random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
Imagination is vastly more important than intelligence.
Army Pfc. Lynndie England cnn 5/2: “I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to,” she said. … “They did it for their own amusement.” Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of US human rights abuses. Investigations of numerous deaths while in US custody [...]
Michael Froomkin breaks it down: voting for Bush is voting for torture. [Linking to obsidian wings post on the new Republican plan that enables torture.] I said it before: repudiating the Bush administration policies on terror and treatment of prisoners and civilians is my most compelling reason for voting for Kerry. The Bush administration is [...]
after abu ghraib – the london guardian report on huda alazawi, who was arrested and abused with her family; see also talk left commentary on the incident
And that’s the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail. Salon.com News | Seymour Hersh’s alternative history of Bush’s war [2004-sept-18]
Fred Kaplan in slate.com ostensibly reviews Sy Hersh’s new work on torture & Abu Ghraib in Does Torture Work? – Seymour Hersh evades the question. By Fred Kaplan. In reality he sets out once again, just in case anyone missed it the first 10,000 times that torture apologists made it, the argument we’ve all heard [...]
i’m an anarchist, and i’m voting, and more than that, i’m voting for kerry.* here’s why: war on iraq: Will Kerry solve the iraq situation? Will he make it better? Folks might suggest that Kerry will not, or can not. Other folks might reasonably point out that the Democrats are not really better on iraq: [...]
jack balkin had some important things to say on june 9 about arguments make you ashamed to be a lawyer, and about arguments for the imperial presidency.
From Fafblog! the whole worlds only source for Fafblog., Saturday 12-June-2004: Torture: A last recourse we may require sooner and sooner The Medium Lobster has been disquieted of late at by the latest round of Iraq torture scandal news. There has been much uproar – among that irritating minority which have not been studiously scrutinizing [...]
From a Bush press conference last week: Q: Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we’ve learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the [...]
More reporting from Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker (2004-05-24 issue, posted 2004-05-15). This one begins by noting: The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret [...]