A Couple of Fun Factoids - Palin Meets Her Doppelganger and Keep America Safe Fails to Rally

A couple of fun factoids from today.

• Sarah Palin will be in Denver on Thursday on what she likes to call her "road trip" but what others commonly refer to as a book tour. The woman who proudly proclaims herself a "real" American and pro-life, has been rated a Tier 4 by American Right to Life (ARTL), a very powerful anti-abortion grou and they plan to rally in opposition to her.Tier 4 is earned when an individual claims that they are pro-life, but "deny the personhood and God-given right to life of the unborn." Considered one of the more radical of the anti-abortion groups, ARTL sees the issue in black and white with absolutely no shades of gray: you see abortion as murder, or you don't. The fact that Sarah Palin appointed a pro-choice judge to the Supreme Court of Alaska was enough to lose her Tier 1 position. There are other factors that ARTL cites, but that was the biggie for them. I just find the whole thing ironic, and something you might expect to see in a sci-fi movie. You know, the character suddenly meets their doppelganger or other self? Except, in fiction, there is always some sort of explosive event when that happens as two selves cannot exist in the same time and place together. Here is Sarah Palin coming face to face with some of her lies and political manipulations, but this time, it is all coming from the right, and her religious right at that.

• Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, and Liz Cheney tried to get a rally going to protest the decision by Eric Holder to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York. They each tweeted their followers (Rove has 92,000, Gingrich 1.2 million) to meet at 9:30 Wed. Nov. 18 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building to oppose Attorney General Holder's testimony as to why he had made this decision. Liz Cheney's new group, "Keep America Safe" is all about promoting the neo-con policies espoused by her father and she tweeted a reminder a couple of hours before the hearing. The fun fact part? Nobody showed up. Oh the hearing happened, and there were plenty of people there on both sides of the debate (see the post below on Senator Sessions), but there were also empty seats, and nobody identified as being a member of Keep America Safe either inside or outside the Dirksen Building. This leaves me with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling. 

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon.
k

An Officer's Obligation by Matthew Alexander

Matthew Alexander writes about torture from an officer's perspective in An Officer's Obligation and provides what should be required reading for all the talking heads at Fox News, David Broder at the Washington Post, Bill Kristol, and Karl Rove. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity should be required to read this on-air, Beck without any of his cutesy facial contortions and sad-sack put on.

They are fond of talking about the Constitution, about our soldiers, about how Obama has put the soldiers at risk by banning the use of torture, by releasing information on the practices of the Bush Administration, that the liberal right and the Democrats are somehow anti-veterans because of their deliberate mis-reading of a report written during the Bush Administration that states that returning veterans might be at risk of being recruited by right-wing extremist terrorist groups.

They so (deliberately I believe) misunderstand the military, the veterans, and the Constitution, that I'm not sure they could understand Mr. Alexander's point when he says:

Military officers have a sacred responsibility that is embedded in their oath of office: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..."

He goes on to explain how:

The Constitution specifically prohibits cruelty to any person in the Eighth Amendment ... unusual punishments inflicted"). Those officers who ordered, authorized, or were complicit in the torture and abuse of prisoners violated their oath of office. The United States has a rich history of military ethics dating back to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. According to General Washington, "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any prisoner...by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." He said this in 1775, during a time when the birth of our nation hung in the balance.

Probably his most important point, is as he speaks about the capture and interrogations of detainees in Iraq, men who did not provide valuable information. Mr. Alexander speaks about the value of these detainees as opportunities for his men to learn to improve their skills, to become better interrogators. He said:

We are Americans and we are smart enough to win the battle of wits in the interrogation room. We cannot afford to doubt our abilities. We should focus on improving our methods within the legal framework of Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution. And military officers have a heightened responsibility to effect change and to lead our interrogator corps to its full potential. We are smart enough.

Mr. Alexander understands, in a way that the talking heads and politicians do not, that interrogation is about trust, not torture. That as a country of law, be are no better than terrorists is we use their tactics is we give up the law in order to protect it.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon.
k