Saturday, August 4, 2007
Can Anybody Help Me?
From Scout at First Draft comes a link to wonderful music video made by the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund. The group used parts of Scout's video and stills that she took during her visits to New Orleans after Katrina in their music video, "Can Anybody Help Me?"
One For One
Someone in the comments here mentioned that it was good to have Gail Collins, writing for the the New York Times again, and indeed, it is (alas, behind the wall). This is from her column titled, "Getting One for the Price of One":
This week, Rudy Giuliani is focusing on health issues, attacking Democrats’ plans to get the government more involved in covering the cost of medical care. In a campaign tour of New Hampshire town meetings, he used the word “socialism” so often that it crowded out the old nonterror-related record-holder, “Ronald Reagan.” Other frequently repeated nouns were “choice” (good) and “France” (bad).
....
You may remember a while back that Rudy Giuliani was touting his wife, a nurse, as an important adviser to him on health matters. This was around the time that he told Barbara Walters that he would be “very, very comfortable” having her sitting in on Cabinet meetings and policy discussions about her area of expertise.
So Judith was expected to be part of the New Hampshire health care tour. But her plans seemed to have changed about the time a new Vanity Fair profile emerged, one that makes her sound like a particularly unpleasant combination of Catherine the Great and Britney Spears. The article, by Judy Bachrach, accuses her of everything from demanding a separate airplane seat for her handbag to putting her husband in harm’s way by forcing him to retrieve a bag of health bars from the hotel during a security lockdown.
Oh dear. Catherine the Great and Britney Spears. Is she going to be called upon to do a quick fade-out? Is she going to be angry at Rudy for making her stay in the background? She doesn't sound like a background person to me, and she's not shy about demanding her rights.
Many of the anonymous quotes in the Vanity Fair piece seem to have come from past and present Giuliani employees, who are particularly bitter about Judith’s alleged attempts to elbow out his closest aides and confidants. This is not something you as a voter need to worry about since Giuliani’s closest aides and confidants tend to be extremely expendable hangers-on.
(We will revisit this issue sometime later when we discuss how chauffer-turned-police commissioner Bernard Kerik came to be nominated for chief of Homeland Security.)
Yes, remember that hero of 9/11, Bernie Kerik, who came close to being in charge of Homeland Security? He of the alleged "secret love nest" where he conducted his “passionate liaisons.”
To protect his wife from unnecessary sniping, all Rudy needs to do is say that he was looking at the world through the eyes of love when he seemed to be envisioning her as a future weapons inspector. (“She gives us a lot of advice and a lot of help in areas where she’s got a tremendous amount of expertise — biological and chemical,” he said in 2003.)
Rudy's candidacy seems like one big joke to me, but we elected a joke twice and I'm not laughing. I suppose that I should hope that Rudy becomes the Republican candidate for president, but one never knows. By trickery or through dirty campaign tactics, he might get elected.
Who would have believed that one who actually served in Vietnam, would come to be viewed as a wimp and a liar, rather than the one who disappeared from the Air National Guard and never gave an explanation?
Good to have you writing again, Gail.
This week, Rudy Giuliani is focusing on health issues, attacking Democrats’ plans to get the government more involved in covering the cost of medical care. In a campaign tour of New Hampshire town meetings, he used the word “socialism” so often that it crowded out the old nonterror-related record-holder, “Ronald Reagan.” Other frequently repeated nouns were “choice” (good) and “France” (bad).
....
You may remember a while back that Rudy Giuliani was touting his wife, a nurse, as an important adviser to him on health matters. This was around the time that he told Barbara Walters that he would be “very, very comfortable” having her sitting in on Cabinet meetings and policy discussions about her area of expertise.
So Judith was expected to be part of the New Hampshire health care tour. But her plans seemed to have changed about the time a new Vanity Fair profile emerged, one that makes her sound like a particularly unpleasant combination of Catherine the Great and Britney Spears. The article, by Judy Bachrach, accuses her of everything from demanding a separate airplane seat for her handbag to putting her husband in harm’s way by forcing him to retrieve a bag of health bars from the hotel during a security lockdown.
Oh dear. Catherine the Great and Britney Spears. Is she going to be called upon to do a quick fade-out? Is she going to be angry at Rudy for making her stay in the background? She doesn't sound like a background person to me, and she's not shy about demanding her rights.
Many of the anonymous quotes in the Vanity Fair piece seem to have come from past and present Giuliani employees, who are particularly bitter about Judith’s alleged attempts to elbow out his closest aides and confidants. This is not something you as a voter need to worry about since Giuliani’s closest aides and confidants tend to be extremely expendable hangers-on.
(We will revisit this issue sometime later when we discuss how chauffer-turned-police commissioner Bernard Kerik came to be nominated for chief of Homeland Security.)
Yes, remember that hero of 9/11, Bernie Kerik, who came close to being in charge of Homeland Security? He of the alleged "secret love nest" where he conducted his “passionate liaisons.”
To protect his wife from unnecessary sniping, all Rudy needs to do is say that he was looking at the world through the eyes of love when he seemed to be envisioning her as a future weapons inspector. (“She gives us a lot of advice and a lot of help in areas where she’s got a tremendous amount of expertise — biological and chemical,” he said in 2003.)
Rudy's candidacy seems like one big joke to me, but we elected a joke twice and I'm not laughing. I suppose that I should hope that Rudy becomes the Republican candidate for president, but one never knows. By trickery or through dirty campaign tactics, he might get elected.
Who would have believed that one who actually served in Vietnam, would come to be viewed as a wimp and a liar, rather than the one who disappeared from the Air National Guard and never gave an explanation?
Good to have you writing again, Gail.
Post Deleted
My post on the MadPriest photo contest is gone, [I] deleted [it]. I had misgivings about posting it in the first place. I should listen to my inner voice. When I don't, I often make mistakes.
This post has been edited for clarity. The words in brackets were added.
This post has been edited for clarity. The words in brackets were added.
Fudpucker
Here's my latest in tongue-twisters - seen on the back of a tee-shirt:
If a fudpucker could puck fud, how much fud could a fudpucker puck if a fudpucker could puck fud.
Say it quickly. How did you do? I had to say it several times before I got it right.
Maybe this is an oldie, and everyone else has seen it. In that case, sorry. Sometimes I don't keep up.
If a fudpucker could puck fud, how much fud could a fudpucker puck if a fudpucker could puck fud.
Say it quickly. How did you do? I had to say it several times before I got it right.
Maybe this is an oldie, and everyone else has seen it. In that case, sorry. Sometimes I don't keep up.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Thank You, Time Magazine
From Time Magazine by Michael Grunwald:
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
And haven't I been saying this over and over? I am so pleased that a national news magazine is telling this story. Maybe now folks in the rest of the country will "get it".
There's this on the mostly inept and not-to-be trusted US Corps of Engineers:
But Corps officials have also committed to restoring the surge-softening marshes, cypress swamps and barrier islands that are disappearing at a rate of a football field nearly every half-hour. They say they now understand that the survival of New Orleans depends on a sustainable coast. "This is not the Corps of old," says Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the agency's Task Force Hope. "The world has changed, and the Corps is changing too."
So. Now they understand about the marshes. I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath for the Corps to keep the promise about the restoration of the marshes. It's not entirely the fault of the Corps, which is funded mainly by earmarks, with politicians meddling in a heavy-handed manner in their plans and projects.
The article is well done. Grunwald did his homework before writing his story, which is more than I can say for other prestigious journalists. I don't agree with every single statement in the story, but he mostly gets it very right.
Thanks to Oyster at Your Right Hand Thief for the tip to the story.
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
And haven't I been saying this over and over? I am so pleased that a national news magazine is telling this story. Maybe now folks in the rest of the country will "get it".
There's this on the mostly inept and not-to-be trusted US Corps of Engineers:
But Corps officials have also committed to restoring the surge-softening marshes, cypress swamps and barrier islands that are disappearing at a rate of a football field nearly every half-hour. They say they now understand that the survival of New Orleans depends on a sustainable coast. "This is not the Corps of old," says Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the agency's Task Force Hope. "The world has changed, and the Corps is changing too."
So. Now they understand about the marshes. I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath for the Corps to keep the promise about the restoration of the marshes. It's not entirely the fault of the Corps, which is funded mainly by earmarks, with politicians meddling in a heavy-handed manner in their plans and projects.
The article is well done. Grunwald did his homework before writing his story, which is more than I can say for other prestigious journalists. I don't agree with every single statement in the story, but he mostly gets it very right.
Thanks to Oyster at Your Right Hand Thief for the tip to the story.
One Small Sad Story
A sad snippet from Juan Cole's daily post on news from the Middle East. This from Reuters:
KIRKUK - Police found the bodies of five brothers, all day labourers, who had been kidnapped near al-Rashaad district 40 km southwest of Kirkuk a day earlier. A sixth brother, six or seven years old, was found nearby unharmed.
Multiply stories like this many times, and you get a picture of the suffering and grief we have brought to a country which had done us no harm.
KIRKUK - Police found the bodies of five brothers, all day labourers, who had been kidnapped near al-Rashaad district 40 km southwest of Kirkuk a day earlier. A sixth brother, six or seven years old, was found nearby unharmed.
Multiply stories like this many times, and you get a picture of the suffering and grief we have brought to a country which had done us no harm.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Bad News From Mississippi
Mississippians are suffering from the same woes as Louisianians as they try to pull their lives back together after Katrina.
From Ana Maria at A. M. In the Morning:
Once again, Mr. Foot-in-Mouth Diseased Insurance Commissioner of the State of Mississippi—George Dale—has implied that the majority of Americans ought to move. That’s right, George Dale thinks that the 55% of Americans whom the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency reported live within 50 miles of our nation’s gloriously beautiful coastlines should move from our homes, families, communities, places of worship, jobs, and friends . . . and that if we don’t, then—by George—we get what we deserve from the worst of Mother Nature.
Oh, George, you are such a horse’s patoot!
Hey, George! That's me and lots of other people too!
Perhaps George Dale would like to list the “safe” geographical places in our nation so that the 55% of us who live within 50 miles of our nation’s “unsafe” coastlines can immediately pack up and move to this alleged “safe place”. By the way, according to the Census Bureau, 55% of our nation’s population equals 167 million Americans. I wonder where George is anticipating us to move? Where exactly is this fictitious place where we can live outside of harm’s way?
Plus, she pitches hardballs at the insurance companies who are trying to weasel out of paying what's due to their customers. She's talking about a local politician, George Dale, the Mississippi State Insurance Commissioner, but her subject is applicable to many of us who could be next in the path of a natural (or not so natural) disaster. What chance does the ordinary citizen have when the public official whose job it is to regulate a business takes sides with the business he's supposed to regulate, against the interests of people who pay his salary?
From Ana Maria at A. M. In the Morning:
Once again, Mr. Foot-in-Mouth Diseased Insurance Commissioner of the State of Mississippi—George Dale—has implied that the majority of Americans ought to move. That’s right, George Dale thinks that the 55% of Americans whom the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency reported live within 50 miles of our nation’s gloriously beautiful coastlines should move from our homes, families, communities, places of worship, jobs, and friends . . . and that if we don’t, then—by George—we get what we deserve from the worst of Mother Nature.
Oh, George, you are such a horse’s patoot!
Hey, George! That's me and lots of other people too!
Perhaps George Dale would like to list the “safe” geographical places in our nation so that the 55% of us who live within 50 miles of our nation’s “unsafe” coastlines can immediately pack up and move to this alleged “safe place”. By the way, according to the Census Bureau, 55% of our nation’s population equals 167 million Americans. I wonder where George is anticipating us to move? Where exactly is this fictitious place where we can live outside of harm’s way?
Plus, she pitches hardballs at the insurance companies who are trying to weasel out of paying what's due to their customers. She's talking about a local politician, George Dale, the Mississippi State Insurance Commissioner, but her subject is applicable to many of us who could be next in the path of a natural (or not so natural) disaster. What chance does the ordinary citizen have when the public official whose job it is to regulate a business takes sides with the business he's supposed to regulate, against the interests of people who pay his salary?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Prayer Of Nonviolence - (June, 2005)
BY JOHN DEAR
God of Nonviolence,
Thank you for the gift of your love and your peace.
Give me the grace to live the life of Gospel nonviolence
that I might be a faithful follower of the nonviolent Jesus.
Send the Holy Spirit of nonviolence upon me that I will love everyone,
from my neighbor to my enemies,
that I may see you in everyone, and know everyone as my sister and brother,
and never hurt or fear anyone again.
Make me an instrument of your peace,
that I might give my life in the struggle for justice and disarmament;
that I may work for the abolition of war, poverty and nuclear weapons;
that I may always respond with love and never retaliate with violence;
that I may accept suffering in the struggle of justice and never inflict suffering or death on others;
that I my live more simply, in solidarity with the world's poor,
that I may defend the poor and resist systemic injustice and institutionalized violence,
that I may always choose life and resist the forces of death.
Guide me on the Way of nonviolence.
Help me to speak the truth of peace, to practice boundless compassion, to radiate unconditional love, to forgive everyone who ever hurt me, to embody your nonviolence, to walk with you in contemplative peace, to be your beloved servant and friend.
Disarm my heart, and I shall be your instrument to disarm other hearts and the world. Lead me, God of nonviolence, with the whole human family, into your nonviolent reign of justice and peace where there is no more war, no more injustice, no more poverty, no more nuclear weapons, no more violence.
I ask this in the name of the nonviolent Jesus, our brother and our peace.
Amen.
Rev. John Dear S.J. is a Jesuit Priest, Peace Activist, Organizer, Lecturer, Retreat leader, and author/editor of 20 books on peace and nonviolence, including Living Peace, published by Doubleday.
Fr. Dear's story can be found on his web site on the link below his picture. He's the real deal, a peace activist, a man who takes the Gospel to heart and moves on to action.
Fr. John Dear's work for peace has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, and the Philipines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchized women and children in Richmond, Virginia.
A native of North Carolina, John Dear was arrested on December 7, 1993 at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina for hammering on an F15 nuclear fighter bomber in an effort to "beat swords in plowshares," according to the biblical vision of the prophet Isaiah. Along with activist Philip Berrigan, he spent eight months in North Carolina county jails. Dear has been arrested over seventy-five times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience for peace, and has organized hundreds of demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons at military bases across the country, as well as worked with Mother Theresa and others to stop the death penalty.
As you see, he walks the walk and pays the penalty. I wish I had his courage.
The National Catholic Reporter has a longer article on Fr. Dear.
His latest book is titled Transfiguration, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Here is the link to his prayer.
UPDATE: Jan at Yearning For God has posted the trailer for the video on Fr. John titled "The Narrow Path", which can be purchased athis site the San Damiano Foundation.
God of Nonviolence,
Thank you for the gift of your love and your peace.
Give me the grace to live the life of Gospel nonviolence
that I might be a faithful follower of the nonviolent Jesus.
Send the Holy Spirit of nonviolence upon me that I will love everyone,
from my neighbor to my enemies,
that I may see you in everyone, and know everyone as my sister and brother,
and never hurt or fear anyone again.
Make me an instrument of your peace,
that I might give my life in the struggle for justice and disarmament;
that I may work for the abolition of war, poverty and nuclear weapons;
that I may always respond with love and never retaliate with violence;
that I may accept suffering in the struggle of justice and never inflict suffering or death on others;
that I my live more simply, in solidarity with the world's poor,
that I may defend the poor and resist systemic injustice and institutionalized violence,
that I may always choose life and resist the forces of death.
Guide me on the Way of nonviolence.
Help me to speak the truth of peace, to practice boundless compassion, to radiate unconditional love, to forgive everyone who ever hurt me, to embody your nonviolence, to walk with you in contemplative peace, to be your beloved servant and friend.
Disarm my heart, and I shall be your instrument to disarm other hearts and the world. Lead me, God of nonviolence, with the whole human family, into your nonviolent reign of justice and peace where there is no more war, no more injustice, no more poverty, no more nuclear weapons, no more violence.
I ask this in the name of the nonviolent Jesus, our brother and our peace.
Amen.
Rev. John Dear S.J. is a Jesuit Priest, Peace Activist, Organizer, Lecturer, Retreat leader, and author/editor of 20 books on peace and nonviolence, including Living Peace, published by Doubleday.
Fr. Dear's story can be found on his web site on the link below his picture. He's the real deal, a peace activist, a man who takes the Gospel to heart and moves on to action.
Fr. John Dear's work for peace has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, and the Philipines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchized women and children in Richmond, Virginia.
A native of North Carolina, John Dear was arrested on December 7, 1993 at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina for hammering on an F15 nuclear fighter bomber in an effort to "beat swords in plowshares," according to the biblical vision of the prophet Isaiah. Along with activist Philip Berrigan, he spent eight months in North Carolina county jails. Dear has been arrested over seventy-five times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience for peace, and has organized hundreds of demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons at military bases across the country, as well as worked with Mother Theresa and others to stop the death penalty.
As you see, he walks the walk and pays the penalty. I wish I had his courage.
The National Catholic Reporter has a longer article on Fr. Dear.
His latest book is titled Transfiguration, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Here is the link to his prayer.
UPDATE: Jan at Yearning For God has posted the trailer for the video on Fr. John titled "The Narrow Path", which can be purchased at
Responsible? Who me?
From the New York Times:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today he felt terrible about the military’s flawed handling of the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former football star who was killed in Afghanistan. But he and other former Pentagon leaders insisted that there had been no attempt to cover up the way it happened.
....
“I do not recall when I first learned that Corporal Tillman’s death was fratricide,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding that it was probably after May 20, 2004, when he was told by a colonel about the possibility of a “friendly fire” incident.
Ah, the convenient memory lapse which comes at the time that one testifies under oath.
“I know that I would not engage in a cover-up,” Mr. Rumsfeld told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today. “I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me.”
Never in a million years would any of the upstanding public servants in the Bush maladministration suggest a cover-up. Never ever. We all know that.
Critics of the Bush administration have asserted that the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death may have been distorted, to exploit the soldier’s patriotic image and perhaps distract attention from an unfolding scandal over abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
That suggestion was raised again today by Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee. Mr. Waxman said the reports of the death were deliberately manipulated to counter bad news about battlefield casualties as well as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad.
Surely not, Rep. Waxman. Whatever would make you say that? How long would it have taken for the abuses at Abu Ghraib to come to light but for the pictures? What's going on right now in the prisons?
Tillman volunteered to serve and was killed by US troops. His family deserved more accurate and prompter information about the circumstances of his death from their government.
As an aside, I've often wondered that we accept the "friendly fire" euphemism. Is the term intended to provide consolation to the family of the deceased? Are their loved ones any less dead from "friendly fire"?
But retired Gen. Richard B. Myers, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, also rejected those assertions. And in sparring with Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, he opened a window on the Pentagon bureaucracy.
Yes, General Myers agreed, the Tillman family should have been notified at once that there was the possibility of a “friendly fire” tragedy.
“According to the Army regulations as I understand them, that’s correct,” said General Myers, who served in the Air Force. “By the way,” he continued, “the Marine regulations don’t. They don’t notify until they’re sure, as I understand.”
You see, no one in the very highest offices is ever responsible in this maladministration.
But Mr. [Thomas M. Davis, III of Virginia,] Davis, whose northern Virginia district includes many military families, tried to walk a tightrope, noting that “nothing in our inquiry thus far demonstrates that either the defense secretary or the White House were aware this was a friendly fire incident before late May.”
He said that presumptions that high-ranking officials must have been involved should not “color or cloud what our investigation is actually finding.”
God forbid!
Absent from the hearing was former Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger, Jr., who was censured on Tuesday for his role in the Tillman case and could be demoted to two-star rank.
....
Mr. Waxman said that General Kensinger’s lawyer told the committee he would not testify voluntarily, and that he would seek to avoid being served with a subpoena. He apparently succeeded.
Apparently, the buck stops with Gen. Kensinger. He does not seem particularly enthusiastic about falling on his sword for the maladministration.
Over all, Mr. Rumsfeld and the retired generals depicted themselves as busy men at the time of Corporal Tillman’s death who left the details of the investigation to subordinates.
When Mr. Waxman asked General Myers if he thought there might have been a cover-up “somewhere along the line,” the general said he had no way of knowing, although he emphasized that he himself had not engaged in one.
The Congressman then put the same question to Generals Abizaid and Brown — “yes or no on this question.”
Both general[s] said they thought there had been no cover-up. “I think people tried to do the right thing,” General Abizaid said, “and the right thing didn’t happen.”
"...and the right thing didn't happen." There's the oh-so-useful passive voice to defend the indefensible. It's not as though real people could have effected a different outcome. It just "didn't happen".
I'm tearing my hair out as I read and write this. I can hardly bear to finish. How can Rumsfeld, Myers, and Abizaid get away with these answers?
My admiration for Rep. Henry Waxman, who has been tireless in his attempts to shed light on the dark corners in the Bush maladministration, is boundless. He is one of my heroes.
There now, I'm done, and I'm about to blow.
God help us all!
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today he felt terrible about the military’s flawed handling of the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former football star who was killed in Afghanistan. But he and other former Pentagon leaders insisted that there had been no attempt to cover up the way it happened.
....
“I do not recall when I first learned that Corporal Tillman’s death was fratricide,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding that it was probably after May 20, 2004, when he was told by a colonel about the possibility of a “friendly fire” incident.
Ah, the convenient memory lapse which comes at the time that one testifies under oath.
“I know that I would not engage in a cover-up,” Mr. Rumsfeld told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today. “I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me.”
Never in a million years would any of the upstanding public servants in the Bush maladministration suggest a cover-up. Never ever. We all know that.
Critics of the Bush administration have asserted that the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death may have been distorted, to exploit the soldier’s patriotic image and perhaps distract attention from an unfolding scandal over abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
That suggestion was raised again today by Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee. Mr. Waxman said the reports of the death were deliberately manipulated to counter bad news about battlefield casualties as well as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad.
Surely not, Rep. Waxman. Whatever would make you say that? How long would it have taken for the abuses at Abu Ghraib to come to light but for the pictures? What's going on right now in the prisons?
Tillman volunteered to serve and was killed by US troops. His family deserved more accurate and prompter information about the circumstances of his death from their government.
As an aside, I've often wondered that we accept the "friendly fire" euphemism. Is the term intended to provide consolation to the family of the deceased? Are their loved ones any less dead from "friendly fire"?
But retired Gen. Richard B. Myers, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, also rejected those assertions. And in sparring with Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, he opened a window on the Pentagon bureaucracy.
Yes, General Myers agreed, the Tillman family should have been notified at once that there was the possibility of a “friendly fire” tragedy.
“According to the Army regulations as I understand them, that’s correct,” said General Myers, who served in the Air Force. “By the way,” he continued, “the Marine regulations don’t. They don’t notify until they’re sure, as I understand.”
You see, no one in the very highest offices is ever responsible in this maladministration.
But Mr. [Thomas M. Davis, III of Virginia,] Davis, whose northern Virginia district includes many military families, tried to walk a tightrope, noting that “nothing in our inquiry thus far demonstrates that either the defense secretary or the White House were aware this was a friendly fire incident before late May.”
He said that presumptions that high-ranking officials must have been involved should not “color or cloud what our investigation is actually finding.”
God forbid!
Absent from the hearing was former Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger, Jr., who was censured on Tuesday for his role in the Tillman case and could be demoted to two-star rank.
....
Mr. Waxman said that General Kensinger’s lawyer told the committee he would not testify voluntarily, and that he would seek to avoid being served with a subpoena. He apparently succeeded.
Apparently, the buck stops with Gen. Kensinger. He does not seem particularly enthusiastic about falling on his sword for the maladministration.
Over all, Mr. Rumsfeld and the retired generals depicted themselves as busy men at the time of Corporal Tillman’s death who left the details of the investigation to subordinates.
When Mr. Waxman asked General Myers if he thought there might have been a cover-up “somewhere along the line,” the general said he had no way of knowing, although he emphasized that he himself had not engaged in one.
The Congressman then put the same question to Generals Abizaid and Brown — “yes or no on this question.”
Both general[s] said they thought there had been no cover-up. “I think people tried to do the right thing,” General Abizaid said, “and the right thing didn’t happen.”
"...and the right thing didn't happen." There's the oh-so-useful passive voice to defend the indefensible. It's not as though real people could have effected a different outcome. It just "didn't happen".
I'm tearing my hair out as I read and write this. I can hardly bear to finish. How can Rumsfeld, Myers, and Abizaid get away with these answers?
My admiration for Rep. Henry Waxman, who has been tireless in his attempts to shed light on the dark corners in the Bush maladministration, is boundless. He is one of my heroes.
There now, I'm done, and I'm about to blow.
God help us all!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The Book Quiz
You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!
by Lewis Carroll
After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind
opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser,
you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming
to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that
it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to[o] much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I don't know quite what to make of this. I feel rather as if I'm living in the upside down world of Through The Looking Glass. I wonder what the wrong turn was. Maybe it was my post about the red hat and the purple dress.
From PJ's Pointless Blog. PJ got the link from others whom I'm too lazy to mention.
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