Month: March 2005

A bizarre headline:

Laura Bush pledges more U.S. aid for Afghanistan

Since when does the First Lady have the prerogative of dispensing U.S. tax dollars to anyone? Well, she seems to think that her royalist gesture is just routine:

“After flying from Washington to the other side of the world, First Lady Laura Bush spent six hours in Afghanistan on Wednesday, praising the courage of Afghan women and pledging more U.S. help for the war-torn country.”

This is unseemly behavior. Laura Bush is the President’s wife, not the Empress of the American Empire. If the Republicans want to propose an amendment to the Constitution making the First Lady a co-president, then let them do so. Until then, spare us the imperious gestures.

It’s a good thing the natural right to live doesn’t apply to people who live across water from here, or the Schaivo Right might have to start opposing war.
According to MSNBC:

“WIESBADEN, Germany – A U.S. Army tank company commander told a military court Wednesday that he shot a gravely wounded, unarmed Iraqi man ‘to put him out of his misery,’ saying the killing was ‘honorable.’

“Taking the stand for the first time, Capt. Rogelio ‘Roger’ Maynulet, 30, described the events that led him to fire twice upon the Iraqi, maintaining that the man was too badly injured to survive.

“’He was in a state that I didn’t think was justified — I had to put him out of his misery,’ Maynulet said. He argued that the killing ‘was the right thing to do, it was the honorable thing to do.’

“Prosecutors at the court-martial say Maynulet violated military rules of engagement by shooting an Iraqi who was wounded and unarmed.

“Maynulet is being court-martialed on a charge of assault with intent to commit murder in the May 21, 2004, killing near Kufa, south of Baghdad. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and his lawyers have argued that his actions were in line with the Geneva Conventions on the code of war.”

Just because the Predator Drone footage shows the man was waving his arms around, doesn’t mean he was alive at the time he was put out of his misery:

“An Army neurosurgeon, Richard Gullock, testified that it was unclear from the surveillance footage whether the driver was alive or dead at the time of the shooting. In the video, the man appeared to be waving his right arm before the first shot.

“’I am aware there can be similar movements in someone who can be considered clinically brain dead,’ Gullock said.

“However, a second neurosurgeon, Lt. Col. Rocco Armonda of the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, countered that the pattern of the man’s movements in the video ‘indicate he was alive.’”

If only he had just dehydrated the guy to death.

Update: AP: U.S. Soldier Convicted in Court-Martial

“WIESBADEN, Germany Mar 31, 2005 — A military court Thursday convicted a U.S. Army tank company commander of a lesser criminal charge in connection with the shooting death of a wounded Iraqi last year.

“Capt. Rogelio ‘Roger’ Maynulet was found guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought conviction on a more serious charge of assault with intent to commit murder, which carried a 20-year maximum.

“Maynulet, 30, of Chicago, stood at attention as Lt. Col. Laurence Mixon, the head of the six-member panel, read the verdict at the court-martial. The court was to reconvene later Thursday to consider Maynulet’s sentence.”

Airstrikes are ok. Execution is not. Everybody understand? Good.
Continue reading ““To Put Him Out of His Misery””

Forget Kyrgyzstan — what about Colorado?

Omigod! Are you ready for this shocking announcement from Steven Plaut trumpeted in his latest screed on David Horowitz’s Frontpage? Okay, here goes:

“We counted 14,400 web pages in which the names Juan Cole and Justin Raimondo appear together.” [emphasis in original]

Oh, the horror! The horror! And I have even worse news for Plaut: both my name and David Horowitz’s appear on at least that many web pages!

Wowee zowee! Somebody call 911!

I have an explanation, though, that might calm Plaut’s shattered nerves: you see, Stevie m’boy, there’s this thing we call the “Internet” …

In the process of writing the blog entry below — mocking the stupidly false stories about me and others spouted by the denizens of David Horowitz’s Frontpage — I realized something that is really beginning to bother me: I’m guilty of exactly the same thing.

My Monday column featured a memo allegedly penned by U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Stephen Young that I found on the website of the Kabar News Agency. Now, as soon as I read this piece I realized fully that a great deal of it was probably the product of someone’s imaginative literary gifts: oh, I thought, too bad I can’t use it! With the clock ticking on my deadline, and a little voice inside my head telling me “Let them deny it!”, I decided that at least part of it was probably true, and I made sure to cover my ass with an exculpatory paragraph at the very end, as well as a weasel-worded introduction to the material that gave several reasons why it could be at least partially authentic.

Part of the memo may well be real: but that isn’t good enough.

That was a mistake, one that, in retrospect, I greatly regret. After all, where do I get off complaining about how the Frontpagers are making up quotes and libeling people without any credible evidence — and then think I can pull stunts like that? It’s not right.

Without giving myself any excuses, I’ll just note that I’m currently recovering from a very mean bout with pneumonia. And none of this “well, it could be true, in a “metaphorical” sense. That’s bs. The War Party is doing enough evil in this world: it isn’t necessary to make anything up. All that’s necessary is to tell the truth, and, in this instance, I failed my readers miserably. I have to note that both my editors, Eric Garris and Matt Barganier, objected, but I brushed their concerns aside with my typical brusqueness.

My apologies, to one and all.

A group of liberal bloggers has issued an “Open Letter” protesting the inclusion of the infamous Jeff Gannon on a panel at the National Press Club. Now, don’t take it on my word that this crowd is a bunch of clueless whiners. Let them demonstrate it to you in their own inimitably whiny words:

“We, the undersigned bloggers, are very concerned about how liberal political bloggers are being systematically under-represented and belittled in the mainstream media, academic settings and media forums. By being intentionally excluded away from these venues, we are effectively pushed out of the discourse of opinion-leaders. The result is that the conventional wisdom about blogging, politics and journalism, as it concerns liberal blogs, becomes a feedback loop framed by the Conservatives and their media allies.”

“… we are faced with an entirely new situation that is more insult than misrepresentation. The discredited conservative media operative Jeff Gannon, neé Guckert, has been invited to sit on a panel at the prestigious National Press Club to talk about the scandal surrounding his access to the White House and more generally, the similarities and differences between bloggers and journalists. Guckert’s token liberal counterpart will be a gossip blogger and sex comedy blogger. While we have nothing but the greatest respect for Mr. Graff and Ms. Cox we believe that neither represents bloggers who write about hard-nosed politics. And as for Mr. Guckert, he isn’t a blogger, he’s barely a journalist, and not a single political blogger involved with the Gannon/Guckert scandal, or otherwise, has been invited to sit on the panel to counter Mr. Guckert’s arguments.

“Therefore, we the undersigned bloggers, respectfully but firmly insist that a serious political blogger such as John Aravosis, of Americablog.org be included on the panel to fairly and accurately represent our industry and us. Mr. Aravosis has agreed to our request that he serve on the panel as our representative and is available should such an invite be forthcoming.

“This situation is simply unacceptable. We will push back against the growing bias and sloppiness we see in the mainstream media as it concerns serious political blogging. If we do not we will never achieve any semblance of balance in the media. If we do not, we abdicate our ability to tell our own side of the story. If we do not we leave it to others to define us and defame us. “

A more insufferable prissiness would be hard to imagine. These people really take themselves far too seriously — and their only problem is that nobody else does.

And why, pray tell, should Gannon have to sit on the same panel with John Aravosis — because Aravosis is gay? Is that it? Sheesh, talk about oppressive — do we really have to “balance” out a gay conservative with a gay liberal? Does this mean Ann Coulter has to be “balanced” out by the liberal blonde of their choice? What a sad commentary on the “enlightened” liberals of our era, who think in such petty narrow-minded terms.

Speaking of petty and narrow-minded, the blogger known as “Billmon” posts an outburst of sex-phobic babbling that sounds like Jerry Falwell on hallucinogens:

“What’s next? An interactive NPC panel session on masturbation? A guest lecture on bestiality and blogging? A press conference by the North American Man Boy Love Association? No, wait, the House isn’t in session this week.

“I hate to sound like a prude here, but this is one of those moments when I start to think the fundamentalist gizmos might just be right.”

Look, I’m no Jeff Gannon fan, but Billmon is right: he does sound like a prude. And a hateful one at that. The problem with Gannon isn’t that he’s “the world’s only conservative gay prostitute journalist with a blog” — and I can guarantee you that isn’t true — it’s that Gannon was an administration plant, a shill who reported for a partisan front organization disguised (but not very well) as a “news agency.” So Jeff Gannon is a gay conservative — so what? So is Andrew Sullivan. So am I. So are any number of gay people — who, I hate to break it to Billmon, are not uniformly Barney Frank liberals. We are everywhere, bud.

As for the prostitute angle — again, so what? At the age of 43, he’s charging a thousand bucks a session — and getting it. The problem with most people, however, is that they can’t even give it away. And that, I’ll bet, is the case with the liberal blogger-geeks and policy wonks who signed that ridiculous “Open Letter.”

UPDATE: Talk about “homophobia” — a word I hate, but this time it fits — this just about says it all.