Posts from — November 2005

Karen at Dark Bilious Vapors goes back to the Peninsula War of the early 19^th century for Murdering Officers, an allusion to the Sharpe’s Rifles series.

The Crimean War continued the tradition with The Charge of the Light Brigade, of which French General Pierre Bosquet said: “C’est magnifique, mais il n’est pas la guerre.” [It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war.]

Ambrose Burnsides is a Civil War example of this type of officer at the The Battle of Fredericksburg, as was, uncharacteristically, Lee with Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

But the concept reached its zenith in the Great War, which lead to many remarkable antiwar books, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque perhaps the best known.

The Battle of the Somme which was fought from July 1^st until November 18^th, 1916 resulted in 420,000 British casualties, 200,000 French casualties, and 500,000 German casualties and only altered the front line 12 kilometers. Approximately 20,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day alone, but General Haig continued to send waves of troops to be mown down by machine guns.

This is the probable setting for Stanley Kubrik’s Paths of Glory in which the character, General Broulard says: “There are few things more fundamentally stimulating that watching another man die.”

This administration is filled with Broulards, sacrificing the children of others to justify their obsessions and unwilling to admit their failures.

We should be sure that those wearing the 18,000 body armor vests that have been recalled as defective are included in the vote.

Too bad they don’t have anyone with legal training or an understanding of the Internet in the group…

[It is extremely difficult to type while laughing this hard.]

Murtha offered a resolution that would force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq “at the earliest practicable date.” It would establish a quick-reaction force and a nearby presence of Marines in the region. It also said the U.S. must pursue stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

But House Republicans planned to put to a vote – and reject – their own resolution that simply said: “It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.”

At some point in the future historians will wonder:

How the Busheviki can justify not killing or capturing Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi any of the three times he and his group were located in Kurdish controlled northern Iraq prior to the start of the war?

How they can justify not closing the trap on Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri when they were in Tora Bora?

How they can justify protecting the Mujahedin-e Khalq [MEK] when Iran is willing to swap Al Qaeda and Taliban captives for the MEK?

It isn’t the end of this conflict that is going to make the Shrubbery the worst President in US history; it is the beginning and conduct of the war.

[And, as my Mother noted yesterday, an economy worse than Hoover, corruption worse than Harding, and less honor than Nixon.]

The Reverend George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was “wrong” and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

So, what we should do is schedule a debate between Father Coyne and Pat Robertson on the issue. Stonehenge at the Summer Solstice would be neutral ground. No written or recorded memory aids, and no voice amplification.

The storm is predicted to follow the same general path as hurricane Wilma.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Cluster of Cold Cats

Turn up the blanket!

[Editor: Ringo, Dot, and Sox call a truce as a cold front moves through and drops temperatures to around 40°.]

Friday Ark

You can listen to the audio link at: White House Takes On Iraq Critics.

The short version: Congress didn’t get all the intelligence, and what was missing were the intelligence reports that said that a lot of what they did get was bogus.

Just so no one thinks that NPR has decided to totally convert to reality, they followed this with a Barbara Bradley Hagerty piece on what a wonderful thing it would be for separation of church and state for Scalito to be confirmed as he would decide these issues exactly like Justice O’Connor, so he’s really not as radical as people would think from his opinions, oh and he ruled in favor of Muslim police officers’ beards, so he supports all religions and there’s nothing to worry about.

I think his analysis is valid and has resulted in a backlash from many people who might have remained silent.

Among one of the most respected Democratic officials on defense, Congressman John Murtha [D-PA], a retired Colonel in the Marine Reserves and a member of Congress for over 30 years, has had enough. He voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq, but he sees no point in continuing the operation.

From the CNN report:

“U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq,” the senior lawmaker said. “It’s time for a change in direction.”

He said he believes all the forces could be redeployed over a six-month period.

Murtha, a former Marine Corps colonel and veteran of the Vietnam war, is the first senior lawmaker to call for an immediate withdrawal. Other critics of the war have asked President Bush to set up a timetable for withdrawal.

[snip]

“I resent the fact that on Veterans Day, they criticized Democrats for criticizing them,” Murtha said. “This [the war] is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public knows it, and lashing out at critics doesn’t help a bit. You’ve got to change the policy. That’s what’s going to help the American people. You need to change direction.”

Murtha is respected on both sides of the aisle for his view on defense issues, and his open shift to opposing the war will provide cover for others, and hopefully some spine to Democrats.

[Update: My bad – I first noticed this at NTodd’s place.

Steve at The Modulator puts us on a path to The Talent Show where you find the door to the “rabbit hole”.

They have decided to call themselves Open Source Media, which strongly conflicts with their privacy and use statement that attempts to copyright everything that exists in their world. They have even trademarked their initials. This is a bit odd as Open Source Media, Inc. is an established enterprise and might have something to say about that.

Their Universal Resource Locator is osm.org, which doesn’t seem to show much confidence in their profit potential.

They apparently found out that osm.com belongs to Oregon Steel Mills,
opensource.com belongs to Red Hat, and opensourcemedia.com is the property of Zope Corporation.

Of course pajamamedia.com is also taken, but a few searches might have led them to a better name choice, one that is not so at odds with their concept.

I didn’t link to them because they apparently don’t want me to, so this will be my last mention of the existence of the group, unless an interesting set of court cases ensues.

I would wonder how anyone who claims to have read Edmund Burke could support the Shrubbery. Burke supported freedom for the American colonies because of the actions of the British government, so how can Brooks the anti-democratic acts at home and imperialism abroad that characterize the current administration?

One must conclude that Brooks still dwells in the deep end of the pool of “ignorance”.

Dot, Sox, Ringo, and I extend our condolences to them.

This has been a sad week for those of us with feline friends.

The WP rounds are normally used to mark locations for air strikes, to provide illumination, or to generate smoke screens. Many would be familiar with the use of “tracer” rounds in machine guns to assist in aiming the weapon, especially when used against aircraft.

Ever since the battle of Falluja there have been reports from various source that the United States forces had used incendiary weapons in the battle. Many said that napalm or the reformulated MK 77 Mod 5 bombs were used in the city. Some of the reporting was based on the appearance of burns on the bodies of the dead from city.

After more than a year of denials the BBC now reports:

The Pentagon has confirmed that US troops used white phosphorus during last year’s offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Falluja.

“It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants,” spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC – though not against civilians, he said.

The US earlier denied it had been used in Falluja at all.

Col Venable denied that the substance – which can cause burning of the flesh – constituted a banned chemical weapon.

Washington is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus devices.

Col Venable said a statement by the US state department that white phosphorus had not been used was based on “poor information”.

I heard the interview with Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, US Army, Pentagon spokesman and certified obnoxious twit. Some of the BBC correspondents have the demeanor of a rabid pit bull when questioning people, for example, I’m sure that the Oxford English Dictionary has a picture of Jeremy Paxman in its entry on obnoxious, but the individual interviewing Venable was just trying to get a straight answer.

Venable spent the entire interview playing with definitions. Somewhat like a cat who has had an “accident” on a tile floor, Venable was “scratching” for cover. If Venable and other spokesweasels would really like to improve the image of the United States in the world community, they might try giving straight answers to questions. The “poor information” the State Department had was a Defense Department lie. The truth is a powerful weapon that the Pentagon might want to consider for inclusion in the American arsenal.

The question is contained in a Josh Marshall post of a reader’s e-mail:

“…When did it become appropriate for the Commander-in-Chief to go onto a military installation before a military crowd and denounce the opposition party?…”

Josh notes: “…it’s also on the eve of a trip abroad.”

Bobby picks up the point and posts about the speech the Shrubbery gave at Elmendorf AFB while flying to Asia for several meetings. In the speech to Air Force personnel he repeats his denunciation of Democrats.

Read the founding documents. Show me where in those documents there is any support for a President making blatantly political speeches to the military of the United States. Show me the references that say the military isn’t required to be apolitical and non-partisan. Show the Department of Defense directives or articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that encourage partisan political activity by active duty members of the military.

I want some demonstration of anything in the traditions, customs, rules and/or regulations that would make anyone believe that partisan political activities are acceptable on the installations of any of the Armed Forces of the United States.

If you can’t leave your political rhetoric outside the main gate, don’t enter the installation.