Month: December 2006

A sane analysis from the DLC.

A reader complains we haven’t had enough big hair metal bands. ‘Tis true. So here’s Def Leppard’s "Pour Some Sugar on Me". My reader explains why it is culturally significant:

This one has it all: Hair and lots of it. (The better for head banging.) Skinny legs. (Sir Mick may have started that one but these guys carry on the tradition proudly.) Torn jeans. Tank tops and/or no tops. A one-armed drummer. Ridiculous lyrics. Silly-shaped guitars. Zero cost to produce as it’s simply concert footage spliced together (badly I might add since many times the lead singer’s lips don’t match the song).

In other words: sublime.

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The Fifth Division shows the extraordinary difficulty of constructing an allegedly national army in the middle of a sectarian civil war. They are actually being trained by the U.S. and proceed to fight Sunnis. And, according to this article, they stand

accused of arresting hundreds of Sunni men on little or no evidence, threatening to rape a suspect’s wife to coerce a confession, and intimidating its commander’s critics, according to interviews with Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Currently, the U.S. military is in control and doing what it can to monitor and restrain sectarian abuses. But what happens when command is transferred? Money quote:

"I understand there were operations done previously by General Shakir, before I got here," that angered the Sunni population, Sutherland said. He added that U.S. forces have helped the general introduce better training for 5th Division troops, conduct intelligence-driven operations and start a recruiting program to enlist more Sunni troops.

The 5th Division "is not necessarily representative of the population of Baquba, but it is something General Shakir is working on," Sutherland said. Diyala’s police and military were in such disarray earlier this year that the previous U.S. command delayed plans to transfer full control to the Iraqi military in October. The new handover date is just months away.

"Right now, the Iraqi Army is expected to transfer to Iraqi ground force command in early February," Sutherland said. "There’s nothing I’ve seen to indicate that won’t happen."

A reader writes:

I just bought "The Conservative Soul". Thanks for writing a useful definition of a faith that incorporates reason and experience. Just finished the abortion passage. I can see why the National Review would rather bury than answer you.

"I think Barack Obama is the most interesting persona to appear on the political radar screen in decades. He’s a walking, talking hope machine, and he may reshape American politics," – Republican operative, Mark McKinnon.

Two Episcopal congregations in Virginia are considering whether to be governed by a Nigerian archbishop who believes that gays should be incarcerated for the crime of adult consensual sex and that their free speech should be controlled. Just an update on the beliefs of some Virginian Christians.

Jose Padilla is a U.S. citizen. He was detained without formal charges for almost four years and turned into a mental patient. The original charges against him appear nowhere in his current criminal prosecution. They were fabrications or delusions or fantasies. Money quote:

The strong public accusations made during his military detention ‚Äî about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment buildings ‚Äî appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America. Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a ‘North American terror support cell’ that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist ‘global jihad’ in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas ‘to participate in violent jihad’ and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.

Michael Caruso, a public defender for Mr. Padilla, pleaded ‘absolutely not guilty’ for him to charges of conspiracy and of providing material support to terrorists.

Neither you nor I know what Padilla was up to, and it will now be up to a court to decide. But the effect of the brutal incarceration of Padilla may now make it impossible to convict him on any grounds. Like al-Qahtani, the torture and abuse to which he has been subject seem to have broken his mind:

"During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body," Mr. Patel said. "The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel."

Padilla, by all accounts, was a completely non-violent and docile prisoner every day of his incarceration. And yet they put him in body-manacles for four years, complete isolation and darkness, and even fitted him with night-goggles for a dental operation. They dehumanized him into a piece of furniture. The level of pure sadism and paranoia in his treatment is worthy of a military dictatorship, not a democracy. Remember also the description of another detainee, al-Qahtani, after detention by the Bush administration:

At the end of months of sleep deprivation and other forms of torture, Qahtani, according to an FBI letter, "was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end)."

Now remember the definition of torture: "severe mental or physical pain or suffering." Four years of blindness and isolation? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Involuntary twitching and body contortion? You think that doesn’t amount to prolonged and severe mental suffering?

This, remember, is an American citizen, who was charged with grievous crimes even the government has now dropped for lack of any evidence. Locked away for four years in solitary confinement, and not even allowed to walk down a hallway without night-goggles, in order to keep him disoriented. Padilla may not be successfully prosecuted because his treatment means evidence from his own testimony is too tainted by torture to be admitted in court. (Qahtani has also retracted everything he was tortured to say.) This is the America Bush has created: lawless, brutal, inhumane, and incompetent. We have no evidence that any of this has made you safer. But it has struck at the very heart of the liberty this country was founded to protect and defend.

National Review is touting Rick Santorum as U.N. ambassador. You cannot make this stuff up.

How did we forget Lionel Ritchie? I apologize in advance for the fact that this tune may get wedged in your consciousness all day. One word: Hello. Another word: Aaaaarrggghhhh!

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My Sunday Times column is up. Money quote:

The hope is that his declarations of no change of course are as credible as his insistence only a month ago that Rumsfeld would remain defense secretary until January 2009. Maybe it’s a last-ditch poker face in an intractable situation.

Or maybe — gulp — he really does believe that Iraq is still fixable, that Maliki will soon emerge as a unifying national leader, that American troops will manage to calm a civil war, that trained Iraqi troops will fight for a united democratic government rather than for sect or tribe or vengeance.

I hope it’s the former, with sanity soon to re-emerge. But I fear it may be the latter: and that his brinkmanship is something he has tragically mistaken for strength.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)