micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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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 |
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Important issues Your humble blogger trys to avoid commenting on every little matter. Most of them don't interest me. I don't care if John Kerry needs to cut his hair or if Bush can manage to convince people of something. And yet there are times when my public just demands that I comment and so I must say that I am opposed to any person ever being allowed to do anything unless they have signed a loyalty oath to the legacy of President Reagan. *** A less important matter is the new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq. This is important because if the best argument against the Uncle Sam's conquest of Iraq is that a subsection of the United Nations didn't support it, it is time for you to get in line behind this generation's Ronald Reagan, President George W. Bush. That or admit that your opposition was intellectually shallow. *** "The Bush administration routinely bypassed or overruled Pentagon experts on international law and the Geneva convention to construct a sweeping legal justification for harsh tactics in the war on terror, the Guardian has learnt," Suzanne Goldenberg writes in today's Guardian. "In one instance, President George Bush's military order of November 13 2001, which denies prisoner-of-war status to captives from Afghanistan and allows their detention without charge or access to a lawyer at Guantánamo, was issued without any consultations with Pentagon lawyers, a former Pentagon official said." "A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, that the military would never resort to such practices in the 'war on terrorism,' Jim Lobe of IPS writes in a June 7 story. "Short excerpts of the report, which was drafted by Defence Department lawyers, were published in the Wall Street Journal Monday. The text asserts, among other things, that the president, in his position as commander-in-chief, has virtually unlimited power to wage war, even in violation of U.S. law and international treaties." These stories aren't worth my time, but thanks to James Benjamin for the links. And here's Kate Zernike and David Rohde in yesterday's New York Times: In the weeks since photographs of naked detainees set off the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, military officials have portrayed the sexual humiliation captured in the images as the isolated acts of a rogue night shift.Some liberal Reagan haters will no doubt be bothered by this shit by I say it is just more reason for God to Bless America. |