This is grotesque and depressing:

Iraqi teenagers dragged two bloodied U.S. soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing the killings as a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans.
. . .
Witnesses to the Mosul attack said gunmen shot two soldiers driving through the city center, sending their vehicle crashing into a wall. The 101st Airborne Division said the soldiers were driving to another garrison.

About a dozen swarming teenagers dragged the soldiers out of the wreckage and beat them with concrete blocks, the witnesses said.

“They lifted a block and hit them with it on the face,” said Younis Mahmoud, 19.

It was unknown whether the soldiers were alive or dead when pulled from the wreckage.

Initial reports said the soldiers’ throats were cut. But another witness, teenager Bahaa Jassim, said the wounds appeared to have come from bullets.

“One of the soldiers was shot under the chin and the bullet came out of his head. I saw the hole in his helmet. The other was shot in the throat,” Jassim said.

I hate to play politics with the deaths of these soldiers, but the fact is our troops are now paying the price for the Bush Administration’s optimism :

For obvious domestic political reasons, the Bush Administration going into the war had downplayed the scale and duration of a post-war occupation mission. When then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told legislators that such a mission would require several hundred thousand U.S. troops, his assessment had been immediately dismissed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as “wildly off the mark.” Wolfowitz explained that “I am reasonably certain that (the Iraqi people) will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.” Six weeks ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was still suggesting the U.S. force in Iraq could be reduced to 30,000 by the end of the year. But the prevailing assessment in Washington appears to be shifting to the idea of a figure closer to Shinseki’s.

So here we are now, eight months since the war began, and we’re stuck in a quagmire that’s getting bloodier and bloodier every day. As the old saying goes “Hope for the best, plan for the worst”. Well, as our soldiers are discovering, conducting a war isn’t one of those things you can only do halfway.

So I’m flipping through the book All Things Oz (which once of those great Chip Kidd-meets-Taschen, collage-style art collections) when I find a section called (I swear to god) “The Legal System in Oz”. These two quotes struck me as particularly funny in light of the current political climate :

No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.
- The Lost Princess of Oz, 1917

A good many laws seem foolish to those who understand them, but no law is ever made without some purpose, and that purpose is usually to protect all the people and guard their welfare.
- The Patchwork Girl of Oz, 1913

Meanwhile back here on Earth, our great leader, while on a state visit to our biggest ally to discuss one of the biggest threats to our freedom since WW2, interrupted his plans long enough to promise that he’d do his best to make sure gay people aren’t allowed to have equal rights. Where’s a twister when you need one?

There’s quite a few great things I didn’t get a chance to post about recently that shouldn’t be missed. For starters, here’s a testimonial about what the supermarket strike is really about from a guest writer at Calpundit :

With regard to health care, I?ve heard people say over and over again that ?everybody contributes something to their health plan ? so should grocery workers.? Well, did you know that over the years grocery workers have given up pay raises in exchange for the assurance of having good health insurance? The employer’s contribution toward healthcare has been a part of their compensation. The union could have negotiated it the other way. They could have agreed to higher wages and higher employee premiums…but the workers wanted a lower paycheck in exchange for fully paid health care.

OK, so that was then and health costs have been escalating. If this was about “contributing a little to their healthcare” there would be no strike. The employer proposal that led to this strike put so little money on the table that, in addition to the premium pickup of $5 to $15 a week, workers? health benefits under their insurance plan would have to be cut 50% (which means that health care costs would be shifted onto the workers outside their insurance plan, meaning out of their own pocket). If the workers want to get the same insurance plan, it would cost them $95 a week or nearly $5,000 a year. THAT IS 25% OF THE AVERAGE WORKER’S SALARY. Is that what “everybody ” pays out of pocket on a percentage basis? Hardly….

The fact is that most of these workers ? at an average annual gross income of $20,000 ? live paycheck to paycheck and earn their healthcare. If the cost to the worker is too high, experience has shown that workers “opt out” of insurance and roll the dice by becoming uninsured.

The bottom line regarding health care is that when a worker lives paycheck to paycheck she can only get her healthcare one of two ways: earn it or get it from the taxpayer. The answer as a taxpayer is clear to me: I would rather people earn their healthcare than get it from me as a taxpayer. What about you?

The companies have proposed to pay all new hires ? and the stores have about 1/3 turnover each year, which means that there are a lot of new hires ? $3 to $4 an hour less than the current employees. What does this mean? This means that new hires will be making Wal-Mart wages, which means that anybody with kids will be eligible for food stamps and taxpayer subsidized health care…

Ans speaking of health care, Matthew Yglesias over at Tapped showed that universal health care would be cheaper than our current system :

Take a look at the OECD’s numbers for public health care expenditures as a percent of GDP and you’ll see that the American government is spending a larger portion of its economy — 6.2 percent in 2001 — on health care than are many countries offering universal coverage. The Spanish government spent just 5.2 percent of GDP on health in 2001, while the Netherlands spent 5.7, Ireland spent 4.9, Greece spent 5.2 and Austria spent 5.3 percent. New Zealand and Britain were at the same level as the United States. Those countries cover a higher percentage of their populations, and the public sector takes on a much larger share of health spending (Greece takes on 56 percent; the others all come in higher) than it does in the United States, where the government picks up just 44.4 percent of the tab.

Unfortunately, the OECD doesn’t have data on the per capita public spending in dollar terms, but by combining this data with this data, I generated a table of 2001 per capita public health spending in purchasing-power-parity-adjusted U.S. dollars (I can email the Excel file to interested parties). The results are a bit surprising — the American government spends more per capita ($2169.828) than any other country with available data except for Iceland ($2191.047) and Norway ($2496.6). More than Sweden ($1934.04), more than Canada ($1976.736), more than France ($1946.36) and way more than Britain ($1637.424) or Spain ($1142.4).

Maybe the right dreams of a country in which the government does nothing to provide health care for the very poor, the elderly, veterans, the disabled and people who show up at emergency rooms without insurance — but if you need to choose between the status quo and Sweden, socialism wins hands down purely on the basis of delivering smaller government.

On a completely unrelated note, Ampersand posted these excerpts from the Massacusetts Supreme Court’s recent gay marriage ruling :

Our laws of civil marriage do not privilege procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people above every other form of adult intimacy and every other means of creating a family. General Laws c. 207 contains no requirement that the applicants for a marriage license attest to their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus. Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. People who have never consummated their marriage, and never plan to, may be and stay married. See Franklin v. Franklin, 154 Mass. 515, 516 (1891) (”The consummation of a marriage by coition is not necessary to its validity”). People who cannot stir from their deathbed may marry. See G. L. c. 207, ? 28A. While it is certainly true that many, perhaps most, married couples have children together (assisted or unassisted), it is the exclusive and permanent commitment of the marriage partners to one another, not the begetting of children, that is the sine qua non of civil marriage.
Moreover, the Commonwealth affirmatively facilitates bringing children into a family regardless of whether the intended parent is married or unmarried, whether the child is adopted or born into a family, whether assistive technology was used to conceive the child, and whether the parent or her partner is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. If procreation were a necessary component of civil marriage, our statutes would draw a tighter circle around the permissible bounds of nonmarital child bearing and the creation of families by noncoital means. The attempt to isolate procreation as “the source of a fundamental right to marry,” post at (Cordy, J., dissenting), overlooks the integrated way in which courts have examined the complex and overlapping realms of personal autonomy, marriage, family life, and child rearing. Our jurisprudence recognizes that, in these nuanced and fundamentally private areas of life, such a narrow focus is inappropriate.

The “marriage is procreation” argument singles out the one unbridgeable difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and transforms that difference into the essence of legal marriage. Like “Amendment 2″ to the Constitution of Colorado, which effectively denied homosexual persons equality under the law and full access to the political process, the marriage restriction impermissibly “identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board.” Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996). In so doing, the State’s action confers an official stamp of approval on the destructive stereotype that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and inferior to opposite-sex relationships and are not worthy of respect.

The department’s first stated rationale, equating marriage with unassisted heterosexual procreation, shades imperceptibly into its second: that confining marriage to opposite-sex couples ensures that children are raised in the “optimal” setting. Protecting the welfare of children is a paramount State policy. Restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples, however, cannot plausibly further this policy. “The demographic changes of the past century make it difficult to speak of an average American family. The composition of families varies greatly from household to household.” Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 63 (2000). Massachusetts has responded supportively to “the changing realities of the American family,” id. at 64, and has moved vigorously to strengthen the modern family in its many variations. See, e.g., G. L. c. 209C (paternity statute); G. L. c. 119, ? 39D (grandparent visitation statute); Blixt v. Blixt, 437 Mass. 649 (2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1189 (2003) (same); E.N.O. v. L.M.M., 429 Mass. 824, cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1005 (1999) (de facto parent); Youmans v. Ramos, 429 Mass. 774, 782 (1999) (same); and Adoption of Tammy, 416 Mass. 205 (1993) (coparent adoption). Moreover, we have repudiated the common-law power of the State to provide varying levels of protection to children based on the circumstances of birth. See G. L. c. 209C (paternity statute); Powers v. Wilkinson, 399 Mass. 650, 661 (1987) (”Ours is an era in which logic and compassion have impelled the law toward unburdening children from the stigma and the disadvantages heretofore attendant upon the status of illegitimacy”). The “best interests of the child” standard does not turn on a parent’s sexual orientation or marital status. See e.g., Doe v. Doe, 16 Mass. App. Ct. 499, 503 (1983) (parent’s sexual orientation insufficient ground to deny custody of child in divorce action). See also E.N.O. v. L.M.M., supra at 829-830 (best interests of child determined by considering child’s relationship with biological and de facto same-sex parents); Silvia v. Silvia, 9 Mass. App. Ct. 339, 341 & n.3 (1980) (collecting support and custody statutes containing no gender distinction).

The department has offered no evidence that forbidding marriage to people of the same sex will increase the number of couples choosing to enter into opposite-sex marriages in order to have and raise children. There is thus no rational relationship between the marriage statute and the Commonwealth’s proffered goal of protecting the “optimal” child rearing unit. Moreover, the department readily concedes that people in same-sex couples may be “excellent” parents. These couples (including four of the plaintiff couples) have children for the reasons others do — to love them, to care for them, to nurture them. But the task of child rearing for same-sex couples is made infinitely harder by their status as outliers to the marriage laws. While establishing the parentage of children as soon as possible is crucial to the safety and welfare of children, see Culliton v. Beth Israel Deaconness Med. Ctr., 435 Mass. 285, 292 (2001), same-sex couples must undergo the sometimes lengthy and intrusive process of second-parent adoption to establish their joint parentage. While the enhanced income provided by marital benefits is an important source of security and stability for married couples and their children, those benefits are denied to families headed by same-sex couples. See, e.g., note 6, supra. While the laws of divorce provide clear and reasonably predictable guidelines for child support, child custody, and property division on dissolution of a marriage, same-sex couples who dissolve their relationships find themselves and their children in the highly unpredictable terrain of equity jurisdiction. See E.N.O. v. L.M.M., supra.

Given the wide range of public benefits reserved only for married couples, we do not credit the department’s contention that the absence of access to civil marriage amounts to little more than an inconvenience to same-sex couples and their children. Excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage will not make children of opposite-sex marriages more secure, but it does prevent children of same-sex couples from enjoying the immeasurable advantages that flow from the assurance of “a stable family structure in which children will be reared, educated, and socialized.” Post at (Cordy, J., dissenting).

No one disputes that the plaintiff couples are families, that many are parents, and that the children they are raising, like all children, need and should have the fullest opportunity to grow up in a secure, protected family unit. Similarly, no one disputes that, under the rubric of marriage, the State provides a cornucopia of substantial benefits to married parents and their children. The preferential treatment of civil marriage reflects the Legislature’s conclusion that marriage “is the foremost setting for the education and socialization of children” precisely because it “encourages parents to remain committed to each other and to their children as they grow.” Post at (Cordy, J., dissenting).

In this case, we are confronted with an entire, sizeable class of parents raising children who have absolutely no access to civil marriage and its protections because they are forbidden from procuring a marriage license. It cannot be rational under our laws, and indeed it is not permitted, to penalize children by depriving them of State benefits because the State disapproves of their parents’ sexual orientation.

…and to finish back at the supermarket strike, Calpundit pointed out this L.A. Times article about a secret pact between the grocery stores to help them take on the strikers :

A union-backed consumer lawsuit filed Thursday against the three supermarket chains in the 6-week-old strike and lockout alleges that the chains’ unusual mutual-aid pact violates California antitrust law.

The suit casts a spotlight on a key element of the labor dispute that has seldom been mentioned since the strike began Oct. 11 and that executives at the grocery stores ? Kroger Co.’s Ralphs, Albertsons Inc. and Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Pavilions ? refuse to discuss publicly in any detail.

The pact basically says that if one of the three chains reaps added business during the dispute, it will share some of that money, according to some Wall Street analysts who follow the companies closely.

Ralphs is seeing a windfall because the United Food and Commercial Workers removed its pickets there Oct. 31 to focus union efforts on the other two. And under the mutual-aid deal the chains quietly made before the strike, “Kroger is obligated to share any earnings gains with the other two retailers,” analyst Mark Husson of Merrill Lynch & Co. said in a report last week.
. . .
Under the chains’ pact, it isn’t clear exactly what would be shared ? part of Ralphs’ sales or part of its profit ? or how much. Also not known is whether payments would be made before the strike ends.

“I will acknowledge that there is an agreement, but we’re not going to say anything about it,” said Gary Rhodes, a spokesman for Cincinnati-based Kroger. “I’m not going to characterize it, nor provide any details about it.”

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims the “arrangement by which each agrees to share revenues with the others” restrains competition, keeps prices at artificially high levels and thus violates the state’s antitrust Cartwright Act.

The suit seeks to have the arrangement nullified and asks for unspecified damages. It was filed on behalf of three Los Angeles County residents. Their attorney, Joe Whatley, was traveling and unavailable for comment.

It looks like Gen. Tommy Franks has some pretty dire preditions for the future of our democracy (link via Pandagon) :

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that ?the worst thing that could happen? is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, ?… the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we?ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.?

Franks then offered ?in a practical sense? what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

?It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world ? it may be in the United States of America ? that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.?

Franks didn?t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks? scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

Okay….before you let the thought of the U.S. turning into a military dictatorship [insert sarcastic comment here] keep you up an night, this quote later in the article will make you take his judgment with a grain of salt :

?As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he?s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he?s very, very bright. And I suspect that he?ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we?ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.?

Y’know, I remember seeing Tommy Franks during the war giving a ton of press conferences, and I never thought he’d turn out to be this big an ass kisser.

Seriously Tommy, you really ought to try pulling your nose out of the boss’s ass every once in a while….

It’s somewhat appropriate that my birthday coincides with “The Great American Smoke-Out” since I have always hated smoking. There are a variety of reasons to quit listed on the Smoke-Out’s “Why Quit?” page…

Ex-smokers also enjoy a higher quality of life with fewer illnesses from cold and flu viruses, better self-reported health status, and reduced rates of bronchitis and pneumonia.
. . .
The prospect of better health is a major reason for quitting, but there are others as well. Smoking is expensive. The economic costs of smoking are estimated to be about $3,391 per smoker per year. Do you really want to continue burning up your money with nothing to show for it except possible health problems?
. . .
Smoking not only harms your health but the health of those around you. Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (also called ETS, passive smoking or second hand smoke) includes exhaled smoke as well as smoke from burning cigarettes. Studies have shown that environmental tobacco smoke can cause lung cancer in healthy nonsmokers. It is also associated with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and low-birth weight infants. Smoking by mothers is linked to a higher risk of their babies developing asthma in childhood, especially if the mother smokes while pregnant. Babies and children raised in a household where there is smoking have more ear infections, colds, bronchitis, and other respiratory problems than children from nonsmoking families. Environmental smoke can also cause eye irritation, headaches, nausea, and dizziness.

…but oddly enough, they fail to list the biggest reason I can think of why people shouldn’t smoke : Tobacco companies are evil.

And I don’t use the word “evil” lightly, either. Not in that sense that many people on the left throw the word around when descibing any megacorporation that screws people over to increase their profits. I mean evil in the sense that tobacco companies are murderers who are every bit as deserving of capital punishment as anyone on death row.

Although this isn’t really new information, this excerpt from a Justice Department report on tobacco companies shows that tobacco companies have a lot more in common with the mob than most legitimate businesses :

At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time ? Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and American ? met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton and agreed to jointly conduct a long term public relations campaign to counter the growing evidence linking smoking as a cause of serious diseases. The meeting spawned an association-in-fact enterprise to execute a fraudulent scheme in furtherance of their overriding common objective ? to preserve and enhance the tobacco industry?s profits by maximizing the numbers of smokers and number of cigarettes smoked and to avoid adverse liability judgments. The fraudulent scheme would continue for the next five decades.

As a result of the Plaza Hotel meetings, the companies launched their long term public relations campaign by issuing the ?Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers,? a full page announcement published in 448 newspapers across the United States. The Frank Statement included two representations that would lie at the heart of Defendants’ fraudulent scheme ? first, that there was insufficient scientific and medical evidence that smoking was a cause of disease; and second, that the industry would jointly sponsor and disclose the results of ?independent? research designed to uncover the health effects of smoking through the new industry-funded Tobacco Industry Research Committee (?TIRC?), later renamed the Council for Tobacco Research (?CTR?). At the same time that Defendants announced in their 1954 “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” that “we accept an interest in people?s health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business,” it established a sophisticated public relations apparatus in the form of TIRC ? based on the “cover” of conducting research ? to deny the harms of smoking and to reassure the public. Once the essential strategy of generating controversy surrounding the scientific findings linking smoking to disease was organized and implemented in 1953-54, the industry’s approach was unwavering for five decades.
. . .
The public statements issued through organizations like TIRC/CTR, the Tobacco Institute, CIAR, and by Cigarette Company Defendants themselves, were flatly inconsistent with Defendants’ actual knowledge about the link between smoking and disease. At the same time that Defendants assured the public through their ?Frank Statement? that ?there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes [of cancer],? internally they documented a large number of known carcinogens in their products and replicated mainstream scientific research showing the health effects of smoking. Defendants? internal documents acknowledge that their public denial that smoking cigarettes causes disease both was contrary to the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus ? established through extensive epidemiological and other scientific investigation by the early 1950s ? and was intended to convince smokers and potential smokers that there remained genuine scientific ?controversy? about whether smoking caused disease.
. . .
Just as Defendants long denied, contrary to fact, that smoking does not cause disease, Defendants also made numerous false and misleading statements denying that smoking is addictive over the past several decades. Indeed, no later than 1988, there was an overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking was a drug-driven behavior of dependence, and that nicotine was the drug delivered in cigarette smoke responsible for creating and sustaining addiction. Relying on long discarded and discredited definitions of addiction, Defendants publicly attacked the scientific and medical evidence of addiction when, in fact, overwhelming documentary evidence demonstrates that Defendants openly recognized, from at least the early 1960s, that nicotine was responsible for the pharmacological effects that keep people smoking. Indeed, researchers for Cigarette Company Defendants saw themselves as being in the ?nicotine business? and conceived a pack of cigarettes as a ?day?s supply of nicotine.? As with Defendants? statements designed to undermine the scientific evidence of smoking?s harms, the statements denying addiction were knowingly false and misleading when made, and intended to avoid product regulation, to bolster the industry?s defenses in smoking and health litigation, and to avoid increasing consumers’ concerns about smoking.

Defendants? awareness of the critical importance of nicotine to the cigarette smoker, and thus to the continued profits of the industry, were such that the Defendants dedicated extraordinary resources studying nicotine and its effects on the smoker. The evidence shows that Defendants have long had the ability to modify and manipulate the amount of nicotine that their products could deliver (including removing all nicotine), and have studied extensively how every characteristic of every component of cigarettes ? including the tobacco blend, the paper, the filter, and the manufacturing process ? impacts nicotine delivery. Indeed, Cigarette Company Defendants’ internal documents indicate that, in light of Cigarette Company Defendants? recognition that ?no one has ever become a cigarette smoker by smoking cigarettes without nicotine,? Cigarette Company Defendants have designed their cigarettes with a central overriding objective ? to ensure that the smoker could obtain enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction. Accordingly, Defendants? numerous public statements that they do not and have not manipulated the delivery of nicotine to the smoker are false.
. . .
Defendants’ fraudulent scheme also has influenced how the Cigarette Company Defendants have designed their cigarettes. From the early 1960s, Defendants’ cigarette design and research efforts were predicated on the understanding that the introduction of a cigarette that was actually less hazardous to its users would constitute an admission that all other cigarettes brands were more harmful. Accordingly, Defendants delayed and avoided development of potentially safer products, chose not to incorporate design features that they believed were likely to reduce the delivery of harmful constituents in cigarette smoke, and failed to meaningfully test their cigarettes, including “low tar/low nicotine” brands, that they developed or actually sold in order to assess whether different design modifications actually reduced the harms caused by smoking. As a result, Defendants have collectively, in the past five decades, introduced and sold a paltry number of innovative products for which the companies failed, prior to their introduction, to pursue the evidence necessary to ascertain whether they present any actual likely harm reduction to humans.

Efforts to stifle innovation and enforce the understanding that less hazardous products should not be developed were aggressive. In one instance, after Defendant Liggett spent twelve years and $15 million developing a cigarette ? the XA ? that its research showed to be significantly less carcinogenic than its conventional cigarettes, it killed the entire project before marketing the cigarette to consumers after Defendant Brown & Williamson threatened Liggett’s “very existence” if it marketed the cigarette. Brown & Williamson also threatened to freeze Liggett out of joint defense agreements and exclude Liggett from the Tobacco Institute. Delivered through Brown & Williamson’s representative on the Tobacco Institute’s Committee of Counsel, the threat was based on Brown & Williamson’s fear that selling XA would be an admission against the interest of all Cigarette Company Defendants.

But I think the ultimate responisbility goes to our dickless government officials that pander to tobacco growers and accept millions of dollars in bribes from the cigarette companies. The very fact that tobacco is “regulated” by a “Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms” is proof enough that they have no real interest in dealing with this problem. At the very least, tobacco should be regulated by the FDA. Of course, they might have a problem with that whole deliberately addictive product that causes cancer thing.

Ohhh….I get it! This is like that other statue in Iraq!

C’mon guys. Toppling a Bush statue is really hackneyed and boring. Why resort to hyperbolic and empty gestures when you’ve got the facts on your side?

Goddamn, can the Bush Administration do anything right?

The shortage of Arabic translators in Iraq (news - web sites) has made it harder for U.S. soldiers to protect themselves, jeopardized interrogations of suspected al-Qaida terrorists in U.S. custody in Cuba and left almost no one to defend American policy on Arab television stations.

Despite an aggressive effort to recruit Arabic speakers in the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government still suffers from a shortage that is hampering military, diplomatic and intelligence operations in the Middle East.

Solutions seem hard to come by. Arabic and other languages of the Middle East are very different from English. It can take non-native speakers several years to learn and speak it comfortably.
. . .
The government didn’t begin aggressively recruiting Arabic speakers until after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, carried out by Arab extremists from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Congress criticized U.S. terrorism-fighting agencies for missing the growing threat of an attack. Many problems stemmed from agencies not sharing information, but the shortage of Arabic linguists may also have played a role.

The FBI has acknowledged it needs more experienced translators of all languages but especially Middle Eastern. CIA officials say they need native Arabic speakers familiar with foreign cultures to blend in overseas. The armed forces also need Arabic speakers who understand military jargon and are in good enough shape to keep up with troops.

American troops on duty in Iraq often speak little if any Arabic. They must shout in English or gesture their way through dangerous confrontations.

Of course, stories like this from almost exactly a year ago show exactly how low a priority hiring Arabic translators really is :

Nine soldiers being trained as translators at a military-run language school have been discharged for being gay despite a shortage of linguists for the US war against terror, officials and rights activists said Friday.
The nine were discharged from the army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, California over the course of this year, said Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the army’s Training and Doctrine Command.

They included six who were being trained as Arabic speakers, two in Korean and another in Chinese, he said. “All the servicemembers had stellar service records and wanted to continue doing the important jobs they held, but they were fired because of their sexual orientation,” said Steve Ralls of the Servicemen’s Legal Defense Network.

“This is a very vivid illustration of how ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and anti-gay discrimination harms the national security of the United States and the war on terrorism,” he said.

Hey Democrats, next year when Bush keeps bringing up gay marriage and tries to make you look “anti-family” or something, don’t forget to bring this up. If you need a little quip to throw in at debates and campaign speeches, try this one :

George Bush hates gay people more than he hates terrorists!

That’ll show all the undecided voters what an asshole Bush really is.

In anticipation of his trip to Britain, Bush made a series of demands. Among the most galling, was his request that the army of snipers that follow him be given a “license to kill” (link via TalkLeft) :

Home Secretary David Blunkett has refused to grant diplomatic immunity to armed American special agents and snipers travelling to Britain as part of President Bush’s entourage this week.

In the case of the accidental shooting of a protester, the Americans in Bush’s protection squad will face justice in a British court as would any other visitor, the Home Office has confirmed.

The issue of immunity is one of a series of extraordinary US demands turned down by Ministers and Downing Street during preparations for the Bush visit.

These included the closure of the Tube network, the use of US air force planes and helicopters and the shipping in of battlefield weaponry to use against rioters.
. . .
The Americans had also wanted to travel with a piece of military hardware called a ‘mini-gun’, which usually forms part of the mobile armoury in the presidential cavalcade. It is fired from a tank and can kill dozens of people. One manufacturer’s description reads: ‘Due to the small calibre of the round, the mini-gun can be used practically anywhere. This is especially helpful during peacekeeping deployments.’

Every once in a while it really hits me hard. This guy, who wants a free pass to murder protesters, is the President of the United States. Thinking about this stuff too long is enough to keep you up at night…

Hey there Mr. “Peaked with Thriller“,

It looks like you’ve gotten yourself into a little trouble again. Since it’s a criminal (instead of civil) investigation, I doubt you’ll be able to buy your way out of this one. I know being rich and famous is like getting a “Get Out of Jail Free” card (just ask Rush and O.J.), but your fame can’t save you forever. For future reference, if you want to get away with being a serial sexual predator, you should either run for governor or become a priest.

The headline in today’s New York Times about yesterday’s awesome Massachusetts Supreme Court Ruling on gay marriage says that it “Creates a Thorny Issue for 2004 Race” :

The decision galvanized conservatives. Led by Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, denouncing what he called a “runaway judiciary,” they vowed to seek a constitutional amendment prohibiting marriage between gays. “This is not going to stop here ? this is going to be in the forefront for a long time to come,” said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition.

For Democrats, such declarations raise the unwelcome prospect that next year’s presidential contest will be fought, at least in part, on the kind of cultural issues that have repeatedly put them at a disadvantage over the last 20 years. And it seems certain to add to the burden they are already carrying as they contemplate competing with President Bush in the once solidly senate South, aides to several Democrats said.

Most of the senate presidential candidates went to great lengths on Tuesday to emphasize that they opposed gay marriage, even as they restated their support for some forms of legal rights for same-sex couples. But the candidates also voiced strong opposition to any constitutional amendment barring gay marriage; supporting it would be nothing short of suicide in a senate primary. But that stance provides what even Democrats said would be a clean target for Republicans to hammer next year.

As it is, the senate candidates are clearly identified with supporting at least some form of legal protections for gays. Howard Dean signed a state bill authorizing civil unions while he was governor of Vermont, while Senator John Kerry, is from the state that produced the decision. And the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York frequently says that he would proudly perform a same-sex marriage ceremony.

“This is going to be an issue next year because Bush wants to make it an issue,” said a senior aide to a senate candidate who spoke only on condition that his candidate not be identified. “I have a feeling this is going to come up again and again.”

Well I say (to quote a spoon-fed dickhead) “Bring it On”.

This isn’t going to be a “thorny” issue, it’s going to be a wedge issue. Specifically, it’s going to be the issue that shows the real differences between Republicans and Democrats. In this battle, we already know which side Bush will be on :

Fallout from the historic ruling is certain to affect the contest for the presidency — where social conservatives have made support for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage a litmus test for Republicans — and trigger legal battles that ultimately will be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Bush quickly issued a statement from London signaling that he would lead the fight for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a step he had hesitated to take until now.

“Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman,” Bush said. “Today’s decision … violates this important principle. I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.”

The Bush campaign will be throwing the gay marriage issue around and it’ll be the perfect opportunity to highlight the Republican party as the party of intolerance.

The Democrats have already staked out a solid middle ground on the issue that will be much more palatable to undecided voters. I’ve already discussed the civil unions vs. gay marriage issue at length, but when you combine that with other gay-friendly stances such as the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”, then there’s no way this could backfire on the Democrats. The key here is that the Democrats haven’t framed the issue as a gay/straight battle, but rather a simple battle of civil rights.

The big mistake that the Republican leaders are making here is that they think the rest of America is as homophobic as they are. To be sure, there are a lot of homophobic people out there, but we didn’t have a chance at winning their votes anyways. The undecided, mainstream voters however are another story completely. While they may not be “ready” to accept the concept of gay marriage, most people don’t automatically equate “gay” with “immoral”, which ultimately is the key to this Republican strategy.