1776-2008: The sound foundation persists.

Mouthing the principles, tenets and ideals of America is a threadbare substitute for patriotism.

Living them, constantly practicing them, and unfalteringly supporting and bolstering their equal application to all is truly functional patriotism.

Such dutiful engagement is the glue which binds the past with the future and stands as both the welcome boon and the innate demand incumbent upon all who benefit from the shelter built upon that foundation.

Maybe, just maybe, now that the words (emphasis added) have been spoken on the record, the spell will be broken.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” [Maj. Gen.] Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.

[snip]

Leonard Rubenstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuses his group uncovered. “The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and … suffering,” he said. Source

Not a scintilla of reasonable doubt.

Such is not us — not We The People — not in any manner, way, shape or form.

The very soul of America and of freedom has been violated. Bring the inhuman, inhumane cretins to task.

Absolutely and indubitably a must-read (emphasis added):

Thomas Romig, a major general who was the Army’s judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005, agreed that the JAGs were pushed to the side: “It was a disaster,” he said.

[snip]

“As they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo,” said Romig, who’s now the dean of Washburn University’s law school. “They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them. … If you’re caught as a terrorist, you’re presumed guilty and you have to prove you’re innocent. It was crazy.”

When Romig objected to pushing the boundaries of interrogation procedures during meetings in late 2002 or early 2003, he recalled that civilian defense officials replied that the time for law had passed.

“Guys, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s time to take the gloves off,” Romig said he was told by Marshall Billingslea, a deputy to Douglas Feith — who was then the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon’s third-ranking official.

Romig said that he and other military officers asked, “Do you realize the implications of what you’re saying?” Source

’nuff said.

The universality of the essential toolbox of liberty today has been reiterated.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) was an almost rhapsodic review of the history of the Great Writ. The Suspension Clause, he wrote, “protects the rights of the detained by a means consistent with the essential design of the Constitution. It ensures that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the ‘delicate balance of governance’ that is itself the surest safeguard of liberty.” Those who wrote the Constitution, he added, “deemed the writ to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme.”

Even though the two political branches — the President and Congress — had agreed to take away the detainees’ habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.” Source

A bit more:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” Article

That 5-4 margin for the supremacy of the Constitution — of it being a living documentation of inalienable creed — is, once again, a key reason why the occupant of the White House should not be an adherent nor espouser nor enabler of dogmatically retrogressive ideological blather (i.e., John Sidney McCain III). Who were that dissenting 4 who raised the flag of fear above the flag of law? Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts (attribution).

Lady Liberty cannot — must not — be waterboarded; her torch once quenched allows — nay, encourages — the reign of darkness.

Do we seek to make the future or break the future?

Ye old scribe votes for the former.

Let’s do it. Together.

It is our proprietary information. By dribs drabs and dollops, it is being taken from our possession and control.

If you wish to give it up, realize going in that it has a value (or it wouldn’t be so eagerly sought and hoarded) and that you — more often than not — are releasing it free and clear, along with any and all future control of the data.

What happens to our data happens to ourselves.

This shadow self doesn’t just sit there: It’s constantly touched. It’s examined and judged. When we apply for a bank loan, it’s our data that determines whether or not we get it. When we try to board an airplane, it’s our data that determines how thoroughly we get searched — or whether we get to board at all. If the government wants to investigate us, they’re more likely to go through our data than they are to search our homes; for a lot of that data, they don’t even need a warrant.

Who controls our data controls our lives.

[snip]

We need to take back our data.

Our data is a part of us. It’s intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch. Source

Distillation of Defense Secretary Gates’ shoulder-shrugging testimony :

Like, whaddaya expect? I’m only 6th in line to the President and head a department getting one-third of the budget. It’s not like I have any authority or anything.

Sheesh. Don’t get friction burns on the fingertips from passing those bucks at warp speed, Mr. Secretary.

… and 1 Giant Step For We The People

If ye old scribe could be granted one boon, it would be that the very first thing on the morning following inauguration day come January, the next president would append an official signature to this executive order:

All executive orders signed by President George W. Bush are herewith rescinded.

12 words. Is that too much to ask?

Is it too much to ask to reassert freedom — to stop cold the yet ongoing mauling, evisceration and outright rape of the Constitution a president swears to “preserve, protect and defend” (citation) in the inaugural oath?

UPDATE May 29, 12:25 p.m.: Rumblings of reason?

Compounding atrocity with inertia.

It is a fetid space indeed inside that nutshell, but — in a nutshell — this snippet from a Q&A piece stands as a sage summation:

Have we done something that can’t be undone in Iraq?

Iraq is already undone. Remember this: There is nothing in Iraq that constitutes a genuine threat to the United States of America. Iraq is purely a domestic war. It’s a war that’s being fought right here in America. As soon as our politicians decide there’s nothing to be gained politically from staying in Iraq, we’ll cut and run. We’ll dump Iraq like we dumped Vietnam.

Haven’t we reached that point? Or gotten close?

No. There are still too many politicians in D.C. who’ve invested too much political capital into Iraq. The American people have to get completely fed up with the war, and we’re not there yet. The majority of Americans are frustrated and don’t like the war but it’s a superficial frustration. Right now, we have these misleading statistics. People don’t realize that April was the bloodiest month in Iraq in the last seven months. The surge is over. It’s lost. It’s gone. Every benchmark of success the surge was based on has collapsed. Source

A 21^st century law of diminishing returns: The more mass media outlets we have, the less the masses appear to know.

Yes, yes yes. More than ever this election year, it is vital to think beyond just the next tomorrow and to recognize and choose which blueprint for the future will be validated.

Commonwealth or peonage? Equality or elitism? Law or fiat? Progression or regression? Mine, mine, mine or ours?

Bolstering or jettisoning the currently somnolent self-correcting mechanisms of the American system?

Democracy or corporatocracy?

Yes, the choice come November is that stark. And that perilous.

Poignant and moving, but cannot be uttered enough.

© 2008 Used With Permission

#172,311 in a woebegone G. Walker administration series. Collect Reject them all.

Once again, oozing from the putrid corridors of the dastardly, absolutely corrupted First Dick’s office: Science? We don’t need no ess-stinkin’ science.

Summaries here and here and here.

Just one telling excerpt from a radio interview with a top-ranked reporter covering Baghdad.

…What you find is a real loathing and contempt for Blackwater and the other private security contractors, a feeling that they’re a bunch of cowboys. You know, they come into an area an American commander’s trying to deal with and they mess things up, and you don’t know they’re there. They don’t coordinate. They don’t tell you they’re coming through. And most of all, that they don’t have the best interest of the country in mind. All they’re there is to make a buck by executing their contract, and their contract is to keep their principal alive, to perform their bodyguard function, at the expense of everything else. American troops know that sometimes you might have to die in the course of your duty rather than, say, kill a bunch of kids. And they really make sacrifices in executing their duty.

And they’re very unhappy when they see these boys cowboying it up, is the term they use, acting like a bunch of cowboys. I was actually talking to a brigade commander about this, and I said, `Would you want the responsibility of having these guys in your chain of command, of having to discipline them?’ And he said, `Absolutely.’ He said, `It would be a lot of extra work to try to keep tabs on these guys, but it’s a lot better than having them just shoot through my’–what he calls–`my battle space, my area, without me knowing about it and messing up the area and maybe undercutting my progress.’

I think that the security contractor situation has really come into relief this year, though, because, for years, some American units acted in a way not unlike the way the security contractors act.… Audio Link

Summary here.

Two top generals of the US army assured Turkey on Wednesday that the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will be eliminated by May next year, a top military official said on Wednesday.

[snip]

They also expressed that Turkey had the right to launch a cross-border operation into northern Iraq for purposes of self-defense. The two US commanders expressed the opinion that an air-offensive into northern Iraq to root out terrorist bases there might be better than conducting an operation on land.

Turkey and the US should decide on the exact date and time of such an air operation in a coordinated manner so that Turkish warplanes will not run into US planes, the sides agreed. The US would also assist Turkey by not having its fighter jets fly in that zone and opening Iraqi airspace to Turkish planes.

Cartwright and Petraeus also reported that troops of the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq would retreat to their own positions as soon as Turkey launches a cross-border operation.

Reportedly, after Turkish warplanes hit PKK targets in northern Iraq, Turkish and US officials have agreed that instead of sending large amounts of troops to the region, Turkey should launch operations against the PKK camps using the 20 squads currently positioned in the Turkish military base in Bamerni in northern Iraq. This deal is considered the strongest indication of the fact that Turkey will not launch a comprehensive land operation into northern Iraq. Article

Stifled freedoms: Like a homely dowager dripping with jewels the entire flawed, shabby and unattractive process is weighted down with layer upon layer upon layer of smothering (and deligitimizing) secrecy.

Five news organizations complained Wednesday that they are being denied access to much of the military commission proceeding against a Canadian terror suspect.

Various arguments in the case of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are apparently made via e-mail - a communications channel to which the public has no access - and issues apparently are being raised in closed sessions for which no transcripts or summaries are available, the news organizations, including The Associated Press, wrote in a filing.

In addition, the filing stated, the public is not permitted access to motions and other documents submitted by the parties and “even the existence of a motion is not currently disclosed in any publicly accessible way.”

[snip]

Besides The AP, the organizations are The New York Times Co., Dow Jones & Company Inc., The Hearst Corp. and The McClatchy Company.

[snip]

The presiding judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, has postponed a decision on whether Khadr can be tried by the military as an unlawful enemy combatant. Khadr has not entered a plea, and no trial date has been set.

The military commissions, which will be conducted at Guantanamo Bay, are the first to be conducted since World War II. It is important that the proceeding in the Khadr case not only be fair but that it be perceived as fair, and that cannot happen unless the public is able to follow and understand the events as they transpire, the five news organizations said.

The Military Commissions Act and its regulations make clear that the public’s right to access extends beyond an actual trial to all proceedings, the filing stated.

In addition, the news organizations argued, the First Amendment protects the press and the public from blocking their rights of access to information about the operation of their government. Article

The dismal road of the woebegone G. Walker administration, particularly higlighted by the emphasis added here.

The US federal judge who presided over the Zacarias Moussaoui terrorism conspiracy case suggested from the bench Tuesday that she might order a new trial for a Muslim cleric convicted of soliciting treason, saying that she could no longer trust representations made by the US government in light of recent revelations that it had withheld evidence during the Moussaoui proceeding. Source

Afghanistan summary here and here.

Pakistan summary here and here.

Pakistan aboil.

#1:

Three defiant judges of the Supreme Court, who are presently under house arrest after imposition of emergency, have now declared in their detailed judgment submitted before the SC last Friday that General Musharraf could not be allowed to contest the presidential elections.

[snip]

These judges who had refused to take oath under the PCO, have also observed in their joint judgment, which has not been released to the media, that continuation of Musharraf as the army chief beyond December 31, 2004 was “illegal and unlawful”.

The judges, Justice Rana Bhagwandas, Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan and Mian Shakirullah Jan, were part of the nine-member bench which had dismissed the petitions of Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Imran Khan on September 28, 2007 with regard to the question whether Musharraf could contest election from the present assemblies with or without uniform. Article

#2:

Thousands of people fled from a valley in northwest Pakistan as security forces stepped up an offensive against pro-Taliban militants, while fighting killed 19 people. Advancing ground troops killed 15 militants in the Shangla district in the scenic Swat valley, the site of fierce clashes with insurgents led by hardline Islamist cleric Maulana Fazlullah in recent weeks in which more than 300 people have died. Article

#3:

Police in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday baton-charged journalists protesting curbs on the media imposed by President Pervez Musharraf and arrested more 150 people, news reports said.

Several demonstrators were injured in the clashes, which occurred outside the city’s press club, Geo News reported on its website, the television channel’s only service still operating after it was shut down by the government at midnight Friday. Article

It’s not called critical mass for nothing.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are already under American control even as analysts are working themselves into a lather on the subject, a well-regarded intelligence journal has said.

In a stunning disclosure certain to stir up things in Washington’s (and in Islamabad and New Delhi’s) strategic community, the journal Stratfor reported on Monday that the “United States delivered a very clear ultimatum to Musharraf in the wake of 9/11: Unless Pakistan allowed US forces to take control of Pakistani nuclear facilities, the United States would be left with no choice but to destroy those facilities, possibly with India’s help.”

“This was a fait accompli that Musharraf, for credibility reasons, had every reason to cover up and pretend never happened, and Washington was fully willing to keep things quiet,” the journal, which is widely read among the intelligence community, said.

The Stratfor commentary came in response to an earlier New York Times story that reported that the Bush administration had spent around $100 million to help Pakistan safeguard its nuclear weapons, but left it unclear if Washington has a handle on the arsenal. Article

Contours of ceremonial chaos.

Hamid Karzai flew to Kandahar last month for a ceremony that later emerged as a key moment in the war against the Taliban, although many people here are still arguing about whether the Afghan president averted disaster or opened a new tribal conflict with his visit to the south.

Mr. Karzai arrived shortly after the legendary warrior Mullah Naqib died of a heart attack on Oct. 11. As hundreds of mourners gathered in the front garden of Mr. Naqib’s home on the north side of Kandahar city, the president stood and placed a silver turban on the boyish head of Kalimullah Naqibi, the tribal elder’s 26-year-old son.

[snip]

Some politicians in the city approved of the President’s action, viewing it as a swift intervention to give the tribe a leader with firm loyalty to the central government. Mr. Naqibi and his supporters say the move was purely decorous, a symbol of the President’s approval for a decision already taken by top elders in the tribe.

But senior members of the Alokozai’s leadership are publicly expressing their discontent, blaming Mr. Karzai for interfering in their affairs and violating their traditions. Installing an untested young man as their tribal leader has hurt security, they say, pointing to the fact that, within weeks of the decision, Canadian and Afghan troops were required to push back the first major Taliban attack on Alokozai lands north of the city.

General Khan Mohammed, an Alokozai tribesman who serves as an adviser to the Interior Minister, said he recently visited Mr. Karzai at his palace with another senior elder to complain about the selection of the young leader.

“I said, ‘Why did you put the turban on Kalimullah’s head?’” Gen. Mohammed said in an interview at his home in the capital. “The tribe didn’t choose this leader. I told him, you’re increasing the violence in our lands.”

[snip]

Variations of the same question are asked in private by senior politicians in Kandahar, who say the disgruntled contenders for the Alokozai leadership are trying to revoke the blessings they have already bestowed on Mr. Naqibi.

But the rules of Pashtun tribal etiquette forbade anybody from raising a fuss in the wake of Mr. Naqib’s death, Gen. Mohammed said, so the elders in attendance that night didn’t feel comfortable raising their voices against the President. Article

Centuries — nay, eons — to hone an accepted and viable judicial system set on a foundation of developed law and precedent, all but ground underfoot by the ‘make it up as we go along, the King cannot be wrong’ presumptions of the woebegone G. Walker administration. The world screams “Nay.”

The United Nations has registered its unease over the military trial of Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr.

Radkhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, complained Tuesday to the secretary of state’s top legal adviser, John Bellinger.

“She raised her concerns about the creation of an international precedent where an individual is being tried for war crimes with regard to alleged acts committed when he was a child,” said spokeswoman Laurence Gerard.

[snip]

Human rights groups say his military trial contravenes the Optional Protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the United States has signed.

The protocol says youths under the age of 18 in armed conflict are entitled to special protection. Article

Kicking disabled vets in the gonads with a steel-toed boot.

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back. Article

Need it be repeated that it is also borrowed money?

Yes.

US contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2006 to over 25 billion dollars but government oversight of the firms involved has slackened, a watchdog group said on Monday.

“While the billions of dollars involved and the complexity of these war-related contracts has only grown, the lack of oversight has been staggering,” said Bill Buzenberg, head of the Center for Public Integrity.

The study by the independent center said government outsourcing for the two war theaters was marred by issues such as a lack of competitive bidding, missing contracts and unidentified companies.

[snip]

The Centre for Public Integrity, which says it is a non-partisan group that investigates major public issues, said it was seeking more information on those contracts through the Freedom of Information Act.

The group said that 31 of the contractors on the top 100 list were foreign, including 12 from Turkey. Article

Summaries here and here and here.

Cultural chaos: Irreplaceable loss of the ties of history and heritage.

Tall Asmar, the famous ancient Sumerian settlement, has been stripped of its contents and digging implements, the Antiquities Department said in a statement.

The site in the restive and violent Diyala Province is Iraq’s most important and significant Sumerian settlement in central Mesopotamia.

Known as Eshnunna among Mesopotamian scholars, it has given the Iraq Museum its famous and priceless collection of votive stone and marble sculptures representing tall and bearded figures with huge, staring eyes and long, pleated skirts.

“An armed group stormed the archaeological site, handcuffed the guards and stole its possessions,” the department said in a statement. Article

Damning preliminary fidndings fron ;our’ side. No study or report has yet been set up, though, to determine whether the mercenary mayhem is not an aberration but rather S.O.P.

Early findings by the FBI on a September shootout in Baghdad involving private security firm Blackwater show that at least 14 Iraqis were killed for no reason, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

In all, 17 people were killed when Blackwater private security guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad neighborhood as they protected a State Department convoy. Blackwater said the guards came under attack.

At least 14 of the shootings broke rules for private security guards in Iraq regarding the use of deadly force, the Times reported, citing unnamed civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

[snip]

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents also found no evidence that the convoy was attacked by Iraqis, as Blackwater claims.

“I wouldn’t call it a massacre,” an unnamed government official told the Times. “But to say it was unwarranted is an understatement.” Article

Related: movement from “there’s nothing we can do” to CYA.

The US security company Blackwater promised [Wednesday] that any of its guards complicit in wrongdoing would be held to account after FBI investigators were reported to have concluded the fatal shooting of 14 Iraqis was unjustified. Article

Overstretch.

More airmen will be doing soldier-type jobs in Iraq, and those that already are can expect to be deployed longer and more often than most in the Air Force.

The Air Force next year will triple the number of airmen working under and helping the Army and the Marine Corps as part of its own “surge” in troops to Iraq, an Air Force commander said earlier this month.

[snip]

Since March 2004, the Air Force has provided airmen to serve combat support roles. The airmen include civil engineers, security forces officers and intelligence analysts serving six-month tours or longer. Many doing six-month tours can expect to return home for a year and then return to Iraq, Bosworth said.

“They’re very stressed,” he said. “[But] they know they’re coming back.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley has sounded warnings about having airmen filling Army jobs they are not trained to do. Article