I will be in and out today, so entertain yourselves.
By the way, I failed to comment on this yesterday- this moderator should be beaten with a stick. Disgraceful behavior.
*** Update ***
Heh.
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I will be in and out today, so entertain yourselves.
By the way, I failed to comment on this yesterday- this moderator should be beaten with a stick. Disgraceful behavior.
*** Update ***
Heh.
by John Cole| 54 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Democratic Stupidity
It appears the Democrats can behave like a supine minority while in the majority:
A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.
The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.
Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate failed to pass competing measures on Friday that would have included tougher judicial checks and oversight on the eavesdropping powers.
The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.
“I can sleep a little safer tonight,” Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.
Are we really passing legislation so Chris Bond can sleep better?
At any rate, well done Democrats. If you are wondering why your poll numbers in Congress are so low, it is because the Republican opposition hates you, and the people who voted for you hate you more. Why? Because of stuff like this.
Grow a spine, you cowards.
This post is in: Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
It is official! One hundred percent of soldiers, when asked, state that no, they do not want an Article 15:
To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?
Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas’ platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.
As to what will happen to him?
Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to Administrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under the various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not releasable to the public by the military on what does or does not happen.
Intrepid defender of the troops Bob Owens with the “scoop.” Our brave defender of the soldiers honor opines:
Let’s look at that once more: “members of Thomas’ platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.”
Presumably thorough, in-person interviews of all of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and Beauchamp’s platoon within Alpha Company by military investigators, and not one of those soldiers could confirm Beauchamp’s stories as told in The New Republic.
Note that the investigation didn’t just stop by stating that the claims were uncorroborated; Col. Boylan states categorically that Beauchamp’s allegations were false. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
But what about the OPSEC violations! NO CRIMES? DOES THAT MEAN NO EXECUTIONS FOR TREASON?
And no- these were not proven “false.” Not in any sense of the word- not from interviews alone. What it means is that the military can’t corroborate it, and of course they can’t- what idiot is going to cop to what Beauchamp described under the threat of punishment? Seriously. If interviews were the only thing done in this investigation, it proves nothing (“O.J.- did you kill your wife? No? Ok.”).
And this is not to blame this on the military or the poor bastards at the Public Affairs Office who have been dealing with idiots like Owens for the past two weeks- what are they supposed to do? Search for canine corpses in the desert? Go the the KBR records and line up a name with every meal served in Kuwait?
No- they did the only thing they could do- they asked the soldiers, and surprising no one, found no one willing to cop to the behavior. Again, this should come as NO surprise, and only in the world of make believe would this mean that the story is finished. Kudo’s to Allahpundit for asking the right questions:
NR claims to have corroborated the various elements of Beauchamp’s story with five different members of his company, four of whom had firsthand knowledge of the incidents. The statement Bob got suggests (but doesn’t quite explicitly say) that every last man in the company was interviewed and, to quote the spokesman, “no one could substantiate [Beauchamp’s] claims.” Assuming both Foer and the spokesman are telling the truth, five guys in the squad are lying to someone. They all have a motive to tell the Army the incidents never happened given the trouble they’d be in for not reporting them at the time; assuming they’re all friends of Beauchamp and want to protect him from a career-destroying mistake, they also all have a motive to tell TNR that the incidents happened the way he said. (Although if they’re lying to TNR, why then dispute the location of burned woman incident? Why not just corroborate him on that detail too? Maybe because there are too many people at FOB Falcon who could disprove it?)
Unless the Army comes up with compelling evidence disproving his story it’s going to end up as the military version of a he said/she said where each side simply believes whom they’d prefer ideologically to believe and leaves it at that. Let’s hope what they’ve got is as specific as Goldfarb’s quote implies.
Allah is probably right. At any rate, hopefully a few things will happen:
1.) Bob Owens and the other nitwits will leave these guys at the Public Affairs office alone and let them get on to more important things. Like, for example, fighting a war- one that really isn’t going very swimmingly. I am betting their 100% attention to that would probably be a good thing.
2.) Scott Beauchamp will get his computer back and will be allowed to talk to his parents again.
3.) Somewhere in Greater Wingnuttia®, someone will cry that a little extra duty is not punishment enough, and I will be blessed with another week’s worth of easy blogging material- making fun of really, really stupid people.
Finally, let me close with the observation that it is Doug Feith’s profound misfortune that Tommy Franks never met Bob Owens.
*** Update ***
Mandatory Troll Disclaimer- Thinking this investigation as currently described proves nothing in no way means that I think Beauchamp’s writings are accurate, nor do I want them to be true. Nor do I want the terrorists to win, nor do I hate America, nor do I plan to move to France and share a condo with Barbra Streisand.
*** Update #2 ***
The whooshing, clattering sound you hear is the strict rules of evidence that they so recently applied to the New Republic being slam-dunked into wastebaskets, as the broad official denial suddenly becomes the gold standard of investigative research.
This post is in: Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
Matt Sanchez, live from FOB Falcon:
Despite the media coverage back home, most of the fifty or so soldiers I spoke with had never heard of Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and shrugged their shoulders when I mentioned the “Baghdad Diarist”. Not following the news too closely is normal on bases throughout Iraq and FOB Falcon is no exception. The day begins long before the sun floats on the horizon and sears the unpaved roads causing the dust to drift in the air by noon and settle long after dusk. Soldiers will only rest when the mission is complete and that means little time for leisure and less time for the latest literary scandals. This is a demographic far much more likely to read anonymous Myspace.com profiles of far-away pretty girls than the pages of a 90 year old progressive bi-weekly magazine.
*** Three Paragraphs Later ***With Operation Law and Order, Lt. Colonel James Crider and his soldiers of the Quarter horse employed clear, control and retain tactics to make the protection of the Dora occupants their personal priority. It’s fair to say the men and women of the 1-4 Cav, like so many of their sister units, know their bit of Baghdad real estate just as well or even better than they know FOB Falcon. For these men and women, the success of their mission is never reduced to a talking point on a tele-prompter, real soldiers have died defending this ground. Which may be why the “Baghdad Diarist” saga is taken so personally.
Jesus wept.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Sullivan links to an archived graphic of bad bridges in the US, and a couple things stand out:
1.) If you look at the blown up map, Brooke, Hancock and Ohio County in WV are all marked red (as is Mon. County), meaning they have problem bridges. That region, the northern panhandle of WV, has it’s old industrial base along the Ohio River; Koppers, Wheeling-Pittsburgh and Weirton Steel, Fostoria glass (not sure how many if any of these are still in business) and many other industries reside or used to reside there. If you drive from Wheeling to Weirton up old Route, it seems like you can not go 1/4 mile without seeing an old steel bridge.
The point- there are a ton of bridges, and I am not sure how many are still operational, and if the archive is conflating the older out of use bridges and the newer bridges for civilian traffic.
2.) When I first looked at the map, I thought “Gee- the SW doesn’t have many bad bridges at all.” Then I realized I am a moron.
3.) Of the industrial centers with a number of waterways, it appears that Oregon and Washington stand alone as being in good repair. There might be a lesson to be learned by comparing the relationship between state and local government in regards to infrastructure in those states and New York, in which it looks like there is not a safe bridge anywhere.
Pretty interesting, though.
This post is in: General Stupidity
Barnett calls the TNR statement “maddening”. If you’re wedded to the belief that the stories were fabricated, then it must be. It’s no fun to have accused a writer and his editors of wilfull malfeasance only to discover you have no real basis for it, except your own insecurities and hatreds. If, on the other hand, you’re concerned to find the full truth about Iraq – and TNR has published countless stories on every angle and supported the initial invasion – the stories are one trivial but worthwhile aspect of the complex reality of war. In the context of TNR’s coverage of the entire conflict, they’re completely legitimate.
I truly have no explanation why the rightwing blogosphere has managed to largely ignore and deny actual claims and cases of torture and abuse by US soldiers but have gone batshit over some trivial, unshocking, verified soldier stories by a man who, unlike Barnett and Malkin, is actually serving his country. But this is my best shot: Their president and their Congress and their movement have lost a war, wounded America’s moral standing in the world and caused tens of thousands of deaths and a greater risk of terrorism across the globe.
After four and a half years of this nightmare, who are you going to blame but The New Republic?
Terri Schiavo Could Have Lived!
Homosexuals are ruining marriage!
Harriet Miers should be a SC justice!
Let’s use this thread to document the crazy of the past few years.
*** Update ***
A quick link to Kevin Drum, who perfectly called how this affair would play out:
Like a Kabuki story, though, you can already see how this is going to play out….Eventually some small part of Thomas’s account will turn out to be slightly exaggerated and the right will erupt in righteous fervor. They were right all along! Thomas did make up his stories! The left does hate the troops!
The best comment from that thread predicting what would happen:
Why the endless attacks against Kabuki theatre?
At any rate, have fun documenting the crazy.
*** Update #2 ***
From the comments:
Of course you can not believe “Scott Thomas” “Beauchamp” about the story about him laughing at a deformed woman. Our brave soldiers would not do that. Of course Beauchamp said that his friend and him laughed at her and that is believable as they aren ot brave soldiers at all Beauchamp admits that he laughs at disfigured people and how can you believe a story told by somebody who admits that he laughs at disfigured people? So he probably laughed at her because he is that sort of person but nobody else did and even though he did not say that they did that is what he meant but they did not do that she does not even exist. Beauchamp says she did but how can you believe him he admits he laughed at her and a person who would do that would do anything?
Without checking the comments to see who wrote this, is this:
a.) Hot Air
b.) Ace
c.) Confederate Yankee
d.) The Powerline
e.) a spoof
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Republican Stupidity, Democratic Stupidity
The Democrats appeared to be up to no good in the House last night:
In a massive flare-up of partisan tensions, Republicans walked out on a House vote late Thursday night to protest what they believed to be Democratic maneuvers to reverse an unfavorable outcome for them.
The flap represents a complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and an unprecedented low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber.
The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt.
Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213 win on their motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Democrats, however, argued the measure was deadlocked at 214-214 and failed, members and aides on both sides of the aisle said afterward.
One GOP aide saw McNulty gavel the vote to a close after receiving a signal from his leaders – but before reading the official tally. And votes continued to shift even after he closed the roll call – a strange development in itself.
Whatever the final tally, acrimony quickly exploded between lawmakers on either side of the aisle as Democratic leaders tried to plot a solution, while parliamentarians on either side argued over protocol.
Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) eventually offered a motion to reconsider, according to floor staff on either side, ostensibly giving members a chance to recast their votes. But the maneuver sparked a chorus of angry protests from the Republicans, yelling “shame” on Democrats, while they returned fire with angry volleys of their own.
I am not too sure what exactly happened, and the only links at Memeorandum are from Powerline and the like- in other words, only Greater Wingnuttia® has commented, and we know their relationship to the truth.
Regardless, how soon we forget- this is neither unprecedented nor a new low. Remember this:
The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle. When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval…
So while I do not approve of the Democratic behavior, it is neither unprecedented nor a new low, as the Republicans have done worse with legislation that actually mattered. I guess we can blame the Democrats for learning from DeLay.
One quick note- have you noticed these things seem to happen late at night? It seems like calmer heads always lose out in these extended sessions.
*** Update ***
It appears I am not the only one to notice the connection. Good for James Joyner. And, as he notes, there is a difference between the two:
Both are unprecedented violations of the rules. And, arguably at least, the Democrats did it out of confusion last night. Further, the Hastert fiasco came at the cost of what amounts to bribery paid for with tax dollars.