Near our home was a shoe store, owned and run by a Jew. Even before 1933 his store windows and swastikas had been painted on the walls and door. But, after the “takeover,” the Nazis demolished his store in broad daylight. They broke all the windows, threw the merchandise onto the sidewalk, and dragged the proprietor and his wife and two children into the street. They started beating and cursing them, all the while calling them dirty names and shouting that they weren’t fit to live among the exalted German, Aryan people. The greatest indignity of all is that after the family was lying in the gutter in agony, the Nazis urinated on them. I was only seven years of age when this took place, but I remember it vividly.

From Afghanistan:

From Pamela Geller, quoted in the Houston Chronicle [h/t -- Eric Dondero]:

I love these Marines. Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial.

In future dictionaries, a “geller” will be defined as “a near-perfect intersection of abject stupidity and irredeemable evil.”

[cross-posted from KN@PPSTER]

Behind the scenes — later paragraphs — we discover that the Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 to 5,000 troops on Iraqi soil. The true number was significantly larger. But they’re all leaving. Why?

It was almost certainly the S.O.F.A., the acronym for "Status Of Forces Agreement."

Obama’s announcement signals that US officials have been unable to negotiate with Iraq’s leaders a renewal of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the stationing and mission of American troops on Iraqi soil. Pentagon officials in particular, backed by a number of congressional leaders, had called for leaving a force of between 3,000 and 5,000 in Iraq for an extended period. –Iraq withdrawal: With US troops set to exit, 9-year war draws to close – CSMonitor.com

A key provision of any SOFA is exempting occupying soldiers from the laws of the country being occupied. It was this provision that Iraqi negotiators refused to renew. Thus, for example, once the old SOFA expired, U.S. soldiers who killed an Iraqi could be tried for murder under Iraqi law.

The Iraqis, it seems, found the back door to get rid of occupying U.S. troops.

This would likely work in other countries as well.

But that still leaves the drones.

Give military women equal abortion rights

Every woman who gets health insurance though the federal government faces a ban on coverage for abortion. We don’t support this policy, but the government at least allows for a few crucial and humane exceptions. For nearly every group, abortion is covered in the case of rape or incest.

But one maddening and profoundly unfair outlier exists: the U.S. Department of Defense.

If a U.S. servicewomen is raped — a shockingly frequent occurrence — she not only must navigate a sometimes sexist military culture as she attempts to get care and justice, she also must pay for the abortion herself.

And because some overseas military bases don’t provide abortions, this can include a costly flight home to find a doctor who will provide an abortion.

So, before we go any further, this is most emphatically not about the right to an abortion.* It’s about who should pay for certain abortions, which is a topic for another site. What I’m interested in is the “shockingly frequent” rape that’s going on in our most trusted institution. Let’s read on:

Servicewomen have lacked a rape exception since 1981, with a brief respite under President Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, the number of assaults against women have skyrocketed. In 2010, nearly 3,200 sexual assaults were reported in the military, a number that studies show represents just a fraction of total assaults. …

One young woman we spoke to, Jessica Kenyon, says she got no support and was ostracized after saying she was raped and sexually assaulted.

Kenyon strongly supports the rape exception but worries women will continue to be left to fend for themselves.

“There is so much torture when you report an assault,” Kenyon told us. “What will women have to do to prove they were raped?”

Given the context — and everything we’ve learned since Abu Ghraib — is there any reason to believe that she’s using the word “torture” in a strictly figurative sense? Do these rapists hold themselves to a higher standard than the Army Field Manual?

That seems unlikely. So what we have here is an organization speckled with rapists and sadists who are so depraved that they can’t even keep their hands (and other parts) off their comrades — yet this doesn’t raise any broader concerns for the Sun-Times. For instance, the editorial makes no mention whatsoever of all the women and girls (and men and boys) who didn’t volunteer to join the U.S. military but who are subjected to its “bad apples” all the same. Who will pay for their abortions (or funerals)? Who cares? Bigger evils must be confronted. Gay soldiers are being booed!

*Rest assured, gentle reader, that when it comes to abortion, you and I are on the same page. I believe wholeheartedly in whatever slogans you believe in, so there’s no need to post them in comments.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, now, as the U.S. is losing its edge economically, it has one clear comparative advantage. And that’s in killing. And it’s using it. Obama has increased the attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan. Brookings Institution last year estimated that for every one militant, as they put it, killed in Pakistan, the U.S. drones kill 10 civilians. –Allan Nairn: As U.S. Loses Its Global Economic Edge, Its "One Clear Comparative Advantage is in Killing, and It’s Using It," Democracy NOW!, December 29, 2010

How does The Drone Equation compare to other approved "collateral damage" equations? Well, during the Bush Administration, if a bombing strike was expected to kill more than 29 innocent men, women and children, the White House had to approve it. What would that be like . . . .

In the case of The Obama Administration, the acceptable "collateral damage" kill number has, apparently, been increased to 50 innocent civilians.

On the bright side, if you stay with groups larger than 50, the U.S. militaryindustrialcongressional complex may at least need a presidential order before it can kill you by mistake.
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The latest reported drone strike: –US Drone Strike Kills at Least Six in North Waziristan, House, Vehicle Hit in Attack, Identities of Victims Unknown, by Jason Ditz, January 07, 2011

Scott discussed the latest Wikileaks release. Judge Napolitano’s earlier interviews with Justin Raimondo can be found here and here.

Watch the clip:

The first [British anti-Iraq-war] march in which I took part must have numbered something like a million. …this huge crowd, which was being really very crudely manhandled by the police at the edges. We stopped. We were all wedged together and looking into Downing Street, where the Prime Minister’s residency is. And nobody seemed to speak, but a kind of feral roar of popular will rose. And I tried to imagine what it must have been like for [Tony] B liar sitting inside that building and hearing that sound…. –British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, “Our Kind of Traitor,” Democracy NOW!, Thursday, November 25, 2010 .

AMY GOODMAN: A former US Marine who killed two unarmed Iraqis is running for a congressional seat in North Carolina… Ilario Pantano has said he has no regrets about fatally shooting the two at point-blank range after detaining them near Fallujah in April 2004.

JUSTIN ELLIOT: These two Iraqi men had been searched. They didn’t have any weapons. And he was — Mr. Pantano was having them search their own car when he opened fire, and shooting as many as fifty or sixty rounds at them. And that includes reloading his M-16 rifle.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite his admission, the military cleared Pantano of wrongdoing in 2005. He is now in a tight race with incumbent Democrat Rep. Mike McIntyre in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District. –From Murder to Congress?

Do you think this sort of thing might be why they hate us?

…allegedly "hacked" software, in the case of the CIA, is now being used to guide killer drones to their targets, according to IISI’s legal pleadings, despite the fact that the modified software doesn’t function properly… –CIA Drone-Code Scandal Now Has A Big Blue Hue

JUAN GARCÉS: "… Hitler asked his generals to be ready to invade Poland, and to exterminate the population in those territories, because German population should replace this population. Some generals say, "My Führer, there will a provoking of cry in the world. Thousands of people will be killed, and there will be blame for us." And the answer from Hitler was, "Why? Twenty years ago was a massacre of Armenians. More than one million Armenians were massacred by the Turkish, in the Turkish Empire. Who remembers now the Armenians?" So, the forgiveness of the first big massacre in the twentieth century was the pretext for encouraging a second wave of massacre that was in World War II." –Another 9/11 Anniversary: September 11, 1973, When US-Backed Pinochet Forces Took Power in Chile

That’s why they MUST be prosecuted!

You know who they are.

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Who’s JUAN GARCÉS, you ask?

AMY GOODMAN: Our next guest, Juan Garcés, was a personal adviser to Salvador Allende. Juan Garcés was with the president when revolting troops bombed the presidential palace and found himself the sole survivor among Allende’s political advisers when the coup had run its course.

More than twenty years later, Juan Garcés has led a legal effort to sue Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity in the Spanish courts. Juan Garcés is now focused on getting the Spanish courts to investigate for the first time the crimes against humanity committed under General Franco’s dictatorship.

At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower said in 1963 "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

… Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … "How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?" …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, "Not until we drop two bombs on Japan." As [historian] Goldberg explains… "One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford." Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy"; the plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was used against Nagasaki.

From Why We Dropped The Bomb By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January/February 1995

It’s hard for Americans who identify with the U.S. Government to accept the idea that that organization could have engaged in such horrendous acts – twice in three days – without pristine motives.

Here’s what Vietnam era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara – who was part of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s command when the bombs were dropped – thought about it:

McNamara: "He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals."

It seems things haven’t changed much, doesn’t it?