Nom de Plume

Great bumper sticker:
Practice compassionate impeachment

Bankrupt The Bush/Cheney Campaign

No matter where you are on the web, there he is. Yep, that’s right Bush banner ads. Yuckola. So we all know he has pretty much bottomless pockets (along with those bottomless oil reserves), but what would happen if every single wannabe Bush-ouster out there committed to clicking at on one of the stupid things five times a day. Could we push the click-through rates and data transfer rates through the roof and drain the reserves?

What an idiot.

Another HJ

U.S. Army Says Kills Around 40 in Iraq Attack
Powell Rebukes Israel for Deadly Gaza Raid

Headline Juxtaposition

Over 40 Killed in U.S. Bombing of Iraq Village
Bush to Israel: Show Restraint, Respect Innocent Life

If there’s any axis of evil in the world, surely it is to be found within our own administration.

Bush “rejects” Berg’s death vehemently, yet does nothing regarding the prison abuse other than musing, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.” Iowa representative Steve King states that the abuse inflicted on Iraqi prisoners was “little more than hazing,” and cannot compare to the death of American contractors. (Hello? Didn’t your mommy ever tell you that two wrongs don’t make a right?) Meanwhile, Rumsfeld refuses to resign by shifting the focus to prison guards. Well, who put them there with little to no training? Who sanctioned–whether tacitly or overtly–their actions? And most importantly, whatever happened to “the buck stops here”?

Because that’s what it comes down to. In all the rhetoric floating around Capitol Hill, at no point have I heard anyone in this administration say, “I am to blame”–and then accept personal responsibility. It’s about money, it’s about power, it’s about who can make the most money by being in public office. Rumsfeld has known about this systematic abuse for months. There’s no way he can’t have known.

And in my book, that makes him more guilty than the prison guards who are on trial.

So let’s talk justice. It’s only fair that, along with the prison guards now on trial, Rumsfeld be forced to take personal responsibility for his actions–or, as the case may be, the lack of them.

Because no matter how distanced we feel from the process, it is our right to make our opinion heard. In justifying this war, everyone talks about American values. I say it’s time to start implementing those values where they belong.

At home.

The other day I was streaming an NPR affiliate in Florida, which was covering a story on how one community wanted to change a street name from Martin Luther King, Jr. Street back to 6th St. Naturally, there was a big ruckus. But then some guy actually got on the air and twanged, “If MLK Jr was alive today, he’d be in jail … for bein’ a terrorist.”

!!!

Winner of the monthly search phrase award

“jenny nimmo!!!!!!!!!!!! if you don t give me any good information i will tell my mummy”

I am outraged on many levels, but one of the main things that kills me about the whole “Iraqi Prison Abuse” scandal (though torture seems a more appropriate word) is that this scandal was inevitable.

These prison guards knew nothing about running a prison. They had no training. They had never even been shown the articles of the Geneva Convention. I’m not exonerating anyone; I think what they did was truly awful. But the fact is that these people were in a strange country fighting a nebulous war—and then they were put in complete charge of a prison without knowing the first thing about how to run one.

There have been countless studies that show the negative effects of absolute power. Berkeley (which really seems to like weird studies) did several of them. And all you have to do is look at Nazi Germany to see that people are like sheep. If every other person in a herd is doing something, you’re going to do it too. This has been documented over and over again in history.

Doing what they do, the Secretary of Defense and his minions have to know this. Yet what did they do? To begin with, they didn’t staff a facility like that correctly–which is the beginning of tacit exoneration. It becomes tacit approval when the Red Cross makes recommendations regarding the treatment of prisoners and those recommendations are ignored. Or when the matter is “being investigated” in January, and Rumsfeldt just viewed some of the other materials last night.

Well, o my faithful blog audience, it has been a long time since I’ve written. Been a pretty busy two weeks–mainly because I’m now back in the ranks of the nine-to-fivers. Nearly three years of not going in to an office, and I have to say: it’s a bit of an adjustment. Not a bad one, just different. Every morning, I swill coffee and head over the 520 bridge. Most of the time, my road rage (it’s usually bumper-to-bumper traffic) dissipates into a little jolt of satisfaction at that first little swoop up that shows the floating bridge bisecting the water. Strangest thing: the water can be calm and peaceful on one side and choppy as the ocean on the other. On a clear day, you can see forever.