Wow – the day has come! President Obama. Yes, President Obama. Wow. Nearly 2 million people filling the National Mall. An inspiring speech. I don’t know if there’s much more to say.
Even though I want to stay cynical and I know we’re going to have to work on him for some issues, he represents such change, especially after the nightmare of the last 8 years. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Bruce Springsteen performed The Rising at the Lincoln Memorial concert for Obama. A song about surviving and rebuilding after the September 11 attacks now referring to another disaster – Bush’s Presidency.
Yet not since 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a “restoration” of American ethics and “action, and action now” as Herbert Hoover sat and seethed, has a new president so publicly rejected the essence of his predecessor’s path.
Well, do you have to say anything more? Yet, it really isn’t funny, because among the other disasters, Bush has left the economy a mess, with many out of work, and many of us on shaky ground.
President Obama has a lot to deal with. I don’t expect miracles, but yet it is incredible to be feeling this much hope again. To be this proud of being an American again.
Amnesty International made a very funny video (on a serious issue) poking fun at our expectations of Obama, while calling for the closure of Guantanamo, ending of torture, and accountability for abuses committed in the “war on terror” by the Bush administration.
It’s part of AI’s 100 Day’s Campaign, calling for President Obama’s administration, within the first 100 days to:
announce a plan and date to close Guantanamo;
issue an executive order to ban torture and other ill-treatment, as defined under international law;
ensure that an independent commission to investigate abuses committed by the U.S. government in its “war on terror” is set up.
To sign the petition and for more information go to:
I am very hopeful about the first two items. President Obama has said he will close Guantanamo and end torture. Incoming Attorney General Eric Holder has stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. I think we may have to push a bit on the accountability issue, though. Democrats tend not to want to make waves.
I was particularly encouraged when President Obama spoke out about the false choice between security and human rights in his Inaugural Address:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
I really do believe President Obama has values we can believe in. Even while I don’t kid myself and I know we will have to keep mobilizing and pushing him on the issues. I remember past Democratic administrations. What is especially encouraging, is the citizens movement he created and empowered by showing us “Yes, we can!” is going to keep moving forward and pushing him to stand up for those ideals.
Amnesty International has launched it’s 100 Days campaign, calling on President-elect Barack Obama to make human rights a priority and undo the damage done by President Bush in the name of anti-terrorism.
In the first 100 days, Amnesty International is calling on the new administration to:
announce a plan and date to close Guantanamo;
issue an executive order to ban torture and other ill-treatment, as defined under international law;
ensure that an independent commission to investigate abuses committed by the U.S. government in its “war on terror” is set up.
Our local Amnesty International group has had the letters to soon to be President Obama out at local events (collecting them for AI to present to him at the right moment, maybe after January 20?). Just joking, after Barack’s in office is obvious, although even AI can barely wait for Bush to leave, can they?
Amnesty International is not alone. A group of retired generals and admirals are also calling for President Barack Obama to end torture “from the moment of his inauguration” according to Reuters.
“We need to remove the stain, and the stain is on us, as well as on our reputation overseas,” said retired Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, former Navy inspector general.
Gunn and about a dozen other retired generals and admirals, who are scheduled to meet Obama’s team in Washington, said they plan to offer a list of anti-torture principles, including some that could be implemented immediately.
They include making the Army Field Manual the single standard for all U.S. interrogators. The manual requires humane treatment and forbids practices such as waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning widely condemned as torture.
Other immediate steps Obama could take are revoking presidential orders allowing the CIA to use harsh treatment, giving the International Red Cross access to all prisoners held by intelligence agencies and declaring a moratorium on taking prisoners to a third country for harsh interrogations.
“If he’d just put a couple of sentences in his inaugural address, stating the new position, then everything would flow from that,” said retired Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes, whose regiment in World War Two raised the American flag on Iwo Jima.
Torture is not patriotic. Torture is also not effective.
Matthew Alexander, an interrogator in Iraq talks in the Washington Post about how he refused to “bend the rules” and use torture, instead going by the U.S Army Field Manual to get the information to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. “We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work”, he wrote.
Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money.
As Alexander notes, not only is torture against his moral fabric and inconsistent with American principles. “Torture and abuse cost American lives.”
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.
So we should be free from torture and excuses for torture now that we’ll have a Democrat in office, right? Well, actually I do hold a lot of hope for Obama on this one. He’s been very consistent against torture. What’s disturbing, is that, as the New York Times and Salon report, Senators Feinstein and Wyden have shifted their previous strong stances against torture, to one of, umm, greater flexibility.
According to the Times:
[I]n an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.
Afterward, however, Mrs. Feinstein issued a statement saying: “The law must reflect a single clear standard across the government, and right now, the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them.”
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he would consult with the C.I.A. and approve interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual as long as they were “legal, humane and noncoercive.” But Mr. Wyden declined to say whether C.I.A. techniques ought to be made public.
Salon reports clarifying statements from he Senators’ offices. Ron Wyden’s office claims he is against torture, but the statement is actually quite wishy-washy.
As you may or may not be aware, under current law, the Army Field Manual can be revised by the Executive Branch without prior consent from Congress. This is to allow for the possibility of incorporating other legal, humane and noncoercive interrogation techniques that might be discovered to be effective in the future. Just because the Army Field Manual is currently the best available standard for interrogation does not mean we can’t do better.
Ah, so there are “legal, humane and noncoercive interrogation techniques” yet to be invented that the Army Field Manual somehow may not allow because they’ve banned torture or, err, “coercive techniques”, so we have to allow some wiggle room.
Feinstein’s clarification is even more disturbing. According to Salon:
Sen. Feinstein has just now issued another statement, to Time‘s Scherer, asserting — much like Wyden just did — “that she still wants a law that mandates the Field Manual as the sole interrogation standard, but that she may be willing to be talked back from that position by the Obama Administration, if it chooses to do so.”
So, she’s willing to consider torture (or “coercive methods”) if President Obama says so?
While I would hope this will never be an issue, the correct answer, Senator, is “No.” No torture. Period. Torture would still be wrong even if President Obama were to order it, or his administration were to order it. Does Senator Feinstein really believe torture is not okay under a Republican administration, but it is under a Democratic one?!!
The America I Believe In doesn’t torture people or use cruel, inhuman treatment. . .doesn’t hold people without charge, without fair trials, without hope, and without end. . .doesn’t kidnap people on the street and ship them to nations known for their brutality. . .doesn’t condone prisoner abuse and excuse high-ranking government of-cials from responsibility for that abuse. . .doesn’t justify the use of secret prisons. . . and does not rob people of their basic dignity.
I’m joining with Amnesty International USA to restore The America I Believe In.
The America I Believe In leads the world on human rights.
What does it say about how things are framed by the real elite when Barack Obama the candidate raised by a single mother who made it through Harvard through hard work and student loans, and supports economic policies that would help the poor through middle class is labeled the elitist? Meanwhile John McCain, born into privilege, who got ahead event though graduating in the “bottom 5” of Annapolis because his father was an Admiral, not to mention abandoning his first wife to marry into wealth, and who is supporting the typical Republican policy giving most of the tax breaks to the wealthy is presented as the man of the people. How does this work?
Harry C. Alford did an excellent two part series that ran in the Seattle Medium that I cited some of the information above from on the realities of McCain’s privilege and poor judgment over the last couple weeks. Meanwhile, Real Change ran an article last week about how the tax platforms of McCain and Obama would affect different classes of people, and an article on the vanishing middle class as well.
In the article Candidates’ tax platforms reward different groups, Michael Beer points out President George W. Bush cut “$477 billion to the richest 1 percent over this decade.” Then he compares the tax plans of our current presidential candidates:
So what values are revealed by each presidential candidate’s current tax proposals? On the website of the nonpartisan group United for a Fair Economy I found a useful list of questions to ask candidates about their tax policy. The first question is “Who benefits and who loses under your tax proposal?” I applied their list of questions to the Tax Policy Center’s recent analysis of Senator McCain’s and Senator Obama’s tax plans.
The bottom line is that the ultra-rich, the top 0.1 percent whose annual incomes range from almost $3 million to hundreds of millions a year, would pay an average of $1 million less in taxes in 2009 under President McCain than under President Obama, if their current proposals became law. President McCain would give them a big tax cut, and President Obama would give them a tax increase. Almost a quarter of the lost revenue in the McCain plan would be due to giveaways to the ultra-rich.
For the middle class, President Obama would give back $1,000 on average to families making between $37,000 and $66,000 a year, while President McCain would give them $319.
Poor families making less than $19,000 a year would get an extra $19 a year from President McCain — not even enough for five gallons of gas. They’d get an extra $567 from President Obama, as well as a $500 per person increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit. That’s enough to defray the rising cost of food and gasoline.
President Obama would repeal all of President Bush’s tax cuts to families making more than $250,000 a year, while President McCain would make them permanent. President Obama’s plan would also increase taxes on investments to bring them closer to the levels of taxes on income from paychecks.
That’s a considerable difference, and Barack is also talking about things like giving tax breaks to businesses that create jobs in America (and eliminating them for businesses that ship the jobs overseas) and expanding opportunities for young people to go to college, in exchange for public service of some kind.
In her article, The vanishing middle class, Jennifer Ware interviews Nan Mooney, author of (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class. Mooney herself had to leave New York City move back to Seattle and in with her parents as a journalist in her 30s raising a child. What she found was that there are a lot of people out there, with a college education and one or more jobs, like her, who were struggling. “People had these middle-class jobs where the wages really haven’t gone up very much, if at all, in the past 10-20 years, but fixed costs have kept inching higher.”
The self-definition of who considers themselves middle class is interesting:
You found people making $100,000 a year who called themselves middle class?
Yes. Actually, most people think they’re middle class. And I find interesting a poll done by the New York Times when I was writing the book where they interviewed people with huge incomes, and everybody who’d gone to college considered themselves middle class. It didn’t matter what amount of money they were making. They could be making $20,000 and they would still be middle class because they’d gone to college.
College is really important in this culture, and in our country there is the rhetoric that if you go to college, you will be okay because you’ve followed all the rules. I think it’s particularly frustrating to those people to still be struggling so much. They don’t understand how that happens.
I’m the $20k a year person (with college), though I have no self-delusions. I’m poor. I don’t have and will never have the money my working class father had through his union job, even though we had some rough times growing up. It’s ironic that he wanted a better life for me and wanted me to finish college (which I finally did, after he passed away, and to my regret, because all it means is a large student loan I will never get paid off dragging my already low wages down).
But I digress. So the middle class is struggling too.
Is the American Dream a myth?
I think it’s becoming a myth for a lot of people. And even though it’s not your fault that you’re in a tighter financial spot than you expected to be in, it’s very hard to lower your expectations because it feels like failure. Also I think that we place too much emphasis on the individual being able to fix this problem, because it’s really a collective issue.
Speaking of fault, where is that line between personal and governmental responsibility?
That’s a really important point, especially in this country where “personal responsibility” has become such a watchword. We’re supposed to be personally responsible for everything, and it’s supposed to be a freedom that we have to pay for our own retirement, our own health care. Employers used to provide pensions and other savings plans that have all but vanished. The system is out of whack. We need social safety measures in the government to help balance things out.
That is the heart of the issue. People struggle alone, and feel it’s their own fault. If you listened to the Republican spin this week, you’ll realize this is exactly what they want the American people to believe. They say we just want government to get out of the way. Out of the way and what? Give tax breaks and contracts for privatization to the wealthy including your cronies? Send jobs overseas, downsize, replace people with machines? Or if you have a job, salaries stay the same while costs for housing, clothing, etc. go up, up, up?
Why is it that so many people who self-identify with the middle class consistently vote against their own economic interests? Or do you think they do?
I think that people aren’t aware that they’re voting against their economic interests. I think that if you listen to the news media, the issues can come out awfully garbled. I think an important job of the Democratic Party is to really let people know the differences between Republican policies and Democratic policies. [Democrats] have been afraid to do that, because they’re afraid to lose the big guy.
Another reason why I think people are afraid either to vote this issue or to even address this issue, is that they’re ashamed. They feel like they did something wrong, and they don’t want to admit that they’re in financial trouble and they don’t talk to each other about it. There was a huge amount of relief in the people I talked to when I told them that others were feeling the pinch as well. They would ask me how others were getting by and the answer to that was twofold: people are getting help from their families, or they are getting into a lot of debt. Basically, they’re not getting by.
Which party and candidates are going to serve you better, and who are the real elites?
Just found this response from Barack on the issue of community organizing, which seemed very appropriate to add:
I felt hope for our country, for our future, for the first time in a long time when I watched Obama’s speechtonight. It would be hard to exaggerate how electrifying it was watching, as he made his case, point by point, to a crowd of, over 75,000, I think they said, packed into a gigantic football stadium, hanging on his every word. It would also be hard to exaggerate what a nightmare the last 8 years have been for this country, and how much we need hope.
Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit cards, bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.
That’s just the economic issues, but it would be hard to exaggerate how badly so many of us have been hit by those, either.
Then there’s the Iraq War, torture, losing our civil liberties, Katrina. . .
America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.
God, I hope so. This is coming from an agnostic. Seriously, though, I like to think our country is better than this.
We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty…
… that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.
That happened here, in our country. We have poor people still not being able to go back to their homes, and yet, we can always bail out large banks and corporations from their own greed.
Obama is far more charitable to McCain than I’d be (but his analysis of McCain’s positions is right on):
Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know.
Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies, but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans?
How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?
It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care; it’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.
As Obama points out, this is part of the old Republican “trickle down” theory. Give more to the rich, and it’s supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of us.
In Washington, they call this the “Ownership Society,” but what it really means is that you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you’re on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You’re on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don’t have boots. You are on your own.
He paints a different vision for the Democrats (who I think, sadly, side too often with the Republicans):
We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off and look after a sick kid without losing her job, an economy that honors the dignity of work.
I like Barack’s vision of America, and it is the America we are told exists:
What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.
It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.
I like his ideas for the economy – instead of giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, giving them to companies that create jobs here in America, eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses to create high-wage, high tech-jobs,cutting taxes for 95% of working people. Eliminating our dependence on oil from the Middle East (okay, I’m not to crazy about the nuclear power part, and uncertain about tapping our natural gas reserves and clean coal technology; but definitely like the idea of making fuel efficient cars here in the U.S.) How about public transit and Amtrak – why not develop fast train service like in Europe? He does talk about developing renewable energy – wind power, solar power, biofuels.
Investing in education. There’s a big one, and I don’t think anything is more important. We keep wasting generations of young people, and even many of those who do make it through to college are saddled with an absurd amount of debt.
I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.
And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.
Affordable and accessible health care for all Americans.
If you have health care — if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.
Protecting social security, equal pay for equal work. . .
Balancing the budget (interesting how we now have tax cut and spend conservatives. . .):
Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.
But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.
Personal responsibility as well:
Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can’t replace parents, that government can’t turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.
I’m glad to see Barack take on McCain on his ability to lead as commander-in-chief, but I wish he (and the other Democrats) didn’t feel the need to be so hawk-like themselves. Out of Iraq, but more emphasis on capturing Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders (that part I agree with. . . yeah, remember them, they’re the ones who killed all those Americans on Sept. 11, 2001?) and Afghanistan (I was never keen on that war either, we’ve created at least as much of a mess there as in Iraq).
He also talks about making sure our soldiers have the equipment they need and care when they get home, and the need for diplomacy (which has been so arrogantly missing from the Bush administration).
As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.
I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.
And this:
And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.
He is calling for an end to partisan attacks and a bi-partisan coming together on issues around the values we do believe in, citing wedge (or as I call them, wedgie) issues like abortion, gun control and gay rights. Admittedly, it would be good to get past this “red state”/”blue state” divisiveness, but we’ll see how it goes.
Finally, invoking Martin Luther King (and fireworks). A great speech. An incredible moment in American history.
I’m thinking we can do this. Also an incredible moment in the Democratic party, as, for the first time in years, we have a candidate willing to fight for it and hold back nothing (whether in campaigning in and trying to win every state, or fighting back Republican attack adds). Fight for it as hard after the primaries (which has been where it’s always falling apart, at the important part. . . it doesn’t make a lot of difference in the long run to win the Democratic candidacy, then loose the election. . .)
Our troops are in danger and several have already died from shoddy electrical work by privatized contractors in Iraq according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times.
Over 283electrical fires that destroyed or damaged American military facilities were reported in just a 6 month period from August 2006 – January 2007, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, according to Times research. The article said the Pentagon has reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted and many more injured.
Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007. It noted “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”
A Green Beret Staff Sergeant, Ryan D. Maseth, was electrocuted in January while showering due to poor electrical grounding. Two soldiers in a nearby building had narrowly escaped an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring just two weeks before Sgt. Maseth’s death.
KBR, the Houston-based company responsible for providing electrical and other basic services for American troops in Iraq, claim they have found no link between their work and the electrocutions, even though their own study found a “systematic problem” with their electrical work. Pentagon officials who have been pressured into looking into Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution are also trying to deny the widespread danger from faulty wiring on Iraq bases have anything to do with his death.
Yet:
In another internal document written after Sergeant Maseth’s death, a senior Army officer in Baghdad warned that soldiers had to be moved immediately from several buildings because of electrical risks. In a memo asking for emergency repairs at three buildings, the official warned of a “clear and present danger,” adding, “Exposed wiring, ungrounded distribution panels and inappropriate lighting fixtures render these facilities uninhabitable and unsafe.”
The memo added that “over the course of several months, electrical fires and shorts have compounded these unsafe conditions.”
According to the New York Times article, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 KBR and other contractors have been paid millions to repair and upgrade the Iraqi buildings our troops are housed in.
Millions of dollars, yet lame excuses as to why the work could not be done correctly:
Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.
Government officials responsible for contract oversight, meanwhile, were also unable to keep up, so that unsafe electrical work was not challenged by government auditors.
Oops, our subcontractors hired unskilled labors for a few bucks a day! Oops, the government inspectors couldn’t keep up with checking the work!
Now, I’m just trying to imagine if we had similar problems with widespread faulty wiring with a number of new condos going up here in Seattle. Residents getting routinely shocked, and occasionally electrocuted in their showers, or forced to flee while their unit is destroyed in a fire. Then the condo builders claimed, “Oops, our subcontractors hired unskilled laborers for dollars a day, not our fault!” I also try to imagine our city officials saying, “Oops, there are just too many condos going up and our inspectors just don’t have time to inspect all of them!” Of course, the next thing I imagine is the lawsuits against both the contractors and the city. I’m not sure if our military members can sue (I seem to recall hearing about restrictions), though if not, why not?
Meanwhile, our troops are still in danger:
The Army documents cite a number of recent safety threats. One report showed that during a four-day period in late February, soldiers at a Baghdad compound reported being shocked while taking showers in different buildings. The circumstances appear similar to those that led to Sergeant Maseth’s death.
Another entry from early March stated that an entire house used by American troops was electrically charged, making it unlivable.
Of course, I’m opposed to the war, and already cynical about the Bush administration and their cronies. Still, this is shocking (oops, pun not intended, but maybe appropriate) even by their standards.
Even if you support the war and Bush, write him and your members of congress and demand both that they remedy the situation so our troops are not in danger from our own contractors shoddy wiring, and that KBR and the other contractors be held responsible.
Update: I’ve found a video, of the Senate Hearings on July 11, 2008 after posting this earlier today. Testifying at the hearing are Sgt. Maseth’s mother and the mother of another electroctuted soldier, and two electricians from KBR.
Evidently I can’t post Brightcove videos to my free Word Press account like I can YouTube videos, so follow the link below:
Last Saturday, President Bushvetoed H.R. 2082, a bill that would have outlawed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques by the CIA. Amnesty International condemned the veto and called for Congress to push for investigation and accountability.
Is waterboarding torture? Eric Lomax, a British World War II veteran who was waterboarded while a Japanese POW has no doubts what he experienced was torture, as he describes his ordeal in a London Times article:
One morning I was led out to the back of the Kempeitai building, where the simple apparatus for the historic water torture was laid out. From its availability I wondered if they used it quite often. I was laid on my back on a bench; my arms, still broken and almost useless, were placed across my chest, my face was covered by a cloth and a tap feeding a hose-pipe was turned on. It was all so simple. To encourage me to say something the senior Japanese man beat me from time to time with the branch of a tree. This did not do my arms any good at all. The interpreter, who did not seem sympathetic to the whole procedure, held my left hand. I suspected that he wanted to make sure that I remained alive.
The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning, choking, vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with ever-changing force. To put it mildly, it was ghastly, quite the worst experience of my life. There were occasional intervals for interrogation. How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of some days, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. Eventually I was dumped in my cell, which was so small it offered little scope for movement. At about this time two of my colleagues were beaten to death. Their bodies were dumped in a latrine where they may well remain to this day.
Was what his Japanesecaptors did to Mr. Lomax torture? Does anyone really doubt that? Why is it being justified when America does it? How did torture become an American value?
The physical damage suffered by victims of torture can usually be repaired. But the psychological damage can never be repaired. It accompanies victims of torture throughout the rest of their lives.
Is this what we want to stand for?
In case anyone is still in doubt whether the water torture is, or is not, torture I shall refer to a Japanese Army document, which is authoritative. I have an extract from the Japanese Secret War Service Guide, headed ‘”Fundamental Rules for Interrogating War Prisoners”. This was probably issued in the Kwantung Army in Manchuria in 1938. In the list of “official” tortures item No 3 reads: “Putting the person interrogated on his back (it is advisable to raise the feet a little) and dripping water into the nose and mouth simultaneously.” A later section draws attention to the importance of minimising the disturbance caused by victims’ screams.
Java Colleen's Jitters 