Saturday, May 08, 2004 The FBI and the FOIA The Daily Texan writes:
"Do you belong to any student activist organizations?"
"Have you ever thought of joining any student activist organizations, like UT Watch?"
He wasn't an activist. Nor a suspect or the messenger of a bomb threat, for that matter.
What interested the agents, from Austin's Joint Terrorism Task Force, was an open records request he filed with UT administrators for information about the underground campus tunnel system.
Posted by Nikhil,
11:42 AM
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Friday, May 07, 2004 Exactly Jack Balkin on the administration's disregard for international law:
The Administration, and particularly Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have been cavalier about American obligations under international law, including the Geneva Convention. International law and transparency, we are told, are unnecessary because, unlike all of the other countries in the world, we are Americans, and we naturally believe in human rights and the rule of law. We need no special incentives to be good. But if history teaches us anything, it is that when governments, no matter how well they think of themselves, decide to free themselves from constraints, they become unconstrained, and when they refuse to make themselves accountable, they abuse their power. The only thing that has been lacking until now has been the proof of what everyone should already have known: that unchecked power leads to hubris, hubris leads to corruption, and corruption leads to violations of human rights.
Posted by Timothy,
2:57 PM
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"The worst is yet to come..." Just now in the prisoner treatment hearing, this is what one Senator said to Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld indicated he had earlier said there were a lot more photos out there.
Posted by Timothy,
1:42 PM
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The Tough Guy Administration TPM provides this from the Nelson Report:
We can contribute a second hand anecdote to newspaper stories on rising concern, last year, from Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage about Administration attitudes and the risks they might entail: according to eye witnesses to debate at the highest levels of the Administration...the highest levels...whenever Powell or Armitage sought to question prisoner treatment issues, they were forced to endure what our source characterizes as "around the table, coarse, vulgar, frat-boy bully remarks about what these tough guys would do if THEY ever got their hands on prisoners...."
-- let's be clear: our source is not alleging "orders" from the White House. Our source is pointing out that, as we said in the Summary, a fish rots from its head. The atmosphere created by Rumsfeld's controversial decisions was apparently aided and abetted by his colleagues in their callous disregard for the implications of the then-developing situation, and by their ridicule of the only combat veterans at the top of this Administration.
Posted by Timothy,
12:28 AM
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Thursday, May 06, 2004 Democrats Coming Together
This post may seem petty in light of the horrible torture stories coming out of Iraq (side note: how soon until we hear about the Gitmo torture chambers?). But this is something that needs to be addressed as we head into the summertime:
The latest polls have John Kerry tied with Bush (even when you have Nader thrown in the mix). But I'm feeling seriously worried about the upcoming campaign. Not because of John Kerry management issues (blaming mistakes on speechwriters) or his untenable position on Iraq ("we'll just get NATO involved"), both of which are easier to repair.
The reason I'm worried is that it seems like Democrats and like-minded supporters, rather than coming together in this post-primary season, are splitting in every direction and are duplicating their own efforts time and again. EVERYONE is trying to duplicate Dean for America now in terms of internet and e-mail fundraising and Meet-Ups, etc. And I'm still getting emails solicitations from campaigns that ended months ago (Edwards, Clark, etc.)
Rather than spending time and money on various progressive and pseudo-Democratic Party GOTV campaigns like: the environmental victory project; Americans Coming Together; the Voting Rights Project; National Election Action Day; Move-On and tons of other 527's, I've left out. Shouldn't we be focusing on coordinating our efforts through the DNC or the Kerry campaign. Granted, it's tough to coordinate things like that and McCain-Feingold probably makes it even harder.
Most importantly, John Kerry needs to step up to the plate and assert his leadership over the party (especially among the defeated candidates) and create a central daily message. Maybe this is in the form of a talking points memo (like the Center for American Progress is already doing). Whatever it takes, it needs to start soon. I'm about as loyal a Democrat as they come, and I'm already getting fatigued by this incessant intra-party competition.
AP: A day after he stopped short of apologizing, Bush told Jordan's King Abdullah II: "I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.
"I told him I was as equally sorry that people seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America," Bush said, standing in the Rose Garden alongside Abdullah.
When you apologize, it is probably best not to tell the people you're apologizing to that you're "equally sorry" about the abuses done to their fellow countymen and how America is viewed. Putting torture on par with the damage done to America's image does not seem to me to be even an effective way to better show the Iraqis the true nature and heart of America.
Posted by Timothy,
6:33 PM
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Kerry on his own Vietnam-era Geneva convention violations I remember watching Kerry when he said this 2 weeks or so ago, on meet this press, and thinking geez, how can he blithely begin his comments like that? Maybe it is good politics (hmm), but it does not promote honest dialogue (and he looked fake doing it). And we need that now.
It's also true that he led raucous demonstrations in Washington, and participated in the "Winter Soldier" hearings. When he appeared before the Senate three months later, he spoke at length about reported American atrocities, attributing most of the specific allegations to veterans who had testified during Winter Soldier. Graphic references to rape, dismemberment and murder took up less than a paragraph of his lengthy testimony, but they certainly brought no credit on the U.S. military. Yet his eloquent words won bipartisan praise from the senators who listened to him.
Kerry didn't join the antiwar movement to indict his fellow soldiers; he often spoke with passion about the injustices done to them, both during the war and when they returned home to inadequate medical care and an indifferent government. His purpose was to prevent more of them from being killed, as he said over and over again.
He didn't try to absolve himself when denouncing the indiscriminate violence of the war. On "Meet the Press," he confessed that he had participated in "the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones." But he felt strongly that U.S. military commanders and civilian policymakers were far more culpable for those atrocities than the men who obeyed their orders. Appalled by the civilian casualties in the "free-fire zones" marked out by their commanders, Kerry and other junior officers had gone to Saigon in January 1969 to complain to their superior -- and were of course ignored.
The free-fire zones, the use of napalm, the carpet-bombing and the assassination programs were all aspects of a guerrilla conflict that could not be prosecuted without killing thousands of civilians. Only by falsifying history -- and assuming that nobody will remember the truth -- can Kerry's right-wing critics claim that he somehow misled the country about what was happening in Vietnam. The smear depends on historical amnesia.
Last year the suppressed recollections of that disturbing past emerged again, when investigative journalist Gregory Vistica revealed wartime secrets long concealed by Bob Kerrey. Although the most incriminating details remain disputed, the former senator and Congressional Medal of Honor winner has admitted that he and Navy SEALS under his command massacred civilians during a nighttime raid on a hamlet called Thanh Phong in 1969. The ensuing debate over his conduct revived searing memories of My Lai, the village where hundreds of civilians were raped and murdered in March 1968 by U.S. soldiers.
In 1971, John Kerry told the Senate that if William Calley and the other soldiers who committed those atrocities were guilty, then so were the commanders who had made such crimes inevitable and then covered them up. "I think if you are going to try Lieutenant Calley then you must at the same time, if this country is going to demand respect for the law, you must at the same time try all those other people who have responsibility, and any aversion that we may have to the verdict as veterans is not to say that Calley should be freed, not to say that he is innocent, but to say that you can't just take him alone." Kerry's critics argue that My Lai was an isolated incident, but at least one celebrated general doesn't agree.
Secretary of State Colin Powell held a command position in the Army's Americal Division, which had included Calley's unit, and he was asked to investigate the earliest allegations about My Lai. He failed to uncover the massacre and was later accused of facilitating the coverup. Whether that accusation is fair or not, Powell knows what happened in Vietnam.
"My Lai was an appalling example of much that had gone wrong in Vietnam," he wrote in his bestselling autobiography, "My American Journey." "The involvement of so many unprepared officers and noncoms led to breakdowns in morale, discipline and professional judgment -- and to horrors like My Lai -- as the troops became numb to what appeared to be endless and mindless slaughter." For some reason, despite his loyalty to the president, Powell doesn't seem eager to attack John Kerry.
"In fact, one of the undercovered angles to the Abu Ghaibr story is that many of the perpetrators seem to have been prison guards in civilian life, and I suspect -- as previous posts here on more than one occasion suggest -- far worse behavior is routinely tolerated there."
If the torture in Iraq is a violation of the Geneva conventions, and if much worse is happening in our prison system, what does that say about our country's concern for human rights for all?
AP: U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday. The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true.
The new photos from Abu Ghraib are very similar to the first wave: nude Iraqis chained together or to prison bars. On the cover, they run another photo of Pvt. England - who has been reassigned to Fort Bragg, NC, but according to the Post, has not been charged (which I assume means "not charged yet"). She is holding a leash-like string or cord that is tied around the neck of a naked prisoner on the ground. Quotes from her family take the expected, "others asked her to do it" tack, and England is quoted (via her mother) as saying, in what has to be one of the great double-meaning understatements ever, this: "Mom, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." As I suspected yesterday based on Hersh's New Yorker article, there appears to be a strong element of souvenir-taking in all of this...
This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
So is Rush telling us that a naked George Bush simulated fellatio with a bag over his head in his Skull and Bones days? I somehow doubt it. This is an absurd defense. Josh Marshall has it right: "Another example of how a war for liberal democracy can't be run by the most illiberal people in our society. And just what is Rush's idea of a 'good time'?"
Posted by Timothy,
1:47 PM
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The system works... the third time around?
HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing -- it's a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of -- it's 53-page report.
O'REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.
HERSH: No, look, I don't want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations. One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it's very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison. (via TMW)
What is disturbing to me is that Miller has been put in charge of the prison system in Iraq. Hersh also said this (via TPM):
First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).... Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.
I agree: this clearly is not thinking. Here is what Will is specifically referring to:
[Bush said:] "There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."
What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that.... But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters. Perhaps that, which is problematic enough, is what the president meant. But what he suggested was: Some persons -- perhaps many persons; no names being named, the smear remained tantalizingly vague -- doubt his nation-building project because they are racists.
Wow, George Will is making some sense. However, Josh Marshall makes many of the same points here. Marshall is not nearly as eloquent, but he also does not say this:
In "On Liberty" (1859), John Stuart Mill said, "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say" that the doctrine of limited, democratic government "is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." One hundred forty-five years later it obviously is necessary to say that.
Huh? I agree that Bush is wrong in his insinuation above. But if Will wants to say that opposition to Iraq is not racist, this is a really bad quote to use and endorse. Here is the full passage from Mill:
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.
Bush said: "There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern." Is that not what Mill says above? It seems Will was not thinking, which as he would admit, is really a shame. (Let's also not forget Will's attitude towards White minority rule in Apartheid South Africa though.) Of course most people who oppose Bush's democracy building project in Iraq are not racists. As Will says, Just because democratic institutions can help foster the culture necessary for liberty, does not mean they will. But Will does himself no serve by quoting someone who actually does make a race based statement.
Yet. I'll keep saying this. My question is not "Are we as bad as Saddam's Iraq?" but "Are we getting more like it or less like it?" We might never get as bad as Saddam's Iraq or even squalid old Egypt, second-largest recipient of US aid in the world before Iraqi reconstruction began. But we can be much better than those countries and yet a disgrace to ourselves.... Nevertheless, let me be clear: American political culture is healthier than Arab political culture. Let's keep it that way.
Posted by Timothy,
2:48 PM
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Channelling Coulter-geist Ted Rall does suck. Whatever comes out about American actions in Iraq, the US army is not "virtually indistinguishable" from the S.S. Rall should visit the Holocaust Museum.
Update: In a recent cartoon, there was something about how W had pretended to invade Afghanistan. I don't know whether Rall is delusional or purposively fantastic. In any case, it is not effective satire.
Update 2: The link is fixed! Apologies to the relevant party.
Posted by Timothy,
2:23 PM
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Rumsfeld's Winning Hearts and Minds
Don Rumsfeld: "I think that -- I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."
Taguba Report: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."
Daily Kos attacks the spin that this shows "the system works", and also notes that the U.S. has known since January about these abuses:
But more puzzling is the fact that, even if he cared not one whit about good war management for management's sake, Cheshire Cat Rummy should have been clever enough to know that this would get out eventually, and had the sense to at least alert somebody in Congress during closed session so he and Bush would now be insulated...which can only lead to this conclusion: Deep down, Rumsfeld thought, if not hoped, it would never get out.
Update: Compare Rumseld's statement with the account of abused in the Taguba Report: (via Andrew Sullivan)
6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts: a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; i. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture; k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
Posted by Timothy,
12:03 PM
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Whose Moral Responsibility? In the run up to war in Iraq, many hawks claimed that it was our nation's moral responsibility to fight Saddam. Putting the debate on that claim aside for one moment, I remember asking myself the obvious question: What were those writers still doing up here at Dartmouth? This sort of talk came from all corners, in The Review and on The D's Op-Ed page (you'll need to forgive me for not pouring through the archives). I suppose that I could never bridge the intellectual gap that was able to see our national responsibility in terms of something that other people should go do while we on college campuses pontificate about it.
This OpEd by a Marine Veteran explains the situation better than I can.
Here's the final point: "If you support this war, but assume that Pat Tillman and Other People's Children should fight it, then you are worse than a hypocrite. If it's not worth your family fighting it, then it's not worth it, period."
Posted by Graham,
12:19 AM
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004 If We Build It They Will Come
Among the many nonsensical and out-right absurd things George Bush has done in his Presidency few can compare with the enormous waste of taxpayer money that is the national missile defense system. Imagine if in response to the 9/11 attacks, Bush had proposed building a big glass dome over Manhattan. Hey, it would protect New York from future hijacked planes, but it wouldn't really be a very good protection against other types of attacks. The only possible reason for building a glass dome would be if the glass-makers had contributed generously to your campaign. George Bush's "Field of Dreams"-like delusions of imminent missile attack in the post-9/11 world make about strategic sense as France's World War I Maginot Line. This missile defense system will protect America from a threat that barely exists today and can easily be evaded by our enemies.
Proponents of the system (and no doubt our friends in the Comments section of this blog) will argue that there is no reason NOT to build the system since we have perfected the technology and there are several countries still remaining in existence who have the means and motive to launch a missile attack against us. The truth is that only an insane rogue leader who was willing to sacrifice millions of his own people's lives would launch an attack like that. So, Kim Jong Il for example? Perhaps. But how much better protected would our ports and subways be if we had spent our missile defense money on those strategic defenses. When you have a limited budget for defense you prioritize based on need (although I think it's clear the fiscal conservatives have left the building). Missile defense should have been the first thing on the budget chopping block on September 12th. Americans everywhere should question this President's commitment to fighting terrorism when he is willing to waste our money in this manner.
Here's more info on the new system:
The first system will rely on interceptors in a handful of silos here at Fort Greeley, an Army base, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. In an attack, boosters would release the kill vehicle more than 100 miles above earth. With a heat-sensitive telescope, the vehicle would search the chill of space for the warhead, then maneuver with its thrusters and try to pulverize the weapon by simply ramming it at speeds faster than 20,000 miles an hour.
Posted by Dan,
8:45 PM
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Torture allegations widen to include Afghanistan and other Iraqi facilities
The scandal of the U.S. military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners threatened to widen Tuesday as lawmakers emerged from a closed-door briefing with Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said similar abuses — though "small in number" — may also have occurred at other Iraqi facilities and in Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Outraged by the sexual humiliation and abuses of Iraqis by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison, senators called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explain the situation in an open hearing as soon as possible.
"There were some incidents in Afghanistan," said Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites), after the panel's closed briefing with Pentagon officials. "We did not get the full details but were left with the impression that they were relatively isolated and certainly small in number." (Link)
Posted by Timothy,
1:50 PM
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Monday, May 03, 2004 Abu Ghraib shows a reason why Gitmo should not be a zone outside the law I just saw Brig. Gen. Karpinski on The O'Reilly Factor. Karpinski said that though she had been in charge in charge of Abu Ghraib prison for a time, military intelligence, not military police, directed the interrogation of prisoners. Furthermore, she said that the abuse was not the result of individual reservists taking their own initiative, but had to have been the result of the direction of some (unknown) individual who came up with these techniques. A month before the abuses occured, a new team of military intelligence officers arrived at Abu Ghraib. Their main mission was to teach interrogators new methods of extracting information. Where did this team come from? Guantanamo Bay.
BAGHDAD, May 1 -- A top Pentagon intelligence officer is leading an investigation into interrogation practices at an Army-run prison where Iraqi detainees were allegedly beaten and sexually abused, officials announced Saturday. The move came amid allegations that military guards abused prisoners at the behest of military intelligence operatives.
A soldier accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility wrote to his family last December that military intelligence officers encouraged the mistreatment, according to correspondence provided by the soldier's family.
"We have had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break," the soldier, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, wrote in a Dec. 18 e-mail released by Frederick's uncle. "They usually end up breaking within hours."
Frederick also wrote that he questioned some of the abuses. "I questioned this and the answer I got was: This is how military intelligence wants it done," he wrote.
The Army Reserve commander who oversaw the prison said that military intelligence, rather than the military police, dictated the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. "The prison, and that particular cellblock where the events took place, were under the control of the MI command," Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski said in a telephone interview Saturday night from her home in Hilton Head, S.C.
Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, also described a high-pressure atmosphere that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses occurred, she said, a team of military intelligence officers from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came to Abu Ghraib last year. "Their main and specific mission was to get the interrogators -- give them new techniques to get more information from detainees," she said. (Washington Post, via TMW)
Posted by Timothy,
8:29 PM
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Muslim Rights The Council on American Islamic Relations has published its report on Muslim Civil Rights in the U.S. for 2003:
"Along with an increase in the number of bias-related incidents and experiences, we have also witnessed the negative results produced by government policies that target ordinary Americans based on religion, ethnicity or national origin," said CAIR Research Director Dr. Mohamed Nimer. "It is this guilt by association that has created a sense of siege in the American Muslim community."
1,019 reported incidents, a 70% rise. See theWashington Post article.
Posted by Nikhil,
3:52 PM
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John McCain's letter to the Sinclair Broadcast Group (which announced they would not broadcast Nightline's Friday show, where Koppel read the names of the war dead)
I find deeply offensive Sinclair's objection to Nightline's intention to broadcast the names and photographs of Americans who gave their lives in service to our country in Iraq.... There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves. (link)
