BunkBlog

In a conversation with my mom this weekend (Hi mom), we were discussing the concept of holding Bush or Rumsfeld directly responsible for the actions of every single person who worked for them. Obviously, there is a level of abstraction in any sufficiently large organization, and it is unreasonable to assume that Bush or Rummy knew anything at all about the crimes at Abu Ghraib. That does *not* mean, however, that they are not responsible for those actions.

Truman made famous the phrase, “The Buck Stops Here” as a symbol of the enormous responsibility placed on his shoulders. The President is responsible for everything that is done in his name. And every official action of a military servicemember is done in the name of the President.

The enlistment oath I took four times:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Notice, soldiers defend the Constitution first and foremost. Second, notice that they obey the orders of the President. Now, the actions of these people in Iraq are violating all kinds of laws and treaties, but some of them (weakminded as they were) had been led to believe that they were acting legally, as required by the interrogation teams that had been placed over them. This does not excuse their actions in the slightest, but they thought it was acceptable.

And, the President finding out about the Abu Ghraib from the news is absurd. If he didn’t know about these actions before then, he should have. If he is being shielded by Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld should be fired for exposing the President to such an extreme breach of ethics and honesty.

More than anything, though, the President needs to stop trying to pass that buck to everyone but himself. He is the President. His people did something awful. It’s his responsibility, whether it’s his fault or not.

Illuminating blacked-out words in redacted (edited/declassified) documents is actually possible with computers today.

Interesting, the government stopped using Courier in its documents recently because it’s ugly compared to Arial or Times New Roman. But, because Courier is a monospace font, it is actually harder to decipher with the method listed in the article. So, the government has made it easier to pierce the veil of secrecy they put around redacted documents. Fantastic.

Great post about Abu Ghraib.

“The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.”

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.”

There are more photos and video from Abu Ghraib prison. They’re worse.

U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

I am taking three classes this semester, all online. Two of them have responsive and personable instructors. The third actually has a teaching team consisting of a professor and TA. You would think this would make it the most responsive of the lot. Nope.

Two days ago, the professor posted that our grades from the last assignment would be posted that night, as well as the solution. Still nothing.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but it’s completely par for the course. It has taken 5-15 days to get a response to a question, the book is bizarrely useless, the online forums have only the vaguest relationship to the course objectives and none with the book, etc.

I fully expect the final to be written in ancient Greek and Aramaic, and consist entirely of electronic engineering problems (it’s not an engineering class) dealing with combinations of dilithium crystals and unobtanium produced under intense pressure in a low-gravity environment.

Please just let me get a passing grade so I get reimbursed for tuition. Horrible class.

My cow-orkers tend to say some absurd things that they think make sense. Here are a couple from this week.

“I’m ok with Word until you get into the advanced features. How do you delete a page break?” Um, yeah. That’s not really advanced so much as it is blatantly obvious. DELETE key ring a bell?

“I don’t run an antivirus because it would be a step backward for me. As a programmer, I know how things propagate and I’ve got a good router.” Sure you do. The magical kind of router that is not only a stateful packet sniffer but stops trojan horses and updates itself automatically to prevent file corruption on all computers attached to it. Fantastic technology.

It’s been a while since I posted about Urinal Etiquette, so I suppose it is time.

My boss was in the restroom the other day when I went in. He was at the far-right urinal, so I (naturally) took the far-left one. This maximizes the distance between us, and minimizes any inclination to make eye contact or otherwise violate the Urinal Code.

I guess it wasn’t far enough. He started up a conversation. Apparently the man has never heard of the Urinal Code. Shocking.

This image found through the joy of random LJ image-hunting. Woohoo!

Stolen shamelessly from Pouk23, I give you the Holy Armor of God, on Bush.

Oh, the hypocrisy. Oh, the irony. Oh, the absurdity.

What is truly sad is this woman represents a large and important bloc of swing voters this fall. God help us all.

Gun safety presenter shoots self

He’s ok, but what amazing irony. It’s hilarious, in a dark way.

Especially for Ernunnos.

This prison junk in Iraq is really bothersome to me. First, I can’t believe there is a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. military who would attempt to use the excuse that he’d never gotten any specific training in handling prisoners of war. EVERY soldier gets that in basic training, and as a SSG he would have gotten it again in two separate leadership training classes over the years. To pretend that he didn’t realize that beating and humiliating naked prisoners was wrong beggars the imagination.

The entire thing makes me so mad. I want those soldiers court martialed, I want their commander thrown in prison, I want a huge apology to the PWs for their maltreatment. And it’s not that I think those prisoners are good guys, but they are HUMAN and the U.S. military is supposed to be a beacon of honor and dependability. Those men and women don’t deserve to be put in the same category as their compatriots.

And then, there’s the “thanks for helping” part. The soldiers and marines in Iraq have a hard enough job (whether it’s a job they should be doing is moot – they don’t get to choose the missions they only carry them out), now they’ve got to deal with the encouragement these assholes have given to the insurgents. The al Sadr nutcases didn’t need a justification to be violent, but now they have a great one.

According to the Guardian, the Abu Ghraib prison story is even stranger than first thought. Although the photos we’ve seen so far only show GIs, Titan and CACI (two defense contractors) are apparently involved up to their necks.

One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.

Bush and Cheney answer all questions

My favorite quote about the secret, not transcribed, unrecorded, closed-door session:

Bush said it was important for him and Cheney to appear together so that commission members could “see our body language… how we work together.”

I believe “body language” in this case is Dick pulling Dubya’s strings to make him talk, but I could be wrong.

Sorry, my leet-speek is rusty.

I stayed home today to knock out a paper for the easy class which I’ve avoided working on since the first day of the semester, even though the requirements were provided in the syllabus and it’s due on Sunday (run on sentence much?). So, I work on it, and it’s even easier than I thought it would be, and done after about 4 hours of half-assed work. I am the king of pulling it out of my ass.

If you weren’t sure about the sheer chutzpah (or arrogance depending on your affiliation) of our current President, check out this clip from the Letterman show. He uses a producer’s sweater as a cleaning rag for his spectacles!

According to the Associated Press, among the weaponry currently arrayed around Fallujah is an AC-130 gunship.

bq. The side-firing weapons array consists of one 25mm GAU-12 Gatling gun (firing 1,800 rounds per minute), one 40mm L60 Bofors cannon (with a selectable firing rate of single shot or 120 rounds per minute) and one 105mm M-102 Howitzer cannon (firing 6 to 10 rounds per minute).

Yeah, don’t you think that may be overkill?

Apparently these are two spiders in Iraq. Yet another reason to not go there. Damn.

Mess With Texas – it’s fun.