At least I hope so -- that would be the charitable explanation for his Washington Post columnurging President Obama to let sleeping torturers lie. But I don't think that's the case.
NO, I THINK there's another explanation for rhetoric like this:
Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States.
He was right to do this. But he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices.
But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps -- or, at least, careers and reputations.
Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability -- and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.
Obama has opposed even the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger. When the grass roots were stirred by the desire for vengeance against the AIG officers who received contractual bonuses from government bailout funds, Obama bought time by questioning the tactic. Quickly the patently unconstitutional 90 percent tax the House wanted to slap on those bonuses was forgotten.
LOOKING FOR SCALPS? Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. U.S. and international law prohibits torture of captured combatants, with penalties ranging up to death if the torture is fatal. Furthermore, the United States has led prosecution of torturers from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the wake of World War II, sending those individuals to prison for years. Or worse.
I think this example is interesting. An American military commission, in 1947, tried four Japanese defendants for war crimes committed against U.S. prisoners. Among the war crimes? Waterboarding.
Of course, Japanese war criminals had nothing on your average Texas sheriff.
In 1983, the San Jacinto County sheriff and three deputies were charged with -- and convicted of -- waterboarding prisoners to elicit confessions. The "lawmen" all went to prison for a long, long time.
As the judge said in federal court as he passed sentence: ''The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.''
But not, as it turns out, a certain president of the United States hailing from the Lone Star state.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I gather what American interrogators did to "enemy combatants" in the name of the American people does embarrass David Broder. Just not enough to prosecute Bush Administration figures for acting just like Hitler's and Tojo's henchmen . . . or sadistic Texas lawmen.
No, according to Broder, war crimes just aren't that big a deal when it's Americans committing them. Or ordering them. I'll bet the venerable pundit also wonders why the world hates us.
Probably, in the fever swamp of his Beltway consciousness, Broder believes the world -- like the left-wing Washington ideologues and the provincial populist yahoos -- just harbors an "unworthy desire for vengeance." Vengeance identical to that we took against the Nazis and Japanese for their World War II atrocities, no doubt.
What were we thinking back then?
Couldn't Harry Truman see he was engaging "in a retroactive search for scapegoats"?
It's all so clear. At least to Broder:
That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice.
IF ONLY President Truman had had the wisdom and foresight of David Broder, ace columnist of The Washington Post, we might have spared ourselves six decades of poisoned relations with Germany and Japan. Who knows? Perhaps we even could have turned those fierce enemies into close allies.
Oh, wait. . . .
Nevertheless, the point remains for the oracle Broder: Justice is never its own reward. Justice may or may not be useful depending upon what one's ulterior motives happen to be.
Like Pontius Pilate -- his philosophical brother two millennia removed who famously asked "What is truth?" -- Broder stands before verifiable, objective truth and muses "What is justice?" Obviously, he figures justice must be radically different today for civilized people -- D.C. insiders with whom he's shared drinks and bon mots -- than it was for uncouth Nazis and wild-eyed Japanese fanatics of the 1940s.
Or for some Buford Pusser gone wrong in Bumf*** Tejas. AND THE REST of us who figure the law is the law is the law . . . and that no man stands above it? In the world of David Broder and his Washington cronies, we're just so many grass-roots vigilantes, full of "populist anger" and hell-bent on vengeance.
For those with lingering questions about whether our government has gone all Mussolini and Tojo on us, here's the latest from Vice-President Dick Cheney, courtesy of MSNBC and the Financial Times:
WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of "water boarding" for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guantánamo Bay.
Cheney was responding to a radio interviewer from North Dakota station WDAY who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a "no-brainer" if the information it yielded would save American lives. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney replied.
The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.
"For a while there, I was criticized as being the 'vice-president for torture'," Cheney added. "We don't torture ... We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth.
"But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture and we need to be able to do that."
Cheney said recent legislation passed by Congress allowed the White House to continue its aggressive interrogation program.
But his remarks appear to stand at odds with the views of three key Republican senators who helped draft the recently passed Military Commission Act, and who argue that water boarding is not permitted according to that law.
"SO," YOU SAY, "Cheney approves of waterboarding terrorist scumbags. So what?"
On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury."
The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.
Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.
"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.
BUT WHY TAKE TED KENNEDY'S WORD FOR IT? OK, there is more detail and documentation in this column by Robyn Blumner:
Bush was strident in asserting that the CIA chamber of horrors or ''program'' could be open for business again. But at the same time, the president gravely assured us: ''The United States does not torture.''
Interestingly, we weren't nearly as blithe to water-boarding when it happened to our own guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.
In Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts, Judge Evan Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade, has documented the trials in which the United States used evidence of water-boarding as a basis for prosecutions. The article, still in draft form, will be published soon by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. Among the numerous examples, Wallach cites one involving four Japanese defendants who were tried before a U.S. military commission at Yokohama, Japan, in 1947 for their treatment of American and Allied prisoners. Wallach writes, in the case of United States of America vs. Hideji Nakamura, Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata, and Takeo Kita, ''water torture was among the acts alleged in the specifications . . . and it loomed large in the evidence presented against them.''
Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment and torture of Morris Killough, ''by beating and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.'' Other American prisoners, including Thomas Armitage, received similar treatment, according to the allegations.
Armitage described his ordeal: ''They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.''
Hata was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor and the other defendants were convicted and given long stints at hard labor as well.
Wallach also found a 1983 case out of San Jacinto County, Texas, in which James Parker, the county sheriff, and three deputies were criminally charged for handcuffing suspects to chairs, draping towels over their faces and pouring water over the towel until a confession was elicited.
One victim described the experience this way: ''I thought I was going to be strangled to death. . . . I couldn't breathe.''
The sheriff pleaded guilty and his deputies went to trial where they were convicted of civil rights violations. All received long prison sentences. U.S. District Judge James DeAnda told the former sheriff at sentencing, ''The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.''
But, obviously, not Dick Cheney . . . or George Bush.
It is not my place, on this non-partisan blog, to proclaim that we have voted ourselves over to a fascist -- or neofascist, as it were -- regime. It may or may not be the case and, at any rate, we shall have our answer soon enough.
That determination lies with you, dear reader. Listen to what the administration says, then look at what it is doing in our name and, finally, look at how we have dealt with enemies who have done the same.
2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law. 90
2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.
What you, as a Christian and an American, are willing to tolerate is up to you. Free will and all that, don't you know?
Christ will judge George Bush and Dick Cheney, whether or not the American people get to them first. As He will judge us all.
Just remember that we all are accountable to God for what we do, what we fail to do, and for what we put up with. Lord, have mercy.
The next time some Bush Administration commisar -- or some Bushie media shill -- uses the phrase "The troops in Iraq are putting their lives on the line for our freedom," blow up your TV.
And mail the smoldering parts to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.
I'm not sure, exactly, what our troops are in Iraq for, but it's not to fight for your freedom or mine. Hell, they can't even secure their own.
BUT THE PROBLEM is neither al Qaida nor any of the Wahoobi suicide jockeys who seek to plunge the world neck deep into the 13th century. No, according to this Washington Post story, the problem is Uncle Sam:
The national commander of the proud, patriotic, 2.4 million strong Veterans of Foreign Wars (motto: "Honor the dead by helping the living") took one look at the mushrooming dispute between three antiwar Marine reservists and the U.S. Marine Corps, and knew where his sympathies lay: with the protesters.
"What the Marine Corps is trying to do is hush up and punish these individuals who served our country," Gary Kurpius, the national commander, said in a telephone interview. "All they're doing is exercising the same democratic voice we're trying to instill over in Iraq right now."
The Marines have accused the three reservists, all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, of wearing their uniforms during political protests and making "disrespectful" or "disloyal" statements. All three were honorably discharged from active duty, but now face "other than honorable" discharges from the inactive reserve, which could affect future employment and veterans benefits.
The VFW issued a blistering statement on the controversy yesterday. Headline: "VFW to Corps: Don't Stifle Freedom of Speech."
Kurpius, an Army vet who fought in Vietnam, doesn't even agree with the protesters. "We're pretty much on record supporting the troops, and if you're going to support the troops, you're going to have to support their mission," he said. "I may disagree with the message . . . but I and my organization will always defend their right to say it."
The Marines respond that this is not a free-speech case. Adam Kokesh, 25, one of the protesters, "violated Marine Corps uniform regulations and he was disrespectful to a commissioned officer," said Master Sgt. Ronald Spencer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Mo. "That would be the issue. It has nothing to do with free speech."
Kokesh, who fought in Fallujah and now is a graduate student at George Washington University, was wearing parts of his camouflage uniform in March during a demonstration where 13 veterans roamed Capitol Hill and downtown Washington carrying imaginary weapons to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.
When Kokesh was contacted by the major assigned to investigate the case, he responded with an e-mail about his service and opposition to the war, and concluded with a profane suggestion about what the major could go do.
While all three reservists wore parts of their uniforms during demonstrations, at least one of the charges seems to involve speech only: Liam Madden, 22, of Boston, is accused of making disloyal statements in a speech where he accused the Bush administration of "war crimes"; said the conflict is a war "of aggression" and "empire building"; and said Bush "betrayed U.S. military personnel." Madden says he was not in uniform during that February speech in New York.
Spencer, after addressing the uniform issue, said he needed a few hours to research questions about the alleged disloyal statements, then did not return messages to answer those questions. Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, referred those questions back to Spencer, saying, "I'm unable to speak to the legal reasoning behind the freedom of speech charges issued by the Marine Corps."
NONE OF THE MARINES are on active duty. They're not even in the regular reserves. They're all in the "Individual Ready Reserve" -- a reserve of last resort, for lack of a better description -- membership in which is involuntary and lasts for eight years after discharge from the armed services.
They're all civilians, in other words.
The Marines are going after civilians because the government doesn't like what those veterans are saying about the war. The Marines are going after civilians because they can . . . or so someone in Washington thinks.
That's not freedom. That's Mussolini's Italy -- or Chavez's Venezuela -- fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn looking for the "Hitler's Germany" exit. And if these Marine combat veterans haven't earned the right to say Crazy King George's catastrophic little war is full of beans . . . well, then none of us have the First Amendment right to say the God's honest truth in public.
Either wearing fatigues or butt naked.
If Americans can't goad our elected representatives into putting an end to this plague of Mad Bush Disease -- putting an end to the insanity ASAP -- it's going to get worse. Much worse.
Well, John Lennon got that one right. We elected Donald Trump president -- or at least voters in states comprising a majority in the Electoral College elected Donald Trump -- and what seems to be a nearly inevitable war with Iran already is lost. It didn't -- doesn't -- have to be fought. The fuse was lit when Trump pulled the United States out of the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran, then ramped up sanctions in an attempt to destroy the Iranian economy.
After a year or so of tit-for-tatting with the mullahs, Trump poured jet fuel on the burning fuse by ordering the (nominally) peacetime, extralegal assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, said to be the second-most powerful member of the Iranian government. The Iranians will strike back -- hard. When they do, Trump, who has blown up any plausible deniability that he is a madman, has threatened to respond by committing war crimes on an epic scale -- airstrikes against 52 Iranian targets including civilian sites and cultural treasures.
THE IRANIAN regime is not innocent in this, and Suleimani had much blood on his hands, including American blood. Then again, so does North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Trump considers him a friend . . . at least for the time being. Tomorrow, who the hell knows? No, Iran is not innocent. But after years of neocon warmongering, Trump's diplomatic duplicity, foreign-policy recklessness and -- now -- an illegal assassination of a foreign official that pretty clearly was an act of war, the United States stands before a global jury guilty as charged. We are a deeply wrong country set to embark on a clearly illegal and unjust war. And we are guilty of putting the madman who's about to pull the trigger in just the position to do it. With impunity.
As we say during the Roman Catholic Mass, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."
But . . . perhaps if getting into this catastrophic mess is our fault, maybe we also can get out of it. Somehow, like we eventually did in Vietnam.
(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
(b) Circumstances.— The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such war crime or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act).
(c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct—
(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;
(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict; or
(4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.
The CIA failed to fully inform Congress that it was videotaping the harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects and that it destroyed the tapes in 2005, the bipartisan leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.
"Our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed and we are very frustrated about that issue," said Chairman Sylvestre Reyes, D-Texas, after a three-hour closed-door meeting with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden. That meeting, he said, "is just the first step in what we feel is going to be a long-term investigation.
That probe will include calling other witnesses, including Hayden predecessors George Tenet and Porter Goss, and John Negroponte, the former Director of National Intelligence, said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the panel's senior Republican. Reyes said he would also call on Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA director of operations who actually had the tapes destroyed.
The CIA's use of waterboarding to torture terror suspects was approved by the White House, a former agency official claimed yesterday. The accusation comes amid growing uproar over the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of al-Qaeda members.
John Kiriakou, the former agent, said that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida — the first senior al-Qaeda operative captured after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 — broke him in less than 35 seconds, and “probably saved lives”.
The harsh interrogation technique, which critics — and Mr Kiriakou — say is torture, was approved at the highest levels of the US Government, said Mr Kiriakou, who led the team that captured Zubaida.
Referring to the waterboarding of Zubaida — a technique that simulates drowning — Mr Kiriakou told the NBC TV station: “This isn't something done willy-nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner.
“This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and the Justice Department.”
Mr Kiriakou's comments came as the head of the CIA was questioned yesterday in closed-door hearings on Capitol Hill over the destruction of the tapes, amid allegations that the agency tried to hide evidence of illegal torture.
The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.
Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.
While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.
Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.
WHOA. HE'S RIGHT. Thus, I am here to advocate on President Bush's behalf.
For criminal malfeasance in ignoring -- or, at a minimum, failing to act upon -- intelligence questioning the wisdom of going to war with Iraq and predicting what would happen if we did, the president (and other key figures in his administration) deserves impeachment, removal from office, criminal prosecution and jail time.
For criminal malfeasance in failure to take serious measures -- in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 -- against the illegal and uncontrolled flow of foreign nationals across our southern border, the president (and other key figures in his administration) deserves impeachment, removal from office, criminal prosecution and jail time.
AS A CATHOLIC, HOWEVER, I do not believe in applying the death penalty when imprisonment is sufficient to remove the threat from society. So, in the name of mercy, I merely advocate impeaching George Bush, Dick Cheney and other officials as necessary, removing them from office, prosecuting them according to U.S. law and international covenant, then throwing their asses in prison long enough to make a point.
It's less, certainly, than they deserve. But, then again, aren't we betting everything, as Christians, on getting much less than we deserve.
I’ve had it with some people’s stupidity. Where’s common sense at? I laid out the reasons why I will not support John McCain, and instead of trying to give me a reason to support him, I get called a Brown shirt, and exactly who is trying to intimidate who again? When I say I don’t support John McCain’s 100 year war in Iraq, I mean that I don’t support wars that last so long that eventually everybody forgets why we are fighting. I mean that I don’t want to commit children who haven’t even been born yet to an endless war. When I say I want to do what is necessary to win a war, that means I want to keep war to a minimum instead of supporting decades of mothers and fathers crying because their child died in a war that nobody even knows why they are fighting. What’s so ridiculous about wanting wars to be short lived? Would anybody actually argue that 20 year wars are better than a five year war? How stupid is that? When wars are fought, do what it takes to win it, and win it quickly. Cripes, where’s General Patton when you need him?
WELL, THEN. If "do what is necessary" is the be-all, end-all "gold standard" of human conduct, let's just blow the whole Middle East to hell with our nuclear arsenal -- and China, too! -- and we can win the War on Terrorand solve global warming via nuclear winter in one swell foop!
Then, back at home, we can attack the nation's crime problem by overturning the Supreme Court's Miranda decision and then move on to waterboarding suspected gang bangers until they rat out every Crip, Blood and MS-13 hoodlum from sea to shining sea.
And, you know, the poor are a pretty bad drag on the rest of us, even when they're not committing crimes. Maybe . . . I mean, if we're truly committed to "do what is necessary" to build a more literate, prosperous and orderly country . . . maybe we just ought to "eliminate" the problem.
Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more! Say no more!
Cripes, where's Adolf Hitler when you need him?
THEN AGAIN, maybe we could just try another tack. Maybe we could start by adhering to the Geneva Conventions.
And maybe we could try not attacking countries on the flimsiest of suspicions that they might try something funny.
After we've mastered those things, maybe we could crack open some compendium of the moral law -- I like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, myself -- and take it to heart. Like this part, for example:
Respect for bodily integrity
2297Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.91
2298In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.
Respect for the dead
2299The dying should be given attention and care to help them live their last moments in dignity and peace. They will be helped by the prayer of their relatives, who must see to it that the sick receive at the proper time the sacraments that prepare them to meet the living God.
2300The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy;92 it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.
(snip)
III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE
Peace
2302By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill,"94 our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral.
Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice."95 If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."96
2303Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."97
2304Respect for and development of human life require peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is "the tranquillity of order."98 Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.99
2305Earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic "Prince of Peace."100 By the blood of his Cross, "in his own person he killed the hostility,"101 he reconciled men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its union with God. "He is our peace."102 He has declared: "Blessed are the peacemakers."103
2306Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death.104
SO, I MAY BE STUPID, but I do understand one important thing that American brownshirts don't. Many things are possible. Not all are permitted, lest we ourselves become that which we find repellent.
Irony is, sometimes, a humongous case of what goes around comes around . . . at the hands of the recipient of Goes Around.
In this case, it is well possible that don't-let-the-Pentagon-door-hit-you-in-the-arse, soon-to-be-ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be facing war-crimes charges in . . . the German courts.
Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."
A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.
Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.
Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a "a big, big problem." U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case.
The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.
In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case — that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue — has been proven wrong.
It has been many years since I've wanted a goddamned thing to do with the professionalized, politicized "pro-life" movement. Why? Because it's God-damned.
That sad fact becomes clearer by the day, if not by the minute.
Any organization that isn't wouldn't mock the Almighty by saying, with apparently straight faces -- both of them -- that Donald John Trump was "a voice for the unborn and continuously working to build a culture of life." That is a whopper of Trumpian proportions, at least. Trumpian, hell. Orwellian. Having Trump speak at an alleged March for Life is like having the ghost of Joseph Goebbels keynote an Anti-Defamation League convention. This most vile and dangerous of American presidents is building some kind of culture, alt-right all right, and it is anything but a "culture of life."
A CULTURE OF LIFE does not see ripping children from their parents at the border, then placing them in squalid and overcrowded Border Patrol stations as a feature and not a bug.
A culture of life's stance on the treatment of women does not include "grab 'em by the pussy." A culture of life does not celebrate war crimes, it does not threaten war crimes, and it does not tolerate peacetime assassinations of foreign leaders. A culture of life seeks to ease the struggles of the poor -- it does not cut their SNAP benefits. A culture of life takes a dim view -- a really dim view -- of referring to women as "dogs." A culture of life does not claim there's "some very fine people" among neo-Nazis and other white supremacists. A culture of life does not celebrate someone who's told 16,241 public lies in his first three years in office. A culture of life is not racist.
WHEN I SAW the March of Life's tweet, the first thing -- literally -- that came to mind was "abomination of desolation." That's Bible speak, roughly describing something horrific and defiling. Apocalyptic, even. Think of erecting pagan monuments on the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, as the Romans did. Think of building an altar to Satan in a Catholic church. Think of having Donald John Trump speak at a March for Life.
I'm thinking of the Archdiocese of Omaha sending busloads of teenagers to the March for Life -- and all of its hyperpoliticized Trumpdolatry -- like lambs to the spiritual and ideological slaughter. One of three things is likely to happen to each poor soul, and none is good: * The kid might die of irony overload right on the spot.
* The kid might become a MAGA enthusiast, endangering his or her immortal soul and causing much harm to others somewhere down the road. * The kid might be unusually perceptive, see this for the evil, blasphemous bullshit that it really is, take note of who and what brought him or her into this moral clusterfuck . . . and be lost to the Church (or Christianity, period) forever. What an amazing witness for Christ. America -- and the church -- will have much to suffer because of such sulfurous subversion from the depths of hell. I'm also imagining Jesus on one of those buses full of Nebraska teens as it crosses the Potomac River. It is written, "As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it."
In a universe where Nancy Pelosi is the Antichrist in heels, in a political construct where President Obama is a communist Islamic Nazi witch doctor from Kenya who's going to take over health care and force doctors to pull out your fingernails one by one until you retroactively abort your firstborn son and offer his remains to Ted Kennedy . . . it is in this strange, strange world that North Carolinians just might elect to the U.S. House -- with GOP and tea-party blessing (and cash) -- one Ilario Pantano.
Ilario Pantano, who used to be a Goldman Sachs energy trader, ended up rejoining the Marines after 9/11, then went on to pump some 60 rounds from an M-16 into the backs of two unarmed Iraqi detainees.
Ilario Pantano, whom the Marines charged with murder months later but didn't have enough evidence to court martial.
Ilario Pantano, the subject nevertheless of a Marine leadership-manual scenario aimed at teaching unit leaders how not to act on the battlefield, whose actions were described by a lance corporal who reported him as "war crimes."
ILARIO PANTANO, whose actions at Mahmudiyah, Iraq, prompted the following discussion questions at the end of "his" leadership-manual chapter:
* How should the Marine Corps investigate and adjudicate incidents such as those that occurred at Mahumadiyah may have occurred?
* Does the Marine Corps have an equal obligation to protect the reputation of a Marine accused of a crime or dishonorable behavior, someone possessing the presumption of innocence, and the reputations of those who have honorably brought forward questions about that Marine’s behavior?
* Can an action be lawful but dishonorable?
* What do we use as measures of honorable behavior and conduct if the Uniform Code of Military Justice is inadequate or unsuited to the task?
And it doesn't matter to anyone. Most notably, the candidate himself.
One might assume that someone who'd gunned down a couple of unarmed prisoners at almost point-blank range might be circumspect about his wartime actions. Especially actions that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.
One might think that someone in such a position -- who had been branded by more than one of his own Marines as a war criminal -- might come back home haunted and penitent, and aware that he dodged some bullets that two Iraqi men couldn't.
You know what they say about what happens when you assume.
NO . . . if an alleged war criminal has the nerve to run for Congress, an alleged war criminal has the nerve to have a fund-raiser Sunday at a gun range. And offer campaign-donation refunds to anyone who can outshoot him, reports The StarNews in Wilmington, N.C.:
Republican congressional candidate Ilario Pantano will hold a pistol match Sunday afternoon at the Ant Hill Range in Brunswick County to raise money for his campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton.
For $25, “any patriot” who thinks he can outshoot Pantano is invited to show off his marksmanship in a timed target-shooting challenge, according to ads for the event.
Shoot fast and straight enough to beat the former Marine and trained sniper and get your money back.
“Pantano needs your help to fix Washington, so come on out to this fundraiser social for an afternoon of fun, food and guns!” according to an advertisement for the event.
Pantano is advertising the event as a way to protect the Second Amendment and “clear all the anti-gun liberals out of Congress.”
Registration starts at 11 a.m., with the shooting starting shortly after noon. Shooters can sign up at the event and must bring their own gun and ammunition.
ADVENTURESOME "patriots" had better bring their "A" game. The Marines' account(go to Page 49) of Pantano's Iraq adventures indicate he's absolutely deadly at 5 feet:
At this point, the occupants of the white sedan were described as cooperative; no weapons had been found on either their persons or in the vehicle. The women at the target house corroborated their story. The only finds worth mentioning were the coffee cans of nuts and bolts found in the trunk of the car.
The platoon commander directed the corpsman to take charge of the detainees. The corpsman moved them to the rear of the vehicle, separated them and placed them on their stomachs. He stood security on the detainees while the platoon commander and radio operator went to the target house. It could not be determined whether the platoon commander was informed that the residents had confirmed the two detainees’ story. It was determined, however, that the residents had not been held hostage in their homes by insurgents. The platoon commander and radio operator returned from the house. Upon his return, the platoon commander directed the radio operator to get the Iraqis up from the ground and remove the flex cuffs; the radio operator did so using his medical shears. The platoon commander then told the corpsman he wanted the detainees to search the vehicle a second time. The corpsman moved the detainees to the left or west side of the vehicle, placing the older of the two Iraqis in the driver’s door and the younger in the passenger door. The Iraqis had to be told several times to stop talking. The platoon commander directed the radio operator and corpsman to take up security positions, leaving him alone with the two Iraqis. The corpsman testified that he heard the platoon commander say “stop” in Arabic and then again in English. He then heard shots being fired. The platoon commander fired two thirty round M-16 magazines into the two Iraqis using burst fire. The corpsman has testified that the platoon commander fired from a distance of four to five feet.
The corpsman turned during the firing and observed the platoon commander’s rounds striking the Iraqis in their backs. He saw the Iraqis slump into the vehicle. The radio operator immediately faced about and saw the platoon commander firing into the vehicle. After the platoon commander ceased firing, the corpsman checked the Iraqis’ vital signs and informed the platoon commander that they were dead.
Prior to this firing, the only other shots that had been fired were the warning shots to stop the white sedan. The corpsman testified that throughout this entire action, the platoon had not received any fire. Elements of 3rd Platoon were established to the east, west, and north of the scene of the incident and others were at the target house.
The corpsman went to the rear of the vehicle. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to the radio operator, “the blood is not on your hands, it’s on the lieutenant’s.”
The corpsman testified that after shooting the two Iraqis, the platoon commander used his K-bar and rifle to break windows and lights of the white sedan and to flatten its tires. The radio operator also testified that the platoon commander did this, although he testified that it happened before the shootings.
The platoon commander later said that “I didn’t wait to see if there was a grenade. I didn’t wait to see if there was a knife. And unfortunately, there are a lot of dead soldiers and Marines who have waited too long. And my men weren’t going to be one of those dead soldiers or Marines and neither was I.” The Intel Bn Marine testified that he heard the shots and went back towards the location of the white sedan. During this time, a second vehicle approached the scene from the north. The platoon commander ordered that vehicle, a brown sedan with several Iraqi laborers, to stop just north of the white sedan.
The Intel Bn Marine and the interpreter jogged north past the white sedan to assist the platoon commander with the Iraqis in the brown sedan. The interpreter described the scene at the white sedan. “They looked like they were on their knees. They were shot in their backs. One was in the front of the vehicle, the other one was in the back of the vehicle, facing the vehicle.”
He later described the scene as “weird.” “The rounds, sir -- there were too many rounds shot into those detainees, sir.”
The interpreter testified that upon arriving at the brown sedan, he observed the platoon commander using his knife to flatten the tires of the vehicle. The platoon commander ordered Marines to move the new detainees to the north of their vehicle. (There were five or six Iraqi house painters in the vehicle. Painting equipment was found in their car and in the house where they had been working.) They were probably twenty feet from the two dead Iraqis. Here, the Intel Bn Marine and his interpreter questioned them. The interpreter testified that the platoon commander had him tell the painters that “if any of them want to join the insurgency that same thing was going to happen to them as those bodies” and then they were released. They drove away on flattened tires.
By this point, the platoon commander had placed a sign on the first vehicle, on the left side, the same side as the deceased Iraqis. It read “No better friend, no worse enemy.” The first vehicle was not searched again. No effort was made to recover the remains of the dead Iraqis.
PERHAPS THAT ought to be Pantano's campaign slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy." Wink.
Lots of politicians will stab you in the back. The would-be congressman from North Carolina might be the first, though, to empty two clips into it.
How ironic that Ilario Pantano went off to war to -- What was the official reason at the time? -- "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." That was from President George W. Bush's televised address to the nation at the beginning of hostilities.
"To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed.
"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honourable and decent spirit of the American military.
"In this conflict America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality."
AS IT turns out, Saddam wasn't alone in that regard.
As it turns out, at least one Marine -- it was alleged -- decided he would employ some Saddam-style deterrence for anyone considering messing with Uncle Sam. What happened in Mahmudiyah was literally, it would seem, out of the Saddam Hussein Handbook for Keeping Troublemakers in Line. This pasaage from Saddam's obit in The Sunday Times, for example:
The society he grew up in was violent and well armed. Some accounts say Saddam was given his first firearm at the age of eight. Another has him, at the age of ten, threatening to kill a school teacher who wanted to expel him. But, much more than violence, tribal loyalty was the overwhelming characteristic of the society into which he was born. He was to rise to power not by becoming prominent in politics or the military, but by harnessing the ties of kinship. One of the rebel officers who led the 1963 Baathist coup was Ahmed al-Hassan al Bakr, a relative of Saddam's. Bakr became prime minister and it was under his leadership that Saddam's stealthy seizure of power began, beginning with the building of security and intelligence networks answerable - and loyal - not to the state but to Saddam in person. For five years after 1963, Saddam Hussein lived on the fringes of the new political establishment, frequently falling out of favour and ending up in jail. The breakthrough in his political fortunes came in 1968 when a second coup brought the Tikriti clan to power. Bakr became head of state with Saddam as vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council. he systematic violence and intimidation that was to keep Saddam in power began. Possible opponents were assassinated.
The Kurdish political leader Mahmoud Osman got to know him well during this period. "He told us, 'You have to kill some people, even if they are innocent, in order to frighten others'."
In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein, as Vice President, became head of Iraq's nuclear energy programme. In 1975 he made one of his rare trips abroad - to Paris - to visit the plant that was to supply Iraq with its first nuclear power station. He was welcomed in person by the then French prime minister, Jacques Chirac. Iraq and France signed an agreement which bound Baghdad to the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; the plant would be for the production of energy only, strictly non-military.
In 1979, Bakr, in poor health, announced his intention to step down and hand power to Saddam. Some members of the RCC objected and demanded a vote. They did not live long. Saddam accused his fellow Ba'athists of conspiring against him, and of plotting with foreign powers. A meeting of the RCC was filmed in which Saddam is shown denouncing the alleged conspirators and being persuaded by terrified acolytes not to be lenient. Between a quarter and half the members of the ruling body were executed. It was at this time, too, that another distinctive feature of the Saddam regime emerged - a willingness to punish not only direct opponents and potential opponents, but members of their families as well.
"NO BETTER friend, no worse enemy."
And now, a tangible symbol of the putridity oozing from an infection America picked up during an unnecessary war is on the cusp of election to Congress. Our Congress. The United States Congress . . . as opposed to its Iraqi counterpart.
Or the old Communist central committee of Soviet times.
Not so many, according to a Salon piece, have a problem with this:
But one of the remarkable things about the campaign in North Carolina this year is that the murder charges are not only not an issue, but have barely even been talked about.
David McLennan, a political scientist at North Carolina's Peace College, told Salon that the issue could backfire for McIntyre, the Democratic incumbent, particularly in a district with a large ex-military population.
"There are some people in the district who consider Pantano to be a hero. For McIntyre to raise that issue is just way too delicate," McLennan says.
Some of the only criticism of Pantano's past has ironically come from the man he beat in the GOP primary, fellow Iraq war vet Will Breazeale. He told the Daily Beast after his primary loss that he considers Pantano "dangerous," adding: "I’ve taken prisoners in Iraq and there’s no excuse for what he did."
Asked by Salon if he is surprised that his critics have largely ignored the Iraq incident, Pantano was defiant. "If they want to question my war effort -- if they think that's prudent, they can go ahead ... I've served my country proudly in two wars."
IT WILL be America's great shame if he serves one second in Congress.
