Month: May 2011

Harold Evans, who is against releasing the bin Laden pictures, considers shocking photographs from different eras:

Ronald Haeberle’s picture of dead and terrified villagers at My Lai were not the gratuitous violence alleged against the publishers. They were evidence of a massacre. They were the reality of war. Similarly, a World War II photograph of the beheading of an Australian soldier by a Japanese officer was horrifying, but testimony to the nature of an insensate cruelty.

By the same token, it would have been better if decades of American editors had not suppressed gruesome photographs of Southern lynchings in the 1920s and '30s; or if someone had had the tenacity and courage of the documentary photographer Carole Gallagher in showing, with the agreement of the subjects, what disfigurement had been produced by two decades of radiation from atomic bomb tests in the American Southwest.

On the same test, however, it was merely to satisfy morbid curiosity to show us the dead Lee Harvey Oswald lying on a pathologist’s table, with the crude post-mortem stitches lacerating his chest. That picture was suppressed but eventually made it into print. I’d guess that the same will happen with the bin Laden and it won’t do more than indulge a prurient curiosity.

A reader writes:

I am a World Trade Center survivor. I was on the 62nd floor of Tower One when the first plane struck and I was in the police command center in WTC 5 when WTC 2 collapsed on top of us.  I am also a Catholic. 

When I turned away from the Mets-Phillies game Sunday night to watch the President “announce” the news that everyone already seemed to know, I had no mixed emotions.

That son a bitch killed my friends, colleagues, fellow New Yorkers, fellow Americans, fellow human beings. Worse still, he inspired thousands, if not more, to take up a blind nihilism as their credo, ostensibly in the name of Allah, “the merciful, the compassionate”.  All the pain he has brought to this world has not been reckoned and may not be reckoned in our lifetimes.  I sat on my couch Sunday night and poured a large glass of Irish whiskey and toasted the death of the man who had tried to kill me. “Fuck you" I said out loud.

Then I went upstairs and looked in on my three sleeping children – my oldest born in 2002 – and I kissed them all. Then I settled in next to my wife – my beautiful wife, who will be married to me ten years tomorrow, and who is carrying our fourth child. She for many long hours thought her husband of five months was crushed to death in the towers. I put my hand upon her belly and I closed my eyes and I prayed that Osama bin Laden would know the fullness of Christ’s mercy.

John McCain is the latest to confirm that the war crimes of the last administration had nothing to do with the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden:

“So far, I know of no information that was obtained, that would have been useful, by ‘advanced interrogation.’ In fact, according to published reports … some of the key people who knew about this courrier denied it [under torture] … I stand on the side of the United States and by the Geneva conventions, of which we are signatories, which we were in violation of by waterboarding.”

Is this all the GOP really claims from the Bush era with respect to the war on terror? If they can't trumpet Iraq (botched) or Afghanistan (botched), is torture what they regard as their signature achievement? Despite the fact that Obama found and killed Osama bin Laden without any torture at all.

Pew deconstructs the ideological composition of both parties. Ed Kilgore summarizes:

In general, Pew's analysis reinforces the generally-accepted belief that Republicans enjoy more ideological coherence than Democrats, but there are some pretty striking contradictions between the views of the Staunch Conservatives who dominate GOP politics these days and at least one of the GOP-leaning indie groups, the Disaffecteds, who support more government help for the needy and strongly dislike corporations. The three Democratic "types" and the Democratic-leaning indie group the Post-Moderns have significant differences of opinion on the importance of the environment and attitudes towards immigrants.

Jamelle Bouie notices that 70 percent of "Solid Liberals" want politicans to compromise while only 17 percent of "Staunch Conservatives" do:

[T]his contrast explains a lot about the current state of American politics. Republican politicians refuse to compromise because they are accountable to conservative voters who dislike compromise. Democratic politicians, on the other hand, are in the opposite position: Not only are they accountable to other groups besides liberals but liberals themselves prefer compromise.

I thought it was going to be a routine check up, but instead I have just gotten back from one root canal and the removal of two wisdom teeth. I guess I better write my column before the pain or the painkillers kick in.

In case you missed the news:

Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft

Angus Johnston questions the meaning of Yahoo’s search data:

“Who is Osama Bin Laden” … can be, and often is, used as a synonym for “Tell me some stuff about Osama Bin Laden.” And “tell me some stuff about Osama Bin Laden” is a perfectly reasonable request for a thirteen-year-old to have made last Sunday night.

A reader reflects on the findings:

Upon hearing about bin Laden’s death, I called in my nine-year-old son to tell him about it.  I started by asking, “Do you know who Osama bin Laden is?”  He looked at me like I was not speaking English and said “No”.  I was initially surprised, but then realized that I was glad.  I had learned about the first plane that hit the WTC when I dropped him off at day care when he was two months old.  Now he’s nine, Osama is dead, and he has only the vaguest notion of what it was all about.  America is different for him than for us who knew it before, and some things seem normal to him that maybe shouldn’t be (taking shoes off at the airport, for instance).  But the fear that 9/11 generated in the psyche of those of us who watched as the towers fell isn’t there in my kids.  And for me, that’s a good thing.

Another adds:

For all Americans born in this century, there will be nothing unique or strange or interesting about having a black president. It will be normal.

War-dog blogger Rebecca Frankel serves up an awesome slideshow:

The question of how the dog got into bin Laden's compound is no puzzle — the same way the special ops team did, by being lowered from an MH-60s helicopter. In fact, U.S. Air Force dogs have been airborne for decades, though the earliest flying dogs accompanied Soviet forces in the 1930s. Dogs usually jump in tandem with their trainers, but when properly outfitted with flotation vests they can make short jumps into water on their own. A U.S. Navy SEAL, Mike Forsythe, and his dog, Cara — pictured above — recently broke the world record for "highest man/dog parachute deployment" by jumping from 30,100 feet.

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy)

Ben Smith relays the conventional wisdom:

The debate offers an opportunity for Pawlenty, and a risk. The opportunity is to shine as the only serious candidate for president willing to mix it up. But standing on a stage with Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum isn't necessarily the best way to elevate oneself.