Links, I guess
Dec. 8th, 2004 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumMaia's had finals, and I have a couple of new toys, so I've not managed to get upset enough to post about much political.
The weather has been grey, and drippy, so we've not gone out enough for me to wax loquacious on that (though I may have a few things to say about the train trip this weekend; I can't write them in advance), and I have no really cool pictures to try and upload via LJ.
So, I do have some things to share, from my perigrinations on the web.
If you don't like have Christ forced on you, leave Now, perhaps I'm doing a disservice to O'Reilly here, but not much. It may be he only feels that way about Jews who dislike people trying to convert them.
This one is painfulbecause I know all the players. Abuse Cover-up? Even if it isn't true (about which I can't say, I wasn't there) the allegations of whitewash are far too believable (and I saw some of the things the article discusses). Ford and I shared a tent in Kuwait, on our separate ways to Germany, and were in the same holding unit for a while in Wash. If it ever gets to court I am likely to be subpoenad as a witness, about the training we gave/got and the nature of interrogation vs. counter-intelligence.
A Proud Wartime Liberalism Better Angels of Our Nature (another vet of the present unpleasantness) talks about how the Dems need to address the issue of fighting terrorism. References to several people who have been bruiting it about the past couple of weeks. As a wrap up, it's better than any effort of mine, so go read it.
Is that legal, on hate crimes Recently (at least enough so that I recall having the opposite opinion) I realised the argument that a crime is a crime, and hate (in a narrow sense, vis a vis motive) is a factor to be weighed in the balance of punishment. Mr Muller does a better job of explaining it than I can.
Orcinus does a nice job of showing why this might matter in his most recent post Eliminationist Watch as well as pointing out that the recent piece on 20/20 was not only bad journalism, but might make it possible, should they feel vengeful, to get a capital punishment re-considered for one of the killers of Matthew Shepard Matthew Shepard and Hate Crimes It isn't in his piece, overtly, but part of the plea agreement was that his muderers wouldn't talk about it. As a layman it appears to me a violation of the agreement means it's void, which would open the door ro a resentencing. Ain't gonna happen, but maybe the furor over it would be interesting. Raising it could be framed as a law and order/victim's rights issue too, damn crooks going about trying to get sympathy.
And, last but not least, Rummy faced some ugly questions about equipment, from soldiers. "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"
The answer... "Suck it up." Well, I'm paraphrasing, what he actually said was, perhaps, more insulting, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said. He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."
The weather has been grey, and drippy, so we've not gone out enough for me to wax loquacious on that (though I may have a few things to say about the train trip this weekend; I can't write them in advance), and I have no really cool pictures to try and upload via LJ.
So, I do have some things to share, from my perigrinations on the web.
If you don't like have Christ forced on you, leave Now, perhaps I'm doing a disservice to O'Reilly here, but not much. It may be he only feels that way about Jews who dislike people trying to convert them.
This one is painfulbecause I know all the players. Abuse Cover-up? Even if it isn't true (about which I can't say, I wasn't there) the allegations of whitewash are far too believable (and I saw some of the things the article discusses). Ford and I shared a tent in Kuwait, on our separate ways to Germany, and were in the same holding unit for a while in Wash. If it ever gets to court I am likely to be subpoenad as a witness, about the training we gave/got and the nature of interrogation vs. counter-intelligence.
A Proud Wartime Liberalism Better Angels of Our Nature (another vet of the present unpleasantness) talks about how the Dems need to address the issue of fighting terrorism. References to several people who have been bruiting it about the past couple of weeks. As a wrap up, it's better than any effort of mine, so go read it.
Is that legal, on hate crimes Recently (at least enough so that I recall having the opposite opinion) I realised the argument that a crime is a crime, and hate (in a narrow sense, vis a vis motive) is a factor to be weighed in the balance of punishment. Mr Muller does a better job of explaining it than I can.
Orcinus does a nice job of showing why this might matter in his most recent post Eliminationist Watch as well as pointing out that the recent piece on 20/20 was not only bad journalism, but might make it possible, should they feel vengeful, to get a capital punishment re-considered for one of the killers of Matthew Shepard Matthew Shepard and Hate Crimes It isn't in his piece, overtly, but part of the plea agreement was that his muderers wouldn't talk about it. As a layman it appears to me a violation of the agreement means it's void, which would open the door ro a resentencing. Ain't gonna happen, but maybe the furor over it would be interesting. Raising it could be framed as a law and order/victim's rights issue too, damn crooks going about trying to get sympathy.
And, last but not least, Rummy faced some ugly questions about equipment, from soldiers. "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"
The answer... "Suck it up." Well, I'm paraphrasing, what he actually said was, perhaps, more insulting, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," Rumsfeld said. He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up."
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if you can listen to the audio via NPR
Date: 2004-12-09 04:17 am (UTC)Afterwards, the newscaster made a point of remarking that the general there had said that Wilson wouldn't suffer any reprimand for asking that question.
Now - if this is supposed to be a free Q&A session to air gripes and raise genuine concerns - why should that even be a possibility? "We're letting you ask questions so you can incriminate yourselves to the zampolit" is the not-so-sub-text of saying "Don't worry, you who asked questions won't get in trouble with the politicals."
Re: if you can listen to the audio via NPR
Date: 2004-12-09 05:37 pm (UTC)Look at the flap which ensued when the troop said that, were Rumsfled to be in front of him, he'd ask for his resignation. It wasn't really out of line (it might have been borderline, but I don't think so... if he were my troop, I'd have got in the way of an Article 15, and tesitified for the defense in a court martial).
TK
according to dKossacks it's been orwellized
Date: 2004-12-10 12:33 am (UTC)The work to Minitrue stuff happening in plain view, like a magic show, is fascinating to me - particularly when it works on the populace, but perhaps some straws have started to weigh down even the media camels.