The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Josh Jasper:

Major air strikes in Iraq today. My first worry is that they were preemptive pacification for a first strike in Iran.

I keep worrying that someone will convince Bush that invading Iran is a "cakewalk" and that we'll be greeted as liberators. I really do think that there are enough conservative idiots who'd buy that line of shit to actually make it possible for the US to invade. I have lost faith in the ability of the majority of Americans to discern propoganda from reality.

If the right PR spin was put on an invasion of Iran, a majority of Americans would accept it as neccesary, and manage to convince themselves that Iraq would remain stable during it.

It worked with Iraq. It would work again.

That sounds more like an indexing issue than a UI issue. I know a few people at Apple. I could talk to them and see if they could make contact with whoever is in charge of the store.

There's a whole field of anthropology waiting to get created here.

Cyberanthropology. Just imagine the google based studies, the mind numbing statistics, the boring white papers, and the amount of academic rancor it could generate.

I find myself wondering if you could work this sort of deal out with traditional tailors in places like Shanghai who make western clothing. Thinking about it, a small realspace storefront, a tape measure, a webcam, and some reliable international shipping could mean you could buy and sell custom garments from anywhere.

James J Murray, suing the ISP? How's that going to solve the problem? Did they ignore requests from him to delete the material or stop it from being sent?

Stephen Sample What I don't understand is the attitude some seem to have that American industry is bad in principle. The bad guys need to be punished, yes. But if we got rid of all of it -- where would we get our burgers, books, and computers for our blogs?

I'm sorry, who said that? Where? Oh, it was the mysterious "attitude some seem to have". I tell you what, if you find them, you can go argue with them.

CA residents may remember the White House telling us that conservation was some sort of liberal "lifestyle" but the real problem was that we weren't following some Republican plan or another.

Around the time Nixon was president, there were plenty of rah-rah supporters who found him ot be the best thing since sliced bread. These days, he's known to have been a crook. I can only hope that support of Bush is viewed in the same context in future histories.

Perhaps we need some sort of amnesty for Bush supporters. Just drop the chimp and we'll all go back to buisness.

OK. So for getting stupid all over me, I have to take revenge.

There.

So, beyond the installation of torturers at Abu Ghraib, including civilian contractors, we can now lay this at Rumsfeld's feet We're putting Sadr's forces in charge of Najaf and Falujah, and an Iranian backed group of insurgents is probably joining his militia in "protecting" these areas.

That's right. The Medhi Army is being given authority in Falujah and Najaf. We're also letting the Iranians in. That's how bad things are going there.

Our "exit strategy" seems to be to leave things in the hands of thugs, theocrats and terrorists.

Any bets if the Iraqi people end up thanking us for yanking out one brutal thug, replacing him with several others, and then leaving them with a flattened country?

Ah, but I do, in particular, blame this current US administration. I blame the wanton disrespect they have for the environment in support of the greed of private corporations.

Theresa:

"they took photos because they were Americans, far from home, and goofing around. "

That was part of my point. The CIA we've come to expect through shows like Alias, or in print, is sophisticated. This situation was created in part by contractors, and in part by inept soldiers with poor supervision.

I've read testimony from Vietnam about torture, and I do know that the US operations in Southeast Asia involved heroin trading with private armies. The movie "Air America" wasn't a fake. One of my high school professors worked for them.

Snapping pictures just seems even more inept than things were back then. It looks like a total breakdown of (and I twitch at writing this ) the expected professionalism and secrecy surrounding this sort of action. While I'm glad it's been discovered, it creeps me out that our intelligence services have been replaced by inept contractors.

MFB:

"I do not believe that you can fight a counter-insurgency war without torture. Counter-insurgency is all about intelligence, and since guerrillas don't use radios much, that means human intelligence. Guerrillas and their supporters don't volunteer information. Therefore it has to be extracted by interrogation. "

Well, the USA signed a treaty saying we wouldn't. I don't care if we need the information to achieve an objective. Torture is wrong, and we don't do it.

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan:

The best people I knew were Americans. And I'm tired of having to counter popular perceptions about Americans here, that they are stupid, ignorant, right-wing nuts, religious bigots. I welcome the help from decent people abroad. And as for feeling embarassed by our government, why, it's not as many people can throw stones around here, right?

When I lived there, Singapore wasn't in the habit of sticking it's nose into other nations businesses by propping up US favourable opposition parties. The US, on the other hand, did exactly that while I was living there. They funded (bribed) a local politician in order to get a voice in Parliament.

The US has a constant double standard in international politics. I've been watching it for over half my life.

Look ! ANWAR! Iraq! Kerry's medals! Winter Soldier! Clinton! Clinton! Clinton! Kerry is a boring smart guy! Bush is a regular guy! Vote jock, not nerd! Islam is evil but we can't say it in public! Arabs are evil except the ones we prop up as dictators!

STOP ASKING QUESTIONS! IT'S UN-AMERICAN!

While Smash and Stryker (sounds like a line from a Zucker Bros. movie) are spot on, this little gem dribbled from the orifice of one of Smash's readers:

To reject a tactic because of morality in war is sensless. War equates to killing others the least moral act we should be able to imagine. Denying torture has a place in war is to deny interrogation as useful to ultimate goals.

Tho stripping em naked and taking pictures of them looks more like hell week in college. Sure these bozos should get smacked, but torture has it's place in logical warfare.

Posted by: IXLNXS at May 3, 2004 05:15 PM

What gets me is the idiocy of it all. They took *photos*? They were smiling and laughing? How could anyone think this was a joke?

Oh, and Irony or ironies, the name of one of the civilian contractors accused of being involved is named John Israel.

here's a link to an article quoting him

Mr. Israel, the report found, "denied ever having seen interrogation processes in violation" of Army standards, "which is contrary to several witness statements." .

Lydia asks: What do you do about the guys that do evil who think they're doing good?

Well, violence, although it may prevent an immediate response, seems to have not done the trick in Iraq. The population there seems to be getting progressively more and more anti-American every day. We're not winning. We're loosing. Iraqis are starting to hate the US.

This fellow in Iraq writing as "The View from Baghdad" mentions that Arabic news sources seem to be pushing the population into believing some fairly horrific things about America. Adding in to that, Sadr (the fellow who's "running" things in Fallujah) is probably being funded by Iranians, and is in touch with Hamas.

I worry that no matter what happens, the US will end up at war with another Middle Eastern nation.

Before this year, I'd never even considered the possibility of voting for a Democrat for President.... *sigh*

Look at it this way, David: the Democrats have gotten more centrist over time. Perhaps there's hope for them yet.

Perhaps we should invade large printing presses and B&N warehouse distributers and throw doc martins and berkenstocks into the machinery :-)

Seriously - indie bookstores that stock lots of popular books, have a good location and a nice staff can stay in buisness. Encouraging customers helps. Childrens books are a huge market. So's the latest John Grisham or Jan Karol. Specialty bookstores have it tough.

I hope some good will come out of the sucess of the LOTR trilogy in terms of further investment in fantasy/scifi. It's certainly working that way with comic books.

Wow. That was a better gloat than any Bond villain ever had.

D'you really think the Justice Depatment can't just ask Bush who the leak was and who they called?

I mean, c'mon, no one except a total party line dupe belives his father didn't know about Iran/Contra, and no one except a total party line dupe should belive Bush dosen't know who called Novak and the other reporters.

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