10/27/2005

bye bye harrie

so harri miers is no longer a nominee? celibacy in the city ends it's run and you have to wonder, with the little resistance you saw to harri, if democrats are going to fight next time?

or will they again stand on the sidelines while harry reid vouches for harri miers? he was vouching for her again today. does he not get that america, right & left, felt she was unfit?

the only 1 who did anything was now and kim gandy. i saw a lot of sitting on the sidelines otherwise.

so i'm not real impressed with supposed brave voices.

sherry's not only unimpressed, she's flat out furious and thinks that if this is how the 'opposition party' is going to work we might as well just call off the 2006 elections because it's just a waste of money.

stacy e-mails to say she did talk about amy goodman's interview with janis kaprinski in all of her classes today. she said history and english class were the 1s where she found the most interest from teachers and the class.

stacy requested that i quote from the interview again.


AMY GOODMAN: So, 90% of the people at Abu Ghraib, though, not charged, brought in, just being held indefinitely.
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: And I think it's important to separate the category of detainees that we're talking about. 90% of the security detainees, these so-called terrorists, associates of terrorists or individuals who may have information about terrorism, they are tagged as security detainees, and they're the ones who are being subjected to interrogation.
The other part of the population is the Iraqi criminal population, small – small crimes, non-violent crimes, looting, missing curfew. We had an effective release policy in place with my signature to release these prisoners after they had served an appropriate amount of time. And even in those cases, probably 75% or 80% of those individuals didn't have a piece of evidence in their file that would hold them or convict them in a U.S. court, but the security detainees, there was no release process -- effective release process in place for them.
AMY GOODMAN: The Geneva -- the ghost detainees, is this the only time you believe you broke the Geneva Conventions?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Well, I will tell you that all of the prison facilities were right on the line, not in terms of how the prisoners were being treated, but the conditions were very austere. We were keeping prisoners in the outside camps only for as long as we needed to because the temperatures were 120 degrees, 140 degrees by noontime, so I would say that we were very close to being in violation of fair treatment and humane treatment of detainees.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever speak directly to Donald Rumsfeld?
COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: No, I -- Yes, he came to visit, and I expressed my concerns about the conditions in the prisons. I spoke directly to Ambassador Bremer nearly every week. I spoke to General Sanchez at least once every week, reported it in the updates and the night time briefings to General Wojdakowski, who was the deputy at CJTF-7, about the lack of funding, even the basic supplies: a basin for washing, a change of clothing, and the funding that was supposed to come from the prisons department at Ambassador Bremer's headquarters. We never saw one-tenth of the funds that we were supposed to receive. So, we were close to violating, but not for abuse or torture.

over at the daily jerk off he's still trashing joe wilson. does any 1 wonder where the daily jerk off gets its take on the news? i don't.

by the way, has any 1 else noticed that the daily jerk off hasn't mentioned the 2,000 milestone? hasn't discussed the way the press has covered, or not covered, it? besides sliming joe wilson yet again, he's, once again, back on election 2000. does the daily jerk off not grasp that wars are waging? or does he enjoy sitting in his rocker, afghan under the chin, saying, 'gather round, kiddos, and i'll tell you about 5 years ago 1 more time'?

while the daily jerk off self-pleasured yet again, c.i. had a really strong commentary that i wanted to note:

As has been noted on Law & Disorder and Democracy Now!, you're talking about prisoners who've been held for years, with no trial and little hope of getting out. This is their way of protesting and taking action when no other action is left to them. We could do something about it (other than force feeding) but that would mean living by the prinicples our nation's supposed to stand for.
Instead, we lock people away without a trial and no hope of release. Then when they take one of the only stands left for them to take, we further the indignity by force feeding them. (After denying for months that a hunger strike was even going on.) What will future generations think when they look back on this?America, the supposed nation of rule of law, detained, imprisoned people with no trials (including children under the age of eighteen) and left them there. Kept them there with no end in sight.
Threw out the Constitution because, the administration argues, it doesn't apply to Guantanamo.
Nothing applies to Guantanamo, it's not part of the United States. If you buy that argument (I don't), what of the people working at Guantanamo? Are they not part of the United States? Are they not bound by the laws and principles of this country?
[. . .]
Let's note Amy Goodman's interview with Janis Kaprinski from yesterday's Democracy Now!:
JANIS KARPINSKI: The only person that I spoke to individually after General Miller's visit – briefing, his in-brief, that initial briefing, I went to find the JAG officer, the legal officer, lawyer, who was with General Miller, and she was -- I believe she was a major and she had been working down at Guantanamo Bay. So, I asked her, I said, "What are you doing about releasing the prisoners down at Guantanamo Bay?" And she said, "Ma'am, we're not releasing prisoners. Most of those prisoners are going to spend every last day of their lives at Guantanamo Bay. They're terrorists. We're not releasing them." And I said, "Well, what are you going to do? Fly their family members over to visit them?" She said "No, these are terrorists, ma'am. They don't get visits from home." And that was -- that was absolutely shocking, thinking about the fate of these, what we believed was, several hundred prisoners down there, 680 prisoners spending every last day of their lives at Guantanamo Bay, and particularly important because that meant that military police would be guarding them for the foreseeable future.There's a little truth that doesn't make the news, mainstream. "We're not releasing prisoners."
Are we really surprised that after several years with nothing, no trial, no end in sight, that people would decide that a hunger strike that could result in death was the last act open to them?

while the daily jerk off lectures you 1 more time about election 2000 and ignores the actual events of life today, it becomes more and more useless. i'll probably pull the daily jerk off from my links in the next few days. c.i. is always the optimist and keeps thinking that the daily jerker will get honest. i've lost faith in that.

i was just about to post when betty called. she just posted and was wondering if i'd read it and let her know what i thought? never a problem. it's hilarious as always. i want to pull the last paragraphs and quote those but i don't want to spoil something by risking that someone seeing the excerpt might not have already read it. but go read it.











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