Dick the Dick says veeps don’t respond to congressional subpoenas.
I don’t know how many times a sitting president or vice president have been subpoenaed. But seems to me that if We, the People, want accountability from the Executive branch, then the president and vice president have a duty to answer to the people, as represented in Congress.
We could be in for a fun couple of years.
First off, anyone who can find a rightie blogger who questions the timing of Saddam Hussein’s sentencing — the Sunday before the midterm election — gets a prize.
I haven’t thought about what the prize is. Not much chance I’ll be giving one.
Second, I predict Karl Rove is in for a surprise. I don’t think most of the American public gives a shit about what happens to Saddam Hussein any more. I think most Americans are sick of being jerked around on Iraq by the Bushies. The verdict is not going to change minds that the war was a mistake.
In anticipation of the joyous reaction of Iraqis, Reuters reports,
U.S. and Iraqi forces on Saturday began a security crackdown in the capital and other regions in anticipation of a verdict today in the trial of Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi government issued an around-the-clock ban on all vehicles and pedestrians, beginning Saturday night and lasting until at least Monday morning. The restrictions were also extended to the provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala, and to the city of Mosul, bastions of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
The authorities beefed up police and military presence at checkpoints throughout the capital, and all Iraqi troops and police officers were recalled from leave and put on standby in the event of civil unrest.
Saddam faces the possibility of the death penalty, and the authorities fear that a guilty verdict could trigger widespread attacks by supporters of his government.
Those Iraqis know how to celebrate.
Kirk Semple of the New York Times writes,
Many Sunni Arabs today criticized the verdicts as the product of a political charade designed to satisfy the political agendas of the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the Bush Administration.
And even among Mr. Hussein’s detractors and enemies, the euphoria that greeted the verdicts was not unequivocal. A 70-year-old Shiite woman from the Palestine Street neighborhood of eastern Baghdad said the worsening security situation in Iraq robbed her of any feeling of celebration. “The happiness is gone because we are not comfortable now,” she complained.
For the record, I don’t doubt the guy is guilty of atrocities. But as they say, hangin’s too good fer ‘im. For someone like Hussein it would be a worse fate to rot in prison, old, alone and forgotten. But then, me and Jesus are opposed to the death penalty on principle.
John Hanna, Associated Press —
An abortion doctor plans to ask for an investigation of the state attorney general and Bill O’Reilly over comments by the Fox television host that he got information from Kansas abortion records, the doctor’s attorneys said Saturday.
Dr. George Tiller said he will ask the Kansas Supreme Court on Monday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and take possession of the records of 90 patients from two clinics.
Attorney General Phill Kline obtained the records recently after a two-year battle that prompted privacy concerns. He has said he sought the records to review them for evidence of possible crimes including rape and illegal abortions.
During a Friday night broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the conservative host said a “source inside” told the show that Tiller performs late-term abortions when a patient is depressed, which O’Reilly deemed “executing babies.”
O’Reilly also said his show has evidence that Tiller’s clinic and another unnamed clinic have broken Kansas law by failing to report potential rapes with victims ages 10 to 15.
A spokeswoman for Kline, who received redacted copies of the records Oct. 24, said Saturday he doesn’t know how O’Reilly obtained the information.
The Associated Press reports —
The Rev. Ted Haggard was dismissed Saturday as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed “sexually immoral conduct,” the church said Saturday.
Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him. He also had placed himself on administrative leave from the New Life Church, but its Overseer Board took the stronger action Saturday.
“Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct,” the independent board said in a statement.
— Dogen, Genjokoan
— Jesus, Gospel of Thomas
Update: Blaming Mrs. Haggard.
Update update: You want to read James Wolcott.
By now you’ve probably heard that the military Times papers — Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Corps Times — is calling for Rumsfeld to go. Taylor Marsh has the text of the editorial. As Taylor says, this is unprecedented.
For opposing views of the military Times papers, compare Billmon some rightie bloggers. Start with Billmon:
Long ago, I worked for the company that owns the military Times publications, although my own paper was aimed at the civilian side of the government (we called our small corner of the newsroom “the demilitarized zone.”) Maybe things have changed in 20 years but I can assure you that back then the Times papers were even more mindlessly pro-military than the Pentagon itself (which is kind of like being more Catholic than the pope, but with superior firepower). If they’re taking aim at the SecDef — and timing their battery fire for maximum political effect — it’s reasonable to believe that the generals have reached a point that in many countries would be followed in short order by a military coup.
Billmon points out that the military Times papers were taken over by Gannett awhile back, which makes them part of the evil “MSM.” And, sure enough, you can click here to read a rightie blog post titled “Liberal Army Times calls (again) for Rumsfeld’s head.” The blogger writes,
CNN fails to report that the editorial position of the Army Times has been and still is VERY liberal. I know that as I did a stint them as a journalist way back. Note most of their most editorized stories have come during less than stellar times for the military.
As proof of this runamuck liberalism, the blogger linked to a CNN story:
In May 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke, an Army Times editorial said, “This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential, even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.”
Human decency, abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and accountability are “liberal.” OK, I accept that.
For those of us who actually served in our Military I can tell you what these papers really are…to the troops.
The National Enquirer of our military. Their editorials are always dripping with disdain for the military and have a huge liberal bias. They are owned by the Gannett publishing company who also publish the USA Today.
They are NOT representative of our military. For the MSM to allege otherwise is being dishonest.
Dr. Steven Taylor of PoliBlog — conservative but not crazy — writes,
Much will no doubt be made about the timing, but it is worth noting that the response is [to] the President–he is the one who brought the whole thing up in the first place.
I have passing acquaintance with the Army Times as a friend of mine is a subscriber and I have seen some (granted, limited) coverage of Iraq from the paper. It was certainly more positive than that in the MSM. Indeed, given that the four publications are aimed a military audience, it is rather difficult to make “liberal media bias†claims in this context. Members of the military or regular readers of the papers in question are welcome to correct me if they feel the need.
I sent enquiries to my military contacts, and I will let you know if any of them offer an opinion as to the political proclivities of the Army Times. Personally, I have a hard time believing that newspapers catering to military families are going to be The New Daily Worker.
As Dr. Taylor says, the editorial writers claim the timing of the editorial is not about the elections, but is a reaction to what the President said about keeping Rumsfeld. The Blue Crab, a rightie blogger (why isn’t he the Red Crab?), will have none of this.
The editorial protests that “This is not about the midterm elections.” Uh, sure. That’s why it was released to the major media outlets on Friday. …
… Of course it is about the midterms, and of course they are doing their level best to help drag the Democrats across the finish line. This is all part of that media crescendo.
“Media crescendo” refers to another post in which the Crab complained that the New York Times had the unpatriotic and liberal-bias nerve to quote people criticizing the President.
You’re shocked, I know. Truly, objectivity requires heaping only praise and glory and flowers and stuff on the President, at all times. Unless the President is a Democrat.
I see that much of the Right Blogosphere is still rampaging over the Kerry joke flub. Like that wasn’t ginned up just to distract voters from issues. It’s OK to try to swing the election by stirring up a phony crisis about someone who isn’t even running, but discussing a real issue critical to the nation is outside the pale.
Joan Vennochi writes in the Boston Globe:
The president earns dismal marks for job performance, according to recent polls. His unpopular Iraq war policy stands to turn voters against Republican candidates across the country.
Yet even with the presidential juice at low octane, some Democrats swiftly echoed the White House talking points after John Kerry bungled a bad joke. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, insulted the US military, they insisted; he must apologize.
All it took to bring them to their knees was the usual: a blast of hot air from the White House, fanned by Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and cable TV, and then giftwrapped by the mainstream media.
And like trained seals, rightie bloggers honk away on cue.
At the Los Angeles Times, Meghan Daum picks up on the Dick Armey quote I discussed here.
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey explained the process during the Kerry flap even as he conceded that what Kerry said was just a slip-up. “It’s pretty standard-fare political discourse,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday. “You misconstrue what somebody said. You isolate a statement, you lend your interpretation to it, and then you feign moral outrage.”
Armey added that “the Democrats have been doing it for years,” and, of course, he’s right. Sloganism-as-national idiom isn’t a partisan tick. Here’s Kanye West’s post-Katrina mantra, although he didn’t so much reinterpret a statement as an entire agenda: “George Bush hates black people.” It mushroomed into a rallying cry for black America. Catchy, yes. True? Come on.
Except that Kanye West wasn’t speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party. As far as I know he was speaking on behalf of Kanye West. And if his remark had “legs” it was because (a) it was amusing to see someone go off-script; and (b) lots of people were already thinking it. As far as I know, nobody in the Democratic Party got their fax machines going and sent their minions forth to push the story onto news media as hard as they could push. So, Ms. Daum — you had a good column going, and then you got stupid. Try harder next time.
Truly, Stupid is in the saddle and riding mankind. Mahablog commenter k has seen campaign ads that smear candidates by associating them with the Democratic Party.
One thing I have noticed- I am in a ‘red’ state with a Dem Governor who will win easily- The R opposing him is running ads attacking him by showing him at the 2004 Dem Convention saying “John Kerry†and amplifying it: the implication being that Kerry is his hero and that it is a crime to attend one’s convention and endorse one’s party candidate. Another commercial attacks a local Dem for ‘ taking money connected to Hillary Clinton and John Dean. Well they are Dems and Dean is the Chairman of the party so yea, we get the slur but it is the attack on being a member of another party and gasp taking party money that is being attacked here. Another ad attacks a Dem for state senate, an Iraq vet, a lawyer, for defending drug dealers and criminals. Yea it is what lawyers do. What I’m seeing is the attack on belonging to another party, participating in the legal system.
They’re running on smears and air. It’s all they’ve got.
See also Glenn Greenwald on Faux Nooz’s weekend program schedule.
I want to go back to Billmon — I think he has a point here —
Now I despise Donald Rumsfeld as much as any commie pinko, but this kneejerk habit the generals have gotten into of blaming Rummy for all their problems in Iraq is getting pretty old. The Army’s own failures — most particularly, in deciding that because it doesn’t like to fight guerrilla wars, it wouldn’t prepare to fight one — are well documented in Tom Ricks’ Fiasco and elsewhere. The ossified bureaucracy obsessed with budgets, rank and military ceremony (in roughly that order), which led defense gadfly Chuck Spinney to label the Pentagon “the Versailles on the Potomac,” had grown deeply dysfunctional long before Donald Rumsfeld came back to town. If anything, he at least tried to reform it — even if most of his ideas went in diametrically the wrong direction for the “fourth generation” war the military now finds itself fighting. …
… trying to make Rummy the sole scapegoat for America’s failure in Iraq is as big a lie as Shrub’s insistence that the SecDef has done, and is still doing, a great job. It looks to me like the Times papers are simply pandering to their special constituency (something that was also their editorial bread and butter when I was there.)
The Dems may applaud now, but if I were them, I’d be extremely wary of the precedent. As a group, the joint chiefs are developing a taste for bureaucratic blood — they’re trying to destroy Rumsfeld just as they destroyed Les Aspin and emasculated Wesley Clark. Only now they’re doing it openly (or at least semi-openly) and in the middle of an election campaign.
That’s usually not a good sign for a republican government — and I’m not talking about the political party.
So, while at least Rumsfeld is a real issue and not a phony issue — keep what Billmon says in mind.
Update: Don’t miss Media Matters by Jamison Foser.
For some reason, today I keep thinking of the X-Files episode in which Mulder says, matter-of-factly, “It looks like I’m gonna have to tell Skinner that his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all.” One of the all-time great moments of television.
Today I’m looking at the Right Blogosphere and thinking, “They really are that stupid, after all.”
The background story, which you’ve probably heard by now, comes out of today’s New York Times. William J. Broad writes that Iraqi documents the U.S. government had posted on the web to keep the wingnuts busy included —
… detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
I repeat, accounts of Iraq’s nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Skip over to National Review Online, where Jim Geraghty writes,
I’m sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?
What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been “no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat”, for the past three years solid. Now we’re being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.
Let’s go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.
I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a “Boy, did Bush screw up” meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the “there was no threat in Iraq” meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh… al-Qaeda.
The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.
There are times when I almost wish I were a rightie. If you are a rightie, you can be don’t know shit from shinola stupid, and get paid for it. Must be nice. (See also “Cry, the Beloved Stupid Country” at A Tiny Revolution.)
That Iraq knew how to make nuclear bombs isn’t exactly a surprise. Through the magic of the Internets and the Google, we can find detailed information on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program before the 1991 Gulf war. We can learn that Iraq had a lot of uranium, and that in 1989 Iraq began construction on the mass production of centrifuges and a pilot-scale cascade hall at Al Furat. We can learn that Iraq “planned to divert highly enriched uranium, that was subjected to Agency safeguards, at Tuwaitha under a ‘crash programme’ to use the material in the production of a nuclear weapon,” says the IAEA. And on the same page we learn that
- Iraq’s primary focus was a basic implosion fission design, fuelled by HEU
- Using open-source literature and theoretical studies, ran various computer codes through Iraq’s mainframe computer to adapt the codes and develop the physical constants for a nuclear weapon development programme
- Was aware of more advanced weapon design concepts
- Invested significant efforts to understand the various options for neutron initiators
This is not news. This is stuff the IAEA had up on the web, in English, before the 2003 invasion. I know this because I found it way back then.
However, if you don’t have stuff to make a bomb with — you know, like uranium and hundreds of centrifuges — the plans are not all that effective. You could wad them up and toss crumpled paper balls at people, but that’s about it. And on the same page (scroll down to the chart at the bottom) we can learn that Iraq’s nuclear program stuff was destroyed, either by the 1991 Gulf war or by the IAEA.
Thus, information about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program before 1991 is not relevant to a decision to invade Iraq in 2003, unless you have new information that they’d rebuilt their centrifuges and cascade hall and such, and the IAEA was very certain they had not done this. Remember, inspectors were re-admitted into Iraq more than four months before the invasion, and they had found what was left of Iraq’s nuclear bomb-making facilities exactly as it had been left in 1998. You can find the IAEA’s press releases and reports on Iraq’s nuclear facilities from September 2002 to July 2003 here.
Once again, I am dumbfounded — which is what happens when you have found stuff that’s dumb — at how little the righties understand the history of Iraq’s WMDs and by their utter inability to comprehend linear time. (See also, from the Maha archives, “Jeez, Righties Are So Gullible.”)
Today, some of them seem to think that Saddam could have just snapped his fingers and had an advanced nuclear weapons program cranked up in no time. No, dears. We’re talking about a nation with only some centrifuge fragments buried in some guy’s flower garden. It would have taken them years to get back to where they were in 1991, especially after the inspectors were readmitted.
Broad of the Times says it was the IAEA that noticed the Iraqi plans on the web and asked that it be taken off.
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
Early this morning, a spokesman for Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador, denied that anyone from the agency had approached Mr. Schulte about the Web site.
You’ll remember that last March, John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence, posted a bunch of random documents captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. These were hyped as possibly being the mother lode of proof that Saddam Hussein either had WMDs or was in cahoots with al Qaeda. Righties seized upon these and eagerly began to “interpret” them, often to hilarious results. So far little in them has been news, except to righties.
Via Oliver Willis, an NPR interview of Michael Scheuer from April on the document dump.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, clearly, somebody feels it’s in America’s interest. This has been a Republican-pushed release. Would there be some potential benefit for the Republicans?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Oh, I think clearly there is, and we’ve already seen their mouthpiece, The Weekly Standard, has already run a couple of articles saying that this proves Saddam did X or did Y, without any [LAUGHING] real knowledge of how the new documents fit into the context of everything else we know. It’s just plain amateurishness — or they know what’s in these documents and they figure it can help them by releasing it.
Today Thomas Friedman — not the sharpest tack in the box, himself — complained that Bushies think voters are stupid.
They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.
Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.
Ah, Mr. Friedman — look at Bush’s base. They really are that stupid, after all.
Commentary from Smart People:
Christy Hardin Smith, “NUKE-u-lar MOH-rons.”
Scott Lemieux , “Charles Johnson, Genius”
Michael Bérubé, “ABF Friday: Special Election Edition!”
Steve Gilliard, ” Taking the pinheads bowling”
Digby, “Secretary of Hack“
Damnfool David Ignatius actually gets paid to write stuff like this —
Following Tuesday’s elections, President Bush will face some of the most difficult decisions of his presidency as he struggles to craft a strategy for dealing with the ruinous mess in Iraq. He will have to do what he has sometimes found hardest: make a decisive choice among conflicting recommendations from his advisers.
Oh, please. Bush is not going to face anything. He’s not going to decide anything. He’s not going to make any policy changes. After all this time, I can’t believe anyone paying attention (I assume Ignatius is paying attention) hasn’t perceived that Bush is not capable of facing difficult decisions or making decisive choices that he doesn’t want to make.
No matter how the elections turn out, here’s what is going to happen between November 7 and the beginning of the next congressional term, regarding the Middle East:
The Baker-Hamilton recommendations will be made public. The punditocracy will spend days dissecting them, and any Republican with aspirations to the 2008 presidential nomination will declare them to be a sensible roadmap to an honorable resolution. Bush will make some noises about taking the recommendations under consideration. And nothing more will happen.
There will be rumbles coming out of the Department of State about a policy shift regarding Arab-Israeli issues. Condi Rice will tell Tim Russert that the President sincerely wants moderate Arabs and American allies in Europe and elsewhere to take a larger role and work together to address these issues. Pundits (like Ignatius) will write columns about how the United States must deal directly with Syria. And they will write that the United States must pressure Israel into making some concessions to the Palestinians. And then some other event or issue will take up most of media’s attention for a few days, and the policy shift will have been forgotten. And nothing more will happen.
If Democrats take back at least one house of Congress, I expect Bush to make some speeches in November and December declaring that he won’t let the Dems dictate Iraq policy. He will use the words strategy and victory a lot. If the Lords of Diebold allow the Republicans to retain control of Congress, Bush will interpret this as a “mandate” for the continuation of his Iraq policies, and he will dig in even more stubbornly. Bush’s speechwriters will be challenged to come up with a new way to say “stay the course” other than, you know, “stay the course.”
What happens after January is a much more interesting question. And what happens may or may not depend on who controls Congress, because politicians of both parties will be under pressure to force Bush to change the course. Ron Hutcheson writes for McClatchy Newspapers:
Voters rank the war as their top concern, and polls consistently show that they want their leaders to come up with a better plan to bring the troops home. There’s no consensus on what to do, but pressure for change is building in both political parties.
How President Bush responds probably will define his final two years in power.
A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 60 percent of Americans favor a new strategy for Iraq. Only 7 percent want to stay the course.
“The public absolutely wants something to be done about Iraq – overwhelmingly. They want their leaders to do something about Iraq that is different,” said Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief. “They’re not expert enough to know what to do, they just want something done.”
No one suggests that the election could lead to a quick withdrawal or even a dramatic shift in tactics. Bush will retain his power as commander in chief, no matter which party runs Congress. At this point, the policy options for Iraq seem to range from bad to worse: add troops, withdraw troops, stay the course.
But analysts say the president can expect growing dissent and more pressure for change from lawmakers of both parties and the American people if the situation fails to improve.
Any party or politician who wants to win elections in 2008 is going to have to at the very least put some distance between himself and Bush’s War. (This will set up a situation in which a whole lot of Republicans were for the war before they were against it, but of course they will bristle with indignation if any Dem points that out.) Republicans in Congress — especially those outside the South — ought to realize that they cannot continue to echo Bush’s rhetoric and support Bush’s every cough and be assured to keep their jobs (or get a better one, like being president) after 2008.
This is not to say that they won’t try the Saint McCain strategy of appearing to oppose the President while letting him have everything he wants. And if the Republicans do better than expected on Tuesday, many of them might conclude that they only need to shore up Diebold and gerrymander a few more districts to keep themselves out of voters’ reach. And many of them might be right. But the loss of a substantial number of seats might shock enough of them into considering the possibility that democracy in America isn’t completely dead yet. And in that case, Washington might see a rebirth of genuine bipartisanship.
If Dems take back the House as expected, at the very least they’re going to have to make a big, loud, highly visible, splashy effort to force Bush to change his policy. Everyone in America should see them fighting their butts off to get Bush to change his policy. Holding a few hearings and passing a couple of resolutions won’t be enough. Even if they fail, they must show the public that it’s Bush’s War, and that the failure is Bush’s fault.
Nearly 75 percent of voters think the Dems will either end of scale back the U.S. involvement in Iraq if they take back Congress. If Dems take back Congress but can’t deliver on Iraq, the public had better see them get bruised and bloodied trying.
But I think it’s possible enough Republicans will want to get on that bandwagon that there might actually be a veto-proof majority with the constitutional power to override Bush.
For the next couple of years Republicans are likely to be in the very uncomfortable position of trying to protect the Bush Administration from, you know, investigations and scrutiny and oversight and such, because a lot of them are complicit in whatever he’s been up to. If he goes down, so will they. But at the same time, they’re going to have to oppose his unpopular policies, particularly on the Iraq War, or they’ll be toast in 2008.
Democrats, on the other hand, for once have the advantage of clarity. Finally, as Joan Walsh says, they stand for something, which is change in Iraq. Republicans will have to waffle and equivocate; Dems can pound the podium and say the course will not be stayed. I think, with only a couple of exceptions, even Dems who voted for the 2002 resolution ought to be able to to draw a clear, bright line between themselves and a lying, incompetent Bush. And there may be some Republicans about to conclude that they’d better draw that same line.
If I believed in a personal God, I’d think she was trying to send America’s Christians a message.
You can cheat in love, and you can cheat in politics, but you can’t cheat the Tao.
Update: Church leader admits to some indiscretions.
Update update: See also Mr. Wolcott.
… it confirms my suspicion that all Republican men are privately, passionately, exceedingly gay. According to this exciting morsel, Haggard took part in weekly conference calls with President Bush–“he and the president like to joke that the only thing they disagree on is what truck to drive.”
‘What truck to drive’–I wonder if that is some kind of cryptic butch gay Western lingo. It’s a shame Will & Grace is no longer on the air to provide enlightenment on such matters, leaving us to forage on our own.
Roxanne emailed this story yesterday, and now I see Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher is commenting:
Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.â€
She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A “non-hostile weapons discharge†leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson’s own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.â€
Then Kevin Elston of Flagstaff public radio KNAU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out more. This is from Elston’s story:
“Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed….â€
Peterson was reassigned to a base gate and sent to suicide prevention training, but in September 2003 she killed herself with her service rifle. Greg Mitchell:
The Army talked to some of Peterson’s colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: “The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were.”
Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.
Peterson was a devout Mormon who had volunteered to go to Iraq.
Via Daou Report, see also Classically Liberal.