The Dish

A reader feels conflicted about the outcome of the war:

I cannot support the war in Iraq.  Not because I think Saddam was a good leader.  Not because I think Iraqis don‚Äôt deserve a chance.  Not because I think this war we-shouldn‚Äôt-have-started has not morphed into the war we-can‚Äôt-afford-to-lose.

I cannot support the war in Iraq because after all the lies, the mistakes, the hubris, the Constitution shredding, the cover-ups, the undercover outings and, most importantly, the torture, if we win this war during the Bush presidency, he and his like will take it as a vindication of their actions and they will be emboldened to further damage my country.

This is not Bush bashing.  This isn’t hyperbole.  I truly believe that President Bush is a danger to my country.  And winning the Iraq war while he is in office would be the true end of the United States as we know it.   

Let‚Äôs get Bush out of office.  Let‚Äôs put in place an administration that will wage this war within the bounds of the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and has the will to do what it takes to win.  Let‚Äôs put in place an administration that asks the American public for the sacrifices of war time and deals openly and plainly with the public on the successes and failures at the front.

I’m for making progress, period, whoever is the president. But I also agree that what Bush has done to the constitutional integrity of this country, the rule of law, and the international moral standing of the United States will take a generation to recover from. Among the Republicans, McCain alone, I think, has the capacity to erase the stain.

Another reader intreprets events at the recent convention of the largest denomination in America:

The "speaking in tongues" controversy noted earlier indicates that the hard right wingers who took over the SBC during the 1980s are turning on each other. With no moderates to rail against, who else can they consume but each other? And some of the younger SBC pastors are tired of being frozen out of the leadership. Earlier this year, a group of younger pastors called for the older folks to step aside or at least open up the leadership. They called their statement "The Memphis Declaration."

I think Frank Page’s election is an indication of discontent among many Southern Baptists with their leadership. Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Arkansas, was the entrenched leadership’s candidate. Springdale is close to Bentonville and his church has lots of Wal-Mart headquarters types among its membership.

There is also a theological debate within the SBC between Arminianism and Calvinism, two ways of understanding the relationship between grace and free will. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, is a Calvinist, and a darling of the entrenched leadership of the SBC. Baptists have historically been Arminian in thinking. Some comments attributed to Page in Baptist Press make me think he is Arminian and wants this debate to end.

Some highly visible SBC figures, such as Richard Land of their Ethics and Religious Liberty agency, have been very close to the Bush Administration. I suspect there is mild discontent among Southern Baptist rank and file with being too closely associated with this administration.

Time has a fascinating article on the convention as well. Page’s election was, apparently, driven in large part by … bloggers.

Jonah can’t quit.

Getting ugly.

He didn’t realize the dude is legally blind. Classy to call him personally.

A reader writes:

As much as I oppose the war, I cannot get worked up over that video. These marines are fighting insurgents that hide amongst their co-citizens and use them as human shields. The marines cheer when he sings about putting the girl in front of him as a shield because it’s a reversal of the tactic used by the insurgents. It’s an expression of frustration with insurgent tactics and not, I believe, a sign that they would ever actually contemplate doing something like that. It is easy for us who live comfortable, sheltered lives to criticize but we can never understand the frustrations and the stress of the troops in Iraq.

Yep, those pesky Jews have been at it again, cooking up fatal diseases to kill off their enemies. Get a load of this from one Mohammad Ali Ramin:

‘When the Islamic Revolution of Iran succeeded and attracted many people around the world, including Christians, the AIDS epidemic came about, and fear again overtook the world. After the September 11 attacks, the deadly epidermis broke out, which was destroyed when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. On the eve of the invasion of Iran, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) illness broke out, but disappeared after the invasion,’ he said."

"Ramin also claimed that the spread of bird flu was a conspiracy plot cause[d] by the failure of America, Israel and Britain in the Middle East. Ramin pointed out that to cover up and hide their failures, these countries have spread the news about the bird flu to preoccupy and distract public opinion for some 5 to 6 months. ‘Nobody asks how a bird that had the flu could fly from Australia to Siberia,’ he said, adding that even the Iranian minister of health had claimed to have stopped the disease at Iran’s borders. He claimed the holocaust story and bird flu rumors are interrelated. He attributed the killing of millions of chicken was to control the price and amount [of] chicken in the market."

A crazy poster at DU or LGF? Nah, just the advisor to the president of Iran.

I’ve long discovered that many Americans don’t want to know what’s going on in Gitmo or elsewhere in the law-free, non-Geneva military prisons set up by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Gonzales. We know that many inmates at Gitmo have no credible evidence against them and no way to get a fair trial. We know that many are there because of evidence procured through torture. Yes, some are also the worst form of Jihadist murderers, and they deserve to be detained indefinitely. But many aren’t. And we have no sane procedures to distinguish between the two. We also know that some prisoners have been tortured and abused, and many are regularly assaulted, or "IRFed", for often minor infractions. If you don’t know much about the process of "IRFing," read this. Eric Umansky has another excellent post on the subject. A lawyer for one of the prisoners met with his client shortly after such an "IRFing":

One of our clients was a mess. He’d been IRF’d a couple of days before and he was sickening to behold. One eye was swollen shut, the other a deep black and blue. Contusions all over his body, cuts on his head and legs. He couldn’t swallow and could barely talk. The "offense" meriting his forcible extraction was that he stepped over a line that they painted in his isolation cell.

What are those cells like? Eric debriefs a lawyer who’s been there:

[T]he detainees who hanged themselves last week were in cells where "there’s nothing on the ceiling and the meshing is far too small to allow a sheet or anything to be tied to it. They would have had to slowly strangulate themselves by wrapping a sheet around the toilet bowl or something like that."

That, according to a military spokesman, was a "good P.R. move." Those with no hope of trial, release or Geneva POW protections have gone on hundreds of hunger-strikes. Here is an account of what one individual, who was a teenager when picked up in Afghanistan, has been put through:

According to medical records obtained by TIME, a 20-year-old named Yusuf al-Shehri, jailed since he was 16, was regularly strapped into a specially designed feeding chair that immobilizes the body at the legs, arms, shoulders and head. Then a plastic tube, sometimes as much as 50% bigger than the type commonly used for feeding incapacitated patients, was inserted through his nose and down his throat – a procedure that can trigger nausea, bleeding and diarrhea.

This is America in the era of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. You can either look the other way or deal with it.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

Here’s a helpful update on the campaign to criminalize homosexuality in Nigeria. Section 7 of the proposed law, pioneered and supported by Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola, states the following:

* Registration of gay organizations by the Nigerian government is prohibited.
* "Publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship" in the media is prohibited.
* Gay organizations are prohibited, as is "procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private". Violators are subject to 5 years’ imprisonment.

Oxford, England, 5 am.