Saturday, June 23, 2007

23 Jun 2007 09:54 pm

Roggio On Iraq

Looking on the bright side after week one:

The U.S. military commanders continue to state the operations will be ongoing through the end of the summer. The escape of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives from Baqubah and the southern belts will no doubt be touted as a failure in the plan, but this view demonstrates a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of warfare and the purpose of the operation.

First, no cordon is perfect, and the enemy has the ability to read the signs and act accordingly. It has been clear for months Baqubah would become a target of Coalition forces, and al Qaeda has its own sophisticated intelligence network that no doubt detected Coalition and Iraqi movements.

Second, the purpose of the Baghdad Security Plan and Operation Phantom Thunder is to deny al Qaeda Baghdad and the Belts, and to kill as many operatives and leaders as possible in the process. When al Qaeda attempts to regroup, it will be in the hinterlands, and in some cases, in regions less hospitable to its actions.

We can hope. But I'll wait and see.

23 Jun 2007 08:49 pm

Face of the Day

A cage dweller sits inside a cage on June 20, 2007 in Hong Kong, China. The poorest of Hong Kong's citizens live in cage homes, steel mesh box constructions, stacked on top of each other. The division between poor and rich in the former British colony, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of its handover to Chinese rule on July 1, remains an unsolved problem. (Photo by MN Chan/Getty Images)

23 Jun 2007 07:14 pm

Dissent of the Day

A reader writes:

Tonight with my daughter and wife I watched the first half of Stephen Frears' and Peter Morgan's The Queen. Your comments regarding Hillary remind me of the tone deaf comments and disposition of the royals in the film to Diana, her death and the public's response to it. They just don't get it. Tone deaf because no matter how closely you watched Hillary in the White House, you miss what she meant to some of us, what her senatorial career means to some of us, and what her chances of being the first female president means to us. Her book sold because many of us are moved by her work. Many of us prefer her to Bill who we also cherish in the same way we love and value Eleanor over FDR. Yes you were close up in the 1990s, but as Morton's movie demonstrates, some phenomena are almost unrecognisable from up close.

My very precocious 9 year old sat with me watching a few minutes of Chris Matthews show tonight and hearing so much about the horse race and Bloomberg and Rudy. She asked very specific questions about who can and who can't run. Can she ever run? Could her father? What kind of profession must you come from? Do you need a certain degree? My fourth grade students ask this question all the time: every couple weeks. And Hillary's running means something completely different than Barack or even Libby Dole. It is possible you are too close to your work and what you know to see that, just as I am too close to my work and what I know not to see that. She and her ever-present coffee cup are real to a lot of us. I have never worked for a candidate and I don't work for her but she is someone who makes my daughter's horizon more real.

The reader is right. I don't get it. But I did get Diana. Loved her. Ditto Maggie. And Golda. I think it's partly because I would love to see a woman president that I can't bear to think this phony could be the first one to do it.

23 Jun 2007 05:59 pm

Saturday Night Medication

But make sure you wait to hear all the potential side-effects.

23 Jun 2007 05:40 pm

Who Are The Lemmings?

Joe Gandelman on Cheney and the GOP.

23 Jun 2007 04:06 pm

The View From Your Window

Orange County, California, 5.45 am.

Check out the newly updated world through your window page here.

23 Jun 2007 03:22 pm

Cheneying Cheney

The Democrats grow some balls:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs. Emanuel acknowledged that the proposal is just a stunt, but he said that if Cheney is not part of the executive branch, he should not receive its funds. "As we say in Chicago, follow the money," he said.

Cheney is acting as if he is outside the constitution and above the law. He has been acting that way for quite a while now. When a public official abuses the public trust and refuses any oversight, it's time for the other branches of government to do what they can to rein him in. Especially when the man has revealed himself to be a blithering incompetent.

I don't think this is a trivial matter, because it seems to me that Cheney is currently an extremely dangerous man. He has nothing to lose in the next eighteen months. He cannot get any less popular. He thinks the 2004 election is the only legitimacy he needs. He doesn't believe the Congress should have any role in foreign policy. And he also believes that Iran must not develop nuclear power and that no one apart from him can stop them. The drum beat coming from his office about Iran's direct involvement in the Iraq war is obviously a preamble to claiming that the 2003 war authorization gives him and Bush the right to bomb Iran without going back to the Congress for approval. He's a man ready and willing to pull a Cambodia. If the Congress and the press don't start pushing back now, it may come sooner rather than later.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

23 Jun 2007 02:44 pm

They're All Terrorists, Aren't They?

The latest leak from the tragic farce known as Gitmo:

Throughout the process, Abraham discovered that officers attempting to comply with CSRT rules to present exculpatory information were frequently obstructed. When he attempted to gather information on a detainee from an intelligence agency aside from a package prepared from him, he was told that no additional information would be forthcoming. An attorney for one intelligence agency refused to certify that no exculpatory information was being withheld. On other occasions, intelligence agencies would overload the intelligence-illiterate Recorders and Case Writers with files, leaving them with "no context for determining whether the information was relevant or probative."

During one CSRT, Abraham found the evidence suggesting one detainee was an enemy combatant "lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence."

Objectively credible evidence? This is the Bush administration, buddy. They don't believe in that.

23 Jun 2007 02:08 pm

The Rights of Children

A reader writes:

Your post "Scarred For Life" is just so painful. But when you write,

"['My body my choice'] is only for women, apparently,"

I think you're missing the point. This is not a men's issue - it's a children's issue.

The desires, aka the rights and humanity, of children are terribly violated in this culture. (And lots of others, sadly.) Circumcision is just one part of it. What we glibly call "separation anxiety," as parents pry their distraught 2-year-olds off them and leave them at day care, is the western world's equivalent of forcing women into burqas, gender apartheid, and second-class citizenship. Young children who do not want to be separated from their parents should not be forced to do it on a regular basis. They are not developmentally able to understand why this is happening to them, so their objections to it should be taken seriously. Young children unwillingly separated from their parents show obvious, massive distress. Adults trivialize this distress ("She'll be fine in half an hour") in the exact same way that men have trivialized the distress of women, slave-owners have trivialized the distress and agony of slaves, and so on.

Women, and feminists in particular, should recognize the unhappiness of children as a feminist issue. But that threatens the gains of women the same way that feminism threatened the status of men.

Continue reading "The Rights of Children" »

23 Jun 2007 01:05 pm

Quote for the Bay

"A wrong attitude towards nature implies somewhere a wrong attitude towards God, and the comnsequence is an inevitable doom. For a long enough time, we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live upon this earth," - T. S. Eliot, "The Idea of a Christian Society," 1939.

23 Jun 2007 12:18 pm

Who Is Hillaryis44.com?

Bainbridge wants to know. It's a site dedicated to smearing Obama on Clinton's behalf. And it's totally anonymous.

23 Jun 2007 11:27 am

Clinton and the Right

A reader writes:

My question is this: If everyone is admitting that a Hillary Clinton's potential nomination to the Democrat Presidential ticket is only fuel for the religious right, then what do you think Senator Clinton's view is on that? Why is it that this either doesn't concern her, or she thinks she can overcome it?

If I were in the same position, I would realize that winning the nomination, only to further create a dichotomy between the American politic, would be disastrous for the country. So, why doesn't Senator Clinton? I can't get over that. Does she not know? And if she does, what's she telling herself to motivate her to continue? Is she really that good?

I think if she were elected, we would be dealing with the same Shakespearean themes we're dealing with now in the Bush administration. She might be looking to simply one up her husband's performance. I consider her nomination to be like pouring salt on a wound.

So far as I can tell, there is nothing Senator Clinton wouldn't sacrifice in the cause of her own ambition: her own self-respect as a wife; what once passed for her principles; and group of Americans (like the gays) who get in her way; and any rival who challenges her. She is now and always has been about one thing only: her own power and ego and how to satiate it. If she has to empower the Christianist right in pursuit of her goal, she will. And if she loses, she will blame everyone but herself. Remember the fathomless narcissism of her husband? She fed it as a way to feed her own.

23 Jun 2007 11:25 am

Enough To Make Any Brit Homesick

Two women sit at a picnic table and shelter beneath an umbrella during a rain shower at Royal Ascot on June 23, 2007 in Ascot, England (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

23 Jun 2007 10:46 am

Malkin and Gitmo, Ctd.

The leaked White House meeting to discuss whether to close it down was canceled, and the status quo continues. I'm sadly skeptical that Condi has any chance to balance out the vice-president on the question of illegal detention, rendition and torture. But I found this an interesting nugget:

Ms. Perino, the White House spokeswoman, noted today that the United States plans to release about 80 of the detainees soon. "America does not have any intention of being the world's jailer," she said.

Now recall the position of the McCarthy-Levin-Malkin-Crittenden right. It is that everyone in there is the "worst of the worst". They're all terrorists, according to Limbaugh and Romney. Romney's position is that he wants to "double Gitmo." (Why, by the way, has the press not followed up by asking Mitt what on earth he means by that literally nonsensical piece of pandering?) So, according to Malkin, the president is about to release 80 murderous, guilty Jihadist terrorists into the world. Let's see if Malkin even utters a squeak.

23 Jun 2007 09:19 am

Ron Paul, Liberaltarians, and Cell Phones

Josh Claybourn returns to the question of cell-phones, polls and Ron Paul's campaign. They do affect pollling data, as Pew has demonstrated here, and certainly by enough to affect a primary election. Cell-phone-only voters are also markedly different than landline voters:

The National Health Interview Survey found them to be much younger, more likely to be African American or Hispanic, less likely to be married, and less likely to be a homeowner than adults with landline telephones...

According to the most recent government estimate, more than 25% of those under age 30 use only a cell phone. An analysis of young people ages 18-25 in one of the Pew polls found that the exclusion of the cell-only respondents resulted in significantly lower estimates of this age group's approval of alcohol consumption and marijuana use.

That makes intuitive sense to me. And it would mean a slight under-estimation of someone like Ron Paul's support.

Friday, June 22, 2007

22 Jun 2007 09:36 pm

Scarred For Life

Since my recent posts on infant circumcision (here and here), I've learned a lot more about the subject. If you can bear a glimpse at the reality of this gruesome procedure, check out this YouTube. Some things I have learned: the majority of circumcisions do not use anaesthetic. Babies are strapped into a restraint, keeping their legs apart, and their arms and abdomen down, because when they have their penises sliced open, they scream and struggle. And this:

Because a baby's prepuce is usually naturally adherent to the glans (this is true of both males and females), it must first be torn away in order to perform the circumcision. The doctor applies clamps and inserts the nose of a pliers-like instrument to tear away the foreskin from the glans.

If parents tore the skin off their infants in any other part of the body, they'd be arrested for abuse. The great unmentionable, of course, is that religion, not medicine, is behind this practice - Judaism and Islam, to be precise. Many secular men, in other words, bear the scars of someone else's religion on their own bodies for life. (I should add, as I have written before, that female genital mutilation is exponentially worse. It removes a girl's sexual pleasure, rather than simply scarring and numbing it.) One commenter on Jeff Goldstein's blog put one rationale for it this way:

Further proof that God exists: he mandates a ritual that tones down the male sex drive, if only by a little, to help men become more godly instead of more carnal.

A survivor of a botched circumcision writes:

I am forty years old and never realized that my penis was terribly mutilated during my circumcision until 10 years ago. I hadn't seen too many other men's penises up close so I just assumed that the scars and layers of missing skin on my glands was a normal variation. A doctor informed me that the jagged edge of my crown, the gouges in my glands and the missing layers of skin on my glands was the result of a doctor butchering me during my circumcision. He said that my parents should have sued.  I thought “my parents” were the ones that had it done to me. What about my rights?  What about my right to sue? I was the one who was butchered. How many men are out there like me?  How many don’t even know that their penises aren’t normal?  And even if they cut me by the book, I would still consider it mutilation because part of me was cut off, altering me for life, without my consent. What about my body my choice?

That's only for women, apparently.
 

22 Jun 2007 06:29 pm

Finally Facing His Waterloo

22 Jun 2007 05:56 pm

The Mullahs Move

In Iran, the oppression intensifies. Whether this is a sign of strength rather than weakness among the theocratic elite is open to debate.

22 Jun 2007 05:54 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

"If we authorize gay marriage in the state of New York, those who want to live and love incestuously will be five steps closer to achieving their goals as well," - Democratic New York state assemblyman, Dov Hikind. In some sort of act of pique, Hikind says he is considering introducing legislation to legalize incest. Wiki's profile of Hikind can be read here.

22 Jun 2007 05:24 pm

Face of the Day

An officer from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds holds a sea eagle chick, one of 15 delivered by the Norwegian Air Force to RAF Kinloss, June 22, 2007 in Kinloss, Scotland. The eagles are being re-introduced to the East of Scotland following a successful RSPB programme that began in the West of Scotland in the mid 70's.The Eagles became extinct in the UK during the early part of the 20th century. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

22 Jun 2007 04:53 pm

The Taliban Graduation

The full video is now online. Gruesome - but probably more propaganda than reality. Still, it's a chilling reminder that al Qaeda has a secure base of operations in Pakistan, our "ally". And they want to use that base to murder Westerners. Sounds very much like September 10, doesn't it?

22 Jun 2007 04:44 pm

The Carrie Computer

Cooler? Just be careful at the prom:

Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity. The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi's Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo. "Take a deep breath and relax," said Kei Utsugi, a researcher, while demonstrating the device on Wednesday.

22 Jun 2007 04:31 pm

Death - A Cable Channel

Germany gets the cable channel that focuses on the next boomer fixation: death, i.e. theirs.

22 Jun 2007 04:19 pm

The New Tsongas?

A critique of Obama. Somewhat undermined by this sentence:

Obama's weaker showing among lesser-educated and lower-earning people is partly because many people are not yet following a race in which voting doesn't start for seven months.

22 Jun 2007 03:47 pm

The House, The Hedge-Fund, The Haircut

Byron York makes the case against Edwards.

22 Jun 2007 03:23 pm

Bush on Stem Cells

I've long thought the president's position on the matter is eminently sensible. The use of human embryonic tissue for medical research is ethically very dubious (I'm against it, period). Under such circumstances, a coherent conservatism of doubt would bar government funding, while allowing the private sector to do what it wants to do. There's no contradiction here, whatever Matt claims, as Kevin Drum points out. What is bizarre is bragging about the private sector research, while declaring it immoral.

22 Jun 2007 03:06 pm

Fatah's Torture Chambers

Now a tourist attraction. And, remember, Hamas is worse.

22 Jun 2007 02:39 pm

Heavy Metal Disability

Addiction to Motorhead is now a formal disability in Sweden.

22 Jun 2007 02:21 pm

Journalists and Campaign Contributions

I'm sorry but I don't see the problem. The notion that journalists should be political and ideological eunuchs is absurd. There should be disclosure, but I don't see the source of all the fuss. So NYT "ethicist" Randy Cohen gave to Moveon.org. Big whup. The one tiny benefit of being denied U.S. citizenship solely because of my HIV status is that I can simply tell campaigns any donation I could give would be illicit. But if it were legal, and HIV-positive immigrants weren't deemed beneath citizenship, I'd give freely. And disclose freely.

22 Jun 2007 02:02 pm

The War On Rushdie

It really has been a disgraceful episdoe with the vilest quarters of left ad right finding ways to excuse another act of Islamist blackmail. Johann Hari gets it right:

Rushdie brought it on himself. He wrote things he knew were "provocative". George Galloway, completing his journey to the theocratic far right, has sneered that his novel is "indeed positively Satanic", and said "he turned 1.8 billion people in the world against him when he talked about their prophet in a way that can only be described as blasphemous."

This is exactly analogous to saying a woman wearing a short skirt is responsible for being dragged into an alley and raped. It is also flecked with a form of soft racism, since Galloway assumes all Muslims are excitable children who can only react to querying of the Koran with attempted butchery.

Not all Muslims, of course. Just the fundamentalist fanatics - with very little public opposition from Western Muslims.

22 Jun 2007 01:47 pm

The Sculpture of Sight Gags

Mark Jenkins has more street installation photographs here.

22 Jun 2007 01:38 pm

Putin and Litvinenko

If you think the Russian president didn't order a hit-job, the evidence is worth a new look:

Litvinenko's widow Marina and his friend, Alex Goldfarb, have written a compelling narrative account of the story. Not to beat around the bush about this, they prominently name the president of Russia as a suspect in the homicide investigation. New Scotland Yard has formally named and is seeking the extradition of one covert FSB agent, Andrei Lugovoi, and is possibly after two more in connection with the killing. And links between the crime and the Kremlin are at this point irrefutable.

Still, this book offers some unexpected treasurers. Most significantly, it gives us an internal account of the rise of Vladimir Putin and the role that Boris Berezovsky played in that process. The entire story of Litvinenko is inextricably entangled in Putin’s rise to power: how Putin resurrected the KGB, how he endeared himself to Boris Yeltsin, became Yeltsin's seventh prime minister, and then emerged as his dark horse successor. At each of these steps, Berezovsky is on the scene, and Litvinenko is not far away either. Once you’ve worked your way through this, you’ll realize how absurd are the Kremlin’s dismissals of Litvinenko's importance. He is the man who knew too much. And he was viewed, very early on, as a traitor to the KGB.

We need to deal with Russia. They are critical to any successful Iran policy. But that doesn't mean we have to be in denial about who's running the place.

22 Jun 2007 01:15 pm

Blair To Convert To Catholicism

A lot of us have been excited about this for a while. My own estrangement from the Vatican hierarchy doesn't prevent my ingrained thrill at the thought of a former British prime minister defecting to Rome. He's visiting the Vatican this weekend, and the Guardian has a report on the PM's spiritual journey:

In another clear sign that the Roman Catholic church in Rome is preparing to welcome the outgoing prime minister into the fold, it is planned that he should go directly from his audience with Pope Benedict XVI to a lunch hosted by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, at the Venerable English College in Rome. He will be the first serving prime minister to set foot in the college, which centuries ago trained Roman Catholic priests for a clandestine return to protestant England and, often, an agonising martyr's death at the hands of their Anglican persecutors.

22 Jun 2007 01:09 pm

The World Through Your Window

We've added another 69 window views to the interactive map of Dish reader window views. Among the new additions: Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Tbilisi, Georgia; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Cusco, Peru. But my favorite part of the map is going to a single city, say London, and clicking through multiple window views. It's like visiting a city through the living rooms of the people who live there, people who only share one thing in common: this blog. The window above is in Jakarta, Indonesia, at 11 am. My thanks to Shaun Raviv who created and maintains the page. Check it out.

22 Jun 2007 12:50 pm

The GOP and National Security

Their two leading candidates, Giuliani and Romney, are among the least qualified foreign policy candidates to run for the presidency since ... well, George W. Bush in 2000. But we're at war now. Why would we trust two men who have been completely unable even to articulate a policy on Iraq and whose views on Islamist terror are so crude and ill-informed (they both believe that the Shia and the Sunnis are interchangeable with respect to U.S. foreign policy) that we'd be running a huge risk in electing them? I can't stand Clinton, but in terms of her foreign policy homework, she is in a different league of professionalism than Romney or Rudy. For the first time in my lifetime, with the proud exception of McCain, the GOP is clearly less serious about national security than the leading Democratic candidates.

22 Jun 2007 12:33 pm

Rudy and the Child Abusers

Why would Giuliani still employ a priest credibly accused by a Grand Jury of abusing boys, described as "cautious but relentless" in pursuing child victims in 2003, a man who was also integral to the conspiracy to protect child abusers from justice or accountability in the upper echeleons of the Catholic church? Because he was Giuliani's childhood friend, best man at his first wedding, baptized his son, smoothed the way for his divorce annulment, and buried his mother. In Giuliani's world, family is family. Loyalty is loyalty. And the children can go to hell. The full story is at Salon. Marc Ambinder provides all the crucial background you need to know. I don't think a defender of a credibly accused child-abuser should be the Republican nominee. That he would keep such a guy on his payroll is an extremely notable insight into Giuliani's character. Or what passes for it.

(Photo: Nicholas Roberts/AFP/Getty.)

22 Jun 2007 12:09 pm

Boxer, Clinton, Talk Radio

Senator James Inhofe is certifiable, so anything he may have "overheard" being discussed by Senators Boxer and Clinton is highly suspect. But the lead Drudge story, combined with the Clinton sister-circle story in the Washington Post yesterday, is fuel for the far right. It's a reminder of what we will be coping with if the Democrats are crazy enough to nominate Clinton. There is only one person who can revive the conservative coalition, jump-start the faletering Christianist movement, bring talk radio decisively back into the role of rallying the GOP base to the polls - and it's the junior senator from New York. Without doing anything, she will increase GOP turnout in 2008 exponentially.

22 Jun 2007 11:54 am

"Fake Cop, Fake Candidate"

The latest in Romney news.

22 Jun 2007 11:30 am

Are Cell-Phones Hurting Ron Paul?

His support skews young, and the young have many fewer landlines than the old. We now have actual evidence of the distortion in polling this can create. Josh Claybourne worries here. But, of course, the young have historically not turned up at the polls in large numbers either. I think that's changing, though. One more thought: I wonder if libertarians are more likely to have cell-phones than others?

22 Jun 2007 11:14 am

The View From Your Window

Brooklyn, New York, 9.50 am.

For a visual trip through many windows in New York City, click here.

22 Jun 2007 10:29 am

The Joy Of Work

Or why Americans are still happier than Europeans.

22 Jun 2007 09:57 am

Medical Freedom In Rhode Island

For the second time, the Rhode Island legislature has over-ruled the Republican governor's veto of a medical marijuana law. This time the over-ride was even more overwhelming: 58-11 in the House and 29-4 in the Senate. There are now eleven free states which allow the sick to use the medicine they want. The decisive Rhode Island vote is encouraging for a looming congressional vote preventing the feds from interfering in state marijuana laws.

22 Jun 2007 09:21 am

Sy Hersh and Lebanon

Not an encouraging story about the New Yorker star's anonymously sourced reporting. Taguba was on the record, of course.

22 Jun 2007 08:48 am

Konsumterrorismus

It's one of my favorite German words and captures roughly how I feel going into any department store. No I never got the shopping gene. I have one aim entering any kind of shop: to get out as fast as possible. But online shopping can be just as overwhelming:

A few weeks ago, I decided to get a new pair of flip flops. I dutifully went to Zappos (free shipping!) and looked in the "casual sandals" section. There were 1590 options. Just for men. In my size. So then I searched for "casual sandals" that were between $39.99 and $69.99. I had narrowed down the list to 652 items. I did a wee bit more narrowing, scrolled through the pages, and, after a few minutes, decided to get the flip flops at my local shoe store. The endless number of online options was aversive.

And no he hadn't stumbled onto Mitt Romney's website by accident.

22 Jun 2007 07:42 am

Tocqueville and Smoking

A nicotine addict resorts to an unlikely authority in defense of his habit.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

21 Jun 2007 10:40 pm

Taguba, Finally Not Following Orders

A reader writes:

Actually, Taguba's performance shows he is part of the problem, although in a mild way. He was given what appears to be an illegal order and either did not recognize it or do anything about it. That said, I can empathize with him because here is a poor guy from a disadvantaged minority who worked his way to a high level in bureaucratic system. He was rewarded by that system, while also overcoming some persecution, and he must have been very loyal to it, because he owed everything to it. The system gave him his status and identity as a successful human being - and an appreciation of this may be the reason why he was picked to do the investigation. Guys like him rarely go astray by telling inconvenient truths. (Powell's presentation of the "justification" for attacking Iraq to Security Council of UN is a parallel case in point, I think.) Now after the fact, he is worried about the stain on his reputation. The lights eventually went on and Taguba, to his credit, did the right thing, with the exception of making an issue about confining to the investigation to make the MPs the fall guys and girls while he was still on active duty.

It looks to me like he was afraid to question "authority" until he understood he was about to be hung out to dry, and even so, the first time he only went public was AFTER he retired.

One final point, Taguba had a second chance ... he could still should have come completely and forcefully clean when he testified to Congress, especially after  Rummy clearly lied under oath to Congress, which is clearly a felony, under the US Criminal Code, punishable with time in the slammer as well as a fine. (Actually, Rummy did not even have to be under oath for it to be a felony to lie to Congress.) But Taguba didn't.

There aren't many men of the caliber of Ian Fishback, are there?

(Photo: Stephen Jaffe/Getty.)

21 Jun 2007 10:09 pm

Cheney Out Of Control

He's now claiming he isn't part of the executive branch. Yes, you read that right. Money quote:

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies, according to a new letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Cheney.

Bill Leonard, head of the government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman's staff that Cheney's office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman.

In pointed letters released today by Waxman, ISOO's Leonard twice questioned Cheney's office on its assertion it was exempt from the rules. He received no reply, but the vice president later tried to get rid of Leonard's office entirely, according to Waxman.

The idea of impeaching him really doesn't seem so outrageous as the months go by, does it?\

21 Jun 2007 08:09 pm

Freefall

The president's approval ratings just scored a staggering 26 percent in the Newsweek poll. 23 percent approve of the handling of Iraq. A broader look at a range of polls is no more comforting. Pollster.com's average is now below 30 percent for the first time. The man can't go much lower among independents and Democrats, so now it's simply a question of whether the base can send him past Carter levels to Nixon territory. Nixon only performed worse than Bush in the worst of the Watergate impeachment crisis. How to explain the recent collapse? Some will say immigration. It may well have an impact. But the data suggest otherwise:

The sharpness of the decline is striking. The change-point for approval is April 23, corresponding to the week of the Congressional vote for deadlines and a fund cutoff in Iraq and the President's subsequent veto. It precedes the immigration debate, though that debate may have sustained the decline. (On the other hand there is little evidence that immigration accelerated the decline which was already underway.)

It's relatively simple, I think. The president's basic rationale for the war in Iraq was debunked within a few weeks of the invasion. His second rationale, democracy, is much further away now than it was three years ago. He has, in effect, no rationale now, except preventing an even worse catastrophe, which simply reminds Americans of what a colossal misjudgment he has made. 26 percent is far too generous., I'd say. Bush asked to have his presidency judged on how he waged the war in Iraq. He has got his wish.

21 Jun 2007 07:54 pm

Good Advice In Wartime

If only Americans had this level of sang-froid when dealing with al Qaeda. The WWII poster has an interesting history. (They even have t-shirts.)

21 Jun 2007 07:20 pm

Death By Genital Mutilation

An infant boy dies after a botched circumcision:

According to the Paediatric Child Health article, the boy was "bottlefed and was reported to be doing well when he was circumsized." Five hours later, the parents returned to their family doctor with the infant, who had become "irritable and had blue discoloration" below the belly button.

Doctors noticed the discoloration and slight swelling of the penis, but sent the child home. Fourteen hours after the circumcision, according to Cairns, the child was brought to another hospital where doctors noted he was extremely irritable with marked swelling of the penis and bruising to the scrotum.

The child was then transferred to a paediatric centre, where his bladder was diagnosed, Cairns said, to "seven or eight times its normal size." The PlastiBell ring, which is used to hold back the foreskin after circumcision, was removed and drained and the child went into shock.

This happens. Whenever you subject an infant to unnecessary surgery, complications can ensue. John Colapinto's extraordinary book, "As Nature Made Him" recounts the tragic story of an infant boy whose penis was entirely destroyed by another botched genital mutilation. He was then gender-reassigned and given a vagina.