It is reported that a US marine, who was captured on film killing a wounded Iraqi at point blank range during November’s assault on Fallujah, will not be formally charged due to lack of evidence.
Here’s a video of the shooting.
Here’s an eyewitness account by the person who filmed the video.
Something I left out of today’s column: in trying to back up his assertion that Syria is to blame for the assassination of Lebanese politician-businessman Rafik Hariri, Michael Young cites one Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party. But who is this guy, Jumblatt, and why should we take him seriously? Well, we shouldn’t take him seriously, as evidenced by his past statements (reported by the New York Sun, via National Review):
“The Lebanese MP is also known for espousing conspiracy theories against America. On April 28, 2004, he gave an interview to Al Arabiyya TV, in which he detailed how America was really behind September 11: ‘Who invented Osama bin Laden?! The Americans, the CIA invented him so they could fight the Soviets in Afghanistan together with some of the Arab regimes. Osama bin Laden is like a ghost, popping up when needed. This is my opinion.'”
So, this Jumblatt character is to be believed — why? Young never says. Jumblatt’s loony ravings continue:
“Mr. Jumblatt was asked ‘Even 9/11?’ and answered: ‘Even 9/11…Why didn’t the sirens go off when the four hijacked planes took off?'”
He’s not only loony-tunes, he’s a rabid anti-Semite and racist:
“In addition to hating America, Mr. Jumblatt has also spoke against the countries that support America. Lebanon’s Daily Star published a February 3, 2003, article quoting him as saying that the true axis of evil is one of ‘oil and Jews’ … The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president, and top advisers, including [Condoleezza] Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz.'”
Jumblatt’s rantings are about as credible as this entire blame-Syria scenario, which is to say the whole thing is bull. What’s striking is that the War Party would stoop this low: citing a loon like Jumblatt whose views are positively Hitlerian. And it’s not as if Young didn’t know about Jumblatt’s crackpot views: after all, this account originally appeared in the Beirut Daily Star, where Young edits the opinion page.
How absurd is it for a foreign country to send troops to another foreign country and then import other foreign troops in to guard them? And when one foreign country decides to pull its troops out of the invaded country the remaining foreign country’s troops have to get some other foreign country to come and guard their troops that nobody wants there in the first place?
Juan Cole has a long post up in which he analyzes the somewhat sketchy information available about the process of choosing a candidate for PM of the Iraqi Assembly. Rather surprisingly, Ahmed Chalabi is still announcing to anyone who will listen that he has the votes to become PM. Cole explains how this might actually be true and also lays out a scenario which could result in Allawi retaining power.
Interestingly, Cole thinks that the women (33% of the seats by UN rule) might be the wild card that allow Chalabi to cobble together enough votes to be a contender, but Abu Aardvark reminds us of the truckloads of blackmail files Chalabi still has.
As I was writing this post, the wires began announcing that Chalabi has withdrawn from the PM contest, so now we can take all this reasoning about PM and apply it to whatever position Chalabi announces that he will win next since he never goes away.
Chalabi photo via billmon
According to a report from the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation office, the Defense Department wants to “target an adversary’s space capability by using a variety of permanent and/or reversible means to achieve five possible effects: deception, disruption, denial, degradation and destruction…”
Space control is military jargon for the ability to ensure one’s own access to satellite capabilities while denying space-based services to adversaries. It encompasses both defensive measures designed to protect satellites as well as what the Pentagon refers to as negation — measures to counter or destroy enemy satellite capabilities.
I know Reason magazine gets its fair share of abuse around here, but this gem from Tim Cavanaugh is my early frontrunner for comment of the year:
The genius of neoconservatism is that it’s exactly in step with the progressivist, middle-of-the-road, big state view of American history they teach in school: The Articles of Confederation resulted in a disaster that taught the founders the value of a strong central state; the Whiskey rebels were dangerous kooks, not unlike the Branch Davidians of our own time; “States’ Rights” has always been a code word for slavery; President Woodrow Wilson was a man of vision but sadly was unable to achieve his goals for an international order; the America Firsters were even kookier and more marginal than the Whiskey rebels, and the best way to deal with one is to sock him in the jaw like in The Best Years of Our Lives; many well intentioned folks on the left underestimated the danger of the Soviet Union, but the anti-communist witch hunts of the fifties were a regrettable overreaction (the Left didn’t become dangerous until the late sixties and early seventies, when it embraced separatist and militant views that undermined the politics of consensus that made this country great); real civil rights progress only came when the federal government asserted its power over the refractory states; September 11 shocked America out of its isolationism and freed President George W. Bush (an excellent man, but distressingly shortsighted in some matters) from his naive opposition to nation-building. And so on.
Leave aside how much of it you agree or disagree with. What would the neocons add to the official version of American history? That Winston Churchill should have been made King of the United States as well as Prime Minister of Great Britain? That we missed a great opportunity by not jumping into the Franco-Prussian War? That we should have intervened on Sylvania’s side against Freedonia? The folks at The Times may have a narcissistic interest in highlighting small differences, but you can’t misuse language forever. When liberals look at the neocons, they see themselves.
Absolutely perfect.
