Some interesting reads I’ve come across lately:
*Worried about the military’s recruiting slump? Well, don’t just stand there being a chickenhawk. Pull out a feather and hand it to a younger chickenhawk.
*Why the ChiComs are still around and the Soviets aren’t.
*The frog slowly comes to a boil: an excellent bit of libertarian synthesis.
Yes, apologists for Big Brother are a**holes, and unless the frank description of them as such (and, oh yeah, nudity) offends you, you’ll enjoy this Penn & Teller video on the PATRIOT Act.
‘I’ll be on “Connected Coast to Coast” hosted by Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley, on Friday(noon EST/9am PST). It’s a segment about military recruiting.. and why the numbers are so low. (Duh!) Right-wing nut-bar Cliff Kincaid (of “Accuracy” in Media) is going to represent the pro-war position. Which I guess means he and his whole family are going to be signing up to go to Iraq real soon now …
As AntiWar.com’s Justin Raimondo asked, “A nation at war with itself — who will win that one?“
A U-S Army staff sergeant has been charged
with killing his two commanders last week at a base outside Baghdad.The military says it’s believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.
It was first believed that the June seventh deaths of Captain Phillip Esposito and First Lieutenant Louis Allen resulted from
“indirect fire” from a mortar round.But the military now believes they died from an explosive device, possibly a grenade.
Sergeant Alberto Martinez has been charged with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad.
The so-called “fragging” incident happened near Tikrit.
Fragging is a term used to refer to soldiers killing their superiors.
UPDATE: More detail from KRT:
TIKRIT, Iraq – (KRT) – A 37-year-old staff sergeant was charged in the deaths of two of his superior officers in the first alleged case of its kind in Iraq.
The stunning announcement Thursday of the court-martial came amid continued violence in Iraq against U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Eight Iraqi police were killed in a car bombing on the airport road in Baghdad, and the U.S. military reported the death of five Marines and a sailor in violence in western Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of the 42nd Infantry Division was charged Wednesday with two counts of premeditated murder for the June 7 attack that killed Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, 30, and Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34.
Martinez, a National Guardsman from Troy, N.Y., was a soldier in the division’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company. Esposito and Allen were that unit’s top two commanders.
U.S. military officials refused to comment on reports that Martinez was facing disciplinary action that could have motivated him to act.
“We don’t have an idea as to any motive at this time,” said Maj. Patrick Swan, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Swan said that charges against additional soldiers could not be ruled out.
Martinez was being held late Thursday under military confinement in Kuwait and has been provided an attorney from the U.S. Army Trial Defense Service. Swan could not say whether the soldier had turned himself in or whether he had been implicated in the attack by evidence found after an extensive investigation.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division had been looking into the deaths of Esposito and Allen for more than a week. The two officers died about 10 p.m. on June 7 inside a former palace that has been converted to barracks for U.S. soldiers on the lush grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former compounds in Tikrit.
It was initially believed the men died from injuries in a mortar attack, but forensic evidence soon ruled that out. Within days, the Army announced the officers’ deaths were being investigated as crimes.
In an interview earlier this month in the San Francisco Chronicle, Milton Friedman speaks on many issues (enough to madden some of our readers).
Buried in the interview is a gem:
Progress in his goal of rolling back the role of government, he said, is “being greatly threatened, unfortunately, by this notion that the U.S. has a mission to promote democracy around the world,” a big Bush objective.
“War is a friend of the state,” Friedman said. It is always expensive, requiring higher taxes, and, “In time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do.”
News-wise, this week sure is starting out with a bang — and, hey, Monday isn’t even over yet!
No, I don’t mean the Jackson verdict. It looks like there’s going to be breaking news on the Bolton nomination around 10:30 tomorrow morning. Stay tuned …
The minute I heard about the recent bombings in Iran, I immediately thought: Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the kooky Marxoid cult that some neoconservatives want to help them effect “regime change” in Tehran. And sure enough, it looks like my instincts were right on target. But, hey, wait-a-minute, weren’t they all supposed to be corraled in “Camp Ashraf,” their base where U.S. guards stand watch over them? Hmmmm…. who let the dogs out?
On the Huffington Post blog, Eugene Volokh, the “libertarian” lawyer who infamously made the case for torture, is all over poor old Paul Findley for citing an apparently nonexistent quote from Condi Rice admitting that we have an “Israel-centric” foreign policy. I jump into the fray to point out that apparently some people — including Larry Franklin, whose sealed indictment on 6 counts of espionage on behalf of Israel was made public today– think it isn’t Israel-centric enough.
God, but I’m having an indecent amount of fun over at the Huff-blog!
Congratulations to Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer, whose series of articles for The American Prospect got an airing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. The idea was to debunk Rep. Curt Weldon’s wacko book retailing a whole new set of neocon-generated lies designed to get us into war with Iran. Naturally, Weldon denied everything: Laura catches him in more than a couple of lies here.
Sources of Neoconservative Thought: Leo Strauss, Leon Trotsky — and Francis Ford Coppola? Arthur Silber has the story….
