Author's posts
Apr 22 2008
Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers
Mistah Kurtz — he dead.
A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.
Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:
Apr 22 2008
Lawsuit Reveals Massive Suicide Rate Among U.S. Soldiers
Mistah Kurtz — he dead.
A class action lawsuit filed against the Veterans Administration by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth has reaped an unusual harvest, in the form of an email from Ira Katz, head of mental health at the VA, to Brigadier General Michael J. Kussman, undersecretary for health at the VA. The email, dated last December, threatens to blow the lid off the scandal of insufficient veterans health treatment, and the lies that have kept this scandal from heretofore getting the traction it deserves.
Here’s Jason Leopold at Online Journal reporting:
Apr 12 2008
Answering the Question — “Will They Get Away with It?”
Buhdydharma, the intrepid web proprietor of Docudharma, has posted an article today asking if, after the revelations by ABC news that basically the entire top administration hierarchy has been implicated in the oversight and implementation of a secret torture program, right out of the White House, if after such a massive revelation Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. “will they get away with it?”
Apr 11 2008
The Torture Planners: “Why are we talking about this in the White House?”
[I know buhdy already wrote on this — see cite for him below — but I figured an extra commentary wouldn’t hurt, providing also a bit more information on the legalities involved. — V.]
In a very interesting follow-up to the unfolding story on the 2003 John Yoo memorandum that justified the use of torture, ABC news is reporting how the CIA came to the White House after the spring 2002 capture of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and asked for permission to use more “aggressive” interrogation techniques. Citing anonymous sources, ABC says that beginning with the Zubaydah case, “the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” These discussions evidently included the use of waterboarding, as the CIA has admitted using this torture technique on Zubaydah.
The “Principals” — high-level Bush administration officials — present included National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice, who chaired the meetings, “Vice President Cheney… Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”
While Ashcroft is said to have signed off on the legality of the interrogations, he got squeamish about how it was being approved. Perhaps he was afraid of future legal and political consequences. Perhaps he remembered how the secrets of the Wannsee Conference were ultimately leaked. Per the ABC story (also reported over at Reuters):
Apr 10 2008
National Lawyers Guild: Fire Yoo & Try for War Crimes
The National Lawyers Guild has issued a press release calling for University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school to fire Professor John Yoo. The NLG calls for the rescission of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provisions that allow immunity and the prosecution of Yoo as a war criminal. Meanwhile, yesterday, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) threatened to subpoena John Yoo to testify about the memo at a May 6 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
The declassification and release of Yoo’s memorandum to William Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, written in March 2003, has caused a firestorm in the press. Yoo’s memo is the smoking gun for those looking for evidence of how the Bush Administration flouted basic human rights law, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the U.S. War Crimes Act to initiate a campaign of torture against detainees swept up in the aggressive U.S. military and covert campaigns that followed 9/11.
Apr 04 2008
U.S. Government Culpability in Death of Martin Luther King
On this 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., there’s been a lot of speechifying and article-writing. But I have seen precious little that recounts the campaign of the United States government to discredit and vilify Dr. King. The activities of the FBI’s Cointelpro program were documented by the United States Senate in its Church Committee Report. The “likelihood” that King was shot by James Earl Ray “as a result of a conspiracy” was the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1975. Unlike the JFK case, the HSCA documents on the MLK assassination remain classified to this day.
Yet we will hear nothing about these facts in today’s mainstream news. It’s unlikely that much will even be said at the liberal blogs. Yet, outside of the work of Dr. King himself, it’s the most salient fact about this day of dark remembrance.
I am charging the U.S. government, and most specifically the FBI, with culpability in the assassination of Martin Luther King. What does “culpability” mean?
Mar 28 2008
McCain Croons Bombing of Iran, While Baghdad Burns
The obscenity that is American politics, circa 2008.
This is funny, and the Reverend Wright’s comments are outrageous? What planet am I living on?
Mar 27 2008
“Unbelievable” Abuse Reigns in Iraqi Jails
Released yesterday by Wikileaks, and seen for the first time (links within quoted material, and bolded emphases, are added):
Confidential memo from Maj. Gen. Kelly, commander of US forces in western Iraq (MNF-W, or Multi-National Force – West), written in late February 2008. Privately verified by Wikileaks staff and not denied or contradicted by MNF-W when questioned by UPI’s national security editor, Shaun Waterman.
Typed up version follows:
Mar 27 2008
“Unbelievable” Abuse Reigns in Iraqi Jails
Released yesterday by Wikileaks, and seen for the first time (links within quoted material, and bolded emphases, are added):
Confidential memo from Maj. Gen. Kelly, commander of US forces in western Iraq (MNF-W, or Multi-National Force – West), written in late February 2008. Privately verified by Wikileaks staff and not denied or contradicted by MNF-W when questioned by UPI’s national security editor, Shaun Waterman.
Typed up version follows:
Mar 20 2008
Short Takes: Obama, APA, & Omar Khadr
Arch-neocon William Kristol and the New York Times seem bent on shoving their racial swiftboating tactics down our throats. Kristol was forced to issue a partial retraction after writing a story that claimed Barack Obama lied when he said he wasn’t present at a sermon by his pastor Jeremiah White that purportedly blamed blamed “the ‘arrogance’ of the ‘United States of White America’ for much of the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.” Kristol and the right-wing want to paint Obama as a racial extremist, or someone who cynically manipulates racist extremists, and this to frighten white Americans.
Of course, Obama was never at such a sermon. And frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if he were. Obama spoke his piece on the anger of black America the other day, in a well-received speech on the impact of racial divisions on the United States. While I think Wright’s comments weren’t “divisive” — comments Obama felt he had to disavow — nevertheless, he said they were understandable, given the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racial discrimination. And that’s more than any other U.S. politician would give towards the validation of black rage, much of it, as Obama pointed out, directed impotently at misplaced or non-powerful targets, or turned inward.
+++++++++++++++
Noted bioethicist and physician, Steven Miles, comments favorably on my analysis of the APA’s new resolution language concerning a ban on psychologist participation in torture in Bush’s prison gulag abroad:
Mar 20 2008
Short Takes: Obama, APA, & Omar Khadr
Arch-neocon William Kristol and the New York Times seem bent on shoving their racial swiftboating tactics down our throats. Kristol was forced to issue a partial retraction after writing a story that claimed Barack Obama lied when he said he wasn’t present at a sermon by his pastor Jeremiah White that purportedly blamed blamed “the ‘arrogance’ of the ‘United States of White America’ for much of the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.” Kristol and the right-wing want to paint Obama as a racial extremist, or someone who cynically manipulates racist extremists, and this to frighten white Americans.
Of course, Obama was never at such a sermon. And frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if he were. Obama spoke his piece on the anger of black America the other day, in a well-received speech on the impact of racial divisions on the United States. While I think Wright’s comments weren’t “divisive” — comments Obama felt he had to disavow — nevertheless, he said they were understandable, given the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racial discrimination. And that’s more than any other U.S. politician would give towards the validation of black rage, much of it, as Obama pointed out, directed impotently at misplaced or non-powerful targets, or turned inward.
+++++++++++++++
Noted bioethicist and physician, Steven Miles, comments favorably on my analysis of the APA’s new resolution language concerning a ban on psychologist participation in torture in Bush’s prison gulag abroad:
Mar 18 2008
Racist Reaction Accelerates Against Obama
Right-wing reactionaries thought manna had fallen from heaven along with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s denunciation of the crimes of America. That’s because Rev. Wright is Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s personal preacher. But while the demagogues falsely label Wright’s sermons as racist and anti-white, his remarks express truths that resonate with the experience of black Americans and cannot be forever hidden.
Anyone can go and watch excerpts from Rev. Wright’s sermons, edited for maximum incendiarism by arch-conservative, Fox Network Hyas muckamuck, Bill O’Reilly. Yet, all the editing tricks in the world cannot paint Wright’s sermons racist. But then that’s the cry raised when African-Americans say anything on the mark about the experience of racism in America, an experience that has made them sensitive to the crimes and injustices of this country perpetrated abroad, as well.
As if four hundred years of slavery, and one hundred years of Jim Crow state segregationism were not enough to prove the racist legacy of this country, African Americans are still subject to discrimination across the entire society, with inferior schools, inferior health care, wage discrepancies, housing discrimination, racist assaults, unfair drug laws and a still racially insensitive judicial system. CalexanderJ over at Daily Kos hit the mark with this quote from the comedian Chris Rock: