Why Does E-Mail Hate America?

The title for this posting was taken from a comment in this entry by Kevin Drum in the Washington Monthly blog.

Kevin brings to the surface of the pond a couple of e-mails between Jack Abramoff and friends at the White House. Abramoff had apparently sent the e-mail to the pager of Susan Ralston an old employee of his now working for Karl Rove. He thought it would stay private to her.

Susan forwarded Jack's e-mail to Ruben (Intergovernmental Affairs), he bounced it to Jen Farley (who got tickets to see Yanni from Abramoff), she read it to Kevin Ring, who e-mailed Jack a reply. Kevin mentioned in his e-mail to Jack that Jen had said that it was probably not a good idea for Jack to "put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."

Jack responded with a curse and a statement that he had sent the message to Susan's pager.

The fact that Kevin Ring had just e-mailed about not e-mailing slid right by them both.

Anyway, there are great comments. Such as...

"If only he'd written "ixnay on the iting-wray," Ambramoff would be a free man today.

Why does email hate America?"

and

"He who lives by the Blackberry - dies by the Blackberry".

Pooposophy

If you throw poop, make sure that it hangs together.

If you find yourself standing on a pile of poop, make sure it isn't taller than your head. And don't expect to stand there forever.

Rain happens.

The Do-Nothing K-Street Congress

Republicans, with a majority in Congress, are blaming Democrats for Congress' inability to pass any significant legislation this year. They are calling their own rule a "Do-Nothing Congress".

Risky. The ice is thin over there.

A more likely cause for our "Do-Nothing" Republican Congress is the fact that paying money for favors has become a named institution, "K-Street". In Washington, K Street is lined with lobbyist's offices, and the lobbyists own Congress as much as anybody does.

This lets bought thought posture as idealogy and triumph over rational discussion. Not only does very little get done, but what does get done doesn't work, thanks to the flies in the honey.

The K-Street Congress. Term limits may be the only cure for this kind of corruption.

Anthrax In The News

Time to stock up on Cipro and mail in your ballot. Anthrax is once again making its way into the headlines, with more and more stories appearing as election day approaches.

First there was a story to the effect that after five years, our emergency medicine supplies are still unready for an anthrax attach.

Then there was a story about how, after five years, the FBI has determined that the anthrax powder used in the post-9/11 attacks was not professionally made.

Three days ago, someone sent a white powder in the mail to newscaster Keith Olbermann - the one who's been most dramatically asking the government to get real - and Rupert Murdoch's New York Post broke a self-imposed FBI silence to report the story (they made it into a funny, but - they broke the silence).

One wonders how many other self-imposed FBI silences there are. It's awfully quiet.

Consider how the news that our forces in Iraq are being attacked a hundred times a day, once every fifteen minutes, has been kept from us.

Systems break down, rain happens. Get Cipro. Vote now.

When Christians Torture You

When Christians torture you, tell them they are forgiven. Say "I forgive you." Say "I pray that God forgives you." Say "Amen."

Pray to God in their faces to forgive them. Pray to their ancestors to forgive them, pray that their children will forgive them. Christ forgave, you can, too. Pray in English.

Praying for them puts you above them. They are not praying for you!

The harder they hit you, pray the harder inwardly for their salvation. Put their own energy into their return to God and Godliness. Pray that God find his way to them.

Forgive them as they hurt you, and you give them back their souls.

God will love you for it.

How Does The Torturer Prove Innocence?

How does a torturer determine who is innocent?

By torturing detainees until he's sure they have nothing to give?

How much torture does it take to prove that someone has nothing to give?

Do the innocent deserve this?

The Efficiencies Of Minimal War

Terrorists are minimalists. With very little material, they blow up pricey military vehicles and often the people within them.

Imagine what Halliburton would do with the concept of a roadside bomb, given all the tools of modern technology. It would cost ten million dollars. Terrorists make them for under $200. They make many more.

The fewer the brushes, the easier it is to paint. The fewer the cooks, the better the stew. The simpler the technology, the more universal its application.

That which is simplest may require no technology at all.

Self-Humiliation

The White House tells us that it has to be told what humiliating treatment is. It doesn't know what humiliating treatment is.

How humiliating.

Contradicting himself ever so slightly, Stephen Hadley tries to exude confidence as he pleads ignorance,

""I'm saying that nobody knows what humiliating treatment is. What does it mean?" Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."

On CBS's "Face the Nation," he said: "This is not about torture. This is about a program that is going to be professionally run by people who have been highly trained.""

Highly trained? In humiliation? Ooh my.

Of course, what's really happening is that Bush is trying to buy amnesty for past misdeeds in the torture arena.

Golden Rule, anyone?

Torture Doesn't Work

The only thing that torture accomplishes is to keep people in fear.

My mom knew that. Fear of a spanking led each of her sons to publicly behave as she wished, but also to develop his own personal, private underground. She made us radicals.

I remember sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to make wine. A cup of grape jam, a scoop of sugar, a touch of yeast and some water in a mason jar that got shaken and tucked away in a corner of the cellar. My own private brewery at age eleven.

Living in fear, we gave her what she wanted. But she was never quite sure of where we were at. She lived in a kind of fear, herself - a fear that the reality she had asked from us was false and was nothing more than a reflection of her own nature.

The torturer lives in doubt. How can you tell when a guy has given all he's got? Only by torturing everybody until either they talk or until there is nothing more that can be done to them.

The people who have nothing to give must be tortured to the max to prove it.

Some argue that torture is worthwhile because it scares people. But if you use fear to manage populations, do you really win the hearts and the minds of people? Or will you be like my mother with her sons, each potential insurgent plotting an independent life of freedom?


People who interrogate detainees say that torture doesn't work.

Ask retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock or Army Col. Stuart Herrington. They interrogated prisoners. They don't think it works.

Ask Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine.

Ask Rear Admiral (ret.) John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General for the Navy, and in the same link,

- Bob Baer, former CIA official,
- Lawrence Korb, former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration,
- Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, and
- Dan Coleman, retired FBI agent, all of whom have perspective from experience.

Read in the link above, for heaven's sake, the Army's own Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1,

"Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."

FBI policy is that torture is ineffective. From an FBI e-mail in the same link above:

" along with the FBI advised that the LEA [Law Enforcement Agencies] at GTMO were not in the practice of the using and were of the opinion results obtained from these interrogations were suspect at best. BAU explained to DoD, FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques."

Conservative John Derbyshire, writing in the National Review Online, says

"Like Alter, I'll go along with some clever manipulation of a suspect's hopes and fears: But rubber truncheons? Electrodes? Pliers? Razor blades? Blocks of ice? Not in my name, no. Am I an absolutist on this? Yes, I am."

Torturing others sets you up to be told what you want to hear.

Being told what you want to hear - and being the president - is what has put this country where it is today.

Do The Results Of Torture Pass The Rules Of Evidence?

Torture produces uncertain results. While it may be strategically useful, it is not enough to convict in court. Torture a man and he will turn in his neighbor. It is an injustice.

Yet wartime arrestees deserve the best justice our system can deliver.

One third of detainees turn out to be innocent. Until their fate is decided, all must be presumed innocent and must be treated as if they are already in the innocent third.

Judges decide. Punishment before trial is not allowed in the American system of justice. Endless detention before trial is not allowed in the American system of justice. For detention of any length, there must be a judicial process.

If investigation determines that a prisoner should be punished, will the court reject evidence obtained under torture? If the prisoner has been tortured, does that pollute the evidence against him?

Do results of the prisoner's own torture enter into evidence against him?

What court would allow that?

My 9 / 11

As I was on my way to work a young man got on the elevator and said, "Isn't it sad? The plane flying into the World Trade Center?"

"Oh, really?" I asked. I mentioned that a plane had flown a long time ago into the Empire State Building and did my best to trivialize his concerns. I thought it must have been a Cessna.

On my way downtown, there was a lot of chatter on the subway. At the Port Authority Terminal, where I usually caught a bus under the Hudson to my worksite in Hoboken, more and more info bits and chatter flew around and a building hysteria appeared.

I found my bus, got on it, we started out the door onto the ramp leading to the Lincoln Tunnel, and we sat. A lady on the bus was explaining how she had heard that a plane had hit the Pentagon and that there were other planes. I'm not sure if I knew that the second plane had hit the towers by then - it was beginning to be all a blur. I was beginning to feel really glad that we had not gone into the tunnel and gotten stuck under the river.

I remember getting off the New Jersey Transit bus and taking a free crosstown bus to the west side ferry port, which has a boat to Hoboken. The boat had been stopped.

Manhattan had been cut off. The perimeters had been secured.

The free bus took me back downtown and let me off. I walked north up 8th Avenue among crowds of people, some very tired, many talking. The enormity of what had happened really began to sink in.

At 59th Street, 8th Avenue becomes the boundary of Central Park, and I walked by the park for a few blocks. Hearing a couple joyfully discover a friend from their floor in the WTC and then discuss together how the building had fallen, I wandered into the park.

There, there was greenery and light, yellow light, gentle light, and I could walk along paths under trees as I continued north.

After 30 blocks more or so, I reached my apartment building. My friend was still home - he had been wakened by a call from his beloved former stepmother, who told him to turn on the TV. Thank heavens he was ok. She, too.

We watched the rest of it on TV.

It took a couple of days before I could cross the river again. Guards were on the boats and buses, eyeing suspiciously the polyglot passengers.

The smoke from the fire continued for weeks. Winds from the west usually sent it over Brooklyn. It visited my neighborhood once or twice, so I have breathed that smell. Air that contained the atoms of those who had gone.

I could see the plume from the commons area of my workplace. A lady I worked with told me that she had been looking directly at the second building when it came down.

One of my clients at the site worked lunch hours at a charity with a friend who had died. Something about helping kids learn to read. She grieved, we grieved for her.

We all grieved. There was a pile of candles and flower there in the little park by the pier at Lincoln Harbor, mementos and farewells taped to the railing. I have video somewhere of the smoke plume flowing in the distance, the farewells in the foreground.

New Yorkers were not enraged. New Yorkers were saddened and grieved. They were also somewhat fearful.

For six months, we looked into each other's eyes. To see who was there. And so very often, it was to see if someone needed help, needed a listen, needed a hug.

After six months normalcy returned, and New Yorkers once again avoided each other's eyes.

The bagpipes' wail of Amazing Grace filled the large hall of the Port Authority Terminal for almost a year, if I remember correctly. It seemed that way, anyway.

The Saturday before the Tuesday that was 9/11, my friend and I had walked through the lobby of the WTC and into the Atrium, the large glassed-in area that contains giant palms and a great marble staircase many feet wide. We bought sandwiches and drinks at a take-out place. Onward, out through the Atrium to the docks and south along the sailboats and piers we walked, to a chessboard table with benches where we ate our lunch.

My friend was raised in view of the towers. Every morning when he walked out the front door of his building there they were, off to the left. Now they are missing.

But he's still around.

Too Many Lies

Too many lies, you've told too many lies.

I can see in your eyes you know I don't believe you,

Saying the words, the special precious words,

You try to win my heart again, I grieve you.


Lost in the halls of mirrors and deceit,

You can't find the door to the hereafter,

It's blocked behind walls of lies - your own defeat,

Stares in your face like a disaster.


Brave hearts will come and smile down the foe,

And happy voices plan a new cotillion,

The dancers will come to dance a new drum,

And dancers will join by the billions,

And dance upon the plans of your master.

Territoriterrorism And Terra-territoriterrorism

The path leads on.

What can you call it when a wave of settlers from another culture kills your people, enslaves you, and continually shoves you off your hunting lands and turns them into farmlands, but does not let you take their cows?

Territoriterrorism.

What, then, can one call it when a sect in a religion declares itself out to violently remake the whole world in its own image?

Terra-territoriterrorism.

How a violent sect can create a peaceful world by re-making it in its own image parallels the question of how the heck do you bomb a democracy into existence.

Five Years After 9/11The Borders Are A Sieve

Five years after 9/11 the borders are a sieve. The home guard is exhausted, abroad on a war of adventure. We tempt further disaster by threatening to bomb Iran.

Who says he's in charge of keeping us secure?

He hasn't even secured the perimeter.

Totaliterrorism and Totaliterrimperialism

Totalitarian terrorism.

From George Soros' new page:

"Terrorism – It’s Little Known Causes & Effects

We have killed more innocent civilians in Iraq than the terrorists killed on 9/11. In addition to killing, we have also humiliated and tortured many Iraqis. By creating innocent victims, we have advanced the terrorists’ cause. They can now depict us as the terrorists and enlist the support of their countrymen, just as President Bush has enlisted ours. We find this difficult to understand because we cannot envision ourselves as terrorists. Yet, that is exactly how we appear to many Iraqis.

The Bush administration and its imitators—many foreign governments have been eager to follow its lead—insist that a state cannot commit acts of terror. That contention must be challenged."

Read more...

"Totalitarian" government was defined by Hannah Arendt in 1951 as government by fear. She pointed to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as examples. Systems with one-party rule. Iraq under the Baathists - Saddam's Iraq - might be considered a more recent example, as might any other one-party rule in the world today.

It's a government thing, totalitarianism is.


This doesn't prevent Mr. Bush from calling the Islamist terrorists "totalitarian", even though they have no government as such, but are pretty much "ad hoc" groups that form and last for a moment or two around a charismatic leader. He really should use the word "authoritarian". They are not governments.


When a government does the kinds of things terrorists do - blow up bridges in neighboring countries to punish civilians for electing the wrong government, for example - that is totalitarian terrorism. Totaliterrorism. They are attempting to rule their neighbors by fear.

When a country tries to rule the world through totaliterrorism, what can that be called?

When everyone who wants to end a war is against the war and is an enemy, and every country that does not support the war becomes an enemy country?

Totaliterrimperialism.

"Scarediness" - A Word For Our Times

Scarediness. I saw it in a comment on the Kos blog:

"It's been my observation that whenever the FBI or DOJ leaks "incriminating" video and pics of some terrorist investigation--It means that their factual case is weak as baby pee.

It can also mean they're trying to keep up the level of "scarediness" in all the boobs before the coming election."

To get an alligator to release you, gouge its eye socket with your thumb.

Now that you know this, are you less afraid?

Need We Be Stalinist?

Do we have to become Stalinist in order to fight Islamo-fascism?

Do we really need gulags and kangaroo courts and walls with ears?

Butter Days Ahead

Some years the money goes for guns. Some it goes for butter.

Seeing as how we have emptied our national wallet on guns the last several years, it seems a pretty good guess that there's butter days ahead.

Who knows but what it may accomplish more than the guns did.

Can They Hold An Election There Today?

Early in the war we heard that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam.

We don't hear that any more.


We helped them through their first Western-style election. We brought them democracy.

They couldn't hold an election there today.


Bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world.

Yesterday.


Amazing how it all fades away.