty much what we have now: excessive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of too few coupled with discrimination based on religion. There was little opportunity to advance economically.

With the way wealth has been concentrated here in the last 40 years, and with that concentration now protected across generations, and few really moving up, and land costing a large fortune in most places worth living, if there was another frontier, I'd be heading there about now for the same reasons my family came here. There's no shame in that. This country is going backward and no longer lives up to its own ideals. It does the opposite of what it claims to stand for. It has been taken over by a relatively small class of self-interested wealthy insiders who are more concerned with wringing every penny they can in porofits and taxes from the workers/consumers, while forcing them to work ever harder for less pay and fewer benefits and stripping them of any recourse for injustices, than it is with quaint notions of liberty, economic justice, human rights, etc.

History is not kind to countries that follow the path we are now on. There is no moral obligation to go down with the ship of state, especially when it is run by pirates.

Don't think for a minute that Ms. Walker represents Christians in this country. Don't even say she represents some Christians. The ideas expressed in this report belong to her and the committee that produced them. Don't for a second claim that they are mine or that of any other Christian who doesn't explicitly express agreement. Quit being such Christophobes.

Silly and OT:

"Kristian" made me think of Krispy Kremes, so then of course I thought of...

Krispy Kristians(tm): n. Kristians who've been burning in hell for a while....

It MUST be time for popcorn now... yes? These "rulers". Ah. An endless source of entertainment of the satisfying chuckle variety. As we used to say of the bible-bangers and end-times koolaid drinkers:

So heavenly minded they're of no earthly good.

No, JackMormon. Pietism is what you say it is, indeed, but the word is capitalized when referring to that movement. The other pietism, lower case, refers to sentimental or ersatz piety. Though not religious, not a Christian, I have great respect for the genuinely religious, those who demonstrate real piety which is quiet, self-sacrificing.

I think there are a lot of ways you don't describe yourself to others because the moment you do, your sincerity comes into question. "I'm sensitive." "I'm a patriot." "I'm pious." And many others!

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan said by his church to be a PENTACOSTAL MILITARY CHAPLIN.

The Taguba report and Sy Hersh named this man, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan as a suspect in the ongoing scandal regarding torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Recently, he has "pleaded the 5th" (or the military equivalent) in an arraignment for the MP Sgt Graner. This fact alone suggests he is in deep trouble - as it was not a court proceeding directed at himself. A two minute web search by myself turned up this item wherin he is identified by his church as PENTACOSTAL MILITARY CHAPLIN! I don't think he is actually a chaplin, but he does seem to have a serious connection to his chosen faith and its organization. While I don't think a person's spiritual belief should be a big issue, in this case it would seem to be worth noting when and where a given sect seems to perhaps wield undue influence.

LA Times report on his appearance in court, plea
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-prison19may19,1,6028530.story?coll=la-home-headlines

early link identifying his position in chain of command
Wash Post, may 3rd
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61603-2004May2.html

"Administrative penalties have been recommended against Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th, and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the head of an interrogation center overseen by the brigade, according to an article in the May 10 issue of the New Yorker magazine. Efforts to reach Pappas and Jordan Sunday were not successful."

item from a church newsletter/ website
http://oakcreekag.org/ViewNewsStory.asp?ID=374

"Assemblies of God chaplain candidate John P. Smith Jr. knew the Bible verse about being prepared in season and out (2 Timothy 4:2).So did Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan Sr., a Pentecostal chaplain mentoring him at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

Village Voice article where writer Rick Perlstein has a piece called "The Jesus Landing Pad" that spoke to the religious aspect of recent Bush administration decisions.

link to Village Voice story
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php

Christophobes? ROFLMAO!

There is no such word as "christophobe". I thought as much, but looked it up anyway. It's just an invention of the last few years that hasn't even caught the eye of lexicographers. It might make it into the lexicon eventually but until then... Phobia denotes "fear". I, at least, am not at all a-feared of the more lethal type of Xian malarky... the kind that latches on to the non-violent preachings of Jesus of Nazareth and bends it into perdition. Been there. Born and bred and learned through critical thinking... I actually let my brain work now instead of filling it with harmful death-loving myths and myth-inspired death-worshipping activities.

On my Happy Planet it is governments and religions that are the greatest impediment to freedom, creativity, and happiness. The farther away I steer clear of them, the more free, creative, and happy I am.

Almost forgot, until the so-called sane Xians begin criticizing "out loud" the actions of this vocal and supposed "in power" minority, I don't believe a word of it. I was a sane one of them once, but I got over it.

Mary Walker here... Gosh Darn it all, somebody at the fellowship has removed the link to my "Soaring" forum, the one that Billmon originally linked to. I really appreciate all the sincere, insightful and helpful comments that everyone has posted for me there. I want you all to be able to continue reading the forum, in spite of it being hidden now, so let me give you the new link to it!

Thank you all so much. I have to run now... we have a meeting to try to cover our asses as much as we can. It's not easy, you know, when lawyers such as I advocate that rich & powerful people, because they are rich & powerful, should therefore not have to follow the laws of our land and of international bodies. Oh I do love to try to establish policy, especially when it brings torture, disregard for the law and disregard for human decency back into the highest levels of our governement and religious institutions.

OK, Bean, I take your clarification as meant. However, I have never heard of lower-case pietism, and a quick google search doesn't reveal any high-ranking hits for the sense you're using. May I suggest "pietistic," or something like it, for the sense you mean? (Ugly, I know, but it would avoid misunderstanding...)

The real word for the kind of Kristian we're dealing with here is:

Antinomian .

When you know you're saved, you don't have to abide by the laws of the unjust. When you know that your actions are smiled on by God, even Biblical law does not really apply to you, let alone the laws of man.

This strain of theological thinking is much more dangerous than the kind of pietistic hypocrisy that you were identifying, Bean. Antinomianism is a recipe for, well, terrorism.

For shits and giggles, read the fantastic Scottish novel, "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner," by James Hogg, to see how far an antinomian theology can be stretched.

Don't blame Christianity for this. They can say they are Christian all they want, but we are all sinners. They are well capable (as anyone is) of ignoring the values they claim to hold close.

The following verses spell out as clearly as possible my feelings on the current administration.

Jesus Christ In The Book Of Matthew:

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Good, Kate. When I've talked to Christian friends about why they aren't more critical, they've more or less ducked it. But that'll only speed up what I believe has been happening gradually for some time: the demise of Christianity in all its forms.

I use the Oxford Concise, Jack, but I'm sure it appears in the larger American dictionaries.

"Soaring" cache

Bean, OED online supports you, but primarily as a second definition--and, interesting to me (professionally, my aoplogies for the arcane argument), as an English mid-nineteenth- century satirical invocation of the rhetorical excesses of eighteenth-century Pietism. In the same way that 19th-c English gentleman-writers made fun of Methodism's rhetorical excesses. I agree with your general point; I'm just having fun with words over time.

like I said this morning on my blog - for us Catholics, the clergy sex abuse scandal is our Abu Ghreib. (Start with the faith that it's all faked by enemies, then the few bad apples, then persist with the few bad apples, on leadership and public sides, even as it is revealed increasingly that it isn't and wasn't, then shift the denial to blame on "circumstances" and "but others are worse," then say Well, it's time to move on, forgive, forget, and lay to rest so that it won't interfere with the good works the mojority of our forces are doing. --and a few of us loud Voices Of The Faithful keep shouting and get called traitors.)

But I should have added that there's one significant exception. No one is, either in the hierarchy or the laity, actually *defending* the activities, or denying that they are anything but criminal, in all the excusing.

As an amateur historian, however, I have to take some exception to the use of the term "medieval." This is really *post-medieval* behaviour - the rise of elements that are always present in human society, repression and rigor, really got going in the Renaissance, in reaction to the free-thought and apparent intellectual chaos of the Universities, Goliards et al who were reading pagan philosophers via Islamic renegade professors and Jewish intellectuals and trying to figure out if they could integrate it with Christianity, and creating proto-socialism. But it's really most typical of the Baroque counter-reformation, with its deliberate and explicit anti-intellectualism, its fideism and pietism.

Bean is also correct in using the term "pietism." (At least, in agreement with me...of course right!) The trait itself is alive and well (and exists in other religions too), as I note in the extended-mega-rant I did on Gibson's Passion, in which you will find comparisons between Lord Krishna Dancing and the statue of Mary on the dome of Notre Dame University, and possibly-convincing evidence (rather than just suspicion) that G's homophobia is the result of self-hatred, along with the explanation of why it is Very Bad Fanfic in a long tradition of Religious Badfic...

@ Winston Smith

Looks like someone has only been and gone and posted up the entire 'deleted' interview in the comments section there. It's easy to see why it's the most popular article the site has ever carried isn't it?

I am reminded of a line from E.M. Forester's "A Room with a View" in which Mr. Emerson says of his son, "And think how he has been brought up--free from all the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God."

Unfortunately, the tune that is stuck in my head right now is from Bernstein's "Candide": "What a day, what a day for an auto-da fe!"

Thad - Quebec City is THE place to live in Canada. Just the right size. Old European charm. Very very pretty.

And people speak some

English because the city's number one industry is tourism. And the residents are gracious and nice.

The weather is like Maine or Vermont. It is snowy. And cold. But not gray and wet like Vancouver.

I just spent $4,000 CAD there in one week - took my kids, was checking it out for my retirement............

(Although I hear the best retirement places for US Expatriots are Panama & Baja. Panama not only doesn't tax pensions, but GIVES foreign retirees all sorts of benefits. The problem with Panama, however, is that it costs a lot to fly back into the US to see one's family. And it is a bit wild.)

I'll be accepting suggestions for good places to live in non-French-speaking Canada if this Administration is returned to power in November 2004.

norbizness, here's a good place to start. My wife and I have made three trips to the Maritimes looking at property to move to in the event that Smirk gets elected or steals another election.
http://www.homesacrosscanada.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/cps.woa/wa/AreaMap?target=ListingSearch&tm=946696&board=SJNB&key=SJNB_0

Property in this part of Canada is amazingly inexpensive, but may go up as many Americans are considering emigration, according to realtors we worked with. What a revolting situation, when people must leave their home because of corruption in Washington.

My, oh my! This has just ignited a special little tempest in a teapot, hasn't it?

But, gentle friends: Jesus loves you, no matter what you do. It's really all about forgiveness. This is what I've discovered in my life in the Lord -- that when you make a little mess, just run to our Savior and ask to be forgiven. And you know, the precious gift is that He will forgive! And then you can go right back out there with you head high. Whatever you did, even if it's a matter of "the law of man", it won't matter, not really. Because Our Lord in Jesus Christ has forgiven, and this world is only a waystation, just a little detour, before those who seek Him spend an eternity in Paradise.

And, if you make the same mistake again; why, just ask to be forgiven again! Isn't that simple? Thank you all for your concern and your attention. It could just go to a girl's head if she weren't careful!

Hello? Is this mike off? Jesus; have you read some of the crap these leftist [deleted]s write on their little [deleted] site? Won't they be surprised when they see the legal opinion I wrote on supression of public dissent? Yeah; yeah! They can read it -- behind razor wire!! [laughter]

Mary;

I am so looking forward to spending ETERNITY in heaven with you and John Ashcroft and all the other so-called Christians who wear religion so prominently on our sleeves. Sixty or Eighty years down here on earth just isn't enough time to be with you all. Having to wait for ETERNITY just makes me want to kill myself and go there right now, but then the all-loving perfect monotheos would send me to hell where I would have to spend ETERNITY being punished for not being able to wait to spend eternity with you all, so I can't very well do THAT, now, can I?

Oh, religion is so much FUN. I was lost and confused, but now I'm found and everything is so CLEAR I could just shit.

I see the Mary L. Walker article has been removed from the Professional Women's Fellowship site. It must be that she's ashamed to have her hypocritical religious gushings on public view now that everybody knows that her idea of doing God's work is to circumvent domestic laws and international treaties so that people can be tortured to death.

It just goes to show, her sickening fake religious cant was posted up since January but after just one day of her being called to account it was deleted. Mary L. Walker, fake Christian, fake lawyer and fake warrior obviously can't handle pressure very well

Re Miz Walker's manifesto - did anyone cache it? If you email it to me, I'll host it as Exhibit #? in the Bible-Thumping Orc collection.

bellatrys

Cached Mary Walker screed...

Mary Walker's nauseating cant

Oooh. That's a thought, indeed. If you believe in heaven and have been reasonably good, your reward will be to spend eternity with the likes of Ashcroft. Quick! Tonight I'm going to sin... and tomorrow... and tomorrow. Please -- suggestions for sinnin'!!

Actually, I think Ashcroft looks remarkably like century-old illustrations of da debil.

Again, don't blame Christianity for this. See my post from 3:27pm June 8th, just above.

Nice cacheing, people! They can delete, but they can't hide.

Meanwhile, has the full memo been made public yet? I'd like to see the complete sentence in which "inherent in the president" appears. Not that I don't trust journalistic accounts of the context, but I'd like to see for myself. Plus heaven knows what additional gems appear in the full memo that haven't been highlighted by the WSJ or NYT.

I normally don't bother weighing in on a thread this long.

But as a Christian, I am sick to DEATH of people like this Walker item SHITTING on my religion.

Goddamn them. And her. I mean that as sincerely and unironically as it is possible to be.

God damn them.

Kate, of course Christophobe isn't in the dictionary. But I think the word got my point across that in many there is an irrational and destructive fear of Christians. When folks are labeled "-phobes" this implies bigotry. The fact that such a word isn't in Webster's doesn't mean the word doesn't or can't exist. If the meaning of the word is understood in my communication of it, then the word has served its purpose and exists, at least within the bounds of the post in which it was used. Don't try and hide behind semantics--semantically you don't have a leg to stand on. Let's just face the facts that many people have an unfair and irrational fear of Christians.

Just because you have met irrational Christians doesn't mean all Christians are irrational or hate-filled, etc. Yet many choose to hate an entire population just because of the acts of some within that population--and that is a symptom of Christophobia, or Evangeliaphobia.

It reminds me of recent simplistic caricatures of Islam, like because the 9-11 hijackers were Muslim, Islam is evil--well of course not. Most of us libs won't stand for it when people use such simplistic reasoning about that faith, yet many of us get all giddy when a Christian does something stupid or evil or inane. It inspires more hate speech against Christianity. Face it. Many of us on the left have a problem.

My query about the availability of the full document was no sooner asked than answered.

Document has redactions and is apparently incomplete (that goes for the version on the Newsweek/MSNBC website as well). We'll see if that lasts.

People-GO SECULAR!! God is a fantasy-just like Santa VClause and my enormous endowment!

If you want to compare the similarities between the rise of Nazi-ism in Germany, and the recent attitude changs in America, you might want to take a look at "Mein Kempf", a documentary video of Adolph Hitler's rise to power by Columbia Pictures (no, it's not Hitler's book. It just uses the same name).
The methods are a bit more subtle, but the effect is essentially the same. You don't need a majority to support this kind of shit; you only need a majority of indifference.
The part in this report about limiting prisoner's food brings back thoughts of the section of a town in Germany that was cordonned off, thousands of jews forced to live there, and then rationed at 200 calories a day (read: slow starvation).
This November will forever be remembered as America's turning point.

Yes, indeed, nice cache! But it's also available (in the same font, even, sans the picture) at some questionable site called iPriority:

http://www.ipriority.com/interior/index.cfm?leaderaction=getBatSL&quickreadid=129

I share your paranoia, Billmon. I expect the Bushies would love to win the election semi-legitimately, but one can't wonder if they're willing to spill blood and use the prez's "inherent power" to seize full military control if they don't like the results.

Yes, indeed, nice cache! But it's also available (in the same font, even, sans the picture) at some questionable site called iPriority:

http://www.ipriority.com/interior/index.cfm?leaderaction=getBatSL&quickreadid=129

I share your paranoia, Billmon. I expect the Bushies would love to win the election semi-legitimately, but one can't help but wonder if they're willing to spill blood and use the prez's "inherent power" to seize full military control if they don't like the results.

Oops-sorry! Didn't pull the 1st post back in time. . .

Bean: But that'll only speed up what I believe has been happening gradually for some time: the demise of Christianity in all its forms.

Something thought about since The Enlightenment. Beyond that, at this date we keep thinking every chink in the religionists' paper armor will signal the death toll. It's hard to know if this is so based on the "media" that says that there are more evangelical/redemptionists than ever before. [shrug]

I keep up the mantra, though: The Enlightenment, the enlightenment, the enlightenment... Hope springs eternal.

Randy: Just because you have met irrational Christians doesn't mean all Christians are irrational or hate-filled, etc. Yet many choose to hate an entire population just because of the acts of some within that population--and that is a symptom of Christophobia, or Evangeliaphobia.

Let me reiterate. I'm not afraid. Nor do I really hate. And, and this is the biggie ... I was an Xian from my birth to about age 35. I was not your "Sunday and funeral purposes only" Xian. I was the minister of music in 3 or 4 churches over about 12 years of my adult life. I did evangelism, as much as Lutherans do that. (They did do quite a lot in the 70s and 80s) I have no fear. Loathing is really a waste of time in my opinion. When I'd had my fill of it all, I did everything I could to make sure that my children (who were pre-adolescent and adolescent at the time) changed their view of how they'd been raised in the church. They had been raised in the church as if it was a second home. It was their second home. My efforts were successful, and that makes me very happy now, because I helped to free them from the nonsense that had bound me for the first 30+ years of my life. I'm the wrong person to attempt to "reason with" in the Xian manner I know very well. Would you like to play bible trivia with me?

Namaste, Randy.

According to Eric at Is That Legal?, this is a direct link to the whole report!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5166951/site/newsweek/

Well, I'm having a good night. Try
this

Oh, and Randy, I have at least two semantic legs to stand on, if not more. It's not a word. If it's not a word, it's not anything. If you like I'll look in the most recent diagnostic manual of psychology to see if "christophobia" is there... they have a fairly hefty list of phobias that cause people problems. I'm figuring you for a talk radio listener, eh? albeit that you seem to be one of those who can at least type and phrase a cogent sentence AND paragraphs... if I am misjudging you, I apologize. I'm not arguing semantics here Randy, except that the word "christophobe" sounds like some Limbaugh-Michael Savage-O'Reilly-Hannity invention. Talk to me without use of it, and we'll do just fine. I'm sure.

Or, to skip MSNBC's annoying auto-load script (a must for poor dial-up folks like me), try this.

Reply to Randy:

Randy -- I have a problem with those who argue, however gently, that someone's view of the universe, or their spirituality, or sexuality, is wrong. The Evangelical Fundimentalists who hijacked first the Republican Party, and now (in my view) the government of my country are as intolerant, bigoted and ultimately as violent as any religious extremists. There is no difference between a person who commits or supports others to perform violent acts in the name of Allah, or Jesus, or Shiva.

But these are people living in my country. These are the people who hold prayer vigils for the deaths of those who work in family planning clinics. They threaten, harass and have murdered physicians and nurses. Like Walker, they write legal opinions in support of torture. Like Perle's extralegal DoD "intelligence unit", they operate in the shadow of legitimate government organizations to justify illegal and unnecessary war. They believe in retribution and vengance.

Like Ralph Reed, they formulate Republican strategy. Like the Lee Atwaters and Tom DeLays, they enjoy the power to threaten, bully and intimidate. Ultimately, they contribute to murder, lie, steal, covet, commit adultery, and present false testimony in the name of god.

Given the option, they would force my country to accept and practice their beliefs with the force of law -- they would create a Theocracy. Whether you accept it or not, their single-minded focus and belief that anything done in the name of god is justified and correct is only few steps from putting human beings in boxcars.

And yes, Randy, the people who've done this are Christians. I have a problem with that. There are other individuals and groups that cause me the same grief, and yes, I am 'bigoted' aganist them as well.

If other Christians don't agree with what these people stand for, then why haven't those Christians disavowed them publicly; declared their actions to be a violation of law, of the Ten Commandments and the Gospels? They are in positions of power and trust that affect the lives of other human beings, and are being publicly shown that they don't care about human rights, or human life. 832-plus Americans and perhaps as many as 11,000 Iraqis have already been sacrificed for their lies, and their presumptive arrogance. Why have no Christians spoken up?

It isn't an irrational fear of Christians that drives me to write this, Randy. Freedom of religious worship is a guaranteed right. What I do have is a very real fear that my country is being forced to become a thing we did not freely choose.

I have a problem with being told to accept and believe something, or I'm damned. I have a problem with much of the Patriot Act. I have a problem with liars, thieves, and those who promote opression and violence. It isn't an irrationality about Christianity, Randy; it's a very rational and proper response to evil.

Mongo, a few priests and nuns, and some few mainstream pastors, have spoken up loudly, but my question is:

Where are all the other parishoners, congregants? There should be an ear-shattering outcry from all sections of Xian churches on what is happening in Iraq. And there isn't. And this is the question for those who want to blame the church leaders, or fall back on the old argument that we hate christianity here. Where are you? Why is your sane Xian voice only represented by two people at the Whiskey Bar at this time?

Money your where your mouth is was the saying in my family. If you b'lieve you'd better say so. Otherwise, you get spit out of your savior's mouth. Lukewarm. Put up or shut up. Ante up. Pay your money, and take your chances.

Ptooie! as Jesus would say.

Mongo911, the idea that no Christians have spoken up against Bush or the Christian right is wrong. It's wildly wrong. Most Christian denominations condemned the Iraq war as being in violation of just war theory. They just don't get much press, just as people as far to the left as most of us here don't get much press attention. I wouldn't think I would have had to explain that, but it amazes me the number of people who don't know there's such a thing as Christian leftists, or that much of the energy of the Christian right is spent shooting at the mainstream Christian denominations because they're too far left for their tastes.

Maybe it's an age thing--I'd say much or even most of the opposition to Reagan's Central American policies came from the Christian left and maybe younger people don't know this. Chomsky, not exactly a believer in any sort of religion, has always had kind words to say about religious progressives. But I've noticed many lefty bloggers (probably not our host) and their fans seem totally unaware of this. Ever hear of the sanctuary movement?

And yeah, to me all this comes across as a kind of lefty secularist bigotry, based in part on a combination of ignorance and fear as bigotry often is. Not the most important issue in the world, I'd say, but it's there and it's deplorable.

As an atheist since childhood, I'm fine with anyone telling me I'm wrong. Happens all the time. Used to it. It's your right. But using the government and my tax dollars to tell me I'm wrong, indoctrinate my children against my beliefs, or treat me like something less human, less moral, less American or less patriotic than Christians tends to piss me off. This, unfortunately, is normal in America now. Witness the hysteria over Michael Newdow and the Pledge of Allegiance. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Feel free to criticize, Randy. But many Christians somehow think they have a divine right to control the entire society, and, with incredible nerve, see any interference with this via the Bill of Rights as anti-Christian discrimination. I hope you're not like that.

And I hope you can see why (especially these days, with President Ordained-By-God in charge) some of us are little teed off at Christians who are like that.

I agree with Donald about the Christian left, at least that part. Problem is, the same Catholic Church, e.g., that is solidly anti-war is also solidly anti-choice and spreading disinformation about condoms. I'll keep the Left, thanks, maybe even (some of) the teachings of the Dead Guy On A Stick®, but screw the Church. Sorry.

Billmon,
Hey, this is where the 'few bad apples' comes in. I'm a Christian, hippie, intellectual, leftist law student (I know, weird combo), and ahem, woman. To call this woman who was ordered to do a work-up on torture a 'monster' is probably accurate, but look at her bosses. I concur with the gentleman who said, "Bush (and I would add Ashcroft) a Christian? Give me a fucking break." These folks don't practice "Christian" values (oh gosh, what are they again? SO many governments and religious leaders have obliterated them)--in fact, they seem intent on causing the very thing that is happening: creating an almost visceral gag reflex at the mention of Jesus Christ. I venture to say that if the Great Dove himself were here with us today, He would, again, rather hang with the real folks who give a damn. No, these bad boys and girls are after something way bigger than faith based torture; they are after annialating all that is good in the world. They want the destruction of hope.
PS--Would a true Christian invite as a special guest,Ozzie Osbourne to the White House Press Correspondents Ball? (Check BBC April, 2002) Naaa.

Where are all the other parishoners, congregants?

Those were the terms I was trying to find! (Thanks, Kate) And that really was my question -- where is the organized condemnation of the Robertsons, the Fallwells, the Reeds and the Smirking Chimp at the hands of Christian denomination churches?

It's at least heartening to hear there is opposition from more mainstream Christian churches -- and it's because I move in a primarily secular world that I forgot: Religious denominations aren't monolithic (Thanks, Donald).

I appreciate that some Christians may feel there's a knee-jerk, "secular leftist bigotry" being expressed. That presumption works both ways. To be a Christian doesn't mean you leave your political conscience in the gutter (Read some Teilhard de Chardin. Read Anne Lamott. Give me enough credit for that level of understanding, Don). What's deplorable is the true bigots we've been discussing are the beneficiaries of any friction on the left between secular and non-secular points of view.

But I am more than a little upset at Christians who do fit my worst assumptions. I'm really upset. I'm bloody enraged, not to put too fine a point on it.

Do mainstream Christians ever wish these Evangelical Fundimentalists would stop giving Christianity in general a bad name? Look at what they've done in the Middle East. They've played right into the hands of their Islamic Fundimentalist counterparts. We're "Crusaders" now. And I thought that kind of plot development was limited to Tom Clancy novels.

The main thrust of my comments -- I'm a-stickin' by 'em. The Dead Guy On A Stick is still a good role model, but in these days, the state motto of New Hampshire is a good moral beacon, too.

PS -- Aschcroft was ambushed over the Mary Walker memorandum before the Senate Judiciary Committee (some nice sound bites with Joe Byden) today: Deer-in-the-headlights expression. Flatly refused Ted Kennedy's request to provide copies of that and two other memorandum dealing with the legal basis for torture.

That's enough. As an antidote, I'm watching Lilo & Stitch.

PS--Mongo,
I'm speaking up: hatred, killing, wickedness, lies, all are deplorable when practiced by anyone, especially our leaders. I disavow this Administration. I'm a leftist Christian, and don't know many others, but there are many many people who believe in Christ and do speak up against what is happening...we just don't get any press, just like the other millions who protest.

The web page for Ms Walker at Professional Womens Fellowship, http://www.pwfsd.org/article.php?sid=238,
was taken down, probably early on Tuesday monrning. I had a quick look at it last night, and it was outrageous! I knew they would have to remove it once the saw the comments added by visitors. So, anticipating that, I saved it. I'm having difficulties connecting at the moment, but here it is in ASCII. I suggest skimming very quickly through the first parts; the 'pointed comments' follows at the end.
Note that it was the "Most read story about PWF Members."

--Dominic

PWF San Diego Professional Women's Fellowship

Topics: Soaring High:
Posted on Saturday, January 25 @ 10:30:46 PST by adurning

U.S. Air Force's General Counsel, Mary L. Walker, discusses what it takes to leave a legacy of significance

The following interview with PWF Co-founder Mary Walker has just been published in Success Factors magazine, published by Priority Associates, a division of Campus Crusade for Christ dedicated to helping professionals find balance, focus and direction in life.

How has your personal background contributed to your professional success?

My father died when I was little so I grew up as the only daughter of a single mother where finances were always an issue. I remember thinking that I would have to rely on myself to ensure having a roof over my head and food to eat. I never had the sense that you could depend on someone else. Even if there was someone to provide for you, they might die. Those circumstances of my youth had a lot to do with my determination to be successful. It took me many years to learn there is a God on whom I can depend. I also wanted a profession that challenged my mind. That's why I chose science as my undergraduate major and then went on to law school. I wanted to be involved in policy development at the highest level, and
lawyers in our society are often involved in shaping policy.

How did you end up in government?

I was a partner in a law firm in California and had been involved in some cases that drew me to policy issues in the context of land use. When builders in California were faced with regulations that made no sense and jeopardized their businesses, I began to write about it. This led to some meetings with folks working those issues in Washington. I was approached soon after Reagan was elected and asked to consider serving in the government.

That led to my first appointment as the Principal Deputy in the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. In this job I supervised all of the federal government's environmental litigation, including enforcement and defense, criminal matters and wildlife and marine resources.

How do you define success?

Success is using your talents and time to achieve what God has intended and equipped you for. It doesn't matter if you are a sanitation engineer, a gardener, a homemaker, a secretary, the head of a corporation or a mid-level manager. You have been uniquely equipped to do something. If you are able to identify that, educate and prepare yourself, and apply your talents to that with your whole heart, then I believe that is success. It isn't defined by money or status but by achieving a gal and accomplishing a purpose - the intended purpose for your life. Success also needs to be accomplanied by satisfaction and significance. That which is significant in the long run, like relationships, may not be defined as success in the business world, but will bring satisfaction to our personal lives.

What lessons have you found to be most important for achieving success?

I must know my strengths and weaknesses because I will never be fully successful without others complementing my weaknesses. And I can strengthen others who are weak in the areas where I am strong. I can't identify people to work with if I don't know who I am. It's important to have learned the lesson of understanding myself and how I fit into the group effort.

Another key to success is having the courage that is developed with enduring trials and testing in life. Courageous people have faced
difficult issues over a long period of time and have weathered the storm. They make tough decisions daily where they have refused to compromise. That's what character is all about: courage and integrity. It's someone who values the important things in life and is able to put them into perspective each and every day.

How is faith relevant to success?

I can't divorce faith from success because God is the foundation for my life. I became a follower of Jesus of Nazareth when I was young but neglected that faith in my college years. I returned to it because I realized I needed that foundation. It helped to find someone who could mentor me and help me see my faith as relevant to the challenges of life and work. My relationship with God and with others in the community of faith has been central in my life. So often the bottom falls out, professionally or personally - or both. That's when you need a spiritual family who will mourn with you, pray with you, stand by you and point you to God. God has sustained me through those people in times when I might otherwise be inclined to be discouraged and give up.

We live in a world of terrorism and snipers where personal security is never a sure thing. Life is fragile and it can be cut short at any time. Nobody has any guarantee for the next day, the next month, or the next year. To live your life in that context while depending on God for whatever the outcome takes faith and courage. Making moral decisions in the workplace where it is easy to go along and get along takes courage. It takes moral strength and courage to say, "I'm not going to do this because I don't think it's the right thing to do." I don't believe I would have the courage to live that way if I was not personally connected to the God of the universe.

What are some important principles for leadership today?

Leaders need to see the big picture as well as have a vision for those they lead and the organization in which they are serving. People want to know that the person they are following is committed to a course of action that is right and that they're making progress in getting there. As a leader I try to get the big picture and communicate it to the people I am serving as soon as possible. And I talk about it over and over again until the vision is caught by those who are following me. A leader must also set an example of character and determination so that followers know they have a leader they can trust and believe in. As a leader I also love to see people grow and develop. And sometimes that has to take them out of their comfort zone. I am in the people-stretching business. I am constantly asking people to do things they have never done before: to do a more excellent job, to do something new or to do something a different way. What I find is that people will respond by rising to the challenge and become leaders themselves. As a leader that's part of my job: to believe in people and see abilities in them they often don't see in themselves.

What advice would you give to today's professionals?

When God is the center of your life and everything you do revolves around His plans for you and the world, then that is when life really gets exciting. It's a travesty to be in a place of strategic importance to the world as a business or political leader and not allow God to accomplish the truly significant through you. If you let Him, He will enable you to do things you could never do alone so that when you look back you will have the satisfaction of having left a legacy of long-lasting significance and not just temporal success. That's soaring high.

Mary L. Walker is the General Counsel of the U.S. Air Force. In that position she serves as the chief legal officer of the Department of the
Air Force in Wshington, D.C., giving oversight, guidance and direction for the more than 1,600 Air Force military and civilian lawyers worldwide.

Perhaps all the helpful people commenting on the PWF website would like to include links to photos of MJW's supported in their new photo gallery? Seems like they are having a hard time getting the plank out of their eyes...

Something like: Mary Walker's fellowship outreach

ego

damned links:

For photo gallery, go here:

http://www.pwfsd.org/article.php?sid=323

ego

Never thought I'd live to see the day when we could look around our own neighborhoods and say, "So this is how the Nazi's came to power".

Enjoy.

It's just really interesting that many of the above emails spewing hatred and extremely fowl sexual remarks toward this woman are seen nowhere against other perpetrators--the MEN who acted out the atrocities and ordered the torture. I don't know, call me crazy, but it seems like a lot of the comments are still showing respect for the men, and completely vitriolic toward a woman.

No need for your hero to take the lovely neo-fascist centerfold girl as a concubine -- he can marry her too! According to 1 Kings 11:3, Solomon was said to have had as many as 700 wives and 300 concubines. Concubines, I gather, were sex slaves captured in the aftermath of battle.

So your hero can also marry Ann Coulter and several hundred more ;)

extremely fowl sexual remarks, like "she's a 110% hot chick"?

:)

Sorry - the proofreader in me couldn't resist.

ego

Proofreader: we neglected to spell foul correctly:) Leave me alone, I have to study.

Assignment

"All men are pigs, therefore nothing bestial that they do should ever surprise us. But for a woman to rebel against the fragility of her sex and partake in abusive and abhorrent masculine rituals is a double betrayal, one that threatens all our sacred concepts relating to gender construction, woman as life-giver and woman as pretty little thing hanging about in the background, good for hanging out and fooling around with."

Discuss, with particular reference to the numbers of women featuring in the 2003/2004 American torture of prisoners scandals

Hey, Testosterone, settle down, I'm not male bashing--I'm just pointing out the female bashing. In ref to the female gender: Oh, all three or four of them? (Okaaaaaay, maybe eight or nine). So, I assume you are defending the base commentary, since I was given an assignment (I have enough assignments, already, but I can't seem to pry my eyes and fingers from this website the past 24 hours). Yes, the female species of torturers certainly have gotten the press they deserve, but wowza, the vitriol for them on this site and not the guys is darned tootin' strange, don'tcha think? I mean, the immediate reaction to debase a woman sexually in one's mind for a wrong committed is just, well, icky. Just as icky as all the guys and gals in Abu Graib. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Maybe any one of those soldiers could have been one of the people on this site who so flagrantly reduced Walker to a sex object worthy of being defiled herself? Is that the way to hold an intelligent discussion? She obviously has no soul--who can have a soul with that job?
Let's remember who is giving the orders to torture in the first place. Could be Condi, for all I know.
Now, I really have to go--nice chatting with all of you, Happy Summer.
Verklempt

@ Verklempt

That will do as your assignment, so don't trouble yourself worrying any more about it. Just to keep it in context, the interview given by Mary Walker published in January 2004 by the Professional Women's Fellowship was referred to in Billmon's article but then the post was taken down, evidently some time on 8th June. Some posters here then re-posted (in difficult to read format it has to be said), the Walker interview, complete with comments that has been left at the Professional Women's Fellowship site. As the vast majority of the comments are dated 7th / 8th June it's apparent that those commentators were reacting to the news that Mary Walker had played a prominent part in the drafting of the memo setting out an environment for 'legal' torture (even to the point of torturing prisoners to death). Her article is full of references to God and the directions God gives to her, so some of the answers seem to be directed at the contradictions between her stated religiosity and her advocacy of torture. Other comments are, as you rightly point out, of a crude, sexist, foul language nature.

Perhaps because the comments were appended to a Mary Walker interview few of the posters referred to any other persons connected with the torture scandal, but confined their attacks to her. Some of the posters seem to have quite strong religious beliefs of their own while others seem straightforwardly abusive or even eccentric.

I'm not too sure how well you could extrapolate from a series of attacks on an individual via comment boxes attached to an interview with that individual that responses to the 'torture debate' are 'sexist' or that women get singled out for a paricular style of abuse.

If Graner, Frederick and other males involved in the torture of prisoners had posted interviews which allowed comments it would be interesting to see what kind of abuse they would have received. Given the behaviour of the prison guards and the instructions they received it would seem that attacks on a person's sexuality are common methods of demeaning or abusing an 'opponent'. If that is indeed a 'cultural thing' it seems to be an American one.

OK Ms. Hippie Christian law student, thanks for the reply and good luck with your work and you too have a beautiful summer. Just don't leave the Whiskey Bar with the view that the re-posted comments above are in any way representative of the patrons here, for as a reading of this thread shows you, the people here managed to discuss the issue without resorting to sexist foul-mouthed abusive comments.

I'm quickly becoming a Whiskey Bar patron. But, I'll have a Grand Gold margarita with salt, please. Testosterone, your comments were well taken. I didn't realize the foul comments were taken from the Fellowship site, thanks for clearing that up. The discussion here is some of the most intelligent I've seen on a web page, which is why I'm hooked. It was passed on from an article on the NLG listserv. Don't worry, I'll keep perusing. Cheers, clink.

A votre santé, Madamoiselle Verklempt

Kate, you may know Americhurch well, but how up are you on your late 18th/early 19th European history?

The French Revolution in all its atheistic secularistic glory is *not* something that most people - I hope - are eager to have back, noyades, Newspeak, anonymous accusations and all.

People are people. *That's* the problem, as Gaiman and Pratchett have observed. You can get away from specific symptoms, but you can't get away from the underlying cause.

As far as where have Christians been - well, there are multple parts to the answer. Part of the answer is that that is a rhetorical question, with the assumption that there *is* no answer, and like most assumptions ends up making an ass of the asker and requires the answerer to be a pompous ass in turn. Do you regularly read the National Catholic Reporter? Christian Science Monitor? The blogs of Slacktivist, the Nielsen Haydens, Real Live Preacher, et al? If you haven't bothered to look around, to check your perceptions, then you have no excuse for getting an exasperated retort. We're out here, liberal, progressive, believing Christians who are educated and not simplistic in our beliefs or our behavior.

Some of us also do more social/political work in person than online, and some of us don't or haven't brought our religion into our online discourses - part of that not believing in forcing our beliefs on others, you know.

But then there is the problem of why the SCLM ignores and minimizes and dismisses the liberal Christian traditions (one of my ancestors frex broke with the Quakers because they weren't tough enough on the issue of slavery, which is pretty funny if you know the background) and favors with all the attention the Tartuffes of the Amchurch - ignores, for instance, the British bishop being accused of fascism by the BNP for telling his congregation that racism and neofascism are incompatible with Christianity, or the fact that after all the fuss, the Episcopalians haven't fled en masse (sorry!) after the anointing of an openly gay bishop and are working things out pretty well a year on.

It doesn't help, when we have to contend with routine snobbery and dismissal from our own side, ethically speaking, too.

As for the rest - well, there is a culture war on, you might have heard. The savages have battered their way into the sanctuary and taken over. We're working on retaking them, but it isn't easy - particularly when the worried, uncertain populace is warned against us evil Godhating and/or Heretical Liberals, and the people who are supposed to be the openminded and champions of liberty play right into the fascist rhetoric with their snobbery...

Given that a majority of the US self-identifies as Christian in some way or other - if you write all Christians off as unworthy fools you hope will cease to exist, *how* do you ever expect to win politically or emotionally? "Deconversion by the sword"--?