Circumstances dictate a day off to take care of pressing concerns. But not without mention of a few notable stories.

IRAQ IIO

Summary here and here.

The state of emergency, first officially imposed in November 2004, is extended yet again.

Following a blanket 36-hour curfew imposed on the capital Baghdad from Friday evening until Sunday morning, Iraqi parliament decided to extend the state of emergency over Iraq for 30 days starting the first of October. The region of Kurdistan was excluded, according to parliament’s announcement Monday.

[snip]

Meanwhile, in the Kurdistan region, local Kurdish officials said that Turkish artillery bombed a number of Kurdish villages Monday while chasing elements of the banned Kurdish group PKK. Article

AFGHANISTAN SPIRALS

Summary here.

One can readily picture the plumes of steam erupting from the heads in the White House and the Pentagon (emphasis added).

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring “people who call themselves Taliban” and their allies into the government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

[snip]

Frist said he had hoped the U.S. would be able to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan soon. But he said the 20,000 U.S. troops in the country are still needed to support the NATO alliance, which will assume direct control over most military operations here.

“We’re going to need to stay here a long time,” Frist said.

The senator said he was warned to expect attacks to increase. There appears to be an “unlimited flow” of Afghans and foreigners “willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban,” he said.

[snip]

Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer,” Frist said. “Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn’t sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere.”

Frist and Martinez flew to this dust-blown mountain city 220 miles south of Kabul during a one-day stop in Afghanistan on a regional tour that includes stops in Pakistan and Iraq.

The pair had intended to visit a new $6.5 million hospital built by the United Arab Emirates, but a group of wounded Taliban fighters were recuperating there, including a midlevel commander, and U.S. commander Lt. Col. Kevin McGlaughlin canceled the visit because of security concerns. Article

Instability, insecurity, ignorance: The terrible troika of I’s.

Schools in southern Afghanistan are closing in large numbers due to pressure and intimidation from the resurgent Taliban movement, leading to an education crisis in the volatile region, officials say.

Almost 150 educational institutes have closed in Kandahar province alone, according to the education ministry. Regionally more than 50 schools have been attacked this year.

[snip]

And it’s not just the south where primary education is suffering. “More than 200,000 students are shut out of schools across the country because of school closures due to fear of attacks,” Deputy Education Minister Mohammad Sadiq Fatman told IRIN from Kabul. Article

One can understand the move, but on the other hand the importation of alcohol amounts to poking another stick into the eyes of a significant segment of the local culture.

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME

It’s a bit too sterile a look in many ways, but it does bring forth some historical perspective worth noting nonetheless as to why the odious bill to ‘cut and run’ from the Constitution and from the Geneva Conventions is a Bad Thing.

Official Japanese policy encouraged brutality toward prisoners of war by applying the Geneva Convention only mutatis mutandis (literally, “with those things having been changed which need to be changed”), which the Japanese translated as “with any necessary amendments.”

The amendments in question amounted to this: Enemy prisoners had so disgraced themselves by laying down their arms that their lives were forfeit. Indeed, some Allied prisoners were made to wear armbands bearing the inscription “One who has been captured in battle and is to be beheaded or castrated at the will of the emperor.” Physical assaults were a daily occurrence in some Japanese POW camps. Executions without due process were frequent. Thousands of American prisoners died during the infamous Bataan Death March in 1942.

Elsewhere, British POWs were used as slave labor, most famously on the Burma-Thailand railway line. Attempting to escape was treated by the Japanese as a capital offense, though the majority of prisoners who died were in fact victims of malnutrition and disease exacerbated by physical overwork and abuse. In all, 42% of Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese did not survive. Such were the consequences of “amending” the Geneva Convention.

Red-state Republicans may still shrug their shoulders. After all, George W. Bush is no Tojo. Well, maybe not. But even if you don’t see any resemblance between Bush’s “administrative regulations” and Imperial Japan’s “necessary amendments” of the Geneva Convention, consider this purely practical argument: As Winston Churchill insisted throughout the war, treating POWs well is wise, if only to increase the chances that your own men will be well treated if they too are captured. Even in World War II, there was in fact a high degree of reciprocity. The British treated Germans POWs well and were well treated by the Germans in return; the Germans treated Russian POWs abysmally and got their bloody deserts when the tables were turned. Article

Haven’t had any posts here about the story and revelations regarding ex-Rep. Foley’s proclivities, mostly because it is receiving wide and ample coverage wherever one looks.

One thing not yet come across anyplace is the question of what, if any, was Tom DeLay’s involvement (am not suggesting involvement in pederasty or sexual harrassment, but rather his political involvement, including vis-a-vis Hastert) in this?

It’s no big secret that Hastert was the front man for DeLay and that one of DeLay’s claims to power was digging up every bug under every rock he could on other House members.

That he was unaware of the page stalking situation beggars belief.

What did Tom DeLay know and when did he know it?

Feel free to discuss the scandal itself in the comments area.