Obsidian Wings

Yikes!

by hilzoy

From the NYT again:

"Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.

The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.

The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts. (...)

The California reports said the scientists, acting at the state’s request, had hacked into systems from three of the four largest companies in the business: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.

Thousands of their machines in varying setups are in use.

The reports said the investigators had created situations for each system “in which these weaknesses could be exploited to affect the correct recording, reporting and tallying of votes.”

Voting experts said the review could prompt the California secretary of state, Debra Bowen, to ban the use of some of the machines in the 2008 elections unless extra security precautions were taken and the election results were closely audited.

Matthew A. Bishop, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who led the team that tried to compromise the machines, said his group was surprised by how easy it was not only to pick the physical locks on the machines, but also to break through the software defenses meant to block intruders."

There's just no excuse for this. We are a wealthy nation. We have wonderful scientists. Why we cannot manage to have secure voting machines is just a mystery to me. I hope the Democrats' proposal manages to get it right; if anyone here knows about these issues and wants to comment on it, or to point us to good evaluations of what they're proposing, I'd be grateful.

Because this isn't partisan; it's our democracy.

Iraq News

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars."

More below the fold.

Please Don't Let This Be True

by hilzoy

From the AP:

"Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors _ whose names were blacked out _ said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene _ no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers. (...)

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked."

Naturally, the White House is refusing to surrender documents about this case, citing -- what else? -- executive privilege:

"The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting "implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.""

I just wish they would turn all the information over, so that the Tillman family could know that they knew what there was to be known, instead of having to pull information about how Pat Tillman died out of our government. They deserve better than that. -- And I hope to God that that information shows that his death was an accident.

Shock Troops

by hilzoy

Two weeks ago, TNR published a piece by their 'Baghdad Diarist', who writes under the pseudonym "Scott Thomas". It contains three stories about soldiers doing vile things in Iraq; in one, the person who does the vile thing is the writer. The point of the piece, as best I could tell, was that war does strange things to your sense of what's appropriate, and to try to describe these changes. Thus, "Scott Thomas" writes this, about the incident in which he figures:

"AM I A MONSTER? I have never thought of myself as a cruel person. Indeed, I have always had compassion for those with disabilities. I once worked at a summer camp for developmentally disabled children, and, in college, I devoted hours every week to helping a student with cerebral palsy perform basic tasks like typing, eating, and going to the bathroom. Even as I was reveling in the laughter my words had provoked, I was simultaneously horrified and ashamed at what I had just said. In a strange way, though, I found the shame comforting. I was relieved to still be shocked by my own cruelty--to still be able to recognize that the things we soldiers found funny were not, in fact, funny."

The piece launched a furor on the right, with bloggers falling all over themselves to try to find holes in it. Some of their attempts were pretty lame. For instance, one part of "Thomas"' piece involves finding part of a child's skull while constructing a command outpost. "Thomas" says:

"And, eventually, we reached the bones. All children's bones: tiny cracked tibias and shoulder blades. We found pieces of hands and fingers. We found skull fragments. No one cared to speculate what, exactly, had happened here, but it was clearly a Saddam-era dumping ground of some sort."

A soldier at the same base wrote this:

"There was a children's cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport. It was not a mass grave. It was not the result of some inhumane genocide. It was an unmarked cometary where the locals had buried children some years back."

This was cited as having falsified "Scott Thomas"' claim that he and his comrades had found a mass grave, when in fact he had made no such claim. Similarly, just try to figure out what the big deal is here. Other objections were more substantive, though not, I thought, decisive. In particular, one incident described in the piece involved "Thomas" and his buddies making fun of a disfigured woman; soldiers from the FOB at which this was supposed to have happened deny ever seeing such a woman.

In general, though, the consensus on the right-wing blogs seems to be that this entire piece is an elaborate fantasy cooked up to slur the troops:

"Even if "Scott Thomas" actually exists, and is a soldier serving in Iraq (which most veterans highly doubt) the anti-war cadre of the New Republic intentionally turns off its minimal journalistic standards on this story simply because it hates America, and hates her sons and daughters who go in harm's way."

Now, "Scott Thomas" has come forward:

"I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name."

Discussion below the fold.

Taxes and Prohibition

--Sebastian

I'm a sucker for explanations that go against conventional wisdom.  I know they aren't all true, but I like the way they make you look at things you've never thought deeply about.  Here is a fascinating one I just ran across:

Speakeasies and gangster violence did become familiar during the 1920s.

And Americans did indeed keep drinking.

But contrary to popular belief, the 1920s witnessed virtually no sympathy for ending Prohibition. Neither citizens nor politicians concluded from the obvious failure of Prohibition that it should end.

As historian Norman Clark reports:

"Before 1930 few people called for outright repeal of the (18th) Amendment. No amendment had ever been repealed, and it was clear that few Americans were moved to political action yet by the partial successes or failures of the Eighteenth. ... The repeal movement, which since the early 1920s had been a sullen and hopeless expression of minority discontent, astounded even its most dedicated supporters when it suddenly gained political momentum."

What happened in 1930 that suddenly gave the repeal movement political muscle? The answer is the Great Depression and the ravages that it inflicted on federal income-tax revenues.

Prior to the creation in 1913 of the national income tax, about a third of Uncle Sam's annual revenue came from liquor taxes. (The bulk of Uncle Sam's revenues came from customs duties.) Not so after 1913. Especially after the income tax surprised politicians during World War I with its incredible ability to rake in tax revenue, the importance of liquor taxation fell precipitously.

By 1920, the income tax supplied two-thirds of Uncle Sam's revenues and nine times more revenue than was then supplied by liquor taxes and customs duties combined. In research that I did with University of Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard, we found that bulging income-tax revenues made it possible for Congress finally to give in to the decades-old movement for alcohol prohibition.

Before the income tax, Congress effectively ignored such calls because to prohibit alcohol sales then would have hit Congress hard in the place it guards most zealously: its purse. But once a new and much more intoxicating source of revenue was discovered, the cost to politicians of pandering to the puritans and other anti-liquor lobbies dramatically fell.

Prohibition was launched.

Despite pleas throughout the 1920s by journalist H.L. Mencken and a tiny handful of other sensible people to end Prohibition, Congress gave no hint that it would repeal this folly. Prohibition appeared to be here to stay -- until income-tax revenues nose-dived in the early 1930s.

From 1930 to 1931, income-tax revenues fell by 15 percent.

In 1932 they fell another 37 percent; 1932 income-tax revenues were 46 percent lower than just two years earlier. And by 1933 they were fully 60 percent lower than in 1930.

With no end of the Depression in sight, Washington got anxious for a substitute source of revenue.

That source was liquor sales.

This completely fits with my preconceived notions about how government power (and its general unwillingness to relinquish it) works, so I'm a bit skeptical.  Anyone have enough good historical knowledge about the issue to say if this theory is plausible? 

Gonzales

by hilzoy

I didn't get a chance to watch the Gonzales hearings until late last night, so I'm late commenting on them (Transcript here.) But they were absolutely extraordinary, and not in a good way. If you didn't see any of it, here are links to video of the highlights, mostly courtesy of TPM: Leahy and Specter's opening statements; Leahy on NSA letters; Specter on the visit to Ashcroft on his hospital bed (Gonzales blames Congress); Feinstein on how many USAttorneys were fired (Gonzales doesn't know); Kennedy on torture; Schumer, Specter, and Feingold on whether Gonzales' claim that there was no dissent about the warrantless wiretapping program conflicts with the fact that, according to Comey, most of the senior leadership of the DoJ was prepared to resign over it; Schumer on who sent Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft's hospital bed. If you have to go with only a couple, this clip of Schumer questioning Gonzales gives a good sense of the overall level of mendacity and cluelessness, as does this clip of Feinstein; this one (Schumer) contains the moment that will probably get Gonzales cited for contempt of Congress.

It was an absolute fiasco. That's why it's worth watching some of the video: to get a sense for just how total a disaster it was. Dana Milbank gathers some quotes from the hearing:

"Consider some of the invective directed at the attorney general as he sat hunched and grim at the witness table:

"The department is dysfunctional. . . . Every week a new issue arises. . . . That is just decimating, Mr. Attorney General. . . . The list goes on and on. . . . Is your department functioning? . . . What credibility is left for you? . . . Do you expect us to believe that? . . . Your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable."

And that was just from the top Republican on the committee, Arlen Specter (Pa.). Democrats had to scramble to keep up with the ranking member's contempt.

"I don't trust you," announced Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who paused, while swearing in the witness, to emphasize "nothing but the truth" -- as if lecturing a child.

"You just constantly change the story, seemingly to fit your needs to wiggle out of being caught," added Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

"You, sir, are in fact the problem," submitted Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) (...)

As he fielded complaints yesterday, Gonzales had no briefing book before him; this made sense, because he had no answers for the senators' questions.

Leahy asked if Gonzales would block prosecutors from prosecuting contempt-of-Congress cases. "I'm not going to answer that question," the witness answered.

"Do you think constitutional government in the United States can survive if the president has the unilateral authority to reject congressional inquiries?" Specter pressed.

"I'm not going to answer this question."

Specter pronounced the situation "hopeless" and moved on to another question.

"I'm not going to answer that question," Gonzales said anew.

"How about the death penalty case?" Specter pursued.

"I have no specific recollection as to this particular case," the attorney general said. Whitehouse threw his reading glasses to the table and smacked his palm to his forehead."

It was like that for three hours.

Josh Marshall has been saying for some time that Bush can't fire Gonzales, and that this isn't just because having to go through confirmation hearings for a new Attorney General would be too embarrassing, but because no Attorney General who was not a lot more independent than Gonzales would be confirmed, and any such Attorney General would not thwart investigations against the White House. This hearing provides some really strong evidence for that: Gonzales was not just embarrassing, he was so embarrassing that it's hard to see how even a confirmation hearing for a new AG could be worse. Moreover, as far as I could tell, Gonzales didn't care how embarrassing he was. For instance, consider Milbank's claim that Gonzales didn't have a briefing book. That's extraordinary, and it would just defy explanation if it mattered at all to Gonzales how he did in the hearing. Only the fact that it doesn't -- that he knows that he can say literally anything without risking being fired -- could explain his performance yesterday.

For this reason, I don't think it mattered to him that his testimony yesterday, even if truthful, would imply that he is not just incompetent, but so completely and utterly clueless that it's really not an exaggeration to say that a smart junior high school student would do a better job. Take, for instance, the fact that he still claims not to know how many US Attorneys were fired, how their names got on the list or who put them there, and for what reasons they were fired. Pretend for a moment that you think this is true. Is it possible that anyone who wasn't brain-damaged would not have found out the answers to these questions by now, after all this time and all this scandal? Likewise, is it credible that Gonzales seems to be ignorant of more or less everything that goes on in the Department he allegedly runs -- major cases, policy changes, personnel matters, you name it? After some of the Senators posted their questions (pdf) in advance, on the web?

This is one of those cases in which, for the purpoes of deciding whether or not he should keep his job, it really doesn't matter whether he was telling the truth or not. Either he wasn't, in which case he is breaking the law, or he was, in which case he should probably be sent off to some pleasant facility where he can make little popsicle stick trivets while recieving the care he needs. In neither case should he be Attorney General of the United States of America.

Of course, the fact that Gonzales can say anything without risking being fired does not mean that he can say anything without risk. He could be charged with perjury, and a lot of the Senators came pretty close to saying that they thought he should be. Spencer Ackerman explains the two most important cases of apparent perjury, but there are others. He could also be charged with contempt of Congress. Personally, I think that his entire performance was just one long display of contempt, and that he could be charged on the basis of the whole hearing. But there's one part that seems particularly likely to get him into trouble. I linked to it above, but here it is again, along with commentary from Josh Marshall. Basically, Gonzales refuses either to answer some questions or to explain on what grounds he is refusing to do so. The second point is crucial: when you're testifying before Congress, you do not get to just decide not to answer the questions. As Josh Marshall said in the post I just linked to:

"Testifying before Congress is like being called to testify in court. You have to answer every question. Every question. You can fudge and say you don't remember something and see how far you get. Or you can invoke various privileges. And it's up to the courts to decide if the invocations are valid. But it's simply not permitted to refuse to answer a question. It is quite literally contempt of Congress."

Two last points. First, Gonzales' best attempt to explain why he did not perjure himself when he said that there had been no disagreement about the warrantless wiretapping program waqs that despite what he said in an earlier press conference, the disagreement that led to the famous showdown at Ashcroft's hospital bed did not concern the warrantless wiretapping program. If so, that implies that there is another secret program, so far undisclosed, that people in the DoJ were so worried about that they were prepared to resign over it. What, I wonder, might it be? Burglarizing people's houses without warrants? Opening our mail? The mind boggles.

Second, never forget that it is George W. Bush who is keeping Gonzales in office. Gonzales is bringing ridicule on the DoJ, and on the country. His actions have brought all sorts of prosecutions into serious question, and have cast a cloud over a lot of decent DoJ officials. They are surely distracting the DoJ from its work, and hurting its morale. In the final analysis, George W. Bush is the one who has to decide what matters most to him: the integrity and trustworthiness of our nation's law enforcement, or protecting his own administration from investigation and, perhaps, prosecution. He is, as he says, the decider, and he is the one who has chosen his own interests over the interests of the country.

Jonah Goldberg: When You Jump Into The Shark, The Shark Jumps Also Into You

by hilzoy

In today's LA Times, Jonah Goldberg accuses liberals of having no conscience:

"It's worth at least pointing out a key difference between the potential genocide in Iraq and the heart-wrenching slaughters in Congo and Sudan: The latter aren't our fault. But if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren't at least partly to blame. Yes, the mass murder would have more immediate authors than the United States of America, but we would undeniably be responsible, at least in part, for giving a green light to genocide. Obama offers precisely that green light in his proposed Iraq War De-escalation Act. (...)

There's been so much talk about how conservative foreign policy's moral credibility has been demolished under President Bush. Maybe. But what of liberal credibility? In the 1990s, amid all of the debates about Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the broad outline of the debate had conservatives advocating a narrower definition of the national interest while liberals argued -- and I often agreed with them -- for a more expansive one that included a heavy dose of moralism. Finally, liberals seemed to have shaken off the Vietnam syndrome and embraced an overly optimistic but benign foreign policy of nation-building and do-goodery.

Conservatives are at least still arguing about the national interest -- but they're also the ones touting the moral imperative of preventing genocide and even the need for nation-building. Where is the principle in the hash of liberal foreign policy today? How does liberalism recover? If you can justify causing genocide in order to end a nation-building exercise that -- unlike similar efforts elsewhere -- is fundamentally linked to our national interest, then how can you ever return to arguing that we should get into the nation-building and genocide-stopping business when it's explicitly not in our interest?"

This is deviant brilliance: every bit as much a classic as Bill Kristol's recent attempt to divine the future by sticking his head up his ass and reading his own entrails. Only someone who had shaken off the tyranny of rational thought and fearlessly cut himself loose from the tentacles of his intellectual conscience could write lines like "What of liberal credibility?" and "How does liberalism recover?" in a piece about Iraq.

Jonah Goldberg: I doff my hat to you. No, strike that: I doff my head to you.

Lesser minds will miss the point. Take, for instance, Robert Farley:

"The commitment to stop genocide depends on the practical capacity to stop it, and in Iraq we've demonstrated nothing but a capacity to significantly increase civil strife, such that, even after four years, commentators as distinguished as Jonah Goldberg argue that the country will descend into internecine slaughter minutes after American troops leave."

Robert Farley: a pale, little man who hides within his armature of logical principles and arguments and consistency, like a grub cowering inside its discarded exoskeleton. Jonah Goldberg has no such fears: he sees that contradiction is not a peril to be feared, but the narrow footbridge that allows us to cross over the great abyss of incomprehensibility into a world of sublime and transcendent certainty, in which, freed from niggling doubts and hairsplitting distinctions, our soul can fuse with the world-soul, and we can simply know, with every cell in our body and every fiber of our being, that whatever we did in Iraq was justified, that history will redeem our grand vision, and that liberals are always wrong. While so-called "empiricists" in the "reality-based community" hesitate and wait for evidence and argument, Jonah Goldberg strides forth, naked and unencumbered, into the new dawn.

And the little men in white coats are right behind him.

We Must Not Add Moral Shame To Humiliation

by hilzoy

This is just a followup to Sebastian's post below. I'd like to thank Sebastian for writing it: I have been mulling a post on this issue, but he really prompted me to write.

At this point, it seems very likely that we will pull a lot of our troops out of Iraq starting after the next election, if not before. As Sebastian noted, and commenters confirmed, the Iraqis who have helped us are already being killed; if we pull out without making any plans to take them with us, we will leave them entirely without protection. And if we get to the point at which we begin to withdraw without having made very serious plans for getting the Iraqis who have worked with us out, then we will, in fact, not take most of them with us. We will be leaving them to their deaths. George Packer, who has been on this issue for some time, wrote in TNR:

"Withdrawal means that the United States will have to watch Iraqis die in ever greater numbers without doing much of anything to prevent it, because the welfare of Iraqis will no longer be among our central concerns. Those Iraqis who have had anything to do with the occupation and its promises of democracy will be among the first to be killed: the translators, the government officials, the embassy employees, the journalists, the organizers of women's and human rights groups. As it is, they are being killed one by one. (I personally know at least half a dozen of them who have been murdered.) Without the protection of the Green Zone, U.S. bases, or the inhibiting effect on the Sunni and Shia militias of 150,000 U.S. troops, they will be killed in much greater numbers. To me, the relevant historical analogy is not the helicopters taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, leaving thousands of Vietnamese to the reeducation camps. It is the systematic slaughter by the Khmer Rouge of every Cambodian who appeared to have had anything to do with the West. "

Our government is doing next to nothing about this. Packer again:

"It’s been four months since the State Department announced the formation of a task force to deal with the refugee crisis, including the particular plight of these Iraqis. Officials estimated that up to seven thousand Iraqis could be resettled here by the end of this year. Since the announcements, in February, a total of ten Iraqis have come here under the resettlement program: eight in March, one in April, and one in May. None of them worked for the U.S. in Iraq. These figures mark a decline from the average of twelve per month between October and February. At this pace, every Iraqi now associated with Americans will be dead or in a hardship exile before a single one is brought here."

As of June 30, the total number of Iraqi refugees accepted under this program this year had soared to 69. Wow. We have accepted all of 800 Iraqi refugees since 2003. By comparison, Sweden has accepted 18,000 since 2006. There are towns in Sweden that have took in more Iraqi refugees last year than the US has since the invasion.

If we intend to deal with this in any remotely adequate way, we need to get to work several years ago right now. If we start now, we can get to work processing visas, checking things we need to check, streamlining the system, and so forth. We will be able to use the next year and a half to avert a complete catastrope. If we don't, we won't. So we have to start now.

Senator Kennedy has introduced a bill, S.1651, that would provide up to 5,000 visas a year for Iraqis who have worked for the US Government for at least a year, nd for their families. It would also designate as "Priority 2 refugees of special humanitarian concern under the refugee resettlement priority system" Iraqis who have worked for US media organizations, NGOs, or agencies that the US has contracted with or given grants to. Earl Blumenauer has introduced legislation (HR 2265) in the House that's similar, except that it provides special visas not just for Iraqis who have worked for the US government for a year, but for those who have worked for American media organizations, NGOs, etc., and it provides 15,000 a year, not 5,000.

If you think this matters, I would urge you to call or write your Congresspeople and Senators and ask them to support these bills. I plan to add, to my Senators, that I support the higher numbers and wider eligibilty of HR 2265. Ask the people you know to do so as well: I think that this is an issue that a lot of people would support if they only knew about it, and each of us can help to make it the case that they do. If you're a blogger, it would be wonderful if you would write about this issue.

I would like to do something more organized, or else to help some existing campaign. If anyone knows about one, or (alternately) has suggestions about what I might do to help spread the word and get people involved with this issue, please let me know. Thanks -- and thanks again to Sebastian.

The title of this post comes from Gerald Ford , who "said that he was thankful the United States was able to relocate 130,000 Vietnamese refugees, and that “to do less would have added moral shame to humiliation.”" We can still avoid that shame to some extent. As D-squared at Crooked Timber said, it is a debt of honor. We have to try to meet it.

Support with Support

--Sebastian

I've had my disagreements with D-squared (and that is the polite way of saying it), but he has it right on here. 

Iraqi interpreters used by the British Army and CPA South have already been hunted down by death squads. The British forces in and around Basra are no longer really sufficient to protect themselves, let alone their employees, as Channel 4 news details.

There really is no way of keeping these people safe while they are in Iraq, and they need to be kept safe. Quite apart from what one would call a “debt of honour” (the phrase is somewhat pompous, but accurately describes the situation), it never makes sense to get a reputation for abandoning one’s friends. Therefore, the Iraqi staff used by the British in Iraq need to be given asylum in the UK, along with their families.

If you are from the UK and interested in a political push in this direction please see Dan Hardie here.

But this reminds me of one of the stupid, stupid things about the Bush administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq--his treatment of foreign nationals who have tried to help us.  When we withdraw, it seems there are no plans to give asylum to the Iraqis who have helped us.  (What?  No plans?  From the Bush Administration, who would guess?  I know).  It would be an incredibly stupid policy to just let those people loose to be the first hunted down and killed by both sides of the likely civil war aftermath.  Even if for some reason we didn't feel some sort of moral responsibility to them (which to be clear we should) it makes good practical sense.  We've done all sorts of damage to any reputation for military competence, but that doesn't mean we should go out of our way to show that if you directly help us, we are likely to abandon you to an ugly death when we leave.

And in a very related note,  we aren't taking very good care of them now.  I'm not sure I recommend this link.  It is the kind of thing that breaks my heart, makes me angry at all sorts of people on all sides, and makes me want to scream.  But for what it is worth, it represents the very likely fate of all the Iraqis who have directly aided us if we don't give them asylum when we leave.  So for those purposes, if your stomach is feeling strong, you might want to read it and remember it when the time to withdraw comes.   

I Can Haz Open Thread?

by hilzoy

We just haven't had enough LOLCats around here lately. Herewith, an attempt to rectify that deficiency.

Links: 1, 2, 3.)

Also: remember a few days ago, when I asked when we'd see Hillary-cleavage-style stories, only about men? Stories like this?

"Presidential candidates normally take care with their underwear. Get it right and the pride of a candidate's manhood will remain neatly centered, visible, if at all, as a discreet, masculine bulge; get it wrong and his manly appointments will fall into one of his pants legs, giving him a peculiar, lopsided appearance.

Somebody get the word to Mitt Romney."

If you want to see the occasion for just such a story, only with Dick Cheney rather than Mitt Romney, and if you have a very strong stomach and are in a place where involuntary screams of horror and revulsion will not pose difficulties, and if, moreover, you are good at forgetting things you wish you had never seen, click here.

Don't click otherwise. You have been warned. (h/t LGM.)