Sunday, July 02, 2006

crime of opportunity

* josh:
"On Friday came a reminder that the Duke investigation began as a defense contracting scandal and that investigators are still pursuing the Pentagon angle. Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia filed a bill of information against Richard A. Berglund, a retired lieutenant colonel who worked for defense contractor MZM. Berglund stands accused of making illegal contributions in early 2005 to the re-election campaign of U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA).
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So flipping Berglund doesn't get the feds any closer to Wade. They already have Wade. But Berglund, a former military officer, could help point the way into the Pentagon. He was the program manager for MZM's Martinsville, Va., facility (in Goode's district), which handled defense-related work. Stay tuned."

* josh:
"So Ken Mehlman, now head of the RNC, had a White House official keeping Jack Abramoff up to date on events in Guam, around the time Abramoff took credit for getting an investigation into his work on the island deep-sixed. We already know that at Abramoff's behest Mehlman killed an appointment at the State Department because the would-be appointee, Allen Stayman, because Stayman wasn't good news for Abramoff's sweat-shop owner clients in the Marianas islands.

At a certain point you start to detect a pattern, no? Mehlman was a fixer for Abramoff while Mehlman was political director at the Bush White House. And now he says he barely knew Jack Abramoff."

* msnbc via laura:
"Investigators believe a group of U.S. soldiers suspected of raping an Iraqi woman, then killing her and three members of her family plotted the attack for nearly a week, a U.S. military official said Saturday.
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The Americans entered the Sunni Arab’s family home, separated three males from the woman, raped her and burned her body using a flammable liquid in a cover-up attempt, a military official close to the investigation said. The three males were also slain.

The soldiers had studied their victims for about a week and the attack was “totally premeditated,” the official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. [...]
The official said the rape and killings appeared to have been a “crime of opportunity,” noting that the soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents but had noticed the woman on previous patrols."
jeebus.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

neither do i. i guess in my own rape at gunpoint, i could've brought down the off-duty NYC cop who was finally busted but i had other priorities.

lukery said...

oh - rimone honey. i dont mean to minimise rape - it makes me ill - as does the story that these monsters 'noticed' a woman and planned for A WEEK to rape and burn her. i dont even have the words (or even the emotional werewithal) to even comprehend.

i also think that the media about this particular rape case is disgusting - there are god-knows-how-many rapes every day - and i hate it that this story is elevated above all other.

and separate to that - i'm particularly not interested in this persons comments because i know s/he searched for 'duke rape' when s/he came to my site - and my post had to do with two separate things: Duke cunningham and a rape/murder in iraq.

Anonymous said...

oh no, don't get me wrong--rape is one of the worst crimes i can think of (especially mine which, over a period of 3 hours, was particuarly brutal and disgusting). i just don't particularly care about the duke rape thing.

on the other hand, i'm horrified by the weeklong planned rape of the Iraqi woman and the subsequent murders of her and her family. all i can think is that from what i've read around (mostly written by US troops), this is what we get by totally dehumanising Iraqis.

fuck knows what we haven't heard about yet.

lukery said...

they planned for a week to rape her and then set her ablaze and then murder her and her family

i dont think i could ever feel more sick

Anonymous said...

lukery, about your previous post,

"i so dont fucking care"

Anonymous said...

*snigger* i could point out that betty cared enough to come back here but i won't.

oh. wait. :-)

lukery said...

yes betty?

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I just think you may be a bit harsh here guys. Betty is clearly outraged about an injustice in the US Criminal justice system and wants to spead the word. Sounds fine by me, but she may just be at the wrong website. Seeing as how there's outrage enough to go round and we know who the bad guys are how about wishing Betty good luck with her program in some other setting. Good luck kiddo! Give 'em hell.

lukery said...

damien is right.

i apologise betty.

i saw that your campaign had nothing to do with my post and presumed that you hadn't read the post (other than the words "duke" and "rape" were in it) and that you were copy/pasting your message everywhere.

good luck

(and thnx damien)

Anonymous said...

Betty,

So you think the guys losing $800 bucks and getting outed for fooling with strippers is on a par with an actual rape and multiple murder of an Iraqi girl and her family? That's cheap if they learned their lesson, what with abstinence being the conservative thing.

You probably think Rove wasn't indicted, too. Hit your snooze alarm.