God's Gays

Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, God bless him, has really caused a stir ever since he conceded that homosexuality might have a biological basis. But not to worry, he's busy in his secret underground laboratory divining a holy hormone patch that will convert the wayward chromosomes.

Harold Meyerson at Wapo yesterday explores the moral dilemma Mohlerites now face:

how to reconcile a God who creates homosexuals with a God who condemns practicing homosexuals to hell?

Unfortunately Meyerson is right, the Mohlerites - and their numbers are legion - will hardly skip a beat with this new revelation. They will smugly repeat their mantra, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." Only now they can be more empathetic, being as we now know that God made you a sinner, God bless you. And look on the bright side, they do affirm that aborting chromosomes that fail to convert is still inappropriate.

Here's my rant on homosexual behavior in the Bible. Mohlerites would like you to believe that all homosexual behavior is the same and all is sinful. Homosexual behavior in scripture is not our contemporary understanding of a mutual, consensual, loving relationship. Most often it was an older man exercising coercive power over a young boy, who most likely had been sold into the situation or won in battle. We're talking rape here and no one today would condone such behavior, homo- or heterosexual. With the popularity of 300 in some circles, I would suggest checking out The Spartans at PBS to see the homosexual behavior of that society.

And here is Desmond Tutu's rant:

"To penalise someone because of their sexual orientation is like what used to happen to us; to be penalised for something which we could do nothing [about] -- our ethnicity, our race," said Tutu. "I would find it quite unacceptable to condemn, persecute a minority that has already been persecuted."

There are a few Christian Americans who believe that all are created in the image of God and that everything God creates is good...even very good. God bless the United Church of Christ who will let anybody join their churches. My prayers go out to the Episcopal church where differences over homosexuality threaten to split the church. My own denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to ordination. And, frankly, I don't believe our small numbers could survive a split.

But I say homosexuality is not a moral issue. It shouldn't be an issue for Christians at all. But I have gained a greater empathy for the Mohlerites who worship a God who creates for the sheer pleasure of smacking it down, God bless them, because deep in their hearts they fear that their God also enjoys a good game of what goes around, comes around.

P.S. to Mr. Meyerson, if you really are a modern man who wants to expand the scope of the word "man," dropping the capitalized Him would be a good next step.

TAGS: Christianity, homosexuality

April is the Racist Month

Or Reason #165 As to Why the South Should’ve Won the Civil War:

We wouldn’t have to admit to other countries that Georgia’s part of the union.

Al Swearengen at Dead Issue informed us last Saturday that Georgia did something extraordinary. Not only did they refuse to pass a bill to apologize for their role in slavery as did Missouri and Virginia (and in the latter case the bill still had to be introduced by two African American legislators), the Georgia state legislature is about to pass a bill designating April Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Al was concerned that we’d think this was a parody out of the pages of The Onion, so she provided a link to the Chicago Sun-Times, an article that could’ve been more accurately entitled, “No, Ya’ll, Not Only Are We Not Apologizing For Slavery, But We Wish We Could Get Away With Passing a Bill Bringing it Back.”

For good reason, I’ve been getting on Georgia’s case lately, especially in Assclowns of the Week, because it seems lately the most shithouse rat-on-fire insane people in the country come from this fetid, half-assed apology for a state. Between Newt Gingrich, Phil Gingrey, Zell Miller, Ben Bridges and his viral, anti-semitic memo, and now these redneck bozos, it seems that Georgia is bidding fair to outdo states like Texas, Utah, Idaho, North and South Carolina and Kansas as the most assbackwards, anti-science, hateful and collectively brain-damaged state in the union.

And in rejecting a bill apologizing for slavery and responding with something like this, a bill with actual traction that proposes celebrating the confederacy, they’re more or less openly embracing a legacy that gave us Jim Crow laws, the KKK and lynching.

So before some of my southern readers start giving me Hell like they did last November when I did a two part series about the deep south and how its politicians cater to the racist, mouth-breathing, miscegenation-fearing proles that make up their constituency, think of this. Think of all the southern US senators that refused to sign on to Mary Landrieu’s bill apologizing to the relatives of lynching victims, think of George Allen’s infamous “macaca” statement, the "Call me, Harold" campaign ad that got Bob Corker elected to the Senate, at how they’ve never elected an African American senator since Reconstruction, Genarlow Wilson's ridiculous conviction for child molestation and countless other recent instances of southern, Republican racism and their audacity to claim that the Democratic party was responsible for all the racism of the 60’s.

Those of you who are navy blue Democrats in red states, either you can stop reading here and except yourselves from what I’m about to say. Then cut me some slack.

Now, I’ve been forced to live in these swamps of alleged humanity where the word “nigger” is still in open use (provided there are no people of color within earshot), states in which the Aryan Brotherhood and KKK local chapters parade around in their dirty laundry and openly flaunt their idiocy courtesy of the First Amendment and the ACLU.

These people still long for the anti-bellum era in which vaporish ladies sipped mint juleps on the patio while the niggers cut their fingers to pieces picking their cotton 16 hours a day under the baleful glare and bullwhip of an overseer. Or so they seem to remember. Of course, their memories of what the confederacy used to be prior to the Civil War would have to be atavistic because obviously nobody alive remembers those days. But what little they think they know can hardly be considered enviable even by south of the Mason-Dixon line standards.

It was a time of extreme hardship for most in that part of the country. Education was spotty at best, the economy rickety. It was a violent, hateful and murderous period in a part of the country in which violence, hatred and murder flourished in ignorance, hunger and stupidity.

Come to think of it, this seems to be exactly what southern Republicans want to bring back, to look at the legislation they pass and oppose.

I have two African American boys, although I'm white, and when each of them was born, I made a promise that I would do everything in my power to ensure that they wouldn't have to share a world inhabited by people like the racist knuckle draggers who make up the Republican GA state legislature, people who probably rooted for Edward Norton's character in American History X, people who would still bring popcorn, Pearl beer and fried chicken to a lynching, people who would gladly bring lynching back if they knew they wouldn't suffer political fallout.

What’s Your Definition of Insanity?

You want mine? To paraphrase Einstein, it’s telling the same discredited lies over and over and over again even after they’ve been smashed flatter than dogshit under a steamroller and expecting more people to believe them.

But don’t listen to me. Who am I? Just another man on the street. Let’s listen to Charles Krauthammer, instead, since he rides sidesaddle with the insane clown posse in Washington, DC.

I’m not going to pretend to know as about dementia or any other mental illness as Charles Krauthammer. Even I have to play it smart and realize when I’m outclassed and out-educated. Still, in defending Dick Cheney from New Republic’s Michelle Cottle in her article, “Heart of Darkness”, how can a good, self-respecting liberal like yours truly possibly not at least briefly weigh in when two conservative authors wage open war over whether or not the dependably sinister Dick Cheney’s sanity is called into question?

The point that eludes Krauthammer as adroitly as the fact that Iraq is circling the drain eludes Cheney, is that it’s a very bad sign when two conservative columnists, one of them writing for Marty Peretz’s newly-sold New Republic, have to argue about whether or not Dick Cheney’s heart condition contributes to his incipient madness, it’s not a good sign for America or the neoconservative movement.

"Shoot a man in the face and not bother to call your boss 'til the next day?" Another way of putting that is this: After a hunting accident, Cheney tried to get things in order before going public. Not the best decision, as I wrote at the time, but perfectly understandable. And if that is deranged, what do you say about a young Teddy Kennedy being far less forthcoming about something far more serious -- how he came to leave a dead woman at the bottom of a pond? I am passing no judgment. I am simply pointing out how surpassingly stupid it is to attribute such behavior to mental illness.

Of course, the other point that escapes Krauthammer is that Ted Kennedy leaving a girl at the bottom of a river almost 40 years ago is not only not germane to the discussion at hand but it can’t possibly be equated with Dick Cheney shooting an old man in the face with a shotgun then keeping it under wraps. Ted Kennedy was a stupid, coddled young man when Chappaquiddick happened in 1969. But then, as now, Kennedy didn’t have a heart condition that can be plausibly advanced as a theory for some of the most bizarre behavior ever seen in Washington, DC.

Krauthammer then continues by saying, “I, too, know Dick Cheney,” something that no self-respecting neocon would ever brag about in public these days. But actually knowing Dick Cheney and merely mutually recognizing each other are two entirely two different things. There’s the public Dick Cheney, subdued, barely affable and baring his teeth in a gruesome Dr. Sardonicus approximation of a smile. I’m sure that Charles Krauthammer wasn’t at Cheney's elbow when he'd taken the helm in the first hours after 9/11 and how he’d ordered the power turned back on the Gulf coast for the refineries when there were two hospitals that obviously needed it more. I’m sure that Krauthammer never spent a day in Cheney’s office while he was actually conducting his arachnid-like business.

And if an inability to meet the facts at least halfway if not accept the facts into your home constitutes dementia, then color one third of the nation insane because that’s about the percentage of dead-enders there are in this country who still think that Bush is doing a bang-up job in Iraq. Of course 10% of that 30% never got into a cold car in their lives and the other nine tenths of that 30% probably fill their Mercedes’ gas tanks.

If you want the definition of insane, read the last page of Sunday’s Meet the Press transcript. On MTP with Tim Russert was Tom DeLay, Richard Perle and Rep. Joe Sestak, among others. DeLay… OK, I’m stumped here as to why Tim Russert had even let this malignant little freak onto the sound stage, to begin with. Former Rep. Andrews, I could understand. But Tom DeLay, a guy who flew a Big Tobacco corporate jet to his own arraignment and spent every waking moment dedicated not to serving his country but to enriching himself and ensuring Republican, one party supremacy, is simply about as relevant as the lint in my navel.

This is a priceless lesson in patriotism from Tom DeLay:

Well, I--it, it is my opinion that when you go to war, we ought to all come together. You can debate going to war, that's a legitimate debate. But once you have our soldiers and our, our young people dying on the battlefield, we should come together, and we shouldn't have what we had yesterday on the Mall of, of, of--in Washington, D.C. When the--those are not, in my mind--my opinion, patriots that are talking about impeaching the commander in chief, that are--that are--work as, as Tom's group works....

Now, even if any one of those sentences could be interpreted as semi-coherent by the most doting, supportive and forgiving of rhetoric and English professors, none of them would still make any sense. Because the import of what DeLay had said was not in what he said but in what he’s ignoring. It’s unpatriotic to criticize the president because he lied us into an illegal and totally unnecessary war. It’s wrong to advance a timetable for withdrawal because it emboldens the enemy because our military isn’t funded well enough or manned well enough or competent enough to finish a job by a specific deadline.

But while former Admiral Joe Sestak’s response was eloquent, you’ll have to read that through the link I’d provided because I’m going to work backward here to what Richard Perle, aka Nosferatu, had said just minutes earlier:

MR. PERLE: ...I never anticipated a five year occupation. There was nothing inevitable about a five year occupation.
FMR. REP. ANDREWS: Should've been planned for.
MR. RUSSERT: In fact, you were quoted as saying if you were Delphic that you probably would not have gone into Iraq?
MR. PERLE: Well, no. I think--I think Saddam Hussein posed a threat that had to be dealt with, and I think the decision to remove him was a correct decision. I think there were lots of things subsequent to his removal that might well have been--should have been done differently. But the fact is he posed a threat. Let me quote--I don't usually quote Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, but on this occasion I will. These are his words. "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." This was not an eccentric view. This was certainly not a Republican view. It was a widely accepted view.
MR. RUSSERT: But he did vote against the war.
MR. PERLE: This was his view of it. Remember Vice President Gore? I'm quoting him. "We know that Saddam has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout the country. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."

Of course, it goes without saying that Russert never challenged either of these out of touch sociopaths (Perle and DeLay) about their messy and ongoing divorce from reality. Heaven forbid any member of the corporately-owned media should ruffle the feathers of a PNAC maniac like Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle and the Hammer.

But Perle’s insistence on Saddam being a threat to us when he was hardly even a threat to his own countrymen and the Iranians is nothing less than pathetic at this point. Equally pathetic is Perle conveniently renting Al Gore (and Carl Levin) some credibility by making it look as if he was adequately informed enough to advocate regime change, after all (Gore really did say that, as Glenn Beck gleefully pointed out in his 2004 “You Dems own this clusterfuck, too” article).

Consider, though, that Gore had been out of the loop for close to three years prior to making those 2003 statements. The likes of Bush and Cheney were not. In fact, as we all now know, Richard Perle was one of the major signatories of the PNAC letter imploring Clinton to impose regime change in Iraq. If anything, Perle helped create the loop of lies from 1998 on in which Gore, as had so many of us, had gotten entangled.

Insanity? What’s insanity? Continuing to believe that Saddam posed a grave and present danger to America, that the WMD’s existed, that the 9/11/Saddam/al Qaida connection is as valid as it ever was? That we’re enjoying enormous success in Iraq and will continue to enjoy enormous successes in Iraq? That Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague? That even though Perle never saw a five year-long involvement way back when, has absolutely no problem with another five years of senseless bloodshed as long as George Bush’s fat can be pulled out of the fire with an unlikely victory?

Crazy Christians Caught on Tape

I've been collecting video and audio clips from the Christian Witness for Peace in Iraq worship service last Friday in the National Cathedral that spilled over into St. Albans and the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and in some 200 local churches around the country.

Go here for three audio clips of testimonies given in the Cathedral worship. Celeste Zappala talked about the death of her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker. The Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, representing the World Council of Churches, said, "It's hard to be a Christian in Washington." And Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners said to thunderous applause, "This war is ... an offense against God." I'm still hopeful that Rev. Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church (historic home church of Dr. Martin Luther King) will be posted. It was on his words that I patterned my meditation below.

Here's a videotape of Mr. Logan Laturi, Iraq war veteran and peacemaker, reading from the reflections of Joshua Casteel, U.S. soldier.



And here's a videotape of the first two waves of unpatriotic and heathenistic peace loving Christians defying the law of the Holy Chimperor by crossing the street to the sidewalk in front of the Whitehouse where they will kneel and pray for peace.


As you can hear at the end, the police did not want the 300 wave coming across. In fact, over 700 defiant disciples stood in line ready to go. And did you notice how they went two by two? Just like how Jesus sent out the disciples.


TAGS: peace, antiwar, Christianity

New Rule

Sometimes Partisanship is OK

Here's my new rule, and I especially mean this to apply to the dismissed prosecutors case that is sure to dominate the news this week, and may lead (if there's even a vestige of justice left in the world WILL lead) to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales. - The Repuglicans don't get to use the word 'partisan' in any of its forms to describe Democrats any more. And I'll tell you why.

Democracy cannot function without partisanship. In order to have a choice, the electorate MUST have at least two, and preferably more options to chose from. Therefore it is not only appropriate but desirable and even essential that a political party present its policies in a clear and distinct voice, ESPECIALLY when those policies differ from the opposition. For the last few years, it is exactly this type of 'partisanship' that the Republicans have been criticizing the Democratic party of at every possible opportunity. The portable public chorus of the mainstream media has seen no reason to object to this totally unworthy ploy.

There is a kind of partisanship that is completely unacceptable, in many countries criminal, and that type of partisanship can only really be carried out by the party in power. That is partisanship from within the government apparatus. Even though an appointment to the civil service may be a political reward, once in office, the appointee has an obligation to serve not only the party and/or individual who appointed him or her, but the whole country.

In Canada, I daresay we have as many political appointees serving in government as you do in the US. There are a couple of differences though. First, there are fewer, short-term patronage appointments of the type that seem to beg for an increase in the index of corruption. Most civil servants in Canada are long-term professional bureaucrats. They are sworn to be apolitical, and the vast majority do an admirable job of maintaining an arms length relationship with the government currently in power. One could hardly avoid the mention of Canada's Auditor General, Sheila Fraser in this context. A Liberal appointee, she nonetheless led to that party's ouster from government when she uncovered the federal sponsorship scandal - a scandal which centered on some other Liberal appointees who illegally used government resources and money to further an agenda that was not aimed at the good of the country, but at the success of the Liberal party. This scandal and the way it played out does our system of government proud, in my opinion.

The outing of Valerie Plame is an example of unacceptable partisanship. The removal of perfectly good federal prosecutors for not abusing their positions to further a Republican agenda is another good example. Contracts to Halliburton, Diebold, ES&S, The Carlyle Group, Blackwater, etc., etc., etc., are all examples of partisanship corrupting government in an unacceptable and harmful way. A way that threatens democracy itself.

Not surprisingly, the issue of partisanship and the strange use of that word by the Republican party and their media parrots came up today in this New York Times article about Patrick Leahy demanding answers from the White House. While this whole story is redolent with bullshit as it is, one statement from Senator John Cornyn (R - Texas) has a fetid pungency acrid enough to overwhelm the general stink.

None of the Republicans who took to the airwaves on Sunday offered a spirited defense of the administration, but Mr. Cornyn and others did take exception to the Democratic vow to subpoena White House officials and accused some Democrats of trying to turn the issue to their political advantage.

“I’ll join Senator Leahy in getting to the facts and following the facts where they may lead,” Mr. Cornyn said. But he accused some Democrats of crossing a line “into basically a political witch hunt,” citing the role of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as head of the subcommittee running the investigation into the dismissals of the prosecutors.

Yes, Mr. Cornyn, if the Democrats reap a political advantage by exposing Republican corruption, that is not partisanship - it is just the Democrats fulfilling their obligation of governmental oversight. An obligation, by the way, that has not been carried out by the Republicans in the Senate or House of Representatives for over six years now. Any political advantage accrued by the Democrats is an advantage your party handed to them.

Corruption within government and covering up for corruption are partisan acts, Senator. Exposing corruption is not. Got it?

TAGS: Dismissed Prosecutors, Patrick Leahy, Partisanship, John Cornyn

Lose the war? Hell, we're losing our souls!

What will it profit a person to gain the whole world but forfeit their soul? Matthew 16:26

Friends, we are in danger of losing our souls. During this season of Lent, the scriptures undeniably warn us that we are on the wrong path. Oh it looks a lot like the way to Jerusalem, but maybe you've gotten use to its easy - even accommodating - ride. You see, this road takes a hard turn just before the cross... Friends, I've come back from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq at the National Cathedral to warn you...we are in danger of losing our souls. The war in Iraq is destroying our souls.

We've spent billions and billions of taxpayer dollars with hardly a second thought. We're about to authorize billions more. But there's never enough money to insure our children or raise the minimum wage or pay our teachers. Do you see the danger to our souls?

Mental health disorders among Iraqi war vets are epidemic. And we can't even have confidence that our troops are receiving the best healthcare. Surely second best is better than this. Soul eroding. The stress and strain on our military families. Families separated by multiple deployments. The economic hardships. Skyrocketing divorce rates. The death of thousands create thousands of widows and orphans. Doesn't it just pain your soul?

And then there's the torture. Has the mall muzak so numbed our souls that we aren't outraged by the torture? We're so proud of our torture that we've legalized it. We've brought it out into the light of day. We've shone a light on it. There ought to be a special ribbon for our cars. Who would Jesus torture? Ooops, sorry. That was the hard turn just before the cross I was warning you about. Kinda sneaks up on you and next thing you know...you've landed in the middle of the crowd shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

This war is slowly hollowing out our souls. At it's best, the Church just hasn't seemed to notice. At it's worst, it swaddled the baby Jesus in red, white and blue. It's gonna be a lot harder to pretty up the cross. For there is no denying: Jesus didn't come to Jerusalem with a conquering army but with arms of love. Jesus came to die for faith, not to kill for faith.

The church needs people of faith - acting in faith - to help bring about the end of this immoral war of choice. As Rev. Raphael G. Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church said:

"Mr. Bush, my Christian brother, we do need a surge in troops. We need a surge in the nonviolent army of the Lord. We need a surge in conscience and a surge in activism and a surge in truth-telling."

President Bush is going to win this war come hell or high water. Maybe he's willing to forfeit his soul for his noble cause. He's not dragging me down with him.











TAGS: Peace, Antiwar, Christianity

The Iraq News

Fourth "Anniversary" of Shock and Awe, Bush Speech, Walter Reed, Protests, "Zip It," Frank Rich, More

I just watched President Bush give a five minute speech on the first four years of the Iraq War. Today's the "anniversary". That's one and a quarter minutes of speech per year of warfare.

Bush managed to exceed the low expectations he's set for these speeches. Though I just harangued him for brevity, it was probably a blessing for him and us. To his credit, he appeared sober. He was dressed. His facial expressions fit the mood; that's to say, he wasn't laughing the whole time like he always does.

So, with Bush's 'big acknowledgment' of the anniversary of Shock and Awe in the history books, here's the Iraq News.

• So far, 3,185 members of the American military have died in Iraq. 40% of Americans still think the invasion was the right thing to do. A lot of journalists are still telling little and big lies about it.
• New shit has come to light on what caused the Walter Reed scandal. A three year delay in privatizing the hospital led to critical staff shortages as the number of soldiers in need of care rose sharply. The privatization movement, people, is dead. Write it on your blogs. Spread the word. We actually need a government. Shocker.
• Thousands of Christians marched on Washington Saturday to protest the Iraq War. In fact there was widespread protest generally ignored by our press. San Francisco. Hollywood, California. New York City. Tallahassee, Florida. Providence. Miami. Barack Obama in Oakland. Obama in Denver. I could go on and on.
• Ned Lamont tells us what the UN weapons inspectors knew four years ago.
• The outing of Valerie Plame was done to help make this war happen. Now Plame has testified under oath that she was under cover and improperly outed. Yet, no apologies for the people who dragged her, ass first, through the mud for four years.
• Arianna on four years.
• Frank Rich writes, "The Ides of March 2003." Rich does a fantastic job in this article of demolishing the Bushies call for patience.
• From the Guardian (h/t The Carpetbagger Report)--"The Regrets of the Man Who Brought Down Saddam". Here's me quoting Steve Benin quoting Cliff Schecter, “Try and imagine how truly horrible it must be. Something you wanted with all your heart, and this is the result? You’d rather have a homicidal despot in charge than the U.S. Government?”

VIDEO: Tony Snow tells Ed Henry to "zip it" about Iraq. "Zip it?"
VIDEO: This week's episode of Meet The Press came from the fucking Twilight Zone. Watch as Tom DeLay and Richard Perle team up on Rep. Sustek (Crooks and Liars). So the indicted and disgraced Tom DeLay and the un-indicted, yet also quite disgraceful, PNAC member Perle are welcomed into Russert's den on the eve of the war's anniversary? WTF, Russ?
IMAGE: Blognonymous has a poignant picture that speaks many words about the American approach to Iraq.
VIDEO: Here's a quick look at Saturday's St. Patrick's Day march on the Pentagon.


Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.

TAGS: Iraq War, Shock and Awe, Protest, Walter Reed

The Hollow Point Slugs of Outrageous Fortune.

I wonder how many people who'd marched to little if any effect at the Pentagon yesterday were thinking of Col. Ted Westhusing’s suicide almost two years ago, much less the circumstances surrounding it, much less how much more significance just thinking of the sordid, corrupt circumstances surrounding his death would give this march?

Maybe I’m cynical but I just can’t picture the likes of Aravosis and Sudbay of Ablog or KayinMaine or any of the other thousands who were there carrying picket signs demanding real answers into the abrupt death of Westhusing, who was, ironically, considering the choice of day for the march, found dead in a trailer in Camp Dublin.

Over a year ago, Wayne Madsen of the Madsen Report wrote about the circumstances surrounding Westhusing’s apparent suicide. I don’t buy into Madsen’s conspiracy angle that his suicide was forcefully assisted. After all, why would his alleged assassin bother to forge a recently-surfaced suicide note fingering the two generals that his death could only protect (General David Petraeus and Maj. General Joseph Fil)?

However, whether we’re looking at a murder of a command-level Army officer to kick off yet another conspiracy or the legitimate suicide of a man who was to be reunited with his family in 21 short days, we’re still looking at a tragedy in several ways and on so many levels.

Let’s talk a look at the actual facts in Madsen's 14 month-old article:

Just after Westhusing’s body was found, both Petraeus and Fils were suddenly reassigned as far away from Westhusing’s corpse as possible. In fact, Petraeus was sent to Fort Leavenworth and Fils to Fort Hood. And while unlikely is the idea of Westhusing turning gumshoe and uncovering evidence linking USIS (a Carlyle Group-owned security contractor supplementing US forces) and Iran-Contra, we do know that Westhusing was personally and professionally anguished over what he saw as military indifference to the rampant corruption and abominable abuses that he’d seen and heard committed against the Iraqi people by these very same US Investigations Services mercenaries.

Westhusing was one of the nation’s leading military ethicists. How did they reasonably expect him to react when forced to witness such barbaric behavior?

He went through all the proper channels like a good soldier and was patted on the head and told that it would be taken care of. However, after a vaudeville impression of an investigation, the Army determined that there had been “no contractual violations” on the part of USIS. In the beginning, Westhusing had nothing to go on but an anonymous four page letter but you have to consider that Westhusing’s mood became ever-darkening after some digging on his own confirmed the letter’s charges.

In his suicide note, Westhusing was said to have named both Petraeus and Fils and had charged them with enabling these abuses by simply looking the other way. At the very least, that would explain the abrupt stateside reassignments of both generals.

Let’s a take a brief overview of what’s happened since Westhusing’s June 5, 2005 death:



Former Major Gen. David Petraeus is now a four star general in charge of the US military in Iraq and on a breakneck pace to make the Joint Chiefs. The Iraq War has been very good, as good as it has been for Halliburton, for Petraeus’s career. In less than three years, he’s been promoted by Congress from two to three to four star general and is now answerable to only a handful of people on the planet, including the idiot pictured below who’d put him in for this promotion.



The jury’s still out on Petraeus’s actual competency. At the time of Westhusing’s final posting, Petraeus was on his second tour in Iraq training Iraqi security forces. But what’s missing from the general’s official, glowing biography is that much of that training was outsourced to private contractors owned by the same Carlyle Group that had once harbored in its mahogany-paneled boardrooms the father of the idiot pictured above.

When Westhusing discovered that not only had USIS mercs had slaughtered supposed insurgents in Fallulah (they’re not supposed to engage the enemy, according to DoD regulations, but then again, they’re not supposed to bilk the US taxpayer by shorting the Iraqi security forces of trainers in order to fatten their profit margin) but that they’d impassively watched or perhaps had even participated in the slaughter and possibly rapes of Iraqi civilians, the military ethicist, a man with a probing and complicated intellect, couldn’t very well be expected to sit still for it.

Which only makes his miscasting at Camp Dublin all the more puzzling.

None of it makes sense except the corruption and human rights abuses themselves. There are too many unanswered questions surrounding Westhusing’s alleged suicide and why the Army felt the need to distort and otherwise fabricate evidence (such as alleging that Westhusing had requested hollow point slugs, and one had killed him, when he hadn’t) if the suicide was exactly as they had reported it.

Making the least amount of sense is the promotion of Petraeus, at the time a three star general who got a fourth star thrown at him courtesy of the Democratically-dominated Congress, a man who’d overseen the training of the indigenous forces that could’ve likely been the same ones who’d raped that Sunni Iraqi girl that’s resulted in so many fatal reprisals.

But then again, this is Bizarro world, a wonderful world in which diamonds are discarded and pebbles polished, a world in which whistleblowers are fired, reassigned or even outright killed just for having a conscience and trying to maintain some semblance of honor. Think of Bunny Greenhouse. Think of Carol Lam. Think of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Think of Ted Westhusing decomposing under our feet and his family. Then think of this:

Passing the Peace

BUMPED AND UPDATED BELOW

This Friday evening, March 16th, Christians will overflow the National Cathedral in a powerful witness for peace. Already registrations have exceeded the 3,200 seat capacity of the Cathedral and plans are underway to broadcast the service into another area church. Following the worship service, we'll pour into the streets for a candlelight procession to the Whitehouse. And at the late night peace rally in Lafayette Park there will be a time for divine obedience and possible arrest.

Especially during this season of Lent, the Christian community must repent of its silence and complicity in the run-up to war perpetrated by the Whitehouse. And I join with the event organizers in saying that until the Christian community is willing to take risks for peace, to put its words into action, to publicly witness that the war in Iraq is wrong, more people will die, more violence will shatter more lives, and we will all be less secure. We must commit to the fullness of the Gospel vision of justice, peace, inclusive community and wholeness. Let us choose life that we and our children and the people of Iraq may live!


The next day, Saturday the 17th, will join tens of thousands of Americans and march on the Pentagon. This demonstration marks the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the shock and awe invasion of Iraq, March 19,2003. When we march on the Pentagon, it will mean that the war and occupation of Iraq have raged on for four years. That’s longer than any war in U.S. history with the exception of the Vietnam War and the U.S. Civil War. Unless we act now the war in Iraq will last for years. Bushco are prepared to send hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq for years to come. These young men and women are being sent to kill and be killed so that the U.S. government can avoid the appearance of having “lost ” in Iraq.

It is unconscionable to allow this carnage to go on. Now is the time to end this illegal and immoral war.

Use this thread to coordinate a blogger meet-up in dc. Feel free to also express your antiwar outrage.

UPDATE: The 3,200 seats of the National Cathedral were preregistered nearly two weeks ago. As of today, planners have made room for an additional 1,000 worshippers to stand outside the Cathedral and listen by loud speaker. Another 1,000 will be seated in the sanctuary of the New York Ave Presbyterian Church, where the service will be broadcast on a large screen TV.

Clearly, God intends for our witness to burst the seams of Washington! Following the worship service, we will be surrounding the Whitehouse in a candlight vigil for peace. It's going to be an awesome and beautiful sight, though I'm not sure if 41 had this in mind when he envisioned a 1,000 points of light (make that 5,000 points of light!) I invite all the locals to come down and participate. If you want to attend the worship service, pre-registration is still encouraged. Planners anticipate the procession to take begin at 9:00 p.m. It's 4 mi. to the Whitehouse, so I'm guessing we won't arrive there until 10 or 10:30.

BLOGGER BREAKFAST: It is my understanding that bloggers will meet up with Americablog's Joe Saturday morning at about 9:00 at the corner of 21st & Constitution Ave NW. Aroiund 8:00 a.m. those who want to meet at the Lincoln Memorial and check out the Memorial and the Wall can do that before Joe arrives. I recall some reichwingers have it in their minds that we're coming to town to deface the Wall. Don't ask me how they got this idea. We should just be aware that there may be some confrontations. It is my hope that we will practice peace and respond to any confrontations in peaceful and nonviolent ways.

Please note in the comments if you will be joining us for any of these events so that we won't leave without you.

And may God grant you travelling mercies, bless our witness, and soften the hearts of our leaders that they may catch a vision of true peace and justice for all. Amen.


TAGS: peace, antiwar, pentagon

The Iraq News

Boxer on Troop Love, Cheney at AIPAC, Walter Reed Fallout, Pentagon Admits "Elements" of Civil War, More

Senator Barbara Boxer called on the Republicans to "love the troops" in her speech introducing the failed measure to remove troops from Iraq. Among other things, Boxer said:

[W]hen you love the troops, you don't send them back into combat with post-traumatic stress and a bottle of antidepressants. You don't do it. Tragically, we know this is happening.

Of course, Dick Cheney's despicable display at the AIPAC conference earlier this week shows that the GOP has no plans to stop trying to con the public into believing that the opposition party is the one who is against the troops, while the stark truth pours out of the rat's nest that is our veteran's health care system. It goes way beyond Walter Reed.

Here's some more Iraq News:

• The Pentagon finally admits that "elements" of a civil war exist in Iraq. Elements? Elements! You stupid twits! Why is it that we have these stupid, drawn out semantic arguments that always result in the administration eventually conceding the point months or even years later? Next year they'll blame the democrats for allowing the civil war to happen.
• The Japanese people no longer care to support the War in Iraq.
• The Senate shot down a proposal to end the war in one year.
• Are we headed for a trillion dollar defense budget? Give you fifty guesses.
• Taylor Marsh believes that Hillary Clinton's latest stance on Iraq is her actual belief about the war.

AUDIO: Minnesota Public Radio broadcast, "Beyond Walter Reed".
VIDEO: BBC reports on the Brits own veterans' health care issues.
VIDEO: Joe Biden gives a scathing speech on the floor of the Senate. Biden's plan to end the war works for me, yet the make believe Bush policy continues.
VIDEO: Joe Scarborough talks to Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), about failures in the veteran care system.
VIDEO: Trailer for the film The Prisoner, or, How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair.


Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.

TAGS: Iraq War, Walter Reed, Dick Cheney, Health Care

The Pressure is On

Abu Gonzales on the Hot Seat

The pressure seems to be mounting in the case of eight dismissed federal prosecutors, with D. Kyle Sampson, Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales' chief of staff announcing his resignation yesterday. From the LA Times;

D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, is leaving the Justice Department in the first fallout from the department's bungled firing of U.S. attorneys last year, people familiar with the situation said Monday night.

Sampson, a top lawyer under Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft, had been identified by congressional Democrats as one of a handful of senior officials whom they wanted to question as part of the deepening investigation into who ordered seven federal prosecutors relieved of their duties in December and why.

The Justice Department is expected to provide further details of its handling of the matter in briefings to congressional leaders this morning, said the sources, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak and because it was a personnel matter.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees also announced Monday that they would ask President Bush's longtime political strategist, Karl Rove, to testify as part of the widening investigation into White House involvement in the politically charged affair.

Karl Rove under oath! Don't get me started. KKKarl just barely escaped sharing Scooter Libby's fate in the Plamegate investigation when he 'corrected' perjured testimony at the last minute to avoid indictment.

And from the New York Times;

Senate Democrats vowed today to get explanations, with or without subpoenas, from high Bush administration officials as revelations about the dismissal of federal prosecutors put renewed pressure on the White House.

“Just when we thought our faith could not be shaken any further, it has been,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The latest revelations prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there has been unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department.”

In fact, it looks like Schumer would like to hear from Rove, Sampson, and White House Counsel Harriet Miers in this matter. He is also calling for Gonzales immediate resignation over the scandal. The Republicans though, refuse to accept that this is a problem.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, seemed to want to give the White House the benefit of the doubt, for now, but said the administration should offer explanations.

Until he lost his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee after the November elections, Specter was the one responsible for oversight in this field. Aren't you glad he is no longer? The Justice department has traditionally been quasi-independent of the administration, and this is seen to be essential to maintaining an unbiased objectivity, which is why there is such a fuss over this. Coming on the heels of revelations of widespread FBI misuse of NSLs given them under the authority of the USA PATRIOT Act, it's hard to see how Gonzales can keep his job.

One apparently unrelated story indicates how far this may actually go , as it stirs up a stink in Washington like a dead whale on a beach. That story is the announced move of uber-criminal organization Halliburton to Dubai. They apparently don't believe an independent judiciary that isn't filled with hand-picked GOP hacks will continue to overlook the massive frauds that they have perpetrated against the American taxpayer. They should have had that get out of jail free card laminated. Not having done so they're getting out of Dodge City, with bundles of cash in their saddlebags.

Meanwhile it's getting harder and harder impossible to imagine how bubble-boy Bush continues to ignore the turmoil around him. My only surmise is this: Big Pharma owes the administration a lot for their having so enthusiastically screwed over America's sick and elderly. Like typical Mafia underlings, the pharmaceutical corporations are returning the favor in the form of primo state-of the art product.

Reminiscent of Stanislaw Lem's dystopic character Ijon Tichy (The Futurological Congress) Bush and possibly Cheney are being administered massive amounts of mind-altering chemicals so advanced that they alter not just the mind, but the subject's perceptions of the outside world. Called cryptochemistry by one of Lem's characters, this theory seems the only reasonable explanation for Bush's continuing gormlessness. As Sherlock Holmes would say, once all alternatives have been shown to be impossible, whatever is left, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth.

TAGS: Dismissed Prosecutors, Justice Department, Criminal Conspiracy
Congressional Investigations

Inescapable Logic

It has been a very bad week for Bu$hCo™, with convictions, investigations and revelations galore on a number of fronts. Correspondingly, it's been a rather good week for the truth, which has a way of making itself known in the fullness of time. The Libby conviction went a long way in that direction. While Rove and Cheney, the ultimate targets who probably should have been convicted, were not brought down, they were at least seriously hobbled in their ability to spread the lies on which their game so depends. Like a normally aggressive basketball player facing ejection from the game if he commits one more foul, their effectiveness has been severely reduced.

A number of observations have been made in just the last couple of days that stand out in their illumination of the sad truths about Bu$hCo™'s methods. The most damning perhaps are in connection to the growing scandal of the eight federal prosecutors recently fired in order to put more compliant GOP drones in their places. Jonathan Turley let fly on MSNBC's Countdown with a piece of impeccable logic that would do Socrates proud. (video from C&L - wmv - qt -)

"In my opinion, the most important (and alarming) part of the story is where the authority to do this derives from: The USA Patriot Act. How exactly does giving Bush the power to replace inconvenient prosecutors protect us from terror? Oh, wait, it doesn't. It just protects him and his cronies from prosecution. Talk about politicizing terror."

On the same topic of the fired prosecutors, Paul Krugman has an equally damning observation;

"In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance."

Lest we forget, some of the fired attorneys, notably Carol Lam, were involved in ongoing investigations into Republican corruption. Investigations that are now at the very least delayed as their replacements get up to speed, or at most dropped altogether as the replacements drop the cases altogether, as their political masters expect of them.

Moving on to the emerging scandal of FBI misuse of National Security Letters, a new instrument given them under the authority of the USA PATRIOT Act. "A United States Justice Department report says the FBI has improperly - and in some cases illegally - put citizens under surveillance without judicial approval.. ..The report says the FBI not only violated their own internal regulations, but in some cases violated the law in gathering the private information." Glenn Greenwald best expresses the significance of this most recent in a long string of revelations of administration malfeasance;

That the FBI is abusing its NSL power is entirely unsurprising.. ..but the real story here -- and it is quite significant -- has not even been mentioned by any of these news reports. The only person (that I've seen) to have noted the most significant aspect of these revelations is Silent Patriot at Crooks & Liars, who very astutely recalls that the NSL reporting requirements imposed by Congress were precisely the provisions which President Bush expressly proclaimed he could ignore when he issued a "signing statement" as part of the enactment of the Patriot Act's renewal into law. Put another way, the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore.

The term 'malice aforethought' seems to spring to mind in both these cases. The selection of federal prosecutors and judges all the way up to the Supreme Court, the insertion of secret clauses into laws in the middle of the night, the signing statements, the purging of any justice officials that might oppose them - all followed by the most egregious violations of every principle that the USA has stood for for 230 years - it's hard impossible to imagine that it's not deliberate.

The thing about Turley's, Krugman's, Silent Patriot's and Greenwald's observations is not so much their inescapable logic or their insightful brilliance. It is rather the fact that they arguments are so clean and simple, so accessible - the fact that they elicit a 'how did I not think of that' reaction.

It has been said that the truth is that which doesn't go away even when you stop believing in it. For Bush and his minions the truth may well hang around long enough to destroy the beliefs of even the 29% or so die-hard supporters that still believe in him. I hope it hangs around long enough to see him facing charges in the Hague, but that's just me.

TAGS: Fired Prosecutors, FBI Abuses, Malice Aforethought, The Truth