Obsidian Wings

Some Things Are Best Left Unsaid

OK, so I'm not one of those who believe the official report on 9/11 is complete by any stretch. I'm confident other details, including many contradictions of the report, will emerge as time goes on. But even if those details were suppressed intentionally for political purposes, I have to say I agree with the NYFD for removing Imam Intikab Habib as their Muslim chaplain. I mean, Yikes!

Habib told Newsday in an interview published Friday that he was skeptical of the official version of the attack on the World Trade Center, which killed 343 firefighters.

"I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone," he told the newspaper.

"It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours," he said. "Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?"

Now few people on the planet come close to confiding in me any conspiracy theories more alarming than the ones I cook up on my own. It's part of my culture (my Dad strongly believes in the Tri-Lateral Commission, for example), but when you're employed by the government, in the role of spiritual adviser, no less, you might just want to keep such thoughts to yourself.

UPDATE: O-o-o-o-o-on the other hand, anyone who moves to reprimand in any way this religious leader for speaking out will earn my eternal scorn:

[Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, a] top Jesuit official has been contacting leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to protest a soon-to-be-released Vatican document that is expected to reinforce the teaching that gays are not welcome in the priesthood.[...]

Chojnacki wrote in the letter, dated Monday, that he had participated in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last few years.

"I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation," he wrote.

Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference of Major Superiors, which represents leaders of religious orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans and others, and with bishops to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call in celibate service of priesthood and chaste religious life."

Thank God there are still some Christians* left!

*in the sense of seeking to be more like Christ himself was.

Go Read This

by hilzoy

Barack Obama has posted on Dkos. It's a thing of beauty, all the more so because he has posted explicitly to disagree with some of the people there, not to preach to the converted. Check it out.

Judy Is Free! (Too bad she's still horrid)

The Good News is that Fitzgerald is by all accounts likely close to the end of his investigation, and, if the rumors are right, Rove will be joining DeLay and Frist in the "I am Not a Crook" chorus. The bad news is Judith Miller is free again. OK, so that's unfair. Miller never belonged in jail. But didn't you feel safer in one sense while she was?

The Slip And Slope

by von

Josh Trevino, echoing Paul Cella, writes:

If the experiences of social legislation of the past half century have taught us anything, it is that tinkering with the basic institutions of family and moral structure by government fiat -- however well-intended -- is usually unwise and fraught with unintended consequences.  No-fault divorce opened up a Pandora's box of easily-broken families and maladjusted single-parent youth; poorly-designed social welfare programs weakened family bonds to an oft-fatal degree; and now we see that the "civil union," intended as a sop for those wishing to pretend that a homosexual coupling constitutes marriage, is opening the door to polygamy.  As is its wont in matters of the decay of Western civilization, the Netherlands is leading the way.

[UPDATE: The original story has been called into question; it appears that this is a publicity stunt by the identified trio, not a change in Dutch law.]

A slope, however, becomes slippery only if you allow it to be greased.  There is a principled line between homosexual marriage and polyamory, just as there is a principled line between a revolver and a bazooka when it comes to what guns should be available for purchase on the street.   

I favor gay marriage for a simple reason:  through prudence and experience, I have come to the conclusion that some are caused by nature to fall in love with members of the same sex.  It does not matter whether they would choose it.  They are oriented toward homosexuality. 

That same prudence and experience, however, tells me that there is no "polygamous" orientation.  No one is born a polygamist; polygamy is chosen, by you or your culture.  If you doubt this, note that, although homosexuality has been with us in every society since the beginning of time, polygamy has come and gone with the whims of fashion.  (And polyandry or polyamory are but recent inventions.)

We do right when we try to account for nature, and try to make each of us equals under the law for who we are.  We thus rightly allow gay marriage. In so doing, we recall that marriage is entitled to respect and should not be lightly modified, but only cautiously.  But we also recall that marriage is neither eternal nor static.  Indeed, it has been only a few decades since some states forbade Blacks and whites from marrying.      

But there is no corresponding duty to amend the marriage laws to account for a mere choice of lifestyle -- particularly one as ill suited for modern society as polyamory.*  Allowing gay marriage will not lead to polyamory, if we hold true to that which compels us to allow gay marriage in the first place.

(Modified from a comment on Tacitus.org.)

von

*And it is an ill choice, for a wealth of policy and moral grounds -- among them that polyamory is profoundly disruptive in modern society, where men and women are rightly deemed equals. (History suggests that it's less disruptive in societies where one or the other is dominant: in those societies, you don't need to ask questions about who raises the children; who gets the house; who is covered by an employer's healthcare (one can foresee that some would multi-marriage for that reason alone!); etc.)

Judge Orders Abu Ghraib Photos Released

by hilzoy

Form the WaPo:

"Pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released despite government claims that they could damage America's image, a federal judge ruled Thursday. (...)

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had maintained in court papers that releasing the photographs would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken the Afghan and Iraqi governments and incite riots against U.S. troops.

Hellerstein said in his 50-page opinion that he respected Myers' arguments. But he added that his job was "not to defer to our worst fears, but to interpret and apply the law, in this case, the Freedom of Information Act, which advances values important to our society, transparency and accountability in government."

The ruling was expected to be appealed, which could delay a release for months."

As I wrote earlier, I really do not like the idea of soldiers' lives being put at risk by the release of these photos. But I like even less the idea that any administration that allows horrific abuse to occur on its watch can prevent evidence of that abuse from being made public by arguing that releasing that evidence would cause such anger and outrage that lives would be put at risk. I also think the administration had several ways of preventing us from having to choose between the lives of our soldiers and an open democracy. The best, of course, would have been to put in place whatever standards and practices would have prevented this abuse from occurring, or limited it to the actions of a few soldiers gone bad. Having failed to do this, however, the administration had another avenue available to it, which I described in my earlier post:

"The FOIA request has been in for around a year. That gave the military ample time to identify all the Americans in those photos and videos. Have they all been tried for the offenses seen on the photos and videos? If so, then it would, I think, have been a good idea to release the relevant photos and videos during the trials, as evidence. In that way, their release would have been part of our effort to bring the people shown in them to justice. Possibly some senior officials responsible for our interrogation policies could have resigned at the same time; in any case, we should have done for this reason what we should have done in any case: respond adequately to the abuses of detainees by holding those responsible fully accountable, and release at least the most damning photos and videos as a part of that process. In that way, and (I think) only in that way, could the government have managed the release of the photos and videos in a way that met the demands both of our democracy and of the safety of our troops.

By not doing that -- by not living up to their own responsibilities -- they have forced us to choose. Neither choice is good. But it is not a choice we had to make."

Hughes Empowering Islamic Women

Via a diary on Kos

Undersecretary of State, Karen Hughes, is empowering Islamic women. Just not in the direction she's paid to.

Don't Throw Your Laptop, Open Thread

Are you trying to comment but keep getting a message saying you can't?

Well...???

Speak up!!!

Oh, heh, nevermind...

Just kidding. Some folks have reported a messsage saying they cannot comment, but they haven't been banned. If that's happening to you, please accept our apologies, we're working on figuring out what's causing that. If you have any ideas (it seems to affect mostly AOL users), please share any info you might have.

Perhaps I shouldn't be lining up to support Bush's immigration plan ....

by von

David Brooks, on Meet the Press:

Because we're at a moment in this country where we had a debate for 20 years about: What's the cause of poverty? Is it joblessness, which the liberals were saying? Is it family breakdown, which is what a lot of conservatives were saying? Now, we're at a point where the experts really are seeing the interplay between these two forces. And I saw a hint of it with Bush when he talked in New Orleans the other week. And he understands it, too, and really wants to do something pro-active. And as I say that, you always got to go back to competence. And sometimes in my dark moments, I think he's "The Manchurian Candidate" designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in. And so he has to follow through on that. That's the crucial thing for the next two years for him.

(HT, Sullivan.)

Slarrow's Serious Thread

by hilzoy

Today's New Orleans Times-Picayune has a story alleging that many of the reports of murder and mayhem in the Superdome and the Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina were urban myths:

"Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials. (...)

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened. (...)

Rumors of rampant violence at the Convention Center prompted Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux put together a 1,000-man force of soldiers and police in full battle gear to secure the center Sept. 2 at about noon.

It took only 20 minutes to take control, and soldiers met no resistance, Thibodeaux said. What the soldiers found - elderly people and infants near death without food, water and medicine; crowds living in filth - shocked them more than anything they'd seen in combat zones overseas. But they found no evidence, witnesses or victims of any killings, rapes or beatings, Thibodeaux said. Another commander at the scene, Lt. Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard, said the crowd welcomed the soldiers. "It reminded me of the liberation of France in World War II. There were people cheering; one boy even saluted," he said. "We never - never once - encountered any hostility."

One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino, said Edwards, who conducted the review."

So: what's going on?

Armed Dolphins On The Loose

by hilzoy

Via Ezra Klein: this story is from the Guardian, not the Onion:

"Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?' Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan. (...)

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea. Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port."

I really haven't thought through the question whether we should use dolphins not just for non-violent military purposes, like mine detection, but for killing people. So I'm sure that someone, in comments, will come up with some fascinating reason why it might be a good idea. But I have to say that off the top of my head, I really think we should allow other species to be neutral non-combatants in our wars. At least that would preclude other people from preemptively killing any dolphin they encounter, just in case it's one of the ones we've armed with toxic dart guns.

Sheesh.