The Republic of T.

I heard one of my favorite holiday songs on the radio yesterday — John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” I’ve always loved it, but this year holds special meaning for me — especially the children of the Harlem Community Choir singing “War is over, if you want it.” on the chorus .

This holiday season, I’m getting something that — as a progressive — I have wanted for years: an end of the war in Iraq. As it happens, this “gift” is like many given and received this time of year. You never really know what you’re getting until you unwrap it. Once unwrapped, it’s not to be quite what you thought or hoped it would be. And, even with price tag removed, you know it cost way too much.

(more…)

This year, veterans day should be a day for all of us — all 99 percent of us — to stand with the 1 percent. Not, as Jim Hightower writes, the “corporate CEOs and hedge fund billionaires,” but the “extra-special 1 percent of our society” who are also part of the 99 percent — the veterans of our most recent, most misguided wars, as well as those before. As Hightower said, let it not be a day to merely salute our veterans, but to stand with them and rally with them, as they have already done for us.

Across the country, veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are standing with the joining the 99 percent. Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old former Marine who served two tours or duty in Iraq, and Sgt. Shamar Thomas, another Marine who served in Iraq, are probably the most well known. Olsen, who was critically injured by a police projectile during the attack on Occupy Oakland, became the newest face of the movement, inspiring nationwide rallies. Thomas, in a video viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, confronted police members of the NYPD over violence used against peaceful and unarmed protesters. Yet they represent countless veterans who served their country, often paying a great physical and psychological price, only to find themselves abandoned by their country in the midst of a recession and an unemployment crisis, and who are moved by what they have seen and experienced to join the movement of the 99 percent.

(more…)

This week, my eight-year-old son asked me a couple of questions about the war in Afghanistan. They were simple questions. Yet, both times I struggled to answer.

The first question came out of the blue. “Dad,” he asked me, “Why did we go to war in Afghanistan?”

(more…)

It’s getting hard to keep track of all the cringe-worthy moments at the GOP debates. To that end I’ve created a kind "Low-lights" reel of such moments from the last few. (I fully expect to update this regularly.)

The latest, of course, is the booing of a gay soldier, serving Iraq.

Upon viewing the clip, several things come to mind.

(more…)

This story brings back some memories. [Via Daily Kos.]

Police temporarily detained and questioned three passengers at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport on Sunday after the crew of the Frontier Airlines flight from Denver reported suspicious activity on board, and NORAD sent two F-16 jets to shadow the flight until it landed safely, airline and federal officials said.

The three passengers who were taken off the plane in handcuffs were released Sunday night, and no charges were filed against them, airport spokesman Scott Wintner said.

Frontier Flight 623, with 116 passengers on board, landed without incident in Detroit at 3:30 p.m. EDT after the crew reported that two people were spending "an extraordinarily long time" in a bathroom, Frontier spokesman Peter Kowalchuck said.

FBI Detroit spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said ultimately authorities determined there was no real threat.

It’s not that my experiences have been as intense that what these people experience, but I’ve known for a long time how easily it could have been me, and still could be.

(more…)

It’s a little unnerving — because I’m not used to being in the majority — but it looks like I am now, at least when it comes to the president’s decision not to release pictures of Obsama bin Laden’s dead body. It turns out, nearly two thirds of Americans agree with Obama’s decision not to release bin Laden’s death photos.

Close to two-thirds of Americans support President Barack Obama’s decision not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse.

An NBC News poll conducted in the weekend after the White House decided against putting out the images taken after the successful raid in Pakistan found 52 percent of Americans saying they strongly back the president’s choice to keep the photos under wraps. Another 12 percent of those surveyed said they agreed, but not strongly, for a total of 64 percent.

…Of those surveyed, 24 percent said they strongly think the photos should be released, while another five percent agreed less strongly. Shortly after news of the president’s decision broke, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called it “a mistake,” saying that images of the dead Al Qaeda leader would “prove that fact to the rest of the world.” On Saturday, the U.S. released videos of bin Laden taken from his compound which were interpreted by some as part of an effort to prove to Pakistanis that the raid did really happen to skeptical Pakistanis.

Well. Let’s face it. Some people are never going to be convinced that the Obama administration pulled this off, no matter how many other images or video footage are released.

(more…)

Warning: Graphic images below the fold. NSFW. Strong trigger warning re: graphic depictions of violence, abuse, etc.

Here, we go again. Why does it seem, lately, that a significant portion of the country sounds a lot like our three-year-old every time he sees me looking at something I my iPhone: “Let me see! I wanna see!”

It doesn’t matter what there is to see, or whether it’s something we should see. I doesn’t matter if we know what we’re seeing. It doesn’t even matter whether it matters if we see it. There’s something to see, and we just gotta see it.

So of course, having learned that there are pictures of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, it’s become the hottest “must see” piece of GWOT “war porn.”

(more…)

In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, and the celebrations inspired by news of his demise, there’s been some discussion of whether Americans should be celebrating and just what Americans are celebrating. Are we celebrating the death of another human being (even one as despicable as bin Laden)? Or are we celebrating a win; a "mission accomplished"?

That question is thrown in a disconcerting light upon considering both the course of action America embarked upon after 9/11, and what it cost. Did Osama bin Laden actually win in the end?

That depends.

(more…)

I was sitting on my couch, reading the news on my iPhone, when I learned of Osama bin Laden’s death — caught and shot in the head by military and C.I.A operatives, at his compound in Pakistan. Without thinking about, I close my eyes and breathed a sigh.

What was I feeling? Relief? Perhaps. Something had just ended for me and millions of American, certainly. I felt a lot of things in that moment, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. It didn’t surprise me that a lot of people did feel like celebrating. It disturbed me.

(more…)

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 24 hours, you’ve probably heard that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

The world may well be a better place without it. It is certainly no worse off without him. But, this isn’t really the end of anything.

(more…)

Here’s a question I bet you thought didn’t need to be asked in a post-9/11 America: Does flying a plane into a building make you a terrorist or a hero?

Joe Stack attacked the IRS by flying his plane into one of its buildings. Is he a hero?

Some people think so. Stack’s adult daughter, Samantha Bell, said Monday that her father’s attack was “inappropriate” but that she considered him heroic because of his antigovernment views.

“Maybe now people will listen,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Stack is also becoming a hero to the radical right – specifically, white supremacists and their fellow travelers, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Supremacist web forums have been filled with comments that elevate Stack into an icon of resistance to tyranny, writes Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

Potok quotes one poster on Stormfront.org, a large supremacist web site, as saying, “The Guy is a true HERO!!!”

Let’s break this down.

(more…)

I know this seems like low hanging fruit. But Sarah Palin is back, and along with her mindless blather has returned the chorus of “do not under estimate Palin” and/or “Sarah must be taken seriously.”

Seriously? We’re supposed to take seriously someone who just days ago was spouting nonsense (in the words of a conservative blogger) about mammograms and death panels, and only weeks ago was seriously claiming a conspiracy to move “In God We Trust” off U.S. currency? We’re supposed to take seriously/placate/cower in fear of the mindlessly vehement incoherence of her followers?

We’re supposed to take seriously someone who bad mouthed her almost-son-in-law for being too busy being “in the media” and pushing his own potential book to see his own baby, while sitting across from (arguably) the “queen of all media” herself, and one of the biggest book promoters in the publishing world, spending an hour talking about her book and her own baby who has Down’s Syndrome and thus has special needs? We’re supposed to take seriously someone who implied that her daughter’s baby’s father was using his physical assets to promote himself, who did as much of the same as she could get away with in Runners’ World? We’re supposed to take seriously someone too stupid (Yeah, I said it.), to even recognize the hypocrisy, let alone the irony, of what she was saying?

Are we seriously supposed to overestimate thier importance as much as they do themselves?

(more…)

This fourth grader is about to give a report on where her dad is stationed in Iraq. Except he’s not there. Instead he walks into her classroom.

EMBED-Tricked On Halloween – Watch more free videos

Let’s have more like this, please. More dads, moms, sons, daughters, sisters and bothers coming home, please.

Wow. Break out the spatulas, and get ready to scrape the exploded brains of right-wingers off the ceiling, walls, etc. Apparently, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

US President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. prepare for a Level Five Spatula Alert

The Nobel Committee said he won it for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”.

The committee highlighted Mr Obama’s efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament.

Mr Obama’s spokesman said the president was “humbled” to have won the prize. He said he woke Mr Obama up when he called with the news early on Friday.

There were a record 205 nominations for this year’s peace prize. Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Chinese dissident Hu Jia had been among the favourites.

The laureate – chosen by a five-member committee – wins a gold medal, a diploma and 10m Swedish kronor ($1.4m).

It’s a surprise, but I think I understand why the committee made this choice: You generate a lot of good will among people when your foreign policy message is something besides “It’s our world, and the rest of you are just living in it.”

(more…)

To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve had it in me to write a post reflecting on 9/11, though many bloggers will be doing so today. Part of the reason is that I’ve run out of things to say about 9/11 without repeating myself. Some things, though, bear repeating.

A lot has changed in the three years since I wrote this post. Some for the better, some not. The biggest change, of course, happened back in November. America changed in many ways that day, and for gay Americans it meant that we no longer had in the White House a president who was openly hostile to notion of equality for LGBT Americans and our families. It meant that we no longer had a Congress run by people who would actively legislate against our families.

But as much as our reality changed, it stayed virtually the same.

(more…)

[Ed. Note: WARNING. Graphic Pictures Below Fold. NSFW. Possible Trigger.]

Word is, at least one of the pictures the Obama administration decided not to release shows an American soldier raping a female prisoner.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

Not that it pleases me in the least to say, but …

(more…)

Listen to Tony Lagouranis, author of Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey Through Iraq, describe what he witnessed and did in Iraq.

One of the most disturbing things abut Lagouranis’ book is that over and over again he expresses concern — and makes a convincing case — that many of the people picked up and exposed to our "enhanced interrogation techniques were merely petty criminals at best, or at worst completely innocent of any crime or violence.

(more…)

Eric Holder was right. We are a nation of cowards.

One might say that Attorney General Holder is proving himself to be part of that “nation of cowards” that he called the United States in a different context, i.e. our unwillingness to address the issue of race. What about when the victims of torture are Muslims? Where’s Holder’s courage then?

Surely, I was not the only one stunned by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s public admission that he helped authorize waterboarding of detainees. But, on reflection, there seems to have been a method to his madness; and, so far at least, the method seems to be working.

Have Holder and Colin Powell forgotten from their days growing up in the Bronx the typical reaction of bullies when caught in the act? “Okay, so waddaya gonna do ‘bout it!” It was an attempt at intimidation, and it was generally effective with those who felt not quite up to the challenge.

This has been the case on the issue of the economy (i.e. the bailout), and it is the same on the issue of torture. We let ourselves be bullied into re-electing Bush in 2004, after we knew about Abu Ghraib, And now we are being bullied into not prosecuting the officials responsible for putting America back on the list of nations that practice torture. Now we are being bullied into not even looking at further evidence

(WARNING: NSFW/POSSIBLE TRIGGER IMAGES AFTER THE JUMP). (more…)

I so appreciated DanK’s Torture Timeline on DailyKos. That I created a SMILIE Timeline version, which I’ve imported into Dipity, and embedded below.

I intend to keep this updated with further developments, and fill some events I though should have been included. But I thought I’d share.’

They’re going to get away with it.

I mean those Bush administration officials who redefined torture for the twenty-first century, and brought America’s longstanding enthusiasm for torture out of the closet.

Yeah. Them.

(more…)