Rational thoughts from Robert Scheer

I know, rational thought & Robert Scheer don't normally go together.  But he has a new article up at The Nation that makes a surprising amount of sense, aside from the obligatory attempt to to link the roots of our current problems to Reagan. Speaking of the bailouts, Scheer writes: 

It's enough to drive one back to the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Personally, I would rather we took our chances these days with letting the corporations sink or swim on their own without government interference.

Is this really Scheer, or is someone impersonating him? There's more: 

we all may end up on the public dole, scrambling for droppings from a too heavily laden nationalized table. Socialism for the rich is not the way to go.

Scheer argues that we should look after the workers who become unemployed as a result of corporate failures, rather than bailing out the companies that got in trouble through mismanagement.  I was shocked to find myself in agreement with many of his points.

Another Misleading News Headline

The New York Times online has a story up entitled, "U.S. Forces Mistakenly Kill 6 Afghan Police." If you just read the headline, you would naturally assume that his was a U.S. military screw-up. But if you read the article you find that 

A statement issued jointly by the American and Afghan military commands said a contingent of police officers fired on American forces after the Americans had successfully overrun the hideout, killing the suspected Taliban commander and detaining another man.

So, unlike what the headline implies, U.S. forces had carried out a successful operation when they were mistakenly fired upon by Afghan police. Only then did they return fire, killing them.  Why use a headline that while technically correct, badly distorts what happened?

Vicious Case of Police Brutality

The New York Times reports that three NYC police officers have been charged in conjunction with a case in which one officer:

took his retractable baton and “shoved it” up Mr. Mineo’s anus, Mr. Hynes said, and that “resulted in an anal rectal tear.”

Apprarently he was smoking pot, and ran from police.  Yeah, that justifies being sodomized with a baton.  Naturally the police tried to cover it up, but according to other reports,  a transit officer who witnessed the attack came forward to testify.

The officer who actually carried out the assault faces up to twenty-five years in jail.  If convicted he should get the maximum.  The police are given greater power & responsibility than other citizens; if they abuse it they should also receive greater punishment.

Inflated Military Contracts - Another Egregious Example

According to Strategy Page the defense department's contract with Lockheed Martin to build the F-22 fighter has a disturbing clause. If the military stops buying F-22s, we the taxpayers have to pay Lockheed Martin $147 million. Why would the government enter into such a contract in the first place? Apparently Congress wanted to "encourage building more F-22s."  So they decided to penalize the country if we changed our minds later about how many we needed.

Like most on the right, I favor a strong military and support spending on advanced weapon systems.  But that doesn't mean we need to be stupid and wasteful about it, as is all too often the case.

Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory

Every nut on my side of the aisle who thinks this is a real issue and challenges the legitimacy of Obama's election  should read David Horowitz's article, "Obama Derangement Syndrome" at National Review Online.  The people pushing this theory are, to paraphrase Horowitz, sore losers and an embarrassment to conservatism. As he writes, 

Respect for election results is one of the most durable bulwarks of our unity as a nation. Conservatives need to accept the fact that we lost the election, and get over it

And this isn't some liberal, moderate Republican, or RINO slamming the right. This is David Horowitz of Frontpage Magazine.  Let's not replace BDS with ODS.

The Blackwater Manslaughter Case

The Washington Post reported today that five Blackwater security guards were charged with manslaughter in conjunction with a shooting incident in Iraq in Sept. 2007 that left 17 civilians dead.  According to the article, the guards were: 

working as Blackwater security contractors for the State Department when their convoy pulled into Nisoor Square and they opened fire.

They claim they were under fire from insurgents.  But the Iraqi government contends that they "fired without provocation."  Military & FBI investigations couldn't find anything to support the Blackwater guards' assertion that they were fired upon.

With the caveat that I don't know all the details, but going just by this article and other published reports, this whole thing smacks of a political prosecution.  It seems unlikely that the guards, all former military men, would just open fire on civilians without a good reason.  If they are convicted, I hope the convictions rest on something stronger than the word of the Iraqi government about something that happened in a war zone.

It is also worth mentioning that one of the charges is a firearms charge.  

The guards face the firearms charge under a 1980s drug law that made it a crime to use a machine gun in a crime of violence, according to the sources.

The sheer stupidity of this charge, when applied to paramilitary forces working for the State Department, makes me question the validity of the prosecution.

Nonsense About Torture

Military.com has a story up entitled, Ex-Interrogator: Torture Doesn't Work.  The article, with its highly misleading title, reports on a new book by the leader of an interrogation team in Iraq, who details his experiences and opinions. The article's title is contradicted by information given in the text -- and of course by logic and facts.  The officer, who uses the alias Matthew Alexander, admits that torture did sometimes produce useful information.  He is basically making a case that it is counterproductive overall, and that other methods were more effective -- a much stronger argument than pretending that torture doesn't work.  However, his points are weakened by ridiculous overstatement.  According to the article, Alexander says

the US military's use of torture is responsible for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers because it inspired foreign fighters to kill Americans.

Anyone making such a ludicrous claim cannot be taken seriously, no matter what his experience and background.  Total U.S. military losses are in the "thousands."  So he is essentially arguing that our interrogation practices caused the majority of U.S. military deaths.  I guess there'd only be a couple hundred U.S. military deaths if we hadn't resorted to torture.  Does anyone actually believe that?  

There are various powerful arguments against using torture or torture-like techniques. Making false statements that torture doesn't work, or putting forth crazy assertions that it somehow caused thousands of military deaths are not among them.