Torture, Pope, Lebanon, Syriana

TorturePopeLebanonSyriana

trueblueliberal
The Stranger in the Mirror
Thursday, September 14th, 2006
By Bob Herbert

...Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”
And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, “It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

The character of the U.S. has changed.

I read this in the International Herald Tribune while in SEAsia. Great to see a liberal paper still flying.
grabbed a "Wall St Journal" while walking through 1st class to 'economic'. Appalled but not surprised to see an un-attributed opinion piece proposing legalising of torture. Lets not kid ourselves, the USAEmpire has and will commit barbarous torture while it can. Often by proxy, death squads trained in Georgia. Ask Rigoberta Menchú. What is under debate is the legalising of torture, ie an in your face, "we will do what the fuck evil we like, you have no recourse"
Well I'm here to say that one recourse is to drive your fucking USAnian planes into your fucking WhiteHouse, lets roll!

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Benny16
Manuel II Paleologu, c/o Benny16

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
..Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats..

Well now, imagine how Bruno felt as the flames reached higher... One of the charges against him was the denial of transubstantiation - a totally unreasonable concept.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
juancole

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halcyondays
That Sunni-Shi’a civil war in Iraq?

That’s not a flaw. It’s a feature. And it’s going to be exported to the rest of the Middle East.

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warandpiece
realcities

Current and former officials said the Pentagon's Iranian directorate has been headed by Abram Shulsky. Shulsky also was the head of the now-defunct Office of Special Plans, whose role in allegedly manipulating Iraq intelligence is under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Some officials say they fear the office, whose existence was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, is being used to funnel intelligence from Ghorbanifar, the arms dealer, and an Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen Khalq.

A Pentagon spokeswoman didn't return two phone calls seeking comment about the office.

Bill Murray, a retired CIA station chief in Paris who met with a Ghorbanifar associate and found his claims about Iran to be bogus, called the office's establishment "a big bell ringer."

"That is outright manipulation of information to suggest a predetermined policy," Murray said.

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billmon

Col. Pete] Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force . . . Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

[while idling about in the Barrio drinking cheap rum, for the last month , Billmon was one of the things I missed most about the West
- my cellphone often got the internet, Yahoo news Y! detected a phone browser and showed a compact list of news items.
now if only there was a 'true news' site for cellphones - hint to Aljazeera]

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While in the 3rd world, caught up on some movies c/o your local copy shop Pantip or Patpong
WTC & Flight93 failed to attain any drama, as noted in NYRB faux reality tv
Syriana told a bit to much truth to go down easy. Onya, GC

The NYRB also noted the Hezbollah victory in Lebanon.
nybooks

The very reason Israel waged this war—to reestablish its power of deterrence— has been one of its unquestionable casualties. Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, and Syria all feel that their fortunes are rising. For much of the Arab world, the war damaged the myth of Israeli invincibility. At this point, the most serious peril for Israel is to cease being seen as a dominant force and start being perceived as an exhausted one

and how thin the Merk tanks were.
I wonder which rockets HA used? The general belief is they didnt even use Kornets, of which the Syrians have plenty.
Instead HA may have used Metis a 2nd string device. The NYRB even suggests they used 1980 vintage USA wireguided ATMs.
Whichever, the IDF had no cover, neither in their Merks, nor in concrete buildings, so they were forced back after only a few km.
It seems that Syriana never gave any decent rockets to the Baathists, who are reduced to burying artillery shells, killing only 2 or 3 yanks per day.
Gaza also seems bereft of decent rockets, despite their Egypt tunnels.
Looks like a land war, even in Syri, let alone Iran, may be bloody hard on USAnian infantry.
nybooks

. But the uncomfortable fact for Israel is that whereas Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers for every Israeli citizen it killed, Israel's ratio in inflicting "collateral damage" was, at best, exactly the reverse.

[nyrb has always had a soft spot for HA, even saying that the 83 barracks blast was before HA was formed]

I will put some words together about SEAsia, Laguna del bay, the Barrio, Bangkok, Aus on planes, soon.