What else is there to say about this story in The Telegraph, one of Britain's national dailies, reporting that a group of medical ethicists affiliated with Oxford advocates the killing of unwanted newborns, being that there's no difference between a newborn and a fetus. Their position was outlined in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
I suppose pro-lifers should at least welcome the dropping of pretenses and the acknowledgment that, no, there is no biological difference between a newborn and a fetus in the womb. Nor is there any moral difference between the killing of one and the killing of the other.
And I suppose that we could, as well, appreciate the irony of one of the authors -- in the wake of the predictable death threats -- saying that "those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were 'fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society.'"
Aye, there's the rub.
It really isn't ironic at all. The "fanatics" really might be "opposed to the very values of a liberal society" -- at least the one we presently have, which holds that one creates his own moral universe and, indeed, his own reality. In the Oxford death-dealers' reality, "babies are not 'actual persons' and do not have a 'moral right to life.'"
THIS IS the "liberal society" we all have been busy creating the past number of decades, one that perhaps may have been made inevitable by the dawning of the Enlightenment. I mean, by what objective standard was the Enlightenment enlightened? By what -- or whose -- authority do we proclaim such?
Exactly.
In liberal society, all that is required for the repellent to become the height of morality is us saying it is. Or at least enough people with enough authority (and enough guns) to make it so. And the first step is getting a serious journal to legitimize your crackpot theory that up is down, left is right, green is red, wrong is right, and right is wrong.
Or that "babies are not 'actual persons' and do not have a 'moral right to life.'" Enter the Journal of Medical Ethics, and suddenly we don't need to pretend anymore that what's inside the womb is materially different somehow from that which pops out of it. Death to "the products of conception"!
The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.
They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”
Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.
“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”
As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.
The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.
They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.
Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.
“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”
However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.
They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.
One way or another, if civilization is to survive, our "liberal society" must be destroyed. I mean, given the most recent empirical data, you'd have to agree that it's been demonstrated to be nothing more than a "potential" society at best and therefore has no justifiable "right to life."
Pull the plug now. We must make room for something less crippled, less retarded and more robust. It's only logical.
One of these would be Mr. Isaiah Doyle of Jefferson Parish, La.
I'm not a supporter of the death penalty but, frankly, it's hard to say that Mr. Doyle doesn't have it coming. And if I had been a member of this particular jury, as you will see in The Times-Picayune's trial coverage here, I probably would have insisted that the sentence be, uh, executed right there on the spot:
Hours after he claimed he'd like to kill all the members of the jury that convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of a store clerk in Marrero, the same Jefferson Parish jury recommended that Isaiah Doyle die by lethal injection.
The jury of three men and nine women deliberated just under two hours returning a verdict just before 11 p.m.
Doyle showed no emotion as the verdict was read. His mother, Yvette Doyle, collapsed in tears in the audience and was helped by family out of the courtroom.
Doyle, 28, killed Hwa Lee, 26, on Aug. 4, 2005, even though she complied with his demands that she give him cash from the register behind the counter of her parents' Barataria Boulevard convenience Store.
He blasted her with four .45-caliber rounds and initially told Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives it was an accident. For that, he was convicted of murder by a jury Thursday night.
But, after warning court officials for days he'd take the witness stand, he testified Friday during his penalty hearing that the shooting was no mistake.
"The only reason she was shot four times is because the gun jammed," he told the jury. "Otherwise, I would have emptied the gun in her f****** head."
(snip)
Doyle testified against the advice of his attorneys and said he had no remorse for what he did to Lee. He said he had no sympathy for her or her family. And he lashed out at the jury.
"I hate every last one of you, especially him right there," he said pointing to a man on the panel. "I wish I could cut his head off."
At another point in his testimony, he said, "If I had an AK-47 (assault rifle), I'd kill every last one of you."
WHEN YOU'RE busy failing at life (and at getting life), it's probably no big whoop to fail at Dale Carnegie, too. In this case, that's probably a good thing.
When it's something you want to hear, it's "edgy."
When it's something you don't, it's offensive and violates some flavor or another of unspecified "values."
In New York, this pro-life billboard highlighting the inconvenient statistic that 59.8 percent of pregnancies among non-Hispanic black women there end in abortion is offensive.
“The ad violates the values of New Yorkers and is grossly offensive to women and minorities,”the city's public advocate, Bill de Blasio, tells The New York Times. That's because, in the big city, telling minorities that we're eradicating most of them before they can emerge from the womb to become a "social problem" for white people is much more "offensive" than the actual eradication of most minorities before they can pop out of Mama's belly and start troubling Caucasian advocates of tolerance and open-mindedness.
FOR INSTANCE, take Times judicial reporter Linda Greenhouse (please), who's so tolerant of pro-lifers -- particularly Puerto Rican, Democratic pro-life officeholders -- that she lets no stereotype go unmolested in the push for better demonization.
You want to know the one instance when it's permissible to call a Latino Democratic pol "nutty" in New York City? This is it.And a state senator, no less.
If you ask me, the first sign a nation's on the road to oblivion is when it's more offensive to bemoan the extermination of 59.8 percent of a city's African-American children than it is to exterminate them in the first place. Think of it this way . . . we fought a bloody civil war a century and a half ago for this?
At least Jefferson Davis would have had enough sense to look at the LifeAlways billboard, sadly shake his head, then bemoan the senseless loss of perfectly good free labor. Which says a lot about us today, doesn't it?
Dammit! Jabbing surgical scissors into a baby's head is only legal if the baby's -- er . . . fetus' -- head is still inside the birth canal! I hope this Philadelphia doctor -- the one booked for eight counts of murder . . . seven dead babies and one dead mother -- gets the book thrown at him for doing this horrible thing at 28 weeks' gestation, as opposed to 24. Imagine, an abortionist preying on poor and minority women!
Imagine, an abortionist doing gruesome things! Cutting up babies! Jabbing scissors into their itty bitty heads! Who'd a thunk it?
And thus we discover the true meaning of "What a difference a day makes" (not to mention six inches): Life in prison.
THE LATEST on this unspeakable atrocity (as opposed to heroic acts in the name of reproductive freedom) comes from The Associated Press:
A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a "house of horrors" clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell's employees also were charged.
Gosnell "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," Williams said.
Patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society, where Gosnell performed dozens of abortions a day, prosecutors said. He mostly worked overnight hours after his untrained staff administered drugs to induce labor during the day, they said.
Early last year, authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic and stumbled on what Williams called a "house of horrors."
Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses "were scattered throughout the building," Williams said. "There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose."
The clinic was shut down and Gosnell's medical license was suspended after the raid.
“Expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringeupon the people’s Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant,” she added. “The irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger.” “Especially within hoursLimbaugh railed against the left’s attempts to “massage” the shooting “for their political benefit,” saying Democrats were just waiting for an excuse to “regulate out of business their political opponents. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. . . . They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing.” And David Brock, CEO of the liberal watchdog Media Matters, wrote an open letter to Rupert Murdoch calling on him to fire or rein in Beck and Palin for their use of violent rhetoric on Fox News. “Beck and Palin are two of Fox’s most recognizable figures,” Brock wrote. “Before this heartbreaking tragedy in Arizona, you were either unwilling or unable to rein in their violent rhetoric. But now, in the wake of the killings, your network must take a stand.” “I’m not playing politics,” Beck said on his radio show Tuesday. He said he had “softened” his rhetoric over the past two years. “Nobody wants to recognize this. Why? Because it hurts their dialogue.” "There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government." While it would be impossible to top the self-centered offensiveness of today's Sarah Palin video -- where she used the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords to peddle her message of victimhood -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) gave it his best shot, but could only manage a trifecta of stupidity. of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Should we have expected anything else? Four days after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and fourteen wounded, and on the day that Congress and the President will honor the victims of this tragedy, Sarah Palin just happens to choose today to assure America that she is among the victims. In a carefully orchestrated video, complete with a large American flag that apparently flutters next to her fireplace, Palin quickly gets her sympathy for the victims and their families out of the way so she can get to the real reason for her message -- to attack the debate that has arisen about the role violent rhetoric so commonly used among elected Republicans, their media surrogates, and of course Palin herself, may have played in last Saturday's tragedy. A California man was arrested on Wednesday morning for threatening to kill Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington State, as the shootings in Tucson sparked impassioned conversation about Congressional security on Capitol Hill. Charles Habermann, 32, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested for phone calls he made in December to Mr. McDermott’s office in which he threatened to kill Mr. McDermott, as well as the congressman’ss friends and family, and to put the congressman “in the trash.”
"What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."
If you're running a Catholic website -- and not only that, a Catholic apostolate, an organization meant to cooperate with God in the saving of souls -- what the hell does this have to do with anything?
I think that's a question not only Living His Life Abundantly, the apostolate run by Johnnette Benkovic that's behind the screenshot, but for a whole Catholic subculture centered on EWTN, the Eternal World Television Network. What the hell does a murderous madman's politics have to do with saving souls?
What does it have to do with the Catholic faith?
What does it even have to properly do with the culture wars, which are the bread-and-butter of "Catholic radio" and EWTN? And what would possess a "staff journalist," much less a Catholic one, to quote a story from World Net Daily (home for birthers, extreme ideologues, "tea-party patriots" and all manner of life forms on public discourse's outer limits) like it was . . . ahem . . . gospel truth?
What? WHAT DOESthishave to do with the fundamental reality of what happened in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday?
WELL, SINCE the Democrats have put "enemy" politicians in the crosshairs, too, the Catholic Church -- or at least some holier-than-thou elements of it -- have no insights to share about the coarsening of American political discourse? The tendency toward dehumanizing one's ideological opposites? I mean, apart from "Nanny nanny boo boo!"
Does Right make right . . . or, at least, stooping to the left's level make Not Wrong?
Have the Living His Life Abundantly people -- the whole Catholic radio andEWTNcrowd, for that matter -- decided the one unforgivable sin isn't against the Holy Spirit but, actually, is "being a Democrat"? That one's highest calling in the Christian life is throwing culture-war brickbats at "Them"?
That the only people worthy of salvation (and if they think anyone is worthy of salvation, they need to hang up their scapulars . . . and their 501(c)3 tax exemption) are those who vote the right way?
Or the Right way?
I WORRY that someone, somewhere must be spreading a really bad interpretation of Matthew 25:
Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'
And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
UHHHHHHH . . . I'm just a stupid blog guy, here, but I really, really don't think Jesus was talking about conservative politics when he placed the sheep on His right. In fact, a lot of this passage mitigates against what passes for the political right in America these days.
It's a self-evident fact, at least for those with eyes to see, that the Almighty is not a Republican. Or a Democrat, either. He may be a Fabian socialist, but don't quote me on that.
You watch, that last sentence is going to come back to haunt me -- perhaps via an article by "staff journalist" Susan Brinkmann, OCDS.
Surveying the west Omaha landscape on a snowy Sunday night, one could contemplate the quiet, feel the biting January chill and mistake the world for one at peace. One might imagine his fellow Americans -- all of them -- gazing at the powdery comforter pulled over a manicured suburban scene, grateful for the beauty of it all.
One might get lost in the nature-imposed tranquility of such a night and imagine that an anger-crazed teenager hadn't, just a few days ago, shot and killed his assistant principal.
Hadn't shot and wounded his principal.
Hadn't shot at and missed a custodian as he fled the scene of the crime -- a high school just miles away from this peaceful sight.
Lost in a gentle snowfall, engulfed in the soft glow of a leaden January sky, one's thoughts have difficulty embracing the notion of an anger so intense, so soul-deadening, so hope-destroying it would demand that a young man jam a Glock up against his own head, then pull the trigger in a bid for oneness with the abyss.
TAKING IN this wintry vista, one struggles with the vision of a paranoiac snapping an ammo clip into another handgun, in another American city far away, then taking aim at a congresswoman, then pulling the trigger, authorities say. Pulling it again, and again, and again, we hear -- like some sort of self-appointed destroyer of entire worlds.
Appearances can deceive. We are tempted to think the falling snow might somehow forever bury -- mystically obliterate -- the blight upon our land. That the ugliness within us might not survive the beauty without.
Eventually, though, the snow clouds exhaust themselves. Eventually, the light shines upon the illusion and melts it away.
Eventually, we must deal -- Might deal? Can we deal? -- with the muck and the grime.
Maybe.
Maybe we'll just close our eyes, trying not to notice the stink of that which molders around us. And we'll wait for the next snowfall . . . for the next blessed illusion.
It was 30 years ago today, the world stopped to pray . . . and though I don't really want to stop the show, I thought that you might like to know that the singer's going to sing a song, and he wants you all to sing along:
I always heard these things in my bedroom in Baton Rouge -- news of shocking deaths in the dark of the night.
In 1978, I was in high school, up late and listening to the radio when I heard the pope was dead. A month and a half later, I was up late working on homework and listening to the radio -- WFMF -- when I heard a report that the pope was dead. I thought somebody had screwed up and put on an old newscast.
In 1980, I was a sophomore in college. The night of Dec. 8, I was up cramming for finals, listening to the radio. The DJ came on with the shocking bulletin -- John Lennon was dead, shot outside his apartment building in New York. He read the news today . . . oh boy.
Oh, God, no.
Please, God, no.
The death of the pope was big (as was the death of the other pope), but I wasn't Catholic then. The murder of John Lennon was shattering.
The pope was an old man in Rome. He was the vicar of Christ, but he was a distant one back then -- a guy you read about in the papers, or perhaps saw on the TV news once in a while.
John Lennon . . . the Beatles . . . they had been a daily presence in my life -- a pervasive part of the culture in which I had marinated since the age of 3. John, Paul, George and Ringo were the soundtrack of my earthly existence.
IN 1964, my Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy gave me a copy of Meet the Beatles. I had me some Beatles singles, too.
In 1966, John told an interviewer the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, which arguably was true. Truth, however, is no defense against public indignation when veracity meets unpopularity -- people like funhouse-mirror images of themselves a lot better when everybody knows the mirror is all screwy and not him.
Then, John Lennon suddenly was a communist or something, and Mama busted up all my Beatles records. That's how we showed our esteem for the second person of the Holy Trinity back then, as opposed to going to church.
WHEN I was old enough to think for myself -- and to buy my own damned record albums -- the Beatles were back. Big time.
John was always the challenging Beatle. The one most likely to piss you off -- and to make you think. I rather like how he'd sometimes mess with your head, and it was funniest when people didn't get how funny it all was.
Like "Imagine." It's funny to see religious Republicans enthusiastically singing along with "Imagine," a song Lennon once described as "virtually the Communist Manifesto." (Well, OK. Not every Republican.)
We didn't always agree with this presence in our lives -- hell, we didn't always understand this musical fixture of ours -- but we always had to give him credit for honesty, just like we always had to give him credit for amazing songs. We couldn't not give him his due for the music of of our lives.
And now, Dec. 8, 1980, at about 10 o'clock at night. . . .
Suddenly, it was like the soundtrack of my life had been left sitting in the rear window of my '76 Vega. It had warped. It didn't sound right.
A constant presence wasn't, not anymore.
I heard the news 30 years ago today. Oh boy, nothing has been the same since. And it hurts.
His men stop a car seen leaving a house they were searching. Found some garden-variety weapons in the house, find nothing in the car or on the driver and passenger.
Marines search the car again, search the occupants again. Still nothing.
The would-be congressman smashes up the car. He sends the rest of his men off, has the unarmed Iraqi civilians search their own vehicle again. For some reason, he empties two clips of M-16 ammo into their backs at close range. They slump into the car.
The one which contained no weapons.
Afterward, the lieutenant slashes the tires on a car full of Iraqi house painters. After that, he places a handmade sign on the car with the two bodies inside: "No better friend, no worse enemy."
MONTHS LATER, the Marines investigate. Prosecutors charge him with murder, which could have meant the death penalty. A hearing determines there's not enough evidence to court-martial him.
The presiding officer, however, recommended a non-judicial punishment for "extremely poor judgment." He said the lieutenant, by desecrating the Iraqis' corpses with the sign, had disgraced the Marine Corps.
Then he sheds his uniform, finds Jesus, paints himself as a red-white-and-blue hero of the Iraq War, writes a book to that effect . . . then puts himself forth as a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina.
And that, friends, is how Ilario Pantano became a Tea Party darling and got 46 percent of the vote against a conservative, pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare.
That's how he went from staring a murder rap and the death penalty in the face . . . to almost getting elected to Congress. With the backing of a whole, big bunch of Republicans, including Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.
That such a character as Pantano has gotten so far in politics is no testimony to the civic heath of North Carolina. You have to wonder what the hell is wrong with those people, frankly.
In Pantano's native New York, however, old friends and acquaintances wonder what's become of the man they once knew. These deep misgivings about the would-be congressman reverberate through the pages of New York magazine:
But to some of his old New York friends, the new Pantano is not the one they thought they knew. “Is this obviously a new and different phase in Ilario’s life? Yes. Has he made major changes in his life? Yes. Is this the guy I’ve known before? No,” said Noah Shachtman, a contributing editor to Wired magazine and a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution. He met Pantano at Horace Mann. “As a politico turned musician turned reporter,” Schactman added, ”I don’t begrudge anyone the right to reinvent themselves.”
Though Pantano moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, Schactman, like other New York friends who’ve kept in touch, believed Pantano a New Yorker through and through. His mother was a New York literary agent, though she now raises horses in North Carolina; his wife was a Jewish New Yorker and onetime model who posed for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Pantano never did drugs, but he loved to dance and loved the hot nightclubs of the nineties. “He went to Mars, the Palladium, Disco 2000. “He couldn’t have gone there and possibly have had any issue with gay people,” said Alex Roy, who runs Europe by Car, a family business, and who held a fund-raiser for Pantano when he was accused of murder. “He’s changed a lot. I am pretty surprised to hear that he’s against gay marriage, considering that we have gay friends in common. He’s 180 degrees away from the person I grew up with. Maybe it’s a function of where he lives, or having served in the military. If you’re running for office it sure pays to agree with people in your district.”
Vlad Edelman, who was Pantano’s partner in a digital media business for half a dozen years, called Pantano after his New York speech against the proposed mosque. “What’s going on with your politics? I don’t recognize them,” Edelman asked. Shachtman also worried about Pantano’s fearmongering — the candidate fears a Chinese attack via Cuba, as he told Schachtman in an interview for Wired.
THERE YOU GO. Being against gay marriage is a big, big concern. Alleged war crimes? Not so much.
Likewise, giving a speech against the "Ground Zero mosque" is some kind of major faux pas, but gunning down actual Iraqi Muslims in cold blood . . . not so much.
"What's going on with your politics?" As if there were no red flags in 2004, in some God-forsaken corner of Iraq?
Screw it. You want to know what America stands for today? Nothing. Not a damn thing apart from self-righteousness, nada apart from talking a good -- albeit hypocritical -- game. That's who we are, what we're all about.
Left or right, Bohemian or Bubba, there's only one unforgivable sin in contemporary American society today -- being politically incorrect. I guess what they say is true . . . you are what you invade.
I don't know where Angela Manns' attorneys would have gotten such a . . . (ahem) . . . crazy idea.
I'll bet the Omaha World-Herald courts reporter was mystified, too:
There is now no dispute that an Omaha woman killed her young son and left his body to decompose in the family bathtub.
Defense lawyers say they will use an insanity defense for Angela Manns, 47, who is charged in the 2009 death of Michael Belitz, 12.
Her lawyers say she is not responsible for her actions because of a mental illness. Neither the attorneys nor her doctor have revealed her specific condition.
Manns' trial, once scheduled for late this month, is now on indefinite hold. She is charged with first-degree murder.
The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that relying on an insanity defense is an implicit admission that the charges against the defendant are true.
The defense now must show that Manns had a pre-existing and diagnosable mental condition when she committed the crime. Most important, the defense must show that the condition kept her from knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Another option for Manns would have been to argue that she suffered from temporarily diminished mental capacity when she committed the crime.
The defense strategy was confirmed in a brief Douglas County District Court filing and comes almost exactly one year after a judge ruled she was mentally capable to stand trial.
Manns will rely on the defense of “not responsible by reason of insanity,'' according to the filing by Gary D. Olson, assistant public defender.
Psychiatric experts at the Lincoln Regional Center now will investigate whether Manns was sane when her son's death occurred.
“In Nebraska, you have to show in this condition that she didn't know the difference between right and wrong, or she didn't know the consequences of her actions,” said Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine.
“We'll see what the doctors say. Now it's in the hands of the experts for their determination as to her state of sanity.”
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.
Aye, there's the rub.
