Antiwar.com Blog

So sue me: people who riot and kill and swear jihad against an entire country because some drooling gap-toothed Lynndie-type flushed a wad of paper that had religious stuff written on it down a toilet are A-N-I-M-A-L-S. I don’t care if it was their holy book. I don’t care that it hurt their feelings and allegedly offended God. I don’t even care that it was done as part of a torture session — people are being tortured and all anyone can think to focus on is a handful of words about flushing a Koran!?!?

Journalist and friend Margaret Griffis says, “The Newsweek story did nothing to alleviate anything while at the same time providing psychos with a fresh reason to kill us.”

The blame for the riots and deaths is on the nutballs who participated. Someone needs to send a few truckloads of rabies shots to Afghanistan along with the “reconstruction”aid.

Your Antiwar.com review of Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith:
I liked it. Turns out wars are the death of republics, and the Emperor does a great Yushchenko impression.

In other news, the U.S. Air Force is planning to build a Death Star.

I can hardly wait for a certain DC liberventionist to explain this away:

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was an exhilarating and joyful event. It was a classical liberal revolution for democracy and freedom and against corruption. Viktor Yushchenko became the democratically elected president, promising freedom from fear and corruption.

Alas, the new Ukrainian government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, another revolutionary hero, has surprisingly opted for an economic policy that appears to be socialist and populist in nature. The results have been immediate: Last year Ukraine enjoyed economic growth of 12 percent; in the first four months of this year, the growth rate plunged to 5 percent, while inflation has surged to 15 percent. How could things turn so sour so fast? …

Continue reading “Trouble in Paradise?”

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports:

Mock executions – in which a prisoner is made to believe his death is imminent – are expressly prohibited by the US army’s interrogation policy.

The details were described in documents sought by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

On July 13, 2003, Captain Shawn L. Martin, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment took an Iraqi welder out to the desert and made him dig his own grave before pretending to shoot him, according to documents.

Capt Martin wanted information on a bombing. The welder was released.

Capt Martin also captured eight people in a vehicle and fired his gun to make the seven passengers believe he had killed the driver. He then went to the home of a man, whose identity was provided by the driver, and threatened to kill him in front of his family.

Capt Martin was court-martialled, convicted of aggravated assault and battery, and sentenced to 45 days confinement and loss of $US12,000 ($A15,900) in pay.

The other mock execution involved a second lieutenant with the 3rd Brigade of 1st Armoured Division who received administrative punishment as well as an other-than-honourable discharge from the service.

There was no Koran-flushing, though.  No US soldier would go that far.

Glenn Reynolds actually has a worthwhile insight! (Sandwiched between two slabs of baloney, of course.) On the childlike chickenhawkery of Andrew “Second Thoughts” Sullivan:

When Andrew was a champion of the war on terror, writing about martial spirit and fifth columns composed of the “decadent left,” did he believe that nothing like Abu Ghraib would happen, when such things (and much worse) happen in prisons across America (and everywhere else) on a daily basis? If so, he was writing out of an appalling ignorance.

Not that Glenn sees such inevitable horrors as any reason to avoid wars of choice, you understand…

Oakland, CA: TheatreFIRST is producing a rare revival of playwright Robert Holman’s abstract portrait of the lingering effects of war, Making Noise Quietly. In three one-act plays, Holman gives playgoers a glimpse at war’s more rarely acknowledged consequences and victims—often less spectacular than those one sees on the news, yet equally tragic.

Each of the three plays is essentially a dialogue in which two characters who have been deeply affected by a war (WWII in the first play, The Falklands War in the other two) in their past share their experiences and attempt to cope with the awful destruction it has wrought in their consciousness. None of the plays take place on a battlefield or feature soldiers in combat, yet war remains the driving force and major character in all of them. Whether it’s a mother who is finding out she’s lost her son for reasons she can’t fathom, or an unaccustomed father who can’t control his anger after experiencing the horrible adrenaline of killing, all seven characters in the play present a different version of the anguish war causes—far behind the front lines, and long after the peace treaties are signed.

Though Making Noise Quietly was first produced in Britain in 1986, its invocation of the oft-disputed, short but tragic Falklands War (backdrop for two of the three short plays) seems particularly timely in 2005 America. As co-director Clive Chafer so eloquently states in his Director’s Notes for the play’s program: "At this time, it is good to remember that there is no such thing as a limited war, a war whose victory is predictable and whose course can be controlled; a war that can be fought and won and quickly left behind—certainly not for those who are brought down by it: the fighters, and the many touched by its tendrils, which reach out over time and space, and leave their mark, like a tattoo, indelibly."

If you’re in the SF Bay Area:

Making Noise Quietly plays at Mills College campus in Oakland, CA through June 5th.

Details and ticket information available at the TheatreFIRST Web site or by calling (510) 436-5085.