Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Chemical Weapons Against Civilians?
Militants Using Chemical Bombs in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Feb. 21 — For the third time in a month, insurgents deployed a new and deadly tactic against Iraqi civilians today: A chemical bomb combining explosives with poisonous chlorine gas.
This is revolting. It is hard to fathom this behavior, against non combatants. May Allah rebuke them.
Eleventh Dimension Approaching the Membranes
Instaputz beats me to it all the time, so get used to it.
Wow, check out Putz’s totally unhinged reply to Paul Campos in the Rocky Mountain Times.
He’s got the low down.
I suppose that’s why Glenn is lawyer, and not a leader, although I’m sure he is training some of them up. It should go without saying, I suppose that the American’s have been accused of doing this anyway, but the double standard is, or should be, obvious.
This ought to be Good
from TPM.
Wes Clarke and Veterans that vote have teamed up on this, so it is full of partisan rancor, yada yada nada.
Was Valerie Plame Covert?
Since this seems to be the straw man of the week, why not read this?
Scooter Libby is not on trial for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He faces a jury because he lied about his role in giving out Valerie’s name and obstructed the investigation into the leak. Can you leak the name of an overt employee? No.
Of course it’s hard to hang a bell and whistle on that, but that’s what it’s all about.
Was it something I said?
Update: Edited for a little clarity! Clarity Man! Is that to much to ask??
David Gregory, White House correspondent for NBC News:
“I think politics and political coverage has become so polarized in this country…because it’s the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views. And they will clip and digitize portions of these briefings to fit into their particular argument.”
Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary:
“You’ve got this wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out. I think one of the most important takeaways is — it’s the classical line — not only should you not believe your own press, you probably shouldn’t believe your opposition blogs either.”
Richard Wolffe, White House correspondent for Newsweek:
“They want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. … It’s not a political exercise, it’s a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.”
On of the things reporters at the White House should realize, I think, is that they report on things that have both political implications and are news events, depending on which part of which sentence one wishes to parse, and that news feeds will pick up on the news, and that political blogs will pick up on both.
I really doubt that the coverage has become polarized so much by the blogs, as by the politicians, and the reaction of political partisans is hardly to be unexpected from either side of the spectrum.
As for believing owns own press, I agree, However sweeping generalities are in keeping with Red Herring arguments that can neither be supported nor defended, which is probably why Mr. Snow is a Press Secretary, since his statement appears to say something more than it does. Conversely one should not believe your supporter blogs either if it is a matter of veracity.
I would hate to think at this late date that blogs are so completely misunderstood that the term blog means the same thing to all people, and that all blogs are therefore equal. There is quite a bit of difference in quality and quantity in blogs as there are in papers, radio, and television.
I would hope that the role the press plays is as Mr. Wolffe states, but he and others must at least admit that sometimes the press in general has not asked the questions and so no one has got the information. That failure has many reasons, but the blogs are not one of them. The blogs point these things out.
It is of course one thing I suppose for a blogger to use sweeping generalizations, since most of them have no formal training in logic, or English for that matter, but I would think it quite another for those who have been trained in the subjects to do so, as the impression it leaves is of the intention to do so. It is expected that you would be criticized for that infraction as being partisan yourselves, which the right has been pretty consistent in doing, and in fact, this was not really an issue until the left joined in on the criticism.
And finally, I suppose, yes, we do want you to grill government spokesmen, because we have been through one war enabled by the “press’” failure to do so, and have no intentions of letting that mistake be repeated and remain silent as it is.
I think that blogs will always be oppositional to government, but not so towards the press, unless those individuals are collectively perceived to being biased, due to the aforementioned logical fallacies. To criticize the media, or press, is also a fallacy if it is done in general, but to criticize an individual is opinion, opinion that sometimes is more accurate than at others, but coming from a blog, is always personal opinion, and not necessarily as weighty and accepted by the general public as that of the organizations these individuals report for and represent. Coming from the government it is even worse, since one would hope that after all, it represents us all.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Good Post, Maybe Michelle Will Read It
Sixty-five years ago today, President Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese Americans. First-time diarist uberblee, whose grandparents were interned, reminds us in Day of Remembrance: Executive Order 9066.
Conspiracy Idiots
These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building
Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues – climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality – are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.
Agreed.
George Will, Still a Wanker
I usually stay out of Republican’t infighting, but;
Here’s George Will, the inventor (albeit not the chief practitioner) of “strong government conservatism,” sniffing disdainfully at Ron Paul, Congress’s one and only consistent advocate of good old-fashioned “small government conservatism,” as “a cheerful anachronism.” After all, Rep. Paul’s quirky idea that “the federal government is a government of strictly enumerated powers” is held “with more stubbornness than evidence.” Silly Ron — he thought conservatives were advocates of limited government. But he didn’t bank on the revisionism of Will & his fellow neocons, who have redefined traditional conservatism out of existence. Today, Barry Goldwater — and the rhetorical Reagan — would be laughed off the stage of a National Review “summit” (not that he’d be invited in the first place).
Monday, February 19, 2007
What a Mole
Heh,
Now a reader of the Cunning Realist blog has dug up the archived version of the website of Mr. Alishtari’s company, GlobalProtector, which shows that at the same time Alishtari was giving money to the GOP he was bidding on multiple government contracts — including ones with the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.
via: Talking Points Memo What is it with all these short haired people?
Update: It can always get worse, Terrorist Fundraiser of the Year
Yasith Chhun, the head of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization, was indicted in May of 2005 for charges of plotting to overthrow the Cambodian government. He was also, The Los Angeles Times reported, a member of the NRCC’s Business Advisory Council:
I suppose it won’t be long before the press is blaring the next Democrat to be busted for the same crimes, given everything we should know.
I pushed this on up to the top. Did you notice?
The Slow Bleed
Most observers would rightly conclude that up until now the United States remains uncommitted to the fight. Less than 13 percent of our 1.4 million active-duty military are deployed in Iraq. Fewer than 15,000 of the 150,000 troops in Iraq today are actually engaged in combat operations
You can divide 15,000 by 1.4 million,
Iraq has become a “slow bleed,” in which American blood, prestige and credibility are all slowly and inexorably being spilled in ever increasing quantities.
So what I kind of derive from this, is for all the Administration’s and War Hawks pontifications about winning the war, and all the white flag Republican snark from the right, the fact of the matter is this war was never intended to be won at all, and all the debate about this or that aspect of it is just a dog and pony show for the masses. Expletives Deleted come to mind.
This ties in with a previous admonition not to be naive about US forces capabilities with regard to Iran, and the ability of the American people to be bamboozled by their government at the “whim of the hat,” to paraphrase the current “Dear Leader.”
Updated for tenses,for the millions, and snark removal. It’s bad enough as it is. And of course back at the ranch, this was I believe, a part of the original Neocon spin.
Ricochets from the Eleventh Dimension
InstaRudundant ought to be proud,
Johnson, incidentally, has been feted by the mainstream media. He was recently named number 20 on Forbes’s “Web celeb” list. Perhaps more such posts about targeting foreign leaders will move him up into the top ten and get him the sort of regular network booking Ann Coulter enjoys.
Nothing like being in the company of Little Goof FooseBalls there Glenn.
Your GOP Donor at Work
Yeah I can see why Britney is news, after all, publicity is publicity, clik cllk,
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
not from this guy. Meanwhile back at the ranch,
TEHRAN, Feb. 18 — The Iranian Foreign Ministry charged Sunday that Sunni insurgents from Iran used Pakistan as a base to plan a bombing that killed 11 people and wounded more than 30 in the southeastern border city of Zahedan last week. The ministry said it had demanded an explanation from the Pakistani ambassador.
On another note, when will the majority of the American press figure out that there are NO Shiite Muslims? The word is Shia, as in Shia Muslims.
Perspective on Britney?
ROTFLAMAO
Update: IMHO only. I understand that a lot of people really are interested in this stuff, and my opinion isn’t the only one that matters. I am interested in this stuff too, but only in passing, and I sure don’t want anyone to feel like they shouldn’t be on my account, anymore than I want to feel as though I should, on anyone else account either.
Besides, I should have learned a long time ago not to pick on Matt.
Oh Well, That’s Not Helpful to the War Machine
Iran nuclear plant may be delayed
Moscow last year backed limited UN sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment after objections to the Bushehr deal were dropped.
Oh! So that’s what they mean by using diplomacy? You mean it isn’t Cruise Missiles at night? Who would have thunk?
The Murtha Smear Is On
It was immediately picked up by The Weekly Standard, U.S. News & World Report, the National Review Online and the Wall Street Journal, among others. And in the days that followed, the “slow-bleed” line has been used by everyone from House Minority Leader John Boehner, to Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, to White House spokesman Tony Snow, who prefaced it with the ever-handy, “some say.” But apparently that line isn’t having the desired effect, because now the long knives have come out and the smear of John Murtha is officially on.
So who’ll be the next in line? via dKos
Fifty Six Votes is not a Loss
Am I the only person in America that appreciates the rules of the Senate? Because the Senate rules protect the minority opinion, does not mean it cannot express the majority’s views.
What I want to know is why it is a “victory” to threaten to invoke the nuclear option over judges, and end over two hundred years of tradition of guaranteeing the minority’s rights, through Civil and World Wars.
The Senate vote was a bigger victory than anyone seems to note, and that is the biggest loss of the vote. Just how ignorant can we be?
UPdated” I thought the first question ought to be framed as a question, for those of you who speak the language better than you read minds.
Our Children at War
While I may disagree with him about the underlying causes of this behavior, the behavior is what it is, this is another reason to think long and hard before rushing off to war.
Murder, Inc.
That’s the reality of American foreign policy
How typically American: he isn’t to blame for his actions – certainly not! – it’s his “ill-defined mission.” But what if carnage – for its own sake, as an end in itself – is the mission? Forget the highfalutin’ rhetoric about “democracy,” the “war on terrorism,” the “weapons of mass destruction” that somehow turned into a desert mirage. The ugly reality is that Iraq has become an arena for American sadists to act out their perverted fantasies, a vast Charenton where the de Sades in charge of American foreign policy have unleashed an army of torturers and murderous thugs on the Iraqi people. The American media doesn’t want to show the real face of U.S. “liberators,” but they are being outflanked by the new technology that makes the self-appointed “gatekeepers” of journalism increasingly irrelevant.
I think some of these same characteristics prevent the voices of dissent from being given an ear prior to war as well, so it isn’t just us in our time, it is a learned national trait. Since I was raised here as well I can’t imagine where it is learned, unless it’s at the house, or perhaps it is natural to mankind and the churches, etc, fail to remove this illusion of superiority,
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Man, Who Has Time to Eat?
Confronting the Greatest Market Failure in History: National Security & Climate Change
I have just discovered that former National Security Advisor to George H.W. Bush, General Brent Scowcroft, is on the board of directors of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Cool.
so I guess I ought to throw this link in here as well; Climate change: scientists warn it may be too late to save the ice caps
A critical meltdown of ice sheets and severe sea level rise could be inevitable because of global warming, the world’s scientists are preparing to warn their governments. New studies of Greenland and Antarctica have forced a UN expert panel to conclude there is a 50% chance that widespread ice sheet loss “may no longer be avoided” because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
This ought to give conservatives with issues, issues.
Wheels within Wheels Circle the Wagons
Asked by one of Libby’s lawyers if he had talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column, Novak said he’d discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who, the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt? “He’s a very good source of mine” whom I talk to “every day,” Novak replied. Indeed, Hohlt is such a good source that after Novak finished his column naming Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn’t tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak’s sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.
So not only did no one get fired, everyone knew before the question was even posed. HT to The Washington Note.
Et Tu FOX?
True ‘Fair And Balanced’ Coverage: Wallace Calls Out Feith For Lying On Fox News
Transcript:
WALLACE: Now a follow-up to our interview last Sunday with former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Many of you asked us to check out the claim. Here’s what he said to us.
FEITH: Nobody in our office said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. It’s not correct. Words matter.
WALLACE: But it turns out he did make that case in a memo he sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October of ‘03. “The Weekly Standard,” which saw the memo, described it this way. “Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training and explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda.”
Whoa, I’m impressed.
GOP Donor Busted
NY Man Charged With Trying To Fund Terror
Ouch. Serious fair use pinch Via TPM UD: JMM has some links to follow up on.
(CBS/AP) Terrorism charges brought Friday against the administrator of a loan investment program claimed that he secretly tried to send $152,000 to the Middle East to buy equipment such as night vision goggles for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 53, of Ardsley, N.Y., pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to an indictment accusing him of terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and other charges. The charges carried a potential penalty of 95 years in prison.
…
CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party, as he claims on his curriculum vitae. Alishtari gave $15,500 to the National Republican Campaign Committee between 2002 and 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. That amount includes $13,000 in 2003, a year when he claims to have been named NRCC New York State Businessman of the Year.
Alishtari also claims to be a lifetime member of the National Republican Senate Committee’s Inner Circle, which the NRCC describes as “an impressive cross-section of American society – community leaders, business executives, entrepreneurs, retirees, and sports and entertainment celebrities – all of whom hold a deep interest in our nation’s prosperity and security.”
When Your Wrong Lou, Your Wrong
Apparently I was. My apologies
For those of you who have been as perplexed by the inconsistencies in the Border Patrol Agents story, convicted of shooting a drug runner, or in the vernacular, a mule, then you did well to lay low and let it develop, at least I wish I had.
Below is all that I have left of my original two posts, although I know I clobbered at least one more and there may other snotty remarks directed at Mr. Dobb’s over this on my part. Anyway, there are enough inconsistencies in the case to warrant further investigation by a special prosecutor as Mr Wian has alluded to, just to clear the whole mess up.
It is one thing, I suppose for a network to tick off the US Attorney, or the Border Patrol, and quite another for an individual to do so. Ultimately, however, I think that the nation as a whole is better served by knowing the border and drug enforcement laws are being enforced, and upheld, without the bias and prejudice of either the Border Patrol Agents or the criminal justice system being a factor.
At any rate the reporting of the story has been informative and educational, in that I have a better understanding of all the issues that have pitted the two opposing views of the event, without any clearer understanding of exactly what happened during the incident and subsequent trial.
It is not however an issue that has run its’ course in the criminal justice system, so it is not IMHO, and issue that the President can or should interject himself into, no is it at the level of an impeachable offense as some Congressmen have stated, and so the issue is polluted by political gamesmanship as well.
Anyway here are the two posts I still retain, in full, so the rest of you know what in the hell I’m talking about;
Back to The Border Patrol Case
<!–IfCategoriesAllowed>
</IfEntryCategories –>One of the current problems I am having, besides a lack of news without an agenda, is how an agent supposedly being keeped in solitary confinement can be beaten in his sleep by five people, which makes zero sense.
Here is the US Attorneys Statement via KVIA,
At the initiation of their investigation, the DHS Office of Inspector General contacted Aldrete-Davila who was at the time in Mexico.
Aldrete-Davila was at first reluctant to cooperate with the investigation because he feared that should he return to the United States, he could be prosecuted for the offenses committed in relation to the load of marijuana he was driving on February 17, 2005.
In order to secure his cooperation and appearance at trial in the United States, this office agreed that in return for his truthful testimony he would not be prosecuted for the February 17, 2005 offenses. The agreement does not immunize any other conduct.
Based on all of the evidence admitted at the two week trial, including the lengthy testimony of both of the defendants, the jury of twelve citizens heard all of the testimony, judged the demeanor and credibility of the witnesses and unanimously found both defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of eleven of the twelve counts alleged in the indictment, including assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with serious bodily injury, discharge of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence and wilfully violating Aldrete-Davila’s Constitutional, Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal seizure, as well as obstructing justice by intentionally defacing the crime scene, lying about the incident, and failing to report the truth.
via TalkLeft, The Dallas Morning News reported;
Both men admitted in court that they didn’t report the incident, but Ramos said he assumed one of several other agents at the scene had reported it. They also testified during the two-week trial that they shot at Aldrete, who ran back across the Rio Grande into Mexico after being wounded, because they thought he had a gun.
The above two sources are ones that I have come to trust over the years, so Lou’s starting to develope a few hickeys, on this one from the MSM and left.
Two other sources, one of which I can usually disagree with, appear to disagree with Mr. Dobbs as well,
Bonkers at the Border
Lou Dobbs and some Republicans pull an Al Sharpton.Most people would consider corrupt border patrol agents to be part of the illegal immigration problem, not the solution. So it’s passing strange that anti-immigration Republicans in Congress are calling for the federal government to release Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, two former border guards from Texas who were sent to prison last week for shooting an unarmed man in the back and then trying to cover up their crime.
Several GOP lawmakers, including outspoken restrictionists like Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, have hailed the ex-agents as American heroes. President Bush is even being urged to pardon Ramos and Compean, who received sentences of 11 years and 12 years, respectively. GOP Representative Dana Rohrabacher has gone so far as to accuse Mr. Bush of being “on the side of [America’s] enemies” for allowing the men to go to jail.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs has also weighed in repeatedly with pseudo-reporting designed to rile up his viewers rather than inform them of the facts. Speaking of facts, they are as follows, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and evidence presented at the ex-agents’ jury trial:
I would note the Wall Street Journal does still carry some wright with me, so another hickey to Lou. and then there is Reason Magazine‘s
“Compean and Ramos are Bad Guys.”David Weigel | January 30, 2007, 9:40am National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has absolutely the harshest take on the case of Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, border agents who shot a drug smuggler and whose “wrongful” imprisonment has become a cause celebre for immigration hawks. To wit: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, called it “the worst betrayal of American defenders I have ever seen.” Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, introduced legislation calling for a congressional pardon. Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, described the case as a “grotesque misdirection of our judicial system.” Petitions with more than 260,000 signatures have been presented to President Bush calling for a pardon. Seventy members of Congress are co-sponsors of Mr. Hunter’s bill.
Ouch. While there are some facts mixed in to the story, i looks like politics as usual.
Tentative Conclusion, John Stewart still has the best take on TV News.
“Snow-jobs” at the White House
May be the best story description of them all.
7:18 AM – 2/8/2007
The following is the original post;
Duncan Hunter and Me?, or, The Stangest Post I’ve Ever Done
<!–IfCategoriesAllowed>
</IfEntryCategories –>Anyone who knows me, or my writing, will understand that I am one of the odder of the lefties, and also a pretty partisan one, so if you think I might support Duncan Hunter because he wants to impeach the President you might have some basis for your argument, but you’ld be wrong. Nor have I spent a lot of time watching CNN since I haven’t had access to it for more than a couple of months, and it has to compete with Free Speech TV. In fact I may probably be a TV news junky, and inspite of my railings against FOX, I still watch the local Fox station KRIV, since they were on air even before cable, and so I am familiar with Mike Barrajas and Cecilia. No big deal, just some background.(sp) (Sorry Mike, my bad)
Long story can’t be made short, Lou Dobb’s has finally convinced me through his program that the story of the two convicted Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, needed some looking into, and for someone like me finding reliable sources on this is a little rough as there are very few conservative outlets I trust not to spin for spin’s sake, or in the case of Eleventh Dimension, I have become so accustommed to his over the years that I read him to see what everyone else is saying, but he is more of a charcoal filter than a source of news that I fall back on. Obviously I need to so some work on that stuff again, since I used to be pretty good at it before it finally wore me out.
Now, I am one of those lefties that want Leon Peltier freed because he was railroaded into prison, and, I am inherently distrustful of the state. Injustice does not know ideology, it just is, and needs to be corrected when it is found, and it is good for the American soul, because we may disagree on many things, but injustice in the legal system should not be one them. I can’t advocate for Padilla and mot do so for Ramos, or advocat for Peltier and and not do so for Compean, and it’s just that simple. Given the politicians who advocates for these men, it is a difficult thing to align with them, on any issue. Oh well, such is life. I’ll keep an eye out for evangelical lawyers and such.
I don’t have to much if any bias with Dobb’s and CNN, because I can only vouch for Headline News, whom I trust after many, many years. One of the drawbacks with me, or the right’s webring perhaps, is the echo chamber of views and spews which may, as I have stated, be my own biases, and the non lunatic right may have as much trouble with our side of the blogotracks as I with theirs, as well. So befor anyone at GopUSA thinks I am going to start frequenting the joint again, forget it. (I actuallly used to have an account there four years or so ago.)
WIAN: U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton released a lengthy statement defending his decision to prosecute the agents and offer immunity to the drug smuggler. In part, it says, “Federal prosecutors cannot look the other way when law enforcement officers shoot unarmed suspects, then lie about it to their supervisors and file official reports that are false.”
But there is conflicting testimony about all of Johnny Sutton’s claims, conflicts that could be up to an appeals court to resolve — Lou.
DOBBS: Conflicting statements indeed. As a matter of fact, it is clear that the U.S. attorney and the prosecutors in this case took the word of a drug smuggler, one caught red-handed, fleeing federal authorities, and who later was involved in a subsequent crime over that of the U.S. Border Patrol agents. It is a remarkable case.
WIAN: It certainly is. And as Ted Poe, the congressman from Texas, a former judge, has said, it’s the most incredible case he’s ever seen in his — in his career, which includes 22 years as a judge in felony cases in Texas — Lou.
DOBBS: Well, it’s — this is — as a number of those congressmen said, this will not stand. The question is how justice will be ultimately served in this country. We have to hope that that is still a possibility.
Casey, thank you very much.
So off I went looking for trusted others, and four or five pages in I found this’ Border Patrol Agents Betrayed,
The US Attorney for the Western District of Texas was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but in a written statement he released to the news media last week he defended the prosecution of the two agents saying “These agents shot someone who they knew to be unarmed and running away.” He said they also “destroyed evidence, covered up a crime scene and then filed false reports about what happened.”
What he doesn’t mention is the fact that the alleged victim had led the agents on a high speed chase, ditched his vehicle to run across the border and appeared to be armed, pretending to aim a weapon at the agents.
The drug smuggler was given amnesty in return for his testimony and since the trial has been arrested for drug smuggling twice and allowed to walk. Let me repeat that, a illegal alien who has a record of drug smuggling made a deal giving him a free walk on a charge of drug smuggling after being caught with 750lbs of pot, in return for his testimony against the two border agents who caught him red handed, and shot him because they thought he was preparing to shoot them. ….
and then I found this; which quotes a Lulac representative,
The head of the El Paso office of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Elvia Hernandez, says her organization did not view the two agents as innocent, because they had violated procedures and fired at an unarmed man. Still, she says, her organization did not support the harsh sentence and favored their remaining free while awaiting appeal. “We are still very disturbed that they did not let them stay out of jail while appeal was on. It is not that we do not think they should be punished, it is just that the sentence was a little strict,” she said. Hernandez says the federal court wanted to make an example of the two men to discourage other Border Patrol agents from violating the law, but she fears it may have the effect of discouraging agents from using force when it is justified and necessary.
and I have less trouble with LULAC, since I’ve been familiar with them since I was a yonker, but the crux of the evidence appears which is disputed by the father-in-law of one of the men in the letter from Loya that I linked.. Anyway I ran across this letter,
BP supervisor, Jonathan Richards, who had arrived on the scene, was very angry that the smuggler had gotten away. Richards ordered everyone to report to the station. He also told them to load the 743 lbs of marijuana onto their vehicles and take it to the station.
Richards never went across the canal to investigate the assault or to check on agent Compean. Ramos and another agent, named Yrigoyen later testified they told Richards that Compean had been assaulted. At the station, another agent, Mendez, stated that Compean had cuts on his face and hand. He said this in the presence of Supervisor Richards. This is significant because Richards denied having any knowledge of Compean’s injuries. He therefore never notified the F.B.I and there was never an investigation in this case. The agents were convicted on the allegations and lies of the smuggler, the fabricated lies of the prosecutors and the fabricated lies of two agents who were handed proffer letters, (immunity) from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against Ramos and Compean.
The BP supervisor lied on the witness stand, testifying that no one told him Compean had been assaulted, which is his excuse for never notifying the F.B.I. of this fact. The truth is that he offered Compean medical attention and had asked Compean several times if he was OK. The physical evidence was apparent as Compean was cut and covered with dirt. Richard’s failure to notify the F.B.I. of the assault is the reason why the case was never investigated.
Because of the supervisor’s actions, none of the agent’s filled out firearms discharge reports. This administrative policy violation could have gotten them a five day suspension without pay. After checking again on Compean’s condition and asking him if he wanted to file assault charges, according to testimony, Richards then made a statement saying, “If we call the F.B.I. we are going to be here all night doing paperwork. We will never know who the person was that assaulted you although we’ve got the van and the marijuana.” After that, everyone went back to work.
and so there is where I am tonight.
I really can’t put my finger on it, but something really fishy is going on here, and like the LULAC, until this case hase been appealed, given the disputed evidence, I think these men need to be out on bail. It will take awhile to get this story lined out in my head to my own satisfaction, andt I will, but my gut tells me there is something really wrong in Denmark here, and that has usually been right. Ask someone who knows me, or has been reading my work for awhile. Anyway, I’ll be doing some digging into this tomorrow.
6:13 PM – 2/7/2007
Long story short, everyone involved with this case has done a better job os sorting through this, but especially Mr. Wian, who may be the most insulted by my take on the whole deal. So again, apologies to Mr. Dobb’s and his staff,
OK, Just One More Channelling
So “the Murtha plan” is to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don’t have to share the blame for the defeat. But of course he’s a great American! He’s a patriot! He supports the troops! He doesn’t support them in the mission, but he’d like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years. As John Kerry wondered during Vietnam, how do you ask a soldier to be the last man to die for a mistake? By nominally “fully funding” a war you don’t believe in but “limiting his ability to use the money.” Or as the endearingly honest anti-war group MoveCongress.org put it, in an e-mail preview of an exclusive interview with the wise old Murtha:
“Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president’s foreign and national security policy.”
“Undermining”? Why not? To the Slow-Bleed Democrats, it’s the Republicans’ war. To an increasing number of what my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls the White-Flag Republicans, it’s Bush’s war. To everyone else on the planet, it’s America’s war. And it will be America’s defeat.
©Mark Steyn, 2007
Hmmm.
Mark Steyn: Yes. The time lost has emboldened America’s enemies – I use the term elastically – from the peace movement, which is a little less of a joke today than it was last spring, to Jacques Chirac to Kim Jong-Il. John Podhoretz keeps writing these columns in The New York Post congratulating Bush on one tremendous victory after another – over Tom Daschle, over Kofi Annan, over Dominique de Villepin. But these are not the enemy, they’re just speed-bumps on the way to the enemy, and they should all have been left receding into the distance in the rear-view mirror a long time ago.
My emphasis, since the term has such a familiar ring to it, then Hmmmmm.
John Hawkins: Hypothetically, let’s say that somehow, someway, George Bush were convinced not to invade Iraq and were to promise not to invade any other nation during the war on terrorism. What do you think the consequences of that would be?
Mark Steyn: He’d be a one-term President, and the death of the west would be pretty much a certainty. In hard terms, the best reason to hang Saddam is pour encourager les autres. Similarly, if he gets off, the North Koreans and Syrians and the more devious princes in the House of Saud will draw entirely reasonable conclusions about their freedom to operate.
Hmmm.
John Hawkins: Let’s say that things go well in Iraq and that we dispose of Saddam in short order with a minimal number of American and Iraqi civilian casualties. What do you think our next step in the war on terrorism should be?
Mark Steyn: The next step should be to quarantine the Saudis. The US has a moral distaste for imperialism, which is fair enough, but, on the other hand, when it scuppered the British and French over Suez in 1956, all it did was deliver the Middle East out of western influence and into the hands of what it thought were pliable strongmen. That’s no more morally superior than western imperialism and in practical terms it’s been a lot worse. We need to reform the entire region. To those cynical Europeans who say, “Oh, it’s absurd to think Arabs can ever be functioning members of a democrat state”, I’d say, in that case why are you allowing virtually unrestricted Muslim immigration into your own countries? So I’d say: after Iraq, Iran won’t be far behind; we then quarantine Saudi Arabia and explain the realities of life to Egypt and Syria.
Hmmm.
John Hawkins: How do you see the conflict between the United States and North Korea playing out?
Mark Steyn: I’m relatively relaxed, if only because a while back I made my own peace with the big change in global reality: during the Cold War I was never one of those people living in fear of impending nuclear annihilation – the nukes were in the hands of the Americans, British, French, Russians and Chinese, none of whom are stark staring nuts. Now the nukes have gone freelance, and more or less anyone can grab one and take out, if not New York or London, then one of their less vigilant neighbours – Vancouver or Rotterdam. It’s a horrible vision, and I don’t know why the Give-Peace-A-Chance crowd are so insouciant about it, but I’d be very surprised if we get through the next five years without a terrible catastrophe in a western city.
Hmmm.
Another weird scene from the Instapundit.
All Things Libby
eRiposte goes over the record, for the record, yet again.
[Preface: This post is the eighth of a series (see Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) focused on offering some observations and analysis on some of the documents released during the Libby trial. Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
but you knew that.
Right as Rain
Duncan is right as rain on this.
It’ll be unfair to him and to Mormons, but I hope the candidacy of Mitt Romney helps us put a stop to this “people of faith” nonsense. It’s time to retire the phrase and the concept. Not that I have any sympathy for Romney, who said:
We need to have a person of faith lead the country.
I don’t think being of faith makes you better than other people, because it is intended to make you a better person than you were before you found it. It is not, as I understand it, a comparative endeavor, unless it is in fact an internal comparison.
There ought to be an end to this if for no other reason than we should be wearied of being criticized by atheists about non germane aspects of our faith.
And a real time Update: Howard’s (Kurtz) the guy that turned me on to Stealth Badger.
The Media is not the Issue
There is a limit to the usefulness of criticizing the media, since that too falls under the ubiquitous “media,” which doesn’t really mean much when it is used as a broad brush of generalization, and then as per my habit, to single out an individual for a single story doesn’t really help out too much if that individual isn’t open to criticism in the first place anyway. Some people are like that without being journalists.
I don’t have any problems with criticizing someone who gets it wrong all the time, and some of them do, but I don’t think that I want an adversarial relationship with the “media,” which has many constraints that I am not aware of, ie Corporate “policies,” and then again, no matter how high profile they may become, most people make mistakes in judgments and facts all the time.
The reason I even bring this up is because I find journalist to be fascinating people, as are most English majors, because they are so well read, and bring so many different interpretations to the events of our lives, and I don’t want to insult the many for the errors of the few, or just because I disagree, and because sometimes I get things all screwed up myself.
Hopefully the “media” is aware of the fact that the interaction between the blogs and the “media” is just as new a phenomenon to bloggers as it to themselves. It’s like having a pen pal in real time, sometimes, and that is always a little dicey of a relationship even on dead trees.
There, I’ve said my piece. Peace.
Get Your War On
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility Whether goes the War Party?
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Is this worthy of the Senate’s time Senator Graham? Or are you all bluster? I thought so. To much snark for this early.
BTW: Via: Atrios
Late Night Eleventh Dimension
To some people, Vietnam wasn’t a defeat, but a victory. To them, the right side won. And lost. Naturally, they’re happy to repeat the experience.
The ubiquitous some people again, win, loose and draw, or as I prefer, matter, doesn’t matter, anti-matter.
Good Morning Glenn.
So Whose Micro Managing the War Now?
Having listened to the House and Senate debates, and again, to both sides, job well done,
Rice told Iraqi leaders that the Baghdad security operation needs to “rise above sectarianism” and noted that no U.S. or Iraqi forces have yet moved into the capital’s major Shiite militia stronghold, the Iraqi official said.
Politics makes such interesting bed wetters too, doesn’t it?
btw: Via: Antiwar
Peace Talks after Peace Talk?
The US and Israel will not work with a new Palestinian unity government unless it recognises Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.
He was speaking as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepared for talks with Mr Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
I suppose this is reciprocal too.
US troops killed, Britney in the News
Eight US troops have been killed and 14 wounded in a helicopter crash in south-eastern Afghanistan, the US-led coalition has said.
The helicopter, reported to be a Chinook, came down after the pilot reported engine trouble.
Road Rage In Iraq, and Exploding Stars
Apparently our bad habits go with us too;
The Pentagon has been accused of obstructing an investigation into how three British soldiers almost died when an American tank transporter rammed them off a road in Iraq.
and of course I would be remiss to miss this;
Thousands of light years away this remarkable image, captured by the Hubble telescope, shows the death of a star and gives a dramatic foretaste of the time when our own Sun will expire and swallow up the Earth
Sorry the psychobabble is on ABC and deals with Britney. She either wants the attention or needs to be left alone for awhile. But minding our own business isn’t an American forte, anymore, since the news became the Enquirer.
The vote in the Senate
For those few people who may not have noticed, the Senate again affirmed minority rights, something that the previous Senate was unwilling to do. That in itself is a victory. This isn’t rocket science, it is fundamental to our democracy.
It would be nice if the Republicans remembered this the next time they are the majority party in the Senate. It would be nice if they would remember their positions on Kosovo too, but in America war is a partisan issue, and because that is so, there are no victors in America, only losers.
Everything goes out the window, faith, ethics and morality, when war begins. One wonders when the one half will become as chagrined at their own loss, as they are at the other’s.
Terraformed 