Observation
 

Only if Penske decides to return.

I wish I had this When I Was a Clerk
 

For those of you who don't read Volokh - http://www.adl.org/mwd/suss1.asp (casebook dealing with ridiculous tax-evader type arguments).

Maybe someone who knows more about Pakistan can tell me whether the way the government has treated Bhutto during the recent crackdown was a way to strengthen her by giving her cred. Before the state of emergency, Musharraf and Bhutto were understood to be working together.

how can a woman run a fundamentalist islamic state?

I give up. How?

waterboarding?

I never heard that she did that the first time around, but maybe she's been taking leadership tips from Dick Cheney or the Khmer Rouge.

I thought the whole "working together" thing was falling apart once she stepped off of the plane, almost got blown up and then began to allude to the possibility that the bomb was planted by the government?

aV

And then the house arrest. But all of this makes me wonder whether he's letting her pose as more of an opponent of the government than she is. It's not like he's going to win a popular election. So who is he trying to set up?

He's banned the opposition parties from holding rallies and he sacked the supreme court. I would think that he could likely "win" the election and state that even when faced with "opposition" he was the victor.

aV

you have to remember, Ty believes Sadaam got 100% of the popular vote.

Maybe so, but I see coverage that doesn't seem to assume as much.

I think you read more into that report than is there. Bhutto's party (and other opposition) are clamoring that there cannot be free and fair elections while martial law is in place. He keeps martial law, gives them a little window dressing, but still ends up "winning" the vote. Now he can claim a mandate - "see, even with real opposition (hey they even got to speak out and everything) I still won."

Perhaps I'm too cynical.

aV

I was even more cynically suggesting that Bhutto and Musharraf are in cahoots.

Maybe what I'm saying is that (U.S.) media coverage is painting Bhutto as a victim of sorts of government repression, which would tend to give her more populist cred than she has had. Everyone here likes her because she went to Harvard (hi Hank!), but by all accounts she was incredibly corrupt.

The FBI's work is now public:

• Investigators have concluded that as many as five of the company’s guards opened fire during the shootings, at least some with automatic weapons. Investigators have focused on one guard, identified as “turret gunner No. 3,” who fired a large number of rounds and was responsible for several fatalities.
  
  Investigators found no evidence to support assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. That finding sharply contradicts initial assertions by Blackwater officials, who said that company employees fired in self-defense and that three company vehicles were damaged by gunfire.
  
  Government officials said the shooting occurred when security guards fired in response to gunfire by other members of their unit in the mistaken belief that they were under attack. One official said, “I wouldn’t call it a massacre, but to say it was unwarranted is an understatement.”
  
  Among the 17 killings, three may have been justified under rules that allow lethal force to be used in response to an imminent threat, the F.B.I. agents have concluded. They concluded that Blackwater guards might have perceived a threat when they opened fire on a white Kia sedan that moved toward Nisour Square after traffic had been stopped for a Blackwater convoy of four armored vehicles.
  
  Two people were killed in the car, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed and his mother, Mohassin, a physician. Relatives said they were on a family errand and posed no threat to the Blackwater convoy.
  
  Investigators said Blackwater guards might have felt endangered by a third, and unidentified, Iraqi who was killed nearby. But the investigators determined that the subsequent shootings of 14 Iraqis, some of whom were shot while fleeing the scene, were unprovoked.
  
  Under the firearms policy governing all State Department employees and contractors, lethal force may be used “only in response to an imminent threat of deadly force or serious physical injury against the individual, those under the protection of the individual or other individuals.”
  
  A separate military review of the Sept. 16 shootings concluded that all of the killings were unjustified and potentially criminal. One of the military investigators said the F.B.I. was being generous to Blackwater in characterizing any of the killings as justifiable.

NYT

Yes, I saw the article. However, it is still in dispute, allegedly by one of the Blackwater guys interviewed only days after the incident.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...sZFRmrBqEII4Qw

It strikes me that if I were riding around Baghdad, I would have a very itchy trigger finger too.

aV

Of course they dispute it. The FBI says they essentially murdered at least 14 innocent people. The Army says they murdered 17 innocent people. [OK -- murder is a strong word -- more like manslaughter.] The guy may believe what he is saying. People's perceptions are unreliable, especially in dangerous situations.

There is also no doubt that the FBI wasn't working with a pristine, or even a good, scene from which to gather evidence. But "no evidence" the Blackwater guys were fired upon includes, I would expect, things like checking the Blackwater vehicles for any evidence of incoming fire. No evidence is no evidence.

Lord yes -- but if you're being paid by the US Government to do it, you're expected to keep the itch under reasonable control.

S_A_M

Who do you believe? The FBI investigators, or the potential defendant?

Indeed. Which goes to the original point I was making about Blackwater -- that using a private contractor like that to provide security undercuts the counterinsurgency mission. The military will do a better job of internalizing the conflicting demands.

Exactly. And the FBI questioned people weeks after the event. Who may have their own interests in mind that wouldn't necessarily support Blackwater. So of course, if they were being fired upon, that fact would likely be forgotten.

I have no idea what the FBI did in the investigation. Are you an investigator with the FBI?

aV

I don't know who is telling the truth here. The FBI investigators were not there on the day in question. This former army guy was. And so were people who, if they were firing on the motorcade, wouldn't necessarily be truthful during interviews.



I don't necessarily disagree. But the Govt. hired them to do the job. They did their job and the incident occurred. If the govt. doesn't think that its prudent to use them in the future, then so be it.

aV

No, but I have been a military and federal prosecutor. So, I know a little bit about crime scene investigation.

And more importantly, I read an article saying that the FBI was going over the Blackwater vehicles involved as well as collecting and examining the damaged and burned out Iraqi vehicles from the scene.

S_A_M

Great. Super. And I read a report quoting a "Senior FBI official" who stated that the 14 out of 17 number was highly speculative and that it was much to early in the investigation for that number to be reliable. In addition, this same report stated that the firearms used by the Blackwater detail only arrived in D.C. on Wednesday for examination, and that without ballistics tests it was far too early to draw any conclusions about the incident.

Perhaps, in your prosecutorial zeal, you are a bit too anxious to convict the Blackwater employees.

aV

I am not convicting anyone andf I'm not anxious to do so. I just don't necessarily put much credence in any one man's perceptions when they are under fire or believe they are under fire. Reading the public portions of the testimony of the Rangers who killed Pat Tillmann should show you that.

Also, I thought you had no idea what the FBI did or did not do? [And what did the FBI guy have to say about the Army's investigation? But that's not the point.] We'll see what the final investigation turns up.

While I appreciate their service to their country, and to the hundreds of thousands of dollars they're making doing a very dangerous job, they don't get a free pass from scrutiny when a shooting incident occurs. [Ask no questions, just wipe up the blood and pay off the relatives.] No sir. Nobody rides for free.

Why do you have such a fucking hard-on for this? Is one of them a relative of yours?

S_A_M

No relatives. Although I do know a Blackwater employee.

I wasn't the one who said that they murdered 14 people. You did. Yes, I know that you backed off on that, but why not presume innocence until proven guilty?

aV

Read what I wrote. I said that the FBI report "essentially said they murdered 14 innocent people. The Army investigation says they murdered 17 innocents. [Then I went to manslaughter.]" (Or words to that effect because my post isn't in front of me.)

Where in that do I say they are guilty? But if those shootings were unjustified, the killings were criminal acts (though jurisdiction is a big problem).

Of course we should presume innocence in a criminal sense -- but I have a harder time with that when the casualty figure is 17 dead Iraqi civilians, including a number who were clearly non-combatants (e.g. middle-aged women) and not a single American needed a band-aid afterwards.

I also put a lot of stock in the reaction/assessment of the Army units who arrived on the scene to provide back-up -- which was not at all favorable to Blackwater.

It is of course possible that they were provoked by insurgents, but it smells like a free-fire fuck up to me where other guys started shooting because the first guy shot at that white car, and just kept going.

S_A_M

Reading between the lines, no one will ever face criminal charges because the State investigators offered the Blackwater folks immunity to get them to talk.

Oh, the good old days.
 

Apparently, there's at least one US Court that has addressed the status of waterboarding. The Mississippi Supreme Court, in 1926.

• In a case called Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), Mississippi's highest court ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer because his confession was secured by a local sheriff's use of the water cure.
  
  Here's the court:
  
  
  Quote:

  The state offered . . . testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. . . [who], after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.

  Fisher relied on a case called White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922), in which the court took -- as I understand history in those parts -- the unusual step of reversing the murder conviction of a young African-American male, charged with killing a white man (it appears), because his confession was secured by *the cure*. The court said:
  
  
  Quote:

  . . . [T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant's breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the "water cure" was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The "water cure" appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed . . .

It's hard to believe that we're further into paranoid anger than in 1920s Mississippi, but here we are.

Gattigap

Oh, the good old days.
 

Why are you disparaging the good name of 1920s Mississippi? That there was a civilized nation, a world where there were still Gentlemen, unlike whatever peasant foreign backwater your ancestors lived in at the time. We should be proud to be as civilized as 1920s Mississippi - or even 1850s Mississippi. And I believe our friends in the Republican party understand this.

Oh, the good old days.
 

translation: Greedy sees more racists Dems doing horrible acts.

Oh, the good old days.
 

The CIA wants to torture to get "confessions"? That is fucked up. Can you cite to that?


Ty, the case says "administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country". I thought no one in America did it before Bush took over. Can't I accept your pronouncements as fact anymore?

Oh, the good old days.
 

Naw, Hank, Bush-era defensive crouches about waterboarding are old and busted. The New GOP Hotness is Waterboarding's enthusiastic embrace. Get with the program, Hank, or you'll be left in the dust with that bunch of lame-duck, term-limited GOP stalwarts who just didn't have what it took to be Strong in the Face Of The Islamofascist Menace.

Oh, the good old days.
 

what about Rudy's statement is wrong?

Oh, the good old days.
 

It depends on who does it? Really?

Oh, the good old days.
 

even Ty says that. a good toady follows his master's voice better than you're doing.

Oh, the good old days.
 

Ty says that the issue of whether waterboarding is torture is at least partially dependent on the identity of the person holding the bucket? Huh. I must have missed that one.

Oh, and nice ad hominem jab at Gatti -- "a good toady." Heh. That'll show him.

So, um this is kind of awkward, but are you slave's toady or are you his? Or do you switch?

Oh, the good old days.
 

The bitch of LSAT training is that you learn reading comprehension is the last thing you should practice.

at first everyone acts like my positions are insane, then slave always gets around to taking my position two days later. I think it's subliminal. Toadyism is active.

Oh, the good old days.
 

Cryptic insults -- yay! Come on, Hank -- spell it out for me, since I am a dummy. Here's what I saw on the board -- where did I go wrong?

• Gatti: provides cite to Rudy comment re waterboarding.
  
  Hank: what about Rudy's statement is wrong?
  
  Gatti: It depends on who does it? Really?
  
  Hank: even Ty says that (followed by insult)
  
  Me: Ty says that the issue of whether waterboarding is torture is at least partially dependent on the identity of the person holding the bucket? Huh. I must have missed that one.
  
  Hank: The bitch of LSAT training is that you learn reading comprehension is the last thing you should practice.

So, Hank, explain to my poor reading comprehending self where I went wrong? Spell it out, please, in words that are sufficiently simple, so that my trained-in-a-mere-land-grant-state-school-brain can understand. Because as I see it, you said that Ty said that waterboarding may or may not be torture, based in part upon who does it. To which I say, cite please. Because I think that Ty has said some stuff I strongly disagree with here before, but I think that I would have remembered that one.

Got it. Slave's the toady in your mind, but he does it on an unconscious level.

Chris Matthews
 

He was was on a local radio station this morning promoting his new book. He was glib and said some insightful things. For example, he summed up Republicans versus Democrats as:

Republicans want leaders, like Reagan and Ike, so that they can focus on working and making money. Democrats want meetings, endless meetings.

Oh, the good old days.
 

Ty is always saying he isn't as concerned if soldiers near the front torture as when people far removed do it. He has said similar things many times.

People can't pay me for research at this point, I certainl won't do it for free.



Why are you so concerned about what Ty has said, or how I might perceive what ty has said? oh, wait. I know why.

Oh, the good old days.
 

You're wasting your time. Hank is the kind of ivory tower moral relativist who thinks you can't apply "patronizing western cultural mores" to social groups with radically different worldviews, like Republicans.