We'll be diddling the war baby forever...

 

I am a little behind, Arthur SIlber has a piece up from March 29 on the deaths of innocents at the hand of the perpetrators, building off Matt Taibbi in RS on congressional charades and Dave Lindorff from Counterpunch…  and here is a snip:

One of the primary ways in which evil advances is by means of people’s refusal to see the connection between their actions and their ultimate results. As I have often pointed out, those results are felt by specific, individual human beings. These are not finally abstract questions of “policy” or of intentionally unenforceable “timetables”: these are people’s lives — and people’s deaths.

So let’s make the connection that almost everyone struggles to avoid. Here is the approximate tally for only a single day, yesterday:

Heavy violence continued overnight in Tal Afar where retaliatory attacks for yesterday’s massive twin bombing left scores dead. Overall, at least 166 Iraqis were reported killed or found dead and another 146 were wounded throughout the country. Also, a Marine was killed in Anbar province yesterday, another GI died of non-combat related illness, and three British soldiers were wounded in separate incidents in Basra.

Asia Times has an article up, detailing the situation, to the extent known, of the 5 Iranians arrested in Iraq a few months ago..

Under Iraqi law, detainees identified as insurgents who are “actively engaged in hostilities” – those implicated in attacks on coalition forces and innocent Iraqi civilians – are supposed to be charged in civilian courts. They may be held up to 14 days before being brought before a magistrate and either charged with a crime or released. To hold detainees longer without charging them, detention authorities must provide justification for doing so, according to Horton.

That such requirements appear to be systematically ignored by US forces not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and the broader “war on terror”, has fueled criticism of Washington’s detention policies and practices by human-rights groups and legal experts around the world.

“The US hasn’t articulated the legal grounds under which it detains ‘combatants’,” said John Sifton, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.

“They regularly conflate criminal terrorism, innocent civilians and real combatants on the ground, and throw them all into the same pot. The vagueness of the war on terror has supplied the soil under which all this has flourished.”

US detention camps in Iraq currently hold more than 15,000 prisoners, most of whom, like the Iranians, have been held without charge or access to tribunals for months, even years, in some cases, according to a recent New York Times investigative report.

“It’s an exercise of raw power by the US that’s not backed by any legal justification,” said Horton.

I just do not see a possible scenario under which it ends.  In the grip of the militarists, the defense (misnomer) industry, a pliant greedy elected class, an overworked and very worried (on all fronts, for all manner of reasons) citizenry… additionally, as a diversionary stress release offered by the ruling class, their heads spun by social issues and the Rule Of God (we’ve left the tattered Rule of Law in the roadway… and Chavez and Morales have said what the El Norte Rule of Law means there, murder and mayhem.  Starvation and being driven from the land…) 

A warring, damning God, most days… 

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Shelling rocked Mogadishu for a third day on Saturday, overwhelming hospitals with casualties as Ethiopian and Somali troops backed by helicopter gunships resumed attacks on Islamist rebels and clan militia.

Scores of civilians have been killed in what the International Committee of the Red Cross says is the capital’s worst fighting for more than 15 years. Ethiopia says its forces have killed more than 200 insurgents since the assault started.

Terrified residents said volleys of artillery rounds began crashing down onto homes hours before dawn.

“Whoever is doing this is not human. They have clearly never had a grandmother or children to think about,” Salado Yebarow, who lives between the main stadium and the presidential palace, told Reuters by telephone.

“The whole city is being shelled indiscriminately.” [snip]

As arms dealers the world over stand up and cheer!

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Oh yes, how could I forget:  The Lemming Version of diversionary.
Long and wordy.  From drool to twaddle and back again. 

I have the original text and nearly 60 original comments. louisianagirl, in a world well populated with operatives, was one form of the arc.  She arrived all politics, polls, analysis and tag space on comments that for all I know was for sale.  I don’t much care for Obama but her posts contra Obama had a whiff of cash in the air.  She hung at the Box Car Sites, as I call them, and posted as well at Swing State Project.  Not at Dkos, under that name anyway…

Then she became all about sex.  And laid her IED, in a place she knew tongues would hang out (I counted the naysaysers), especially the owner of the site..  LG tried to erase when the fun ws had — little is gone forever and people learned long ago from massive deletions at Dkos (Armando and DD among others) to save save save.

I will say it again, these are not nice people, they are not even decent. 

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