the Shackle Report

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

FRIDAY

From the NY Times on a hypocritical psycho whose time has come and gone at last:

GINGRICH, ON A MISSION, HAS NO TIME TO CAMPAIGN FOR ’08

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 — Newt Gingrich is not running for president, at least not yet. He has set his sights much higher.
Mr. Gingrich’s mission, as he sees it, is to save American civilization from the gravest crisis it has confronted since the Civil War. He has also set as a goal what he calls the restoration of God to a central place in American government and culture.

“Taken together, the challenges we face are greater than any since 1861,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview Friday in his Washington office. “No party, no movement has a grip on the scale of the changes we need to make to survive as a civilization. The most important slogan for the next quarter-century is ‘Real change requires real change.’ ”

—Uh-huh. Suitably catchy, meaningless and fucking just retarded.

THURSDAY

From the NY Times on transferring power in Iraq to some childish thugs even less evolved than our own:

WITH A CEREMONY FROM THE PAST, IRAQIS TAKE CHARGE IN NAJAF

On Wednesday, more than three years after the invasion and two years after American forces put down a revolt here by the militia of Moktada al-Sadr, Najaf became the first province under American control to be handed over to the Iraqis.

As soldiers paraded by a reviewing grandstand, commandos with their faces blackened gathered for a demonstration of their courage.

Each man reached into his right pocket, pulled out a frog and bit its head off. They threw the squirming legs to the ground as the group’s leader held aloft a live rabbit. He slit the belly and plunged his mouth into the gash. The carcass was then passed around to the rest of the soldiers, who took their own bites.

It was explained later that this practice was especially popular among Saddam Hussein’s feared Fedayeen militia, whose members had done the same thing with live snakes and wolves.

—Progress takes time, I guess. At one time, they were probably doing this to human children, and then, wolves, now, rabbits and frogs. I know when I was young and wanted to demonstrate my courage, I used to devour live chipmunks on show and tell day in school. But it passed. Now I just jaywalk, and smoke and call it good. Soon, the Iraqis will move on to eating earthworms and setting fuzzy caterpillars on fire. Then we’ll know we can pull out for good.

WEDNESDAY

From the NY Times on a welcome changing of the guard:

DEFENSE SECRETARY ARRIVES IN BAGHDAD

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 20—Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Baghdad today and said he expected to “learn a lot” in his first talks with American commanders and Iraqi officials since taking office.

“The whole purpose is to go to talk to commanders, talk to the Iraqis and see what I can learn,” Mr. Gates told reporters traveling on his airplane.

—Well, if our history of Defense Secretarys is any indication, we already know the answer to that; you can’t learn shit.

Or maybe not. Maybe you’re the exception. Maybe you can hang around the Green Zone for a couple hours, drive around Baghdad at a hundred miles an hour for one hour with heavy military support, and come back just chock full of insights. Like, for instance; it’s very dry over there, Sunnis and Shiites are two what are known as “sects”, we’re losing, it’s hopeless, and I resign.

TUESDAY

From the NY Times about evolution in religion:

EPISCOPALIANS ARE REACHING POINT OF REVOLT

For about 30 years, the Episcopal Church has been one big unhappy family. Under one roof there were female bishops and male bishops who would not ordain women. There were parishes that celebrated gay weddings and parishes that denounced them; theologians sure that Jesus was the only route to salvation, and theologians who disagreed.

“The Episcopalian ship is in trouble,” said the Rev. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church, one of the two large Virginia congregations, where George Washington served on the vestry. “So we’re climbing over the rails down to various little lifeboats. There’s a lifeboat from Bolivia, one from Rwanda, another from Nigeria. Their desire is to help us build a new ship in North America, and design it and get it sailing.”

—Maybe you should call it an ark instead of a ship. And you could spring for plane tickets instead of going with lifeboats. Or just stay away from metaphors in general, cuz you’re fucking killing me. Though, I guess you have to be metaphorical, since religion is. Oh, and do you see it as apt or ironic that you have to go to some of the most backward countries on the planet to save yourselves? Hey, since you’re in Africa anyway, why don’t you just head up to the bush and ask the apes for help? Can’t get there with a lifeboat, though, so you’ll need another metaphor. Hmm. How about, “the Episcopalian Land Rover is in trouble, and we’re going to climb out the back, climb into the life-travois being pulled by our black friends, and go into the bush to get banana boat help from our brother apes. You can hone that down, but that’s the basic outline.

MONDAY

From the NY Times on the spread of democracy:

LEGAL SYSTEM IN IRAQ STAGGERS BENEATH WEIGHT OF WAR

BAGHDAD — In a cavernous room that once displayed gifts given to Saddam Hussein, eight men in yellow prison garb sat on the floor facing the wall, guarded by two American soldiers.

Among them was Abdulla Sultan Khalaf, a Ministry of Industry employee seized by American troops who said they found 10 blasting caps and 100 sticks of TNT. When his name was called, he stood, walked into a cagelike defendant’s box and peered over the wooden slats at a panel of three Iraqi judges of the central court.

The judges reviewed evidence prepared by an American military lawyer — testimony from two soldiers, photographs and a sketch of the scene.

The evidence went largely unchallenged, because Mr. Khalaf had no lawyer. The judges appointed one, but Mr. Khalaf had no chance to speak with him. Mr. Khalaf told the judges that the soldiers were probably chasing a rogue nephew and denied that the explosives were his or ever in his house. “Let me examine the pictures,” he insisted. The judges ignored him. His lawyer said nothing, beyond declaring Mr. Khalaf’s innocence. The trial lasted 15 minutes.

“The evidence is enough,” Judge Saeb Khorsheed Ahmed said in convicting Mr. Khalaf. “Thirty years.”

In a recent letter he drew a caged heart reaching out to his wife and two children, and wrote, “I hope I can be dust in the storms of Bucca so that I can reach you.”

— I think you’re going to get your wish, because that we can do. Might take a while though, like thirty years, so be patient. The wheels of justice and all…

Sad Mahmud Saleh, a 24-year-old truck driver, was accused by American soldiers of having contraband weapons, including a hand grenade, in his house. His trial consisted largely of Judge Ahmed asking questions. At one point the judge stood and raised his voice.
“Are you a terrorist?” he asked.
“No,” Mr. Saleh replied, standing in the tall wooden defendant’s box.
“Are you involved in any organization?”
“No.”
“Why did they bring you here?”
Mr. Saleh’s lawyer, appointed to represent him just as the trial began, simply asked for mercy.

—For who?

Officials have sought to tighten the evidentiary standards used in deciding whether to detain suspects. Last year, for example, Maj. Gen. William H. Brandenburg, then the task force commander, became concerned about a swipe test that soldiers used on suspects to detect gunpowder. The test was so unreliable that cigarette lighter residue and even a common hand lotion would register as gunpowder.

—Not to mention dust, breath, fright, thoughts, and belief in Islam.

When suspects are caught away from or fleeing a crime scene, like a bomb or a weapons cache, the guide tells soldiers to take pictures of the suspects at the scene. For example, the guide lays out this chain of events: “Your squad conducts a raid on a house, in the house you find 2 adult males. 50 meters from the house you find a large weapons cache buried 2 feet underground.”

Among the instructions: “Take pictures of the individuals with the cache.”

But one year later, the four men, who were held in Iraqi detention and faced death by hanging, walked out of the central court, with all charges dismissed.

—Now, if you’d stripped them naked, put them in a pile, and forced them to masturbate, they probably would have done some time.

Their story, pieced together through interviews and court records, is one of a narrow escape from Iraq’s fractured system of justice. It is also the story of an unlikely civil rights lawyer who beat the system for the four men and a handful of others.

Faraj Mahmoud, 42, a grocer, was not totally shocked when he and his two brothers were arrested that night, with a friend.

Their families had emigrated from Palestine after the 1948 war, and like other Sunni refugees had been favored by Mr. Hussein over Iraq’s own Shiite peoples.

The Wolf Brigade, an Interior Ministry unit made up mostly of poor, young Shiites from Sadr City, had developed a reputation for singling out Palestinians and using torture to extract confessions. The unit’s commander, Abu Walid, who questioned the men on the show, has denied the charges.

In recent interviews, the four men, who have fled Iraq, said they had been tortured in a variety of ways. “ ‘We will beat you until your meat is cooked,’ ” one of the men, Amer Mahmoud, 27, an auto mechanic, said an interrogator had told him.

Faraj Mahmoud, who had married six days before he was captured, said he was stripped and hanged from the ceiling. An electric prod applied to his genitals made his body bounce off the walls, he said. Hania Mufti, a Human Rights Watch official with extensive knowledge of Iraq’s jails, said other prisoners had described similar abuses.

The men said their captors also threatened to fetch their families, and they saw naked women and girls being walked through the jail. That is when they all signed confessions.

—How sweet. It’s their concern for women that really tips the scales for them. Why don’t we send over a bunch of strippers and let them parade through the whole country naked, and just arrest whoever runs out and confesses? We need to start thinking outside the cell.

And by the way, “Wolf Brigade”? Wolves have honor and beauty.