Work Your Brain — 11/1/06

Tales of the Detainee Kind

• The Case Of Bilal Hussein — Justin Gardner @ Donklephant reports on Bilal Hussein, an AP war photographer, accused by the U.S. military of helping some insurgents kidnap a couple journalists. Only those journalists have been rescued and they say Hussein is a hero. The AP wants to know why he’s been detained since April with no charges having been filed against him while right-wing bloggers call for his head.
  

  Six months is more than enough time to get some facts together and make a case against Hussein. The military hasn’t done that, and they should…or else they should release Hussein without charge.

  As Gardner points out, Hussein isn’t the first journalist to be treated as such.

  More

  Tags: detainees, Bilal Hussein, Abdul Rahim Al Ginco, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, Insurrection Act, FEMA, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, liberals, rightwingers, patriotism, pragmatism, American soldiers, Republicans, Democrats, GOP, Georgia, Genital Cutting, abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, TSA, airport security, bomb-making materials, Christopher Soghoian, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, fake boarding passes, Ed Markey, FBI, Police State

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Work Your Brain — Terrorism Edition

• The 9/11 Timeline — To mark the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ThinkProgress has created a comprehensive timeline documenting the key events since September 11, 2001. Their timeline charts five threads:
  • The steady increase in international terrorism and the growth of al Qaeda
  • The campaign to block and obstruct the work of the 9/11 Commission, and the failure to carry out the commission’s recommendations
  • The failure to stablize and rebuild Afghanistan
  • The downgrading of the hunt for Osama bin Laden
  • The steady decline of America’s image abroad
• ABC’s ‘Path’ Not Taken — Ruth Marcus @ TheWashingtonPost.com writes a scathing review of ABC’s “Path to 9/11″ mini-series that was fraught with inaccuracies and blantant flaws.
  

  The docudrama is an inherently flawed form, one that invites embroidery. The irony of “The Path to 9/11″ is that this dramatic license was so unnecessary, given the richly detailed narrative in a document available to the docudrama’screators. It was called “The 9/11 Commission Report.”

  Hat tip: John in DC @ AmericaBlog

• More

  Tags: terrorism, ABC, Keith Olbermann, George W. Bush, 9/11, Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Memorial, World Trade Center, Mark Juergensmeyer, al-Qaeda, 9/11 Commission, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Condi Rice, George Tenet, Saddam Hussein, al-Zarqawi

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9/11: Around The Blogosphere

Remembering the Day

• For Thou Art With Us — Sarah Bunting @ TomatoNation.com was there.
  

  We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. “Ohhh, man,” we both say, and “Jeeeesus Christ,” and “This is not good. This is not good at all. This is fuckin’ bad.” So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there’s nothing else we can say about what we’ve got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. “This isn’t the kind of history I want to be present at,” I say, lamely, to Bob. “Me neither,” he says.

  More

  Tags: 9/11, World Trade Center, terrorism, New York, American flag, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Matt Lauer, Rudy Giuliani, ABC, tragedy, patriotism, Ground Zero, We Will Never Forget, al-Qaeda, CIA, Pakistan, Taliban, Joint Special Operations Command, NSA, National Counterterrorism Center, Tora Bora, al-Zawahiri, Paul Krugman, NATO, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Pentagon, healthcare, Iraq

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Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Recommended Reading - 08/25/06

• ‘Liquid Bombers’ - The Impossible Bomb — A lot of websites have been linking to this explanation as to why the most recent terror plot from the UK could not have worked and why all of the fearmongering and passenger harrassment by the UK and American governments in the airports is unnecessary. I say, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.
• Homeland insecurity 2.0 — Pam @ Pam’s House Blend wrote one of the best reports of what travelling immediately after the latest terrorist plot scare was like that I’ve read.
  

  Again, the PA came on, this time it was for another flight — on Continental — that was boarding. This announcer, I’m not kidding you, went on for about 2-3 minutes warning people about taking on liquids and gels (”liquid” chapstick is a no-no, solid is OK), no coffee or soda will make it on board. Random checks at the gate would be performed. If they find contraband on you, you will be asked to give it up. If you don’t give it up, you’ll not be able to board, he boomed, and you would have to go on a later flight. “Not later today,” he warned, “maybe not even this week…maybe not for a couple of weeks.” OK, at this point, people are laughing, including the two of us. This is ludicrous.

  Our flight is finally called and we board. The plane is about to close up and a couple of late arrivals get on. This time we have a woman taking her sweet time, coming down the aisle with a steaming hot cup of Cinnabon coffee, which she proceeds to balance on an armrest as she casually loads her bag in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle as a couple of people wait behind her.

  Clearly, my friends, US Airways has let on the Cinnabomber.

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Tags: liquid bombers, airport security, Continental, U.S. Airways, crime rate, terrorism, morning-after pill, women soldiers, American soldiers, pharmacists, JonBenet Ramsey, Abeer al-Janabi, Jessica Lynch, Jim Bensman, Army Corps of Engineers, FBI, Duarris Perez, Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, Cuba, Homeland Security, Bosnia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hurricane Katrina, pink food coloring, food industry

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Day 1,230

Today is Day 20 of the “Crisis in the Middle East”.

Do you know how many days it’s been since the U.S. invaded Iraq?

According to Frank Rich in yesterday’s New York Times, yesterday was Day 1,229, making today a nice even 1,230.

According to CNN, “there have been 2,802 coalition deaths, 2,576 Americans, two Australians, 114 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, three Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 31 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, two Romanians, two Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of July 31, 2006.”  1,000 plus Iraqis per month have lost their lives in Baghdad alone the last few months.

However, according to Frank Rich:

On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report. On Thursday, Brian Williams of NBC read aloud a “shame on you” e-mail complaint from the parents of two military sons anguished that his broadcast had so little news about the war.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined. When Nouri al-Maliki, the latest Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington last week to address Congress, he too got short TV shrift — a mere five sentences about the speech on ABC’s “World News.” The networks know a rerun when they see it. Only 22 months earlier, one of Mr. Maliki’s short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi, had come to town during the 2004 campaign to give a similarly empty Congressional address laced with White House-scripted talking points about the war’s progress. Propaganda stunts, unlike “Law & Order” episodes, don’t hold up on a second viewing.

The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn’t happenstance. It’s a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. “It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror,” said Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on July 18. “I mean, it’s summertime.” Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.

So much for supporting our troops, eh?  What happened to reporting all of that good news that was supposed to be happening in Iraq?

I’m upset about Israel and Lebanon too.  Heck, I’m outraged; however, remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are our wars and our messes and our soldiers are dying over there.  Shame on our media for a lack of patriotic priority.

Hat tip AmericaBlog.

Tags: Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Baghdad, American soldiers, New York Times, ABC, Fox News, NBC, Nouri al-Maliki, Frank Rich

The Returning American Soldier And PTSD

As some of you know, my cousin served in Operation Desert Storm, something I am extremely proud of, despite the fact that I am a self-proclaimed pacifist. He committed suicide several years later and though I’ve written that mental illness runs in my family, I do think that he was never quite right after returning from the Middle East. I don’t think he ever got the care he needed after coming home and maybe if he had, he’d still be at family “reunions” annoying the heck out of me.
It is a very brave thing our soldiers do for those of us who don’t or can’t go to war. Certainly it would destroy some of us. Certainly it destroys some of those who do go. Certainly no one who faces that kind of violence and danger and destruction cannot return unchanged or untouched in some way.

According to VA statistics, 505,366 troops from Iraq and Afghanistan have left the military as of February. Of that number, 144,424, 29 percent, have sought VA health care, and 20,638, more than 14 percent of those, have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD include hyper-vigilance, irritability, outbursts of anger, sleeplessness and fatigue, and can be accompanied by alcoholism, depression, anxiety and drug abuse.

Meagher said an alarming rate of violent incidents, suicide, homelessness and unemployment among recent veterans has been documented, but the issue has not garnered much national attention.

“We simply have not been the beneficiaries of that type of substantial coverage by the media these past three years,” she said. “So, how exactly would the public be expected to be prepared for what’s to come — in fact, what is already here?”[“Vet’s Mental Health Needs Intensify”(FOXNews.com)]

By the way, I had to follow that “documented” link out of curiousity. It’s really very interesting; it’s a database of (so far 87) cases of of American soldiers committing suicides, murders, robberies or other crimes due to PTSD due to their time in Iraq or Afghanistan. These men need our help. They deserve our help. They sacrificed for us and they deserve the best medical care we can provide.

Tags: Operation Desert Storm, American soldiers, PTSD, Iraq, Afghanistan, VA, Fox News

The Failure Of Afghanistan

I’m alway on alert for stories and reports about how things are going in Afghanistan. We hardly ever hear anything about how things are going over there since the invasion of Iraq started and, yet, supposedly, Afghanistan is really where all of this War on Terror stuff started. At the very least, Afghanistan is where the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin was after 9-11. And we did a lot of bragging in the early days about how we were bringing them freedom and democracy and how we were going to rebuild the country. Remember all of that?

Now, Afghanistan hardly gets a mention in the news. Even when they had elections, it wasn’t even one of our top stories. Iraq has taken over our lives. Afghanistan is the forgotten bastard child. Kind of a shame really because apparently a lot has been happening while we weren’t looking.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Freedoms, Democracy, Taliban, Kandahar, Pakistan, al-Qaeda

Abdul Rahman Vs. The Women Of Afghanistan

You know, I’ve been thinking the last couple of days about Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man who converted to Christianity from Islam. The Muslims in Afghanistan, that country we freed from the restrictive Taliban, want to kill him for this “crime” against Islam.

Apparently, while we were cheering about all of those changes we brought to the country, no one was paying attention to the fact that there weren’t any real changes being brought to the country. We ousted the Taliban and we’ve had those nifty elections where we forced the Afghan men to let the Afghan women vote for our PR cameras, but as I’ve written here before, almost nothing has changed for women in Afghanistan — they still have to wear burqu, they are still held hostage in their own homes, they still find it next to impossible to get a divorce, even from an abusive husband, etc.

The fact is that the Afghan people built their Constitution on Islamic law. Imagine that. So much for Freedom and Democracy being on the march.

But what really got me thinking about Abdul Rahman is the outcry on both the right and the left. I mean, I’m glad that we could come together on this and join in the outrage over a man’s right to practice his religion of choice, but it pisses me off to no end that there’s no outcry over the fact that the women of Afghanistan still aren’t free after four years after President Bush told us, “The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school – today women are free.” They aren’t free! Where is Michelle Malkin’s outcry posts and articles over their rights? Where is the pressure from the leaders of the world’s nations to release the women imprisoned for running away from their abusive husbands? Where is President Bush’s condemnation over their loss of freedom?

Why is Abdul Rahman so much more important than all the women in Afghanistan?

Tags: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush

Afghan Could Die For Christianity

Imagine living in a country where you cannot choose what god you want to worship or how you wish to worship or even if you wish to worship. Imagine living in a country where making that very choice could mean life or death. Imagine a country where owning a Bible or a Koran or a Torah could be a crime in itself. Imagine living in a country where you are considered a traitor or mentally ill if you convert to another system of belief.

KABUL, Afghanistan, March 20, 2006 — Despite the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban government and the presence of 22,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a man who converted to Christianity is being prosecuted in Kabul, and a judge said Sunday that if convicted, he faces the death penalty.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

[…]

Presiding judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah tells ABC News a medical team was checking the defendant, since the team suspects insanity caused Rahman to reject Islam.

“We want to know that the doctors have given him a green light on his mental state, because he is not normal when he talks,” says the judge.

The post-Taliban constitution recognizes Islam as Afghanistan’s religion, and decrees that Islam’s Sharia law applies when a case is not covered by specific legislation. The prosecutor says under Sharia law, Abdul Rahman must die.

The judge, however, holds hopes for a solution.

“We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian,” Mawlazezadah says. “If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance.”[“Afghan Faces Death Penalty For Converting To Christianity” (ABC News)]

When I look at my bookshelf with it’s dusty copies of a a variety of Bibles, including the Morman version, a book on Wiccan philosophies, several books of Eastern philosophers recommended by my late step-grandmother, and a growing interest in spiritualism, I wonder how I’d be preceived if I lived in such a country. After all, I certainly have questions about the church, about all churches, really.

I’m grateful I live in a country where I’m still free to explore my spirituality and hope it stays that way despite the religious-right’s recent attempts to take over.

However, I’m saddened that all these years after liberating Afghanistan, they really aren’t all that free. We’ve just changed the names of the people in charge.

Tags: Faith, God, Christian Zealots, Islam, Afghanistan

Congress Is Dead

With everything going on in the blogsphere, in national politics, in women’s rights, in the Middle East, in Iraq in particular, in the world in general, I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed the last few days. Politics in particular has made me particularly restless the last three or four days. I’ve been debating a personal rebellion, a political mutiny. However, what I’ve come to realize is that it’s hard to defect from a party when you don’t belong to one. You just can’t up and flounce out of the room with a dramatic slam of the door behind you if you weren’t in there in the first place.

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Tags: Congress, George W. Bush, Russ Feingold, politics, Bill Clinton, 9/11, Democrats, Republicans, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan

Women’s Right’s In Afghanistan Almost As Bad Now As Under The Taliban

Three years ago, President George Bush told us, “The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school – today women are free.”But very little has changed. Most women still wear the burqu, not because it’s all the rage, but because they fear they have to. A third of Afghan women in Kabul are forbidden from leaving the house by the male members of the family. It is still next to impossible for a woman to get a divorce in Afghanistan, even from an abusive husband.

Just because we swept in and knocked back the Taliban, doesn’t mean that we instantly changed social attitudes and traditions that have been around probably since before there was tea in Boston Harbor.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush, Taliban, Dr. Massouda Jalal

Afghanistan — The World’s Top Producer of Heroin

Remember the War on Drugs? “Just Say No?”

The War on Terror has not only dwarfed the War on Drugs, it’s kind of sort of aiding and abedding the drug “bad guys”.

Afghanistan, that place we liberated from the Taliban, that place we hardly hear about any more because of Iraq and all of our successes there, is now the “world’s largest exporter of heroin, and the opium used to produce it, supplying 87 percent of the world market.” In 2004, Afghanistan produced 4,000 tons of opium, most of which was converted into 400 tons of morphine and heroin.

“It is not only the largest heroin producer in the world, 206,000 hectares is the largest amount of heroin or of any drug that I think has ever been produced by any one country in any given year,” says Robert Charles, who until last spring was assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, overseeing anti-drug operations in Afghanistan.

Charles says Afghanistan is producing more heroin than Columbia is producing cocaine. [“Afghanistan: Addicted to Heroin (60 Minutes)”]

According to a report on last night’s 60 Minutes, heroin production in Afghanistan has increased more than 2,000% since 2001. Wow. How long until drug lords become more powerful than the tentative new-born democracy do you suppose?

In fact, a number of suspected drug lords have been given key positions in the government. The most prefered method of transportation of the drug is the use of official vehicles like government transports and police cars. I wonder how much of that money is going to support terrorists.

Doesn’t it make you feel warm and cozy and safer knowing that we’ve done such a bang up job over there in the Middle East?

Tags: Iraq, War on Terror, War on Drugs, Afghanistan, Taliban

War-Photos-For-Porn Website Owner Arrested

Remember that guy who was encouraging U.S. soldiers to post pictures of war dead on the Internet in exchange for access to porn on his website?

Well, he’s been arrested.

But not for what you think.

Christopher Michael Wilson, a former police officer and owner of the sickening website, has had 300 obscenity-related charges filed against him by Polk County in Florida, but none of them involve the graphic war-scene images posted by soldiers; they’re all about the sexual content of his website.

Late last week, U.S. Army officials said they could not confirm whether photographs on Wilson’s Web site, presumably showing Iraqi and Afghan war dead, were actually posted by U.S. soldiers. [“War-dead Web site leads to Polk obscenity arrest
(Orlando Sentinel)”]

Have they seen the pictures? I mean, the pictures themselves were being used as proof that said soldiers were actually soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does the army think that random non-military are taking and posting these horrible pictures?

An Islamic civil-rights group was disappointed that the Army did not pursue criminal charges. Last week, Ibrahim Hooper, a Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman, said: “For this to be treated in a manner that suggests the Army does not take this seriously is only going to further harm our nation’s image and interests around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.” [“War-dead Web site leads to Polk obscenity arrest
(Orlando Sentinel)”]

You know that if this site were accepting pictures of dead Americans, the U.S. government would be demanding the offenders be turned over and sent to Gitmo. We are such bullies with such double standards.

You know this really pisses me off.

Hat tip to Americablog.com.

Tags: Iraq, Afghanistan, American soldiers

Posting War Photos On Porn Sites — Another Glorious Moment For The U.S.

I’ve seen a few posts/articles the last two days about U.S. soldiers posting gory pictures of dead and mangled Iraqis/Afghanis to an amateur porn website. Note that the censored pictures on AMERICAblog show proud, smiling soldiers…this is deeply disturbing and eerily remenicent of the Abu Ghraib with an added horror of these being more than just pictures of torture and guards gone wild.

If these pictures are the real deal, it opens up a whole new can of worms, so to speak.

It’s easy to understand that war and it’s daily stresses can be waring on a person’s mind, but these people seem to take way too much delight in the murder and mutilation of the people we’re supposedly liberating. And the fact that they are posting them to a porn website is creepy in a sociopathic or psychopathic sort of way. What will these men and women be like when they return to the states? What sort of psychoses will they bring with them? This is one of the things that worries me in the middle of the night.

And when the rest of the world sees our soldiers enjoying themselves so much in the death and destruction of another nation’s people, what do they think of us? These are our representatives in the world. Is this how we want to be seen? Do we want the world to believe that this is the democracy and freedom we’re bringing them? This deteriorating humanity?

This just makes me feel ill. So much for our noble mission.

Tags: Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, American soldiers

Support Our Sci-Fi/Gamer American Troops

Today at DragonCon in the independent dealer’s room, I met Richard Tucholka, President of Tri Tac Systems (Fantastic Games & Graphics). He is collecting donations of sci-fi/fantasy-related or RPG gaming reading materials to American troops over in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, believe it or not but geeks can be soldiers too.

You know, they can’t have a large selection of reading materials and such over there. It’s not like they can run into the Barnes & Nobles or Borders down the street. I mean, it’s hard enough to find good sci-fi/fantasy and gaming materials in the States. I keep thinking of that episode of M*A*S*H where they have no reading material and BJ gets the murder mystery and they’re tearing the pages out and sharing them.

Anyway, in support of our troops, I’m posting his email and address with his permission for you to either contact him or send donations to him. I know I’ll be going through my own bookshelves when I get home. I might even have some extra games to send. Actually, I just remembered that SJ Games’ Dealer’s table is having a big sale on old books; I might stop by there in the morning.

Richard can be contacted via Tucholka At aol DOT com. Be sure to ask to see a picture of his kitchen table. The amount of donoations he’s already collected is quite impressive.

You can mail your donations to:

Support Our Sci-Fi/Gamer Troops
c/o Richard Tucholoka
Tri Tac Systems
235 West Fairmount Ave.
Pontiac, MI 48340

Update: When I went to the SJ Games booth to buy some books from their sale table, I told the sales guy what I was up to and he put together a separate bag of boxes of miniatures to donate as well! Yay for them. I was also stopped by a young man who is in the military and thanked for what I was doing. I wish I’d gone to more booths now and asked for more donations.

Tags: American soldiers, roleplaying games, Iraq, Afghanistan, Support the Troops, SJ Games

A Challenge To Liberals & Conservatives Alike

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about this big political tug-of-war this country has gotten into. It really does seem that there are a lot of very vocal people on both sides who are shouting rhetoric and propoganda back and forth.

It seems to me that many conservatives cannot get past Clinton’s marital indiscretions that ended up splashed all over the daily news for ages thanks to Newt Gingridge and Kenneth Starr — oh, and they don’t like the fact that he lied about it either.

And many liberals are hung up on the mysteriously disappearing Weapons of Mass Destruction and Bush allegedly taking the country to war on faulty intelligence which may have been fabricated to act as a reason to do so.

Meanwhile, so many liberals act like Clinton was the best thing since the Beatles and many conservatives act as if Bush was the right hand of God. Both sides turn a blind eye to the flaws of their own political hero, putting whichever it is on a pedestal behind unbreakable glass. Many think that the other party’s hero is the anti-Christ or at least that’s what you’d think to hear or read their sentiments.

So, I’ve been wondering if there’s been nothing that either of these men did that was a good thing that can be recognized by the “opposing party” as a good thing. With that in mind, I wonder if people realize these men are human beings and not perfect and therefore, not god-like — well, maybe if we’re talking about the petty gods of ancient Greek and Roman mythology…

So, here’s my challenge to liberals and conservatives alike:

For Former President Clinton, name one good Presidential thing he did for the country while in office. Name one bad Presidential thing.

For the current President Bush, name one good Presidential thing he did for the country while in office. Name one bad Presidential thing.

Remember, your political champion is not perfect and there has to be at least one thing he did that you didn’t like, just as there has to be at least one thing that you liked about the other party’s champion.

And, since I can’t expect other people to think on this if I don’t, here are my answers:

For Former President Clinton, name one good Presidential thing he did for the country while in office. Name one bad Presidential thing.

My one good Clinton thing is that he balanced the budget which was a campaign promise he made and kept. My one bad thing is that he didn’t secure social security which was also a campaign promise.

For the current President Bush, name one good Presidential thing he did for the country while in office. Name one bad Presidential thing.

My one good Bush thing is how he handled 9-11 in 2001; I felt that he handled the situation very well publically and that invading Afghanistan after the attack was the right thing to do — pacifist that I am.
My one bad thing for Bush is the invasion of Iraq which I felt was unnecessary and uncalled for and which I felt had nothing to do with 9-11 though it was implied at the time — and I also never believed Saddaam had WMD anymore.

So now it’s your turn.

Tags: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, liberals, conservatives, politics, 9/11, Afghanistan, Federal budget, Iraq

More On The Decline of Women’s Rights in Iraq

Thanks to brilliant at breakfast for the link to the following first hand account of one woman’s observations on the decline of women’s rights in Iraq since the occupation began. Clearly, this is a step backward for the women of Iraq. This is what Bush bragged about freeing the Afghanistani women from. Why isn’t more being done to protect the women of Iraq?

Across the country, a steady clampdown on women’s rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks.

My women’s rights group, the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against Islamists who literally tore the women’s clothes off their bodies. Sadr’s men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that their parents would receive the photos if they didn’t refrain in future from “immoral” behaviour.

More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed - notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women’s faces and on to their uncovered legs.

So-called “honour killings” are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn’t go anywhere without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.

Islamist repression against women is a campaign of “moral” terror. Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.

This is a recipe for future gender enslavement, second-class citizenship and ignorance. Thousands of female university students have now given up their studies to protect themselves against Islamist threats.

Islamist hostility is contagious and echoed daily in high-level political debate. Currently there is a drive over the “right” of men to have four wives, to make divorce a male preserve and for custody of children to be given to men only. Even women on Iraq’s National Assembly - the country’s parliament - have been calling for resolutions to allow for the beating of women by their guardians (males relatives, such as husbands or fathers).

This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and influence in Iraq and in the region. [“Houzan Mahmoud: Iraq must reject a constitution that enslaves women”]

Tags: Women's Rights, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islam

The State of Afghanistan?

I’ve been trying to do a little research on how things are going over in US-occupied Afghanistan. You almost never