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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Saturday, May 01, 2004
I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good And death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way And there was nothin' anyone could do or say riverbend responds to the torture photographs with the appropriate level of disgust. The assholes responsible for this are a demented group as one shouldn't need any training to realize that it is wrong to treat other humans this way, even if their actions are far from the worst in the long ignoble history of humanity. But don't end the blame there. If, as military spokeswoman Col. Jill Morgenthaler has reportedly written, it is true that the six soldiers facing court martial did not have training in the Geneva Conventions and have been reassigned to other duties, then the military and those who tell them what to share in the responsibility for these acts. riverbend points out that there are probably many more acts of similar brutality that will never be publicly known. Also, it should be pointed out, they are most likely not all going to be recorded with visual images. It is worth remembering that the horrors of this war are not just in this particular act of torture but in its very design. The AP has concluded that 1,361 Iraqis were killed in April as a result of the conflict. They don't know that these lives weren't very important except to the extent that they could make us feel good about ourselves. *** *** Via tex, here's Josh Marshall on Bush's racism. *** The Brits face their own allegations of abuse. Amnesty International says these are not isolated incidents. *** "American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?" asks Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker: A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:*** Israel apparently isn't missing out on the fun. *** "Why do you idiots take my administration seriously," Cheney meant to say Thursday night. "Even Fox News is more accurate than we are." |