The BBC reports:
Hollywood actor Ben Affleck has attacked US President George Bush’s “dangerous right-wing” policies, which he said were eroding civil liberties.
Speaking in Los Angeles, Affleck, 31, was accepting an award from political group, People For The American Way. He received the Spirit of Liberty award for his work on behalf of children’s rights and voter registration.
Affleck also compared the current state of US politics to the last days of the Roman Empire. Referring to fellow film star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent election as Governor of California, he compared “the dawn of the Schwarzenegger era in American politics” to the empire’s decline.
I wonder if he’ll get Dixie Chicked. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind him and Lopez being out of the papers for a while. Maybe thats his cunning plan.
Thanks to Scribeboy for the heads up. CNN has Rummy defending our heroic crusader:
Asked about this Thursday, Rumsfeld told reporters he had not seen the videos and did not know the “full context” of Boykin’s remarks. But the secretary did say, “We do know that he is an officer that has an outstanding record in the United States armed forces.”
Bit of a lackluster defense. I’d say our boy is for the chop.
There’s more. It’s a Covenant exclusive! (Well, as far as the blogosphere is concerned…). Full article at Waco: The Rules of Engagement. This is an FBI memo:
ODS (ODS is handwritten at the top)
Dept. of Justice Request – Waco, Texas
The Department of Justice thru the FBI, requested two soldiers by name, to meet with the Attorney General on 14 April 93, concerning tactical contingency plans that may be used to bring the situation in Waco, Texas to an end. These personnel are; BG Shoomaker, ADC, 1st CAV DIV, and COL Boykin, Sec Ops, at Fort Bragg, NC. These soldiers have extensive special operations experience, and have worked with the FBI on previous occasions. MG Heldstab has approved this mission, and both have been notified. The Top 6 XOs. FORSCOM, III Corps, and USASOC were also informed. The FBI will handle travel arrangements.
(O’Conner’s signature is here) Michael E. O’Connor CPT, FA AOC WATCH OFFICER
MAJ Wells,
This is what I wrote up and gave to Col (P) Ohle early this morning. BG Shoomaker told my watch NCO (SFC Savage) that the FBI plans to pick him at Fort Hood and fly him first to Waco to assess the situation, and then on to Washington DC. He was not sure if MG Heldstab was aware of those plans when he approved the mission. Just wanted you to be current!
Yup, Boykin, then a Colonel, was sent to Waco to discuss tactical contingency plans. Of course, we all know how well that all turned out.
Of course, in the interests of fairness, it should also be mentioned that Assistant Division Commander Shoomaker’s direct superior was the Commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, General Wesley Clark.
Also, that as I understand it, it is against The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 for the military to be involved in civilian police actions:
From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress.
So Boykin was thoroughly in breach of this law. Along with a whole lot of other people.
The General’s back, in an LA Times Op/Ed piece:
In June of 2002, Jerry Boykin stepped to the pulpit at the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla., and described a set of photographs he had taken of Mogadishu, Somalia, from an Army helicopter in 1993.
The photographs were taken shortly after the disastrous “Blackhawk Down” mission had resulted in the death of 18 Americans. When Boykin came home and had them developed, he said, he noticed a strange dark mark over the city. He had an imagery interpreter trained by the military look at the mark. “This is not a blemish on your photograph,” the interpreter told him, “This is real.”
“Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy,” Boykin said to the congregation as he flashed his pictures on a screen. “It is the principalities of darkness. It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy.”
This is tricky for me. I believe wholeheartedly in spirits, and plenty of other weirdness. I ought to be happy that someone in power takes the concept of evil as seriously as I do.
Problem is, if you’re not objective about it, evil starts looking a whole lot like all the things you didn’t like anyway.
Coming soon, George asks the FBI to send Fox Mulder to investigate….
I try not to cover the same stories as Atrios. He’s bigger than me, and it makes me look silly, but this one is far too much up my street to not mention. Gentlemen, ladies, may I introduce Gen. William �Jerry� Boykin, the US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, with special responsibility for anti-terrorism. Oh, and a complete lunatic.
From MSNBC, quotes from the good General:
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, BROKEN ARROW, OKLA., JUNE 30, 2002
[SLIDE SHOW, PICTURE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN] �And then we began to see this face�the face of Osama bin Laden. And finally we said, �There�s the enemy. That�s our enemy. That�s the man that hates us. And all of those that follow him.�
[PICTURE OF PRESIDENT BUSH] �And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that�s in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he�s there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, �You have been put there for such a time and place.� And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.
�But who is that enemy? It�s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith. Look at what the writers of our Constitution said. We are a nation of believers. We were founded on faith.�
[PICTURE OF SATAN] �And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you do not believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the same Bible that tells you about God. Now I�m a warrior. One day I�m going to take off this uniform and I�m still going to be a warrior. And what I�m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God�s kingdom.�
GOOD SHEPHERD CHURCH, SANDY, ORE., JUNE 21, 2003
CELEBRATE AMERICA EVENT
�And we ask ourselves this question, �Why do they hate us? Why do they hate us so much?�
Ladies and gentlemen, the answer to that is because we�re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. Did I say Judeo-Christian? Yes. Judeo-Christian.
�That means we�ve got a commitment to Israel. That mean�s it�s a commitment we�re never going to abandon.
�Go back and read the history books. Go back and read what the early founders of this nation said about Israel, about the Jews. John Adams wrote extensively of, he called it the Hebrews, the contributions they had made to our concepts of liberty and the importance of their contributions to the founding of this great nation.
�Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin each, independently, when asked to come up with a national symbol for this new nation, both came up with a national symbol that reflected on our Jewish heritage.
�One had Moses standing over the Red Sea with his staff and the water parting.
�The other had the Israelites coming out of bondage in the desert being led by a ball of fire. They recognized the importance of our relationship to the Jews and to Israel. Ladies and gentlemen, we will never abandon Israel, we will never walk away from our commitment to Israel because our roots are there.
Our religion came from Judaism, and therefore these radicals will hate us forever.�
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, DAYTONA, FLA., JAN. 28, 2003
�There was a man in Mogadishu named Osman Atto. You see him in the movie [�Blackhawk Down�], smoking a big cigar and talking philosophically. How many of you have seen the movie? Acting like a big shot. Well let me tell you something. That�s not what Osman Atto did. The reality was Osman Atto was Aideed�s closest ally. He was Aideed�s top lieutenant. He was a multimillionaire financier for Aideed�s clan. And we knew if that if we could capture Osman Atto and take him away, that we could destroy Aideed�s network. So we went after Osman Atto about two weeks before the battle…. We went after Osman Atto. We got into a terrible fight. And I�m sad to say a lot of Somalis were killed as we went after Osman Atto.
But we missed him by seconds. He walked out of the facility that we raided, he walked down the street and blended in with the crowd and we missed him.
�And then he went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, �They�ll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.�
�Well, you know what I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol. But I prayed, Lord let us get that man.
�Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, �Are you Osman Atto?� And he said �Yes.� And I said, �Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God.��
Well, I know I’d feel safe if I was in the US. The man has a picture of Satan. He also doesn’t seem aware that Franklin was a humanist or a deist (depending on who you ask.).
He calls Muslims idol worshippers. Last time I checked it was forbidden in Islam to have any physical representaion of Allah.
Hadith – Bukhari 3:428, Narrated Said bin Abu Al-Hasan
While I was with Ibn ‘Abbas a man came and said, “O father of ‘Abbas! My sustenance is from my manual profession and I make these pictures.” Ibn ‘Abbas said, “I will tell you only what I heard from Allah’s Apostle . I heard him saying, ‘Whoever makes a picture will be punished by Allah till he puts life in it, and he will never be able to put life in it.’ ” Hearing this, that man heaved a sigh and his face turned pale. Ibn ‘Abbas said to him, “What a pity! If you insist on making pictures I advise you to make pictures of trees and any other unanimated objects.”
You’d have thought the top anti-terrorist guy would make a point of knowing some basic Islamic factoids.
Meanwhile, over in Operation Iraqi Freedom…. The Independant reports:
US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.
The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.
Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: “They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn’t capture anything. They didn’t find any weapons.”
Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.
“They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees,” said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as “a punishment of local people because ‘you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us’.” What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.
The destruction of the fruit trees took place in the second half of last month but, like much which happens in rural Iraq, word of what occurred has only slowly filtered out. The destruction of crops took place along a kilometre-long stretch of road just after it passes over a bridge.
Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation, lists only 32 people. The petition says: “Tens of poor families depend completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death.”
The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation. When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: “We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn’t tell us.”
Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen if they are, in fact, attacking US troops.
Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: “It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth.”
Fascist bastards. Bush’s stormtroopers using the tried and tested SS technique of punishing an entire community. And demeaning jazz in the process. Terrorism (though I dislike the use of the word in the situation of Iraq. Asymetric warfare, shall we say.) is the last resort of the desperate, and the hopeless.
As mentioned below, this is the sort of news I really oughtn’t to read. My hands are twitching to get around the throat of the nearest US soldier. Luckily, there aren’t any in my living room at the moment, and by the time I walked to Fakenham airbase I’d have cooled down.
I can’t help feeling that there is probably something in the Geneva Convention about not doing this sort of thing.
Aaah, sorry for the absence. Sometimes, if I read too much news, I get into the sort of state where I don’t want to get out of bed for a few days.
Anyways, today I found something cheery. Bush’s military records. AWOLBush.com has a pretty nice set of documents, all released under my old pal, the freedom of information act.
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