"Can you imagine the outcry from the religious right if six Christian pastors were removed from a flight because they prayed together at the gate? U.S. Airways would be deservedly out of business in a week."
* for some reason, LeeB is upset about this:
"The Pentagon's decision to boot Hudson for speaking up is as much a punishment for him as it is a warning to others in the military not to question orders, regardless of legality. This story follows reports about Hudson's fellow sailor, Lt. Commander Charles Swift, who was also "passed over" and fired after taking Guantanamo Bay case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to the Supreme Court - and winning."* alcee hastings writes letters.
* AP:
"Whistle-blowers tipped off the government to $1.3 billion worth of fraud cases over the past year, largely at hospitals or other health care providers, the Justice Department said Tuesday."
* AP:
"-Federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to reinstate a key terrorism charge against alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla, contending a judge erred in finding that it duplicated other counts in the same indictment."
* Glenn:
"What the failure of Iraq demonstrates is not -- as Kaplan so earnestly suggests today -- that the rosy-eyed, slightly naive but well-intentioned neonconservative idealists just need to be a little more restrained in their desire to do Good in the world. It demonstrates that they are deceitful, radical and untrustworthy warmongers who led this country into the worst strategic disaster in its history and should never be trusted with anything ever again. And it equally demonstrates that starting wars with no justification and with no notion of self-defense is an idea that is as destructive as it is unjust."
3 comments:
Sure, show me in the Bible where Jesus tells his disciples to go kill people? Then wait until some Christians crash a plane into the white house. Then we can ban them from getting on a plane. You show no discernment or logic.
I am interested in the comments about what we are to think of the neo-conservative's failure.
I read this,
"The primary impetus for invading Iraq, according to those attending NSC briefings on the Gulf in this period, was to make an example of Hussein, to create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=142383
...and it struck me how similar our invasion of Iraq has been to our work in any number of other invasions. So, in Vietnam, we were there to keep the dominoes from falling. In Nicaragua, we're there to keep the commies from invading Texas. The blockade of Cuba is to prevent the problem of a good example.
What the neo-cons instigated in Iraq then isn't any different than what the movers and shakers in American foreign policy have been doing since forever. They wouldn't have thought that invading other countries for no real good reason was anything unusual, or anything they would have expected to be spanked for.
It's all about the management of perceptions. We don't ever seem to care about what's really going on or what the blowback of our blundering might be, so long as we can manage the perceptions.
By being so concerned about perception management we don't do anything to really deal with the issues at hand. We don't do anything that would really protect our interest in a stable world.
But, just getting rid of the neo-cons won't solve the problem that we invade other countries for the same reason that the general had the boy torn apart by dogs in Karamazov's story. He did it to show what would happen to anyone who would think to lift their lips up off his boots.
anger. anger..sigh...
I hope Glenn knows better than that.
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