Condoleezza Rice was having an irony blow out yesterday as she traveled the world and babbled from her mouth. Our Secretary of State decided to criticize Vladimir Putin’s power grab and to tell Israel not to mess up the peace process. This coming from a woman whose boss seems to think diplomacy is evil and his presidential power is above all other branches of government. Bush is the ultimate unitary president, which means Condi should shut her pie hole when it comes to criticizing other countries democracies.

How the fuck she could make these statements about Putin with a straight face is amazing.

Uh, hey lady, does that sound familiar to you at all? Seems you just described a fella named George W. Bush. He is actually your boss. Ever hear of the Department of Justice scandal? Read about any of his judicial appointments lately? Recall the 2000 Supreme Court decision that put him in office?

You should read this thing called the Patriot Act. It sort of undermines “liberty and freedom” here in the US. The "Right to assembly?" I guess that is why your boss has been using "protest zones" to keep anyone who disagrees with him far, far away. And I would consider warrantless wiretapping an “arbitrary power of state,” by the way. Same goes for kidnapping people off of streets around the world and detaining them without charges for as long as we like.

Does Putin deserve to be criticized? Yeah. Should it come from anyone working in the Bush administration? Fuck no. The White House lost that right long ago.

Thankfully, Condi wasn’t done making an ass out of herself yet. Rice arrived in Israel today, in a pathetic attempt to get the peace process going. Kind of odd for a woman who helped start a “pre-emptive war” based on false information to think she can talk peace. But healthy shame has never been a part of the Bush White House.

Oh, yeah. You’re the expert on avoiding actions that might lead to conflict. When I think of Condi Rice, I think of white doves, peace and happiness. She certainly isn’t a liar. She definitely didn’t have a hand in selling false information to the American public. And she has always been about the truth and peace.

Representative Barney Frank, D-MA is truly one of the nation’s legislative treasures. The first openly gay member of Congress, Frank is generally considered to be one of the most liberal members of the House of Representatives and has been actively promoting his immoral and subversive gay agenda since he took office in 1972. He founded the National Stonewall Democrats, a Democratic GLBT organization. He’s also widely known for being an outspoken critic of institutional homophobia and heteronormative hypocrisy. In short, Barney Frank is probably the gayest member of the U.S. Federal Government. Yes, even gayer than Larry Craig.

Unfortunately for Frank, it might not be quite gay enough.

Indeed, that liberal base includes even the National Stonewall Democrats themselves, who are urging Congress to re-insert protections for transgendered people back into the ENDA.

The NSD’s position is completely understandable. They are an organization that attempts to fight for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, so for a piece of legislation to specifically exclude one of those groups is going to be galling. And not just to them, but to thousands of others as well.

That said, it does present a quandary for legislators attempting to both do right by their constituents and work to promote achievable goals at the same time.

The tension that Frank describes is one of the things that our intentionally inefficient legislative system was based on, and it’s also the thing that causes the most frustration amongst the electorate. It’s an age-old problem, and one that will never go away. But is Frank right to call on “responsible” Democrats to side with him on this issue? After all, if Bush is never going to sign the damn thing anyway, what’s the difference if it gets defeated in Congress or it gets struck down by Bush’s pen? Why not just stick the trannies back in the bill and roll the dice?

The Democrats' answers to those questions aren’t very sexy.

Whether you believe the Dems reasons is immaterial. Really, they are concerned with something quite larger than potential hostile amendments. As my Media and Politics professor used to say, “Politics is perception.” If Frank and Nancy Pelosi (another supporter of the altered bill who is taking heat from her political base) were to pass this bill through both houses of Congress, it would force Bush to come out against such protections for gay folks via a veto. In doing so, they’ll be sending a message to middle-of-the-road voters and leftists alike that the GOP is the party of discrimination and homophobia (and, of course, conversely that the only way to work against that is to vote Democratic.) If they can’t even get the bill through the House the message is diluted and their leadership appears ineffective. Neither option actually achieves anything legislatively, but the former at least lets the Democrats win the perception battle.

Is it pretty? Absolutely not. Is it satisfying? No, it’s the legislative equivalent of blue balls. But that’s politics, and these are fights that the Democrats desperately need to win. Our system is designed to encourage compromise and foster gridlock. Unfortunately, some will always hold the existence of that exact compromise and gridlock as evidence of the ineffectiveness of the ruling party. That’s OK, and there’s some value and generally truth in that belief. But there is also value in practicality. There is also value in realism. Sometimes, leadership is taking the safer road rather than the one you’d prefer to travel by.

Whether the Democrats choose realistic or idealistic goals for the ENDA bill will remain to be seen. A vote to decide the issue in committee has been delayed until later this month.

We are such a fucked up society that it is amazing. We flip out if children are exposed to sex on TV. Sex is a very natural act, especially the way I do it. Yet, violence is a common everyday occurrence on the tube and hardly a concern is raised. Here's a glaring example: A mother of two won an astounding amount of money yesterday because her two young daughters saw some porn on a hotel television.

Seriously? Edwina McCombs, you are a terrific example of everything that is wrong with America. No, wait, I’m going to say the jury is a terrific example of everything that is wrong with America. You, Edwina, are just a pathetic waste of skin.

Last year, Edwina and her two children, 8 and 9, checked into a Value Lodge in Southern California. She left the kids to watch TV while she went and took a bath.

Uh, what kind of a fucking weirdo takes a bath in a hotel? Especially a cheap hotel like a Value Lodge. Do you know how much hooker juice is probably coated on the tub? And you’re lucky if you get out of there without an athlete’s foot infection on your anus. This leads me to conclude that Edwina is an idiot.

So, while Mommy was soaking in a mix of different folks sperm and blood, the kids started switching channels on the TV. Horror of horrors, they came across a porn channel.

Oh, no, something is very right.

Certainly this is an unfortunate incident, but in no way should it lead to a lawsuit. Are we going to say these children were horribly damaged by watching some sweet, sweet fucking? Oh, wait, now they are because of mommy’s reaction. Now they know there is something terribly wrong with sex. They should lead a fruitful and happy life with no issues at all.

The hotel owner actually offered a $50,000 settlement before the trial and Edwina turned it down. Her babies saw fucking! Surely that is worth more! You cannot put a value on their virgin eyes.

Uh, what? Economic damages? From seeing porn? Please explain.

I very much hope those two young girls grow up to desire cock like no other women before. May they need cock inside of them nearly every hour of the day and accept it from any man who happens to be near by. May they have babies in their wombs when they are 15 and several STD’s before 18. It would really make me happy if mommy’s worst fear played out. So, please, God, let these young ladies become the whores their mommy so fears.

Politics in this country is a sick, sick beast. Every day we fall lower into a cesspool, every day we close our ears in disbelief to the utter utter mess that Washington thrusts about us like titties at a strip club. Politics have been stuck and bled like a Memphis hooker, stripped of dignity, whored to the highest bidder, and made a public mockery of consistently for almost three decades now. Yes, everything is Reagan's fault, and if you disagree with me, you are wrong.

Today's example comes in the form of SCHIP, or S-chip, because we here in American politics like to spruce everything up by giving it hip nicknames. And you can call it "schip" if you want, and be a fucking Kraut, or you can be with it and call it S-chip, the P-Diddy of the children's health insurance world. Nigga.

For those of you who missed Stephen Colbert's acute summary of the issue, it is as follows, convoluted as it may be:

Essentially, the new improved S-Chippy is a Medicaid-based program to provide free health insurance for "lower middle class" (a bullshit phrase if there ever was one) children who just barely don't qualify for Medicaid. Yes, they are poor, no matter what pundits say. Aside from being a spectacular idea, if passed, the S-chip initiative would also be a way to ease into some of the more radical (and I use that term loosely) universal health care programs that are being expounded by the Democratic Presidential candidates. (For the record, vote Edwards.)

Much of the opposition to free health insurance is based on the Reaganomical assumption that people - namely poor people, homeless people, black people, and the uninsured - are responsible for their own states of being, and that the modern United States government should take a policy of outdated Social Darwinism towards them, despite the fact that Social Darwinism hasn't been legitimate since the late 1800s. These people are fucking idiots. The issue is more complex than that. And the sheer volume of uninsured Americans suggests that a hands-off approach by the government has never worked, especially since the government has given no incentive for these people to pull themselves out of their terminal state in the first place.

Not to mention the fact that these are children. Not working adults. Who should be responsible for insuring them? If you said "their parents" then you deserve a quick chop to the throat because you weren't paying attention. If a parent can't even insure him or herself, how in god's name can they insure their children, who by basic nature accumulate far higher medical bills than adults do?

Now that we've shown that free health care for kids is an exceptional idea, we can move on, because the rest of the article depends on us finding that notion inscrutably important. And if you don't think it's important? Well, that makes you a child killer and probably a rapist. I have Chris Hansen on speed dial, so shut your fucking mouths, K?

Congressional Democrats, in one of their few successes since taking control of the Hill, have decided to address the issue, and that's where Puff Chippy comes in. Conceived by the Congress of the 1990s (having been enacted in 1997), which, it should be noted, was controlled by the Republicans, it is a measure to provide free health care to all children who live within a certain income bracket. Under the old plan, that income bracket was essentially Medicaid. Under the new proposal, the ceiling has been extended - adding about four million eligible children to the old total of 6.6 million. (Unfortunately, the funding for this expansion comes from an increase in the cigarette tax, which is overwhelmingly paid by the lower-to-middle classes over the wealthy, and is strike one against the Democrats, though certainly not their low point - we'll get to that later.)

Taxation aside, raising the ceiling is a fantastic idea, because Medicaid has a very low ceiling, and more families than those who make $20,000 per year (the poverty ceiling for a family of four) have difficulty affording their lives. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Bush doesn't think so.

"Policies of the government ought to be to help poor children, and to focus on poor children," he insightfully philosophizes, a rather intelligent thing to come out of the mind of this stagnant retard. But then he continues: "And the policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not federal coverage."

Unfortunately for that fucking moron, his government has done absolutely nothing to enable the poor to find their own private insurance. The income gap between the rich and the poor has reached historic levels during his presidency.

Tell me, George, how will low-income people ever have enough to insure themselves when their share of the gross income of the United States is at its lowest point of the modern age? And then there are his infamous tax cuts, well documented on this site among other places, which grant tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while leaving the burden on the poor at the same level. Talk about "helping people find private insurance." Because if there's one way to get poor people insured, it's to not do anything to help them.

That is strike one against the Republicans. The utter failing for the poor of this country, whom they claim to represent, and who vote for them in drones. It's certainly not their low point - that's coming up - and it's definitely nothing new.

They, as expected, relied on Bush to veto the proposal, and he certainly did.

Though he may be vehement now in his own defense (as evidenced in the video linked above), if there's one thing history has shown us, it is that actions speak louder than words. He did it "quietly." No TV cameras. No press conference. It's almost as though he didn't want anyone to know what he was doing. It's almost as though he felt ashamed.

Unfortunately for the House Democrats, the margin with which the bill was passed, 265-159, is not a large enough majority to override a Presidential veto, and so the possibility of the program taking effect is fading rapidly.

And so the Democrats have pulled out all the stops, and have, in their attempt to sway the necessary number of Red Staters, brought the issue of poor kids full in the face of the Republican Party, thereby administered the largest guilt trip since George Washington cut down the cherry tree. And the twisted tale that follows can only be described as a national political low.

The Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, wrangled themselves a sick kid, a twelve-year-old boy named G----- F---- (I refuse to print his name here, because I am not a heartless bastard, though if you want it, it's all over the links), and exploited his existence on a scale perhaps larger than Dannielynn Smith - nah, nothing is. They had this young, naive 12-year-old give a response to Bush - on the radio - nationally. They didn't have this boy, say, have face-to-face talks with Republican leaders behind closed doors. They paraded him around the entire country, like a midget in a freak show, to achieve their own political ends. That, my friends, is a low point.

But it's not the low point - oh no. Not by a long shot.

That honor goes to the Republicans, who snapped at the bait like hungry walleyes and instantly mounted a mudslinging campaign - not against the Democrats, but against the 12-year-old boy.

It's bad enough to throw dirt at political candidates. They are adults. They can take care of themselves. But this is a child. A fucking prepubescent boy. And they're attacking him. The boy! It's the equivalent of a fully-grown man walking onto an elementary school playground and taunting a kid with braces, then subsequently taking his lunch money. "Not needy enough"? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

(For the record, if you still do not think that the "conservative bloggers" do not represent the opinions of the Republican Party, then you are ignorant and should not comment on this piece at all.)

And in its weird, sick, and twisted way, it has become emblematic of their policy toward the Notorious C.H.I.P expansion in the first place. What they're doing to poor G----- is no different than what they're doing to the four million other children whom the expansion would aid. Telling them they're not deserving enough. Taking away their means. In a way, dooming them to additional pain and suffering because Republicans are the ultimate moral authority in this country, wink wink, and they determine, I guess, who deserves to live and who deserves to die. And poor G-----, like four million other kids, just isn't poor enough to deserve their aid, and not rich enough to deserve their respect.

Take them both behind the shed and shoot them. Never before has there been a situation more emblematic of the utter dogshit that has become the once-venerable insitution of American democracy. Leave it to ChipPac to remind us all of the change that is needed so desperately.

Formus thinks every child in America should be insured, god damn it, and every adult too. Also, for any NSA spies that may be reading this, he was being facecious when he suggested we shoot the Congress. He only meant with a high-grade horse tranquilizer, that's all.

It is Saturday, or as it is known on the Interweb, Asshole Fuckface day. Every week I scour the news looking for the worst of the worst. I dig into the depths of society and rise out of the muck covered in shit and bugs, but always with the most horrible people of the week. So put on your dealer visors, this is going to be ugly.

It’s always nice to kick off the Asshole Fuckface Roundup with a man who is doing everything he can to stop the suffering of white people.

For the past few years Republicans have been hard at work trying to get voter ID laws passed. These laws would require anyone voting to have a photo ID. The Justice Department has been leading the charge because it is now just a tool for Republicans, instead of an agent of law and order. In 2005, Justice Department lawyers determined that a Georgia voter ID law

John Tanner, chief of the Civil Rights Divisions’ voting rights section, then overruled the lawyers who came to this conclusion. Uh, yeah, you read that correctly. The guy who is overseeing the Civil Rights Division made a dictator type move that fucked over black people. He will henceforth be called an Asshole Fuckface. Thankfully, a federal appeals judge later put a stop to the law, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

This week Tanner was at a panel on voter disenfranchisement held by the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles and he explained his decision and why he is an Asshole Fuckface.

Uh. What? Did he just say, “Minorities don’t become elderly?” Why, yes he did. And he wasn’t done. Tanner has been spreading his message across the country. At a Georgia NAACP meeting he made this awesome statement.

That’s a great point. For an Asshole Fuckface. Please stop.

Okay, I’m just going to move on, because that Asshole Fuckface is not going to stop.

You're about to meet the worst Asshole Fuckface cop of all time.

In January, a one-year-old Florida boy fell into the family pool. 911 was called and emergency services responded. Police Sergeant Andrea Eichhorn was one of those on site. During efforts to resuscitate the boy she fell and broke her knee.

The boy, Joey Cosmillo, suffered permanent brain damage. He cannot walk, talk or swallow. Joey now lives in a nursing home, kept alive by machines. The family is obviously suffering from such a terrible loss. Any Asshole Fuckface would do what Sergeant Eichhorn has now done: File a lawsuit.

How about we break her other knee? Seriously. I am recommending someone break her other knee. I am not kidding. I would very much like for her other knee to be broken. But not quickly. Very slowly, with a tiny rubber hammer, pounding away for hour after hour, until it gives.

Yeah, fuck those people with the brain damaged son trying to act like victims. What a bunch of douche bags, huh? I, mean listen to this crap:

I realize you're trying to save your grandson's life, but grab a fucking mop.

Break her other knee. Seriously.

Apparently, sometimes rubbing ladies breasts is wrong. Who knew? This next Asshole Fuckface shows us one example of how that could possibly be true.

California dentist Mark Anderson was recently charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery and sexual battery. Yolo County prosecutors are looking into other complaints that the dentist molested women while he examined them. Currently 27 women are accusing him of the lewd behavior.

Prosecutors may not have known that Mark Anderson is an extraordinary Asshole Fuckface. They do now. He has come up with a fantastic defense.

Wow. Asshole Fuckfacery at it’s best. This is a tremendous display. I am quite simply in awe. Do you finger ladies during a root canal? I know that would take away some of the pain. What about a rim job for gum surgery? This new style of dentistry just makes so many new procedures possible!

Good luck with that, Mark.

Thank God there are Asshole Fuckfaces out there who know what our embryos want.

You may not know Mary Scott Doe because she is an embryo. They tend not to go to a lot of mixers. This week a Maryland lawyer has filed a lawsuit on her behalf against the chairman of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The agency is a state-run $3 billion stem cell research funding agency.

The lawyer’s name is Martin Palmer, but you may know him as the "embryo whisperer." They tell him stuff! He is also the founder of National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children. Wow, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Isn’t it about time someone started an association for the advancement of embryos and fetuses? Fetuses, especially, are discriminated against daily.

Enslaved. Not only has Asshole Fuckface Palmer co-opted the name of the NAACP, but now he is claiming embryos are “enslaved.” He may have a point. The other day I drove by a cotton field and there were around a hundred embryos picking cotton while a white man watched over them with a whip.

The case will be heard on Tuesday in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena.

Good luck, little embryo!

Congrats to all of this week’s Asshole Fuckfaces! You all get an engraved FearTheReaper doorknob!

It’s not often I tell an entire country to go fuck itself, but it is the only appropriate response given the circumstances. In the early 1900s, Ottoman Turks killed around 1.5 million Armenians. For decades, Armenian Americans have lobbied Congress to pass a measure that would label the killings genocide. On Wednesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the resolution and Turkey lost its shit.

They told their ambassador to the US to return to Turkey and told the US ambassador in Turkey that they were not pleased, warning of “serious repercussions.” What kind of repercussions? Last year, Turkey suspended all military ties with France after parliament’s lower house passed a similar bill.

An aide to the Turkish Prime Minister said today the country could "cut logistical support to the U.S." The US has an air base in southern Turkey that many troops travel through on their way in and out of Iraq. The US also relies on Turkey to get supplies to troops, with 70% of US air cargo going through Iraq. The White House claims it will cost lives if Turkey cuts off logistical support. Of course, the White House isn’t exactly whom one should listen to in regards to saving lives.

The Bush administration is now desperately trying to stop Democrats from putting the measure to a full vote in the House. The White House is concerned because Turkey has recently been threatening to invade northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels. Kurdistan is the only place in Iraq where things are going well. Or they were.

The cute thing is they have labeled the Kurdish rebels, "terrorists." Good luck arguing with that, George. Just last week Turkish planes and helicopters attacked Kurdish rebels near the border. The Democrats timing is obviously odd, considering the tensions on the Iraq-Turkey border, but they have a great explanation for inflaming an already delicate situation.

Oh. Well, that’s not really a good answer. I guess we should just be happy you are taking a stand somewhere, because you’re not doing here in the US. Might was well do something that will lead to the death of thousands upon thousands of Kurds.

But to be fair, Turkey is going to attack the Kurds in northern Iraq at some point regardless, so we may as well get it going now. Better to have the shit storm all at once instead of spreading it out over years.

If Turkey does take the actions they have threatened and use the vote as a reason to attack Iraq, then we should pass another resolution declaring them the "biggest fucking babies of all time." Seriously, did someone call you a bad name? Go cry in your fucking olive oil.

I hate bugs and I hate robots. Now some asshole seems to have created insect robots. Why don’t they just blow up the planet? Robots are pure evil and in case anyone hasn’t noticed movies over the past few decades, they will eventually kill us all. It’s inevitable, especially when you make them small and give them wings. Unfortunately, protesters claim the winged bot demons are here.

They are alive and mechanical. They are “robotic fliers” and they are going to kill you. The insect drones are high-tech surveillance tools that have been seen at political protests in Washington and New York. Although, no agency has claimed the robobugs.

Uh, what? After I finish this article, I’m going to blow my brains out. I figure it will be more pleasant than the coming insect robot revolution. I always pictured fighting for my life in storm drains, using my warning cats (I like cats) to alert me to intrusive robots. But those robots are supposed to be large and take the shape of humans. Sure, there would be the occasional spider shaped robot, crawling around with a video camera, but my cats would quickly destroy them. Flying insect robots obviously fuck up everything. Now a robot just flies into my storm drain, armed with its tiny stinger full of deadly poison. Or worse, a substance that only paralyzes my cats and me. Then the humanoid robots just saunter in, take me back to the lab and attempt to manpregnate me with cyborgs. Totally fucked up.

Some, however, do not believe that the tiny airborne robots exist.

Actually, you’ll know because one will have flown into your ear and taken control of you body. Idiot.

The CIA developed the “insectothopter” in the 70’s. It used a tiny gasoline engine, four wings and looked like a dragonfly. But it was taken out of commission because it couldn’t handle crosswinds. And that was the seventies! Of course they have tiny flying robots now.

Even more disturbing, we have created “cyborg insects.”

Great. Just fucking great. We have cameras everywhere, constantly watching people, but I never thought I would have to be concerned about tiny flying cameras. This brings surveillance to an entirely different level. We here in America tend to value our privacy and I’m pretty sure the Founding Fathers never covered flying insect robots in The Constitution. I don’t think Thomas Jefferson ever looked at James Madison and said,

Hey, what if somebody makes tiny eavesdropping robots to fly above protesters?

Wow, good point, Tommy. We should cover insect robots, as well as bug cyborgs.

Welcome to the invasion of privacy insect robot era. It's not goint to be pretty. I’ve been violated too many times by regular bugs and understand how intrusive they can be. I give it 30 years before we are a slave race working for insect robots.


FearTheReaper does not welcome our new insectobot warlords.

It is one thing to just make bad decisions based on your flawed ideology. There are many presidents in our past who have fucked up continually. Herbert Hoover's poor decision making led to the worst economic period in our history. Warren Harding was famously corrupt and Richard Nixon was forced to resign for his shenanigans. But Bush and his cronies have done something puts them to shame. For political purposes they continue to harm the security of our nation. It’s about scoring points for them, nothing else.

First came the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to the press. Why? To get back at her husband, who had foolishly told the truth to the press about Iraq’s total non-involvement of securing Uranium for Niger. Plame just happened to be part of a “clandestine operation” monitoring Iran’s nuclear weapons pursuits.

Now we find out the Bush administration leaked national security information to Fox News and destroyed a private intelligence company’s surveillance of al Qaeda. On September 7th, the SITE Intelligence Group informed the Bush administration they had obtained an Osama bin Laden video. Two “senior” administration officials were given access, with one condition: DO NOT reveal the existence of the tape until al-Qaeda releases it. Any revelation would “reveal sensitive details about the company's methods” in acquiring the video.

So, what did the Bush administration do? They leaked the tape to the media. Twenty minutes after the White House was alerted to the existence of the tape, Intelligence agencies began downloading the video from the SITE website.

Nice work, boys. Thanks for your continued incompetence for political reasons. Why am I so certain it was released for political reasons? Because of the timing. As I noted in an article from September, the timing of the Osama tape release was extremely suspicious, arriving just two days before General Petreaus spoke to Congress. The General and Bush have been making a hard media push to convince America that al-Qaeda is the big bad in Iraq. And it never hurts to have an Osama tape pop up when you want to justify your bullshit wars. Who cares if it undermines a great terrorist intelligence source?

Yeah, but the White House needed to show that the threat was out there. Although, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino today said the administration is concerned about the leak.

Riiiight. I’m sure whoever had a hand in it will be fired, also.

FearTheReaper thinks anyone who doesn't believe the White House leaked Valerie Plame's name is a fucking moron.

RAMADI, IRAQ – In late July when I visited a police station in the town of Mushadah just north of Baghdad I worried that Iraq was doomed to become the next Gaza. As many as half the police officers, according to most of the American Military Police who worked as their trainers, were Al Qaeda sympathizers or agents. The rest were corrupt lazy cowards, according to every American I talked to but one. No one tried to spin Mushadah into a success story. By itself this doesn't mean the country is doomed. How important is Mushadah, anyway? I hadn't even heard of it until the day before I went there myself. But Military Police Captain Maryanne Naro dismayingly told me the quality of the police and their station was “average.” That means one of two things. Either Mushadah is more or less typical, or roughly half the Iraqi Police force is worse.

I had a much better experience when I embedded, so to speak, with the Iraqi Police in Kirkuk. I trusted the Iraqi Police in that city enough that I was willing to travel with them without any protection from the American military, even though Kirkuk is still a part of the Red Zone. Kirkuk, though, is an outlying case. The Iraqi Police there are Kurds. The Kurds of Iraq are the most pro-American people I have ever met in the world. They are more pro-American than Americans. There is no Kurdish insurgency, and the only Kurdish terrorist group – Ansar Al Islam, which recently changed its name to Al Qaeda in Kurdistan – is based now outside a town called Mariwan in northeastern Iran. The Iraqi Police in Kirkuk may be corrupt, but they aren't terrorists or insurgents.

The Kurds have problems of their own, even so, and not every Arab region of Iraq is the same shade of dysfunctional. Every complaint I heard about the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police in and around Baghdad was balanced with genuine praise for the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police in and just outside Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, which until recently was the most violent war-torn place in all of Iraq. If these Iraqis were typical – and make no mistake, they are not – the American military might have little reason to stay.

Captain Dennison and his men took me to the Al Majed station just outside the city on the banks of the Euphrates River.







“They recently changed the name,” he said as we parked the Humvees outside. “The station used to have a tribal name, but they're trying to move away from that now.”

The Al Majed station is so much cleaner than the one in Mushadah I could hardly believe what I was looking at.

Order and tidiness aren't everything, but police officers who live and work in a sloppy dump of a station don't inspire much confidence. If they can't clean up their own space, how can they be expected to clean up a neighborhood infested with terrorists, insurgents, and criminals? They can't, at least not in Mushadah, especially since as many as half the police themselves are terrorists, insurgents, and criminals.

The Al Majed station wasn't as clean and orderly as a hotel, but it was at least as clean and orderly as a hostel. I would have been perfectly comfortable staying there for a week. The station in Mushadah was a nasty place I couldn't wait to get out of. Even some of the American outposts in Ramadi were disgusting.


A Humvee outside the Al Majed station in a lagoon of “moon dust” that will be a lake of deep mud in the winter

Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel Jumaa Abdul Rahman, the man in charge of Al Majed, invited me, Captain Dennison, Sergeant First Class Kitts, and First Sergeant Rodriguez into his office for tea. He sat behind his desk, and the four of us sat on couches that circled the room. A young boy brought us dark brown tea with sugar in small plastic cups.

As usual in the Middle East, the greeting ritual was considerate and elaborate. Hello. Welcome. How are you? Fine, I hope. Did you sleep well last night?

“Our success in this region is because of you,” Captain Dennison said to Lieutenant Colonel Rahman. His statement was completely sincere. He was not being perfunctory or merely polite.


Captain Dennison

“And also because of you,” Lieutenant Colonel Rahman said, also sincerely. “Please don’t leave us.”


Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel Jumaa Abdul Rahman

Several minutes of idle chit chat followed, which is typical even when the real point of a meeting is business. But there didn’t appear to be any business to discuss. The lieutenant colonel led us outside after a while to admire the view of the river and the orchard of fruit trees behind the station.



“We see Iraqis smile now,” Sergeant Kitts said to me on our way out. “And seeing Iraqis smile…that’s a big deal. These people haven’t had anything to smile about for a very long time. This is where we are finally earning our money.”

“I agree,” First Sergeant Rodriguez said. “It’s a lot less volatile now, so we can actually move this place forward.”

I walked among the tidy rows of grapes, figs, dates, and olives with Lieutenant Colonel Rahman and an Iraqi interpreter named Jack.

“Now that the fighting is over,” I said, “what kind of work do you focus on?”

“Mainly on gathering intelligence on sleeper cells and support networks,” the colonel said. “It is much easier now. People here are very appreciative and cooperative with what happened and with what is happening now. If Iraqi Police officers or coalition soldiers go to people's houses they are welcomed with open arms for food and for tea. Before the people here were not allowed to even look at coalition forces or they would be murdered by Al Qaeda.”

“What do you think about the possibility of Americans withdrawing their forces?” I said. He had already said please don't leave us to Captain Dennison, but I wanted at least a little elaboration.


Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel Jumaa Abdul Rahman

“That is not in the best interests of Iraq right now,” he said. “We need some more time. If they pull out there will be a real possibility of serious sectarian warfare. Anbar is secure. Only Baghdad and the surrounding area remains to be secured. As soon as that happens, the fight will be over.” He is right to suggest that most of the violence is in the Baghdad area and its surroundings. But it’s still game-on in Mosul and in parts of Diyala Province. Southern Iraq suffers a lot less violence than the center, but Shia militias still control parts of it.


Jack, an Iraqi interpreter, picks fruit in the orchard

“Are you optimistic?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?” I said.

“I’ll tell you why,” he said. “I could not even dream of seeing what has taken place here in Anbar. Couldn’t even dream of it. If in Anbar, why not in Baghdad?”

“Baghdad is hard,” I said. “It is so much more complicated than here.”

“Yes,” he said and nodded. “Here we are strictly anti-terrorist. In Baghdad the police still favor their sectarian militias.”

I asked Captain Dennison if American troops were still needed in Ramadi, which has not only been cleared of terrorists and insurgents but transformed into one of the most staunchly anti-terrorist communities in the world.

“We still take care of around 80 percent of the logistics for the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police here,” he said. “They're doing great work, but they still need some help getting organized.”

“What are we doing here today, anyway?” I said. “Do you have anything to do here at the station?” So far all the Americans had done is say hi to the Iraqis and show me around.

“We're just checking in,” he said. “The Police Transition Teams are out here are training them to do slower more normal police work, less kicking in doors and beating up bad guys. The Iraqi Police are still in a bit of shock from the hell of a few months ago. They are definitely gung-ho anti-terrorists. If anything, at this point, they need to dial it back.”


An Iraqi Police poster

Until recently the Iraqi Police in Ramadi were more like soldiers than police officers. They weren't issuing traffic tickets or doing slow procedural work. They were fighting terrorists in a war zone that was every bit as bad as the one in Fallujah just down the road.

“It's been four months since a single mortar round hit the station,” Captain Dennison said. “None of the Americans or the Iraqis out here have been in a fire fight for several months.” This was in early August.

There wasn't much dramatic to see or do. Counter-insurgency soldiers often go into hostile areas looking for fights that draw combatants into the open where they can be captured or killed. But the Americans and Iraqis couldn't find a fight in Ramadi now if they tried. So they do not try.

What can I say about Iraqis and Americans who cooperate with each other professionally and have their act together while ironing out minor problems? Peace is much harder to cover than war. Not much of note happens. Once again, I understood why war correspondents write off Ramadi as boring and why major networks don't broadcast from there.

The most compelling material I got in that city were war stories several months out of date. Anbar Province may be an ideal location for a historian or reporter who wants to research an oral history of the Iraq war or write human interest stories, but not so much for reporters who need to break news every day. It's no wonder, really, that so many journalists hole up in the Green Zone and rely on local stringers scattered all over the country to keep them apprised of the most recent car bombs and firefights. It is not, or at least not necessarily, because they are lazy or gutless.

The stories I heard about the battle of Ramadi from these soldiers were harrowing. It’s one thing to relate all this to a journalist. How do they explain what they experienced to their families? It isn’t easy, as Sergeant Kitts explained to me over lunch.


Sergeant First Class Kitts

“I’m outnumbered at home with a wife and two daughters,” he said. “I love going home, but sometimes it’s hard. My littlest girl asks how long is Daddy going to visit. Visit! It’s my family and my house and I only visit. She doesn’t quite understand what I do. I tried to explain. I said Daddy goes after bad guys. She thought about that. Do the bad guys have guns? she said. Yeah, I said.” I could tell it hurt him to say this. “Don’t forget yours, she said.”

*

“We went from having 200 police officers last year to having 8,000 today,” Major Lee Peters said. “And that’s not counting those with the orange bands.” The men who wear orange bands instead of blue uniforms are semi-official community watchmen who were deputized by the tribal authorities. The people of Anbar want another layer of hyper-local security in a province Al Qaeda desperately wants to reconquer after their humiliating eviction.

I attended a brief ceremony where hundreds of newly minted Iraqi Police officers graduated.



Some finished the training and are still waiting to be formally hired. Each unit marched around the room a little bit awkwardly. They looked a bit like amateurs, but everyone who said anything about them insists they are dedicated and reliable.


Established Iraqi Police officers. Not much uniform discipline.


An Iraqi police officer just outside the graduation ceremony

“We worry about potential future infiltration by AQI,” or Al Qaeda in Iraq, Colonel John Charlton said. “But we’re very certain this is not a problem right now. The tribal influence on IPs [Iraqi Police] is strong. Every single one of the tribal leaders is against AQI. In Anbar Province it is very shameful and dishonorable to be a terrorist or an insurgent.”



Captain Dennison also took me to the Farraj police station just outside Ramadi in an area that was sort of a suburb and sort of the countryside.





Just inside the front door was a large portrait of the much-admired Iraqi Major Quather who was killed by a car bomb during the fighting in early 2007.



The captain handed me over the First Lieutenant Bryan Schnitker who gave me the grand tour.


These Iraqi Police officers insisted I take their picture

No one seemed to think the Iraqi Police had been infiltrated, but I wondered if they were corrupt in other ways. Almost everyone with power in the Middle East is at least financially corrupt to an extent.


An Iraqi Police poster

“The Farraj station doesn’t skim the money we give them,” Lieutenant Schnitker said, “if that’s what you’re asking. We monitor it closely enough that we know they aren’t corrupt. I can say this with confidence. We use to cut them checks, but there’s no bank in Ramadi anymore. It got robbed twice, and that was it. It literally got robbed out of existence. There is no insurance in Iraq, let alone anything like FDIC. So we give them cash, and we watch how they spend it.”

Iraqi Police Colonel Saidi Saleh Mohammad al Farraji, who long ago was a captain in Saddam’s army, invited me and the American officers for lunch in his office. The usual Iraqi fare was served – chicken and lamb kebabs with bread, fried tomatoes, and salad.



“What's your biggest challenge,” I said to the colonel, “now that Al Qaeda is gone?”

“It was counter-terrorism,” he said. “Now we just need to make sure the area stays secure so they don't come back. We have sources in the community who will tell us if they come back. Civilians cooperate with us now, but they didn't before we built this station. They didn't feel safe.”


Colonel Saidi Saleh Mohammad al Farraji

“How much longer do you think the Americans need to stay?” I said. “Would it be okay if they left Anbar Province?”

“Within a year?” he said. “No. We don't get enough support from the Iraqi government. If we had the support we need from Baghdad it would be okay here. But the government is too infiltrated with militias. It is very dangerous for us to go there.”

Most of his answers to my questions were stock and uninteresting, but he did say something that surprised me a bit when I asked if he had anything he wanted to add.

“All your reporters are men,” he said. “Every reporter I have seen in Ramadi is a man. You should send American women so they can talk to our women. Someone needs to find out what they think about what's happening here.”

First Lieutenant Schnitker led me to the roof where I could take pictures. It’s hard to photograph the landscape in Iraq because most of it is flatter than Iowa.



The roof was cooler than I expected thanks to the netting that blocked most of the sunlight. A barbecue and a weight set without weights were the extent of the furniture.



An Iraqi Police officer manned a machine gun and watched the surrounding countryside.



We were three stories up. A man bellowing at us in Arabic from ground level.

“What’s he yelling about?” I asked Jack, our Iraqi interpreter.

He laughed.

“He is an IP who got in trouble today,” he said. “I’m not sure what he did, but he was put into detention for an hour. He is saying Let me out! It was supposed to be for one hour, but I’ve been in here for several. It is degrading to be in here with these people.”

“Who is he in the cell with?” I said.

“They locked him up with Al Qaeda.”

I froze.

Al Qaeda was just down the steps? I was suddenly overwhelmed with morbid curiosity. Ever since September 11, 2001, I have wanted to look into the eyes of the kinds of people who would murder thousands of innocents and think their reward would be virgins.

A few years ago a friend of mine – an academic, not a journalist – met Qays Ibrahim up in Kurdistan. Qays is an Al Qaeda member or sympathizer who tried to murder Dr. Barham Salih, who was then the Prime Minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and who is now Deputy Prime Minister in Baghdad’s Maliki government.

Qays missed Barham but shot and killed a handful of bodyguards. He’s in prison now just outside the city of Suleimaniya. Barham refuses to sign Qays’s death warrant even though the caged Al Qaedist stridently insists he will again try to murder the Deputy Prime Minister if he ever gets free.

My friend who met the blunt-speaking and chillingly unrepentant Qays in his cell described the encounter as “very scary,” as though the terrorist were an Iraqi version of Hannibal Lector.

“Can I see the prisoners?” I asked Lieutenant Schnitker.

“I don’t see why not,” he said.

Captain Dennison concurred. It would not be a problem.

“Can I take pictures?” I said.

The answer was yes. Military lawyers later gave me clearance to publish them through the public affairs officer.

Now that I had the chance, though, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to meet them, especially since I had no idea what to expect, had no time to prepare myself, and didn’t know what to say if they would talk to me.

We descended the stairs and approached the freestanding cell.

“All they get is a hard floor, a few blankets, some food, and a fan,” said Jack, our Iraqi interpreter. I wondered from the tone in his voice if he thought they deserved even that much.

Sergeant Kitts joined us.

“Can I interview them?” I said as we approached the door.

“You can, but there is no point,” Sergeant Kitts said. “They won’t tell you shit. Hardly any Al Qaeda guys admit to being Al Qaeda. They’re doomed if they do. All they’ll do is deny it.”

“I at least want to see them,” I said.

“They look just like everyone else,” he said.

Of course they look like everyone else, but I still wanted to see. It’s hard to picture Al Qaeda terrorists looking like me or like some random Arab after all they have done. Even many Iraqis I know think of them as an alien race of monsters. Obviously they are not aliens or Orcs or any other kind of non-human monster. They are as human as I. I don’t have to look to know they don’t have horns or a tail. But they saw off the heads of Iraqi children with kitchen knives. I wanted to look. I still don’t understand why.

One of the soldiers unlocked the door. I let them go inside first. I had no idea what to expect.

We stepped through the door. Six young Arab men groggily stood up and faced us in silence. I almost said “Salam Aleikum,” but then I checked myself, unsure if it's even appropriate to say Peace Be Upon You to the ideological brethren of Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

I noticed, after a few awkward moments of silence, that they did not say Salam Aleikum to me.

“Why are you here?” I finally said as politely as possible. “Why have they arrested you?”

“We are accused of being Al Qaeda,” said one.

“We are innocent,” said another. “We ask that our case be heard in court soon so we can go home.”

Sergeant Kitts warned me they would deny being terrorists. Maybe they’re liars. Maybe they really aren’t terrorists. There is no way I can know. I wished I could meet someone who didn’t deny it and who was unrepentant like Qays Ibrahim. We could have an interesting, if disturbing, conversation.

They looked tired and bored, and somewhat like marginal people who had been picked on in school and who could not get a job. None looked remotely threatening. Only weapons in their hands could make them look threatening. I thought they looked more like gas station attendents than head-choppers.


Prisoners alleged to belong to Al Qaeda

Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil came to mind. I was almost disappointed that I wasn’t face to face with a handful of Hannibal Lectors. It would have been a clarifying moment. But life is rarely so poetically simple and obvious.

“Are you treated well here?” I said lamely. None appeared to have been beaten or tortured.

“Yes,” one said and shrugged. He clearly wasn’t happy to be there.

Prisoner abuse is strictly prohibited by the American Uniform Code of Military Justice, but it still happens sometimes in war zones. Many American soldiers have told me that the Iraqi Police, especially, have a hard time restraining their officers.

I lifted my camera. None of the prisoners hid their faces, but one crossed the room to get away from the others.

“He isn’t Al Qaeda,” Jack said. “He is just a common criminal. Don’t think he is one of them.”

I decided, then, not to take that man’s picture.

“Those four are Al Qaeda,” Jack said.

I snapped their pictures.


A prisoner alleged to belong to Al Qaeda

“That man was caught firing mortars,” he said.

“Say hello to the camera, Ass Munch!” Sergeant Kitts yelled in disgust.

The accused mortar launcher smirked slightly when I took his picture.


A prisoner alleged to have been caught firing mortars

The American and Iraqi officers, fairly or not, are sure these men are guilty. But they have not been convicted. They only allegedly belong to Al Qaeda.

I need to be careful here, but I want to put the Americans’ and Iraqis’ words into context:

I have seen dozens of Iraqis arrested and brought blindfolded and hand-cuffed into various stations. Almost all are quickly released. American soldiers have told me the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are arrested aren’t terrorists or insurgents. I never once detected any presumption of guilt just because someone was arrested.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. An interview with alleged terrorists is useless if they deny it. I don’t want to offend innocent Iraqis and falsely accuse them of terrorism. Nor do I wish to publish lies by people who really are killers.

We briefly returned to the main station said our goodbyes to the Iraqi officers.

“Thank you, sir,” I said to Colonel Mohammad and put my hand on his shoulder.

“You are welcome,” he said and shook my hand firmly.

Then we drove back to the base.


An Iraqi Police checkpoint through the window of a Humvee. Al Qaeda exploded dozens of car bombs at checkpoints like this one during the fighting.

Sergeant Kitts slept in a trailer just around the corner from mine. “That’s where I’ll be,” he said as we walked back, “if you need anything in the middle of the night.”

I took a hot shower – the only kind available in that country in August – and cleansed Iraq from my skin.

Khaled el-Masri grew up in Lebanon, but he had been a German citizen for nine years when he was detained by Macedonian officials while on vacation in Skopje on New Year's Eve in 2003.

They questioned him for three weeks, for no other very credible reason than that he happened to share the same name as the pseudonym of an allegedly Central Asian al-Qaeda operative who was believed to have been active in Germany in 1999 (little if anything is known about "real" el-Masri).

More consequentially, the Macedonians notified the CIA that they had a "Khaled el-Masri" in custody. When they released him (without charges) in late January of 2004, a CIA team was already standing by to capture him.

The broad outlines of what followed are not seriously disputed. He was bagged, stripped, and flown to Afghanistan, where he was frequently interrogated. El-Masri claims he was tortured and raped - an account that the CIA, naturally enough, will neither confirm nor deny. But the details of his treatment have been independently corroborated by others who have undergone similar experiences.

Moreover, it is known that he remained imprisoned for over a month even after George Tenet (a Medal of Freedom holder) knew for a fact that the CIA was detaining the wrong el-Masri. Tenet, incredibly, recommended that el-Masri just be dropped back in Macedonia without even informing the German government that the United States had wrongfully imprisoned one of their citizens for three months.

On 28 May 2004, he was released on a lonely road in the middle of the night in Albania, without apologies or any money with which to return home.

With predictable difficulties, el-Masri has since been trying to piece his life back together. Part of this has included seeking some kind of justice from the government which indisputably fucked him over.

Today that was finally and irrevocably denied by the United States Supreme Court.

That the government's arguments of "national security" could possibly hold when the case in question is one of such well-established incompetence is chilling, to say the least. What makes democracy functional - indeed, what constitutes its very essence - is its commitment to accountability and transparency. To be sure, there are legitimate causes for compromising on these principles under extraordinary conditions, but in the absence of an immediate, existential threat any such justification must itself be extraordinary in order to satisfy legitimacy.

Democracy doesn't always die to thunderous applause. Sometimes it just dies with a shrug.

I’ve used this webspace over the years to take some shots at Justice Clarence Thomas. Sure, some of them were probably below the belt (my personal favorite was when noting his dissent in the medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich I referred to him as Justice “Long Bong Silver”), but that’s kind of how the internet works. We all get some testosterone and snark out of our systems and sometimes it gets heated, but for the most part it’s all in good fun. I don’t have anything personal against Justice Thomas; I just think he’s a bad jurist who is profoundly wrong about a great many things that I care very deeply about.

I think he’s wrong on his approach to personal privacy and abortion rights. I think he’s wrong on his blind acceptance to the excesses of executive power. I think he’s wrong on his laissez-faire attitude towards the Establishment Clause and most of the rest of the Bill of Rights. But most of all, I think he’s horribly and terribly wrong on his entire judicial philosophy. Thomas, like Justices Scalia, Alito and (sometimes) Roberts subscribe to the philosophy of Constitutional Originalism, or the belief that the Constitution should only be interpreted through the express intent of the document’s framers. In my mind, it’s a deeply hypocritical and myopic way to look at the law. Now, I’m sure they’d say the same thing about people like me, and that’s OK. Again, nothing personal, we just disagree.

Try telling that to Justice Thomas. It seems to him that the people who question him are more than just wrong; they’re out to get him. Some of you may be old enough to remember him referring to the “high tech lynching” he was being put through during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation. While there were many reasons why Senators at the time may have been cautious about confirming Thomas to the Court (chief among them his scant 15 month long record as a judge of any kind and his general lack of distinguishing accomplishment as a lawyer or scholar), the hearings largely revolved around the sordid tale of the “Anita Hill affair”. It was that controversy that caused Thomas to invoke lynching, and to this day it remains the thing for which he is probably most known.

His new memoir, My Grandfather’s Son (on sale now!) notes that his confirmation was the most difficult moment of his life. By all accounts, his memoir is a frank and emotionally-charged account of his ascent from poverty in Georgia to Yale Law School to Public Service and, eventually, to the highest court in the land. It’s also apparently a bit of a political hit-piece. As the New York Times notes, in their editorial review of the book, Thomas spares no metaphorical expense at re-hashing his confirmation hearing and one-upping his own hyperbolic "high tech lynching" line.

Now, I don’t know what really happened between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. Having read the testimony, I tend to believe her. That could be, as some bloggers fairly suggest, because I am a liberal and I’ve learned not to trust Thomas. Or it could be because one of my favorite professors from law school actually testified on Ms. Hill’s behalf at the hearings and he once regaled us with the long, sordid and extremely believable story. Regardless, it’s not really material. What is material is that the comparison Mr. Thomas makes between his experience in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the experiences of every black person fearing for their lives from the KKK is more that a bit extreme.

But then again, Justice Thomas is never shy to wrap himself in the imagery of the wounded and oppressed on the one hand while discounting the wounds and oppression felt by everyone else on the other. For example, in his 60 Minutes interview last week promoting his book (on sale now!), he helped justify his opposition to affirmative action programs by claiming he was a victim of the programs themselves.

Newsflash to Justice Thomas: finishing in the middle of your class anywhere doesn’t make it easy to find a job in the legal profession. Trust me, I’m living proof. But that doesn’t mean your degree is worthless or “tainted” as you claim. Far, far from it. Frank Rich of the Times breaks down the 60 Minutes piece and the supposed uselessness of Thomas’ degree further:

Seems to be more than 15 cents worth to me.

More troubling to me is the bitter glee with which Thomas is dragging up old wounds, specifically when it comes to Anita Hill. In the 60 Minutes piece, he shrugged off Ms. Hill as “not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed [at the hearings].” The shots he took at her in his book were more far-reaching. Ms. Hill herself recounted them in an Editorial response, also with the Times:

Ms. Hill proceeds to defend herself forcefully and if you’d like to hear her response I urge you to read the rest of the linked article above. This article, as I said before, is not about saying she was right and he was wrong. But it does raise the question to Justice Thomas: If this situation brought up so many old wounds, why open them up again unnecessarily? Why devote such a substantial portion to your memoirs (on sale now!) to firing back at long gone critics and rekindling long-dead wars?

I guess everyone deserves to tell their story and it’s hard to begrudge him for trying to do just that. Or rather, it would be if he weren’t so brazenly dismissive of those who would try to tell their stories of racism or poverty or homophobia or sexism or oppression or being shoved into the institutional margins. It would be more acceptable if he didn’t scoff at people who tried to explain to him why his actions hurt. It would be less ridiculous if he would look with self awareness at his own words from the 60 Minutes piece that practically beatified him.

It would be nice if you didn’t either, Justice Thomas.


Subrosa will admit, in all fairness, that has not yet read Justice Thomas' book (which, if you haven't heard, is on sale now!) It's on his list, just after he finishes "The Nine" by Jeffrey Toobin, which covers much of the same ground.

Poor Shirley Katz. She’s an English teacher at South Medford High School in Oregon and she can't bring her gun to school. Katz says she needs to carry a gun because she fears her ex-husband will try to harm her. Also, she is worried about a student shooting up the place, because it happens so frequently. I think around 50% of schools have a shooting every year.

This is pretty simple: Shirley Katz is a fucking idiot. If I was a parent, I would be quite concerned that my son’s teacher is worried she might be murdered at any moment. Hey, Shirley, think of the kids. Maybe the answer isn’t a gun, but rather for you to take a leave of absence, or just find yourself a job in the office, away from the kids. Am I penalizing you for having a horrible ex-husband? Fuck yes! Having a murder magnet in a school is a pretty shitty idea. Don’t involve the kids in your poor life decisions. You married and divorced the idiot. That’s your responsibility. How about you straighten out your potential murder problems and then come back to school?

Unless of course, there are not actually any potential murdery husband problems in the future. That is what Katz’s husband claims.

Katz already has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but the school district bars teachers from bringing guns to school. Katz is challenging the rule in court and will have her day in front of a judge on Thursday.

Apparently, Katz has been also practicing in her small, little brain how she would handle a Columbine type attack.

Wow, that sounds incredibly unrealistic. Would you also, in a calm, loving voice, look at the class president and say,

“Remember me if I don’t come back. And don’t ever forget about Shakespeare.”

Too bad Katz’s little fantasy shoot ‘em up would be ruined because she would be the first to die. Why? Because she’s got a fucking gun and everyone in the world knows it. Look who just made the top of Dylan Kelbold’s list! Boom, now where are the jocks?

Sadly, Katz realizes it.

No shit, weirdo. Seriously, go get a job where you aren’t around kids. You are way too unstable and paranoid. A farm would be good for you, or maybe the war.

The school has this crazy idea that life is not a western or a Jodie Foster movie and insists that schools are actually safer when guns are not lying around in a teacher’s purse.

Most importantly, the kids are not big on the idea.

But, but, Miss Katz could try to shoot an intruder, miss and blow a hole in your tummy. What's wrong with that?

Seriously, should a 16-year-old be smarter and less crazy than her teacher?

I believe very strongly that it is my job to continually remind you that our president is an idiot. The words that come out of his mouth are sometimes disturbing, sometimes sad and most often embarrassing. Last week he gave a speech in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here are some excerpts from that speech. They actually came out of the mouth of the man who is our president.

On taxes.

Okay, first of all, if she is actually a woman, then she can’t be a “they.” That is something I learned in the 2nd grade and it has really stuck with me ever since.

Now let’s discuss the building of buildings. You state, “When somebody builds a new building, someone has got to come and build the building.” There’s a lot wrong here, guy in charge of our country. Your repetition makes it sound like someone builds a building and then someone comes along and builds the building again.

You also claimed that the building expanded. Explain further. How does a building expand? Is it made of rubber? Does someone blow air into it? And then why does an expanding building prevent people from getting additional work? I thought building would lead to work based on your previous sentence. It’s really confusing. It barely makes sense. And you are in charge of defending our country.

Next up, decision-making.

Please, please stop saying this. It makes you seem retarded and me seem really retarded for just being a US citizen. Plus, it is something a five year old would say if he was elected president of his kindergarten class.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you don’t have to actually remind anyone about your lack of intelligence, or their level of education. I think it’s a given.

Wow. To finally hear the inner workings of what goes on in the White House is really amazing. So, people actually come to you with advice and then you act? These are awesome things that you say inside your head, but not outside. I’m now going to close my eyes and try to hear Bill Clinton saying the same thing.

…

Nope. That didn’t work.

That’s actually an insult. It gives the impression that you don’t have anything important to say, that you are bullshitting. As President, I recommend saying these types of things. You are sort of important and look what you did. You just took a swipe at yourself. If you were attempting to make me feel as if I have been enveloped by a blanket of sadness, then kudos.

After giving a lengthy answer on global warming:

No, it’s not. Sigh. You should actually know this because you are the president. Filibustering is a form of obstructionism in a decision making body, in an attempt to extend debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage. You are just giving a lengthy answer. Those people in front of you are just audience members. They are not the Senate. And you are not a Senator. You’re the….never mind.

Sure, I mean with 9/11, the Iraq War and everyone thinking you suck, how could it not be pure joy?

On just being there:

Not really. I think we’re better off when you are giving speeches. Thanks.

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to kill our unborn babies and watch us mutate. That is the only reason I can come up with that explains the agency’s decision to allow a new pesticide, methyl iodide, to be used on crops. The decision seems to go against why the agency was created in the first place, but hey, we’re living in the Bush years. Up is now down.

Okay, so explain this:

Yep, we definitely should get that shit out there. I don’t know what could possibly go wrong. The EPA can’t say there weren’t warned. Last month, 54 scientists, including 5 Nobel laureates, sent a letter that included a scary message.

The pesticide will be used mainly for strawberry fields in California and Florida. Methyl iodide will replace methyl bromide, which can no longer be used because it damages the ozone layer. That leads one to the obvious question: Why do strawberries hate us?

The EPA disagrees with the scientists and has approved the pesticide to be used for one year. The agency will also create “buffer zones” to protect neighbors and farm hands. I’m going to go out a limb here and say that if something needs a “buffer zone,” then I don’t want it used.

Methyl iodide will be sold under the name Midas, in what may be the most ironic name of all time. Midas has been approved for use on strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, ornamentals, turf, trees and vines. The pesticide is injected into soil before crops are planted. It kills insects and diseases without leaving a residue on crops, but can evaporate and drift into neighborhoods and groundwater.

Thankfully, Midas would still need to be approved by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, an agency that is a bit harsher with approvals than the EPA. Hopefully, California will make a more educated decision than the EPA, because I don’t want my DNA to mutate.

Robert Bergman, the Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley's chemistry department explained why Midas is very, very bad.

I’d like to take a pass on the mutation thing. I’d also like to kick someone at the EPA in the nuts. The scientists actually went to the EPA for a meeting to explain why Midas was bad news, but the EPA had already made their decision.

Yeah, but the EPA had a “thorough analyses” that lasted four years. Also, the company that makes Midas used to have a guy named Elin Miller as their chief executive. He now is a top official at the…EPA. Hi, George Bush! I thought your filthy little hands would pop up somewhere! George is big on putting people from the corporate world into positions that are supposed to protect us from the corporate world. The manufacturer spent $11 million over eight years attempting to get Midas approved. Turns out they only had to call their buddy, George.

The results are obvious. Now we will live in this world.

RAMADI, IRAQ – Now that major combat operations are finished almost everywhere in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the United States Army and Marine Corps are more like a United Nations peacekeeping force with rules of engagement that allow them to kill if they have to. “We’re like the Peace Corps with muscles,” is how one soldier put it when I left with his unit at 4:00 in the morning to deliver food stuffs and toys to needy families in the countryside on the edge of the desert.

Actually, we did not leave at 4:00. We were supposed to leave at 4:00, when the weather outside wasn’t a blast furnace, but we were late leaving the base. I waited in front of my trailer to be picked up from 3:55 in the morning until 5:00 before a small convoy of Humvees finally showed up to get me.



“Good morning, sir,” said Lieutenant Evan Davies from Rochester, New York, as climbed out of his truck to shake my hand. “Let’s go roust the CAG out of bed.”

The CAG, Civil Affairs Group, was still in bed? We were supposed to leave an hour ago. Our humanitarian aid drop was scheduled before dawn for good reason. We were suffering a heat wave in Iraq – in August no less – and hoped to finish the mission before the molten sun finished us off. I grudgingly dragged my sorry ass out of bed at 3:30 like I was supposed to, but there I was, an hour and a half later, being told to go wake up the CAG.

We drove a few minutes and stopped next to a cluster of spartan trailers.

“I think the CAG is over here somewhere,” Lieutenant Davies said.

He and I poked around in the dark trying to figure out where the rest of the men were.

“Hmm,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure where they are.”

He knocked on the door of a darkened trailer.

An Asian man with long black hair opened the door and squinted at us.

“We’re looking for the CAG,” Lieutenant Davies said. “Aren’t they supposed to be around here somewhere?”

“Nah, man,” said the young man we had just rousted from bed. “We’re State Department here. The CAG is…I don’t know, they moved somewhere else a while ago.” He shut the door.

We walked to another bunch of trailers. Lieutenant Davies rapped on one of the doors.

A grizzled and bald 60 year old Arab man came to the door.

“Good morning, sir,” Lieutenant Davies said. “We’re looking for the CAG.”

“They aren’t here,” said the man kindly. “Come, come, I will show you.”

He was an Iraqi who worked as a cultural and political advisor for the United States military and didn’t seem to mind in the least being dragged out of bed before sunrise. The Civil Affairs Group was just around the corner and he showed us where to go.

“Sorry for waking you up,” I said.

“It is no problem,” he said and smiled as he put his hand on his heart.

The Civil Affairs guys woke up on command and were ready to leave almost instantly.

“We just need to load the food in the trucks and we’ll be ready to go,” said the lieutenant.

The shipping container that held the foodstuffs for needy Iraqis was locked. No one knew the combination needed to unlock it, so someone went to fetch bolt cutters and returned a few minutes later.

“Let's hope this is the right container,” he said and busted open the padlock.



The container was empty.

“Somebody's going to be pissed in the morning,” Lieutenant Davies said.

“Woo hoo!” one of the soldiers yelled in the dark. “Another fucked up adventure in the United States Army. I love it!”

The lieutenant introduced me to our Iraq interpreter.

“How do you like working with Americans?” I said.

“That's a hard question to answer,” he said.

“Ah, come on,” I said. “There's no wrong answer and I won't quote you by name.”

“Well,” he said. “Sometimes I get really irritated.”



“Yeeeeaaaahhhhhh!” bellowed a young soldier in his best imitation of a frat boy yell as another shipping container was busted open with bolt cutters. “We got it now!”

Apparently they found the food.

“But I just keep reminding myself,” our interpreter said, “that they're here to help our army and police.”

Iraqi police officers showed up in large pickup trucks given to them by the United States Army. They loaded up the trucks with food and toys as the first light of false dawn appeared in the east.



“The mission is a little bit FUBARed,” Lieutenant Davies said. “We were supposed to be back in time for breakfast, but it's too late for that now. I sent some soldiers over to the D-FAC [military dining facility] to get some chow for us now so we can eat before we move out.”

A dust storm was beginning to blow in from the west. It looked like thin fog, only I could ever so slightly taste it. I grabbed a plastic water bottle from the backseat of a Humvee and felt a fine graininess that had built up on the outside. Severe dust storms will block out the sun and make the air cooler, as cloud cover will, but this dust felt as though it would only make the air hotter by making it heavier, which is what usually happens.

Several soldiers returned from the dining facility with servings of the Big Fat Heart Attack Special in Styrofoam boxes. Inside each container were biscuits and gravy, breakfast pizza, fifteen pieces of bacon, and plastic silverware wrapped in a napkin. I didn't want to appear too hungry or greedy, so I waited until a few others had opened theirs first. The Americans stood around and ate while the Iraqis loaded the trucks. This was one of the (very) few times the Iraqis appeared more hard-working than the Americans.



Most of the Americans ate their breakfast off the hood of a Humvee while standing up. I sat down in the driver's seat of a golf cart. A soldier sat down in the passenger seat.

“What are you doing here in August anyway?” he said.

“A fine question,” I said as I seriously wondered why I hadn't waited for October or even November. The heat in Iraq during the summer is enough to make a religious man rail against God. I'm baffled, frankly, at how human civilization began in a place so inhospitable to human beings. Someone, I forget who, compared facing the afternoon breeze to sticking a hair dryer in your face while pouring sand on your head. That pretty much says it. It is much worse than in a place like Arizona, for instance, because you can hardly catch a break from it unless you stay on base in one of the buildings.

“It's ridiculous here in the summer,” he said. “At Camp Ramadi you take one step outside and dust explodes.”

“It must be nice in the winter,” I said.

“Actually, it's worse,” he said. “All this dust turns to mud.”

The dust was finely grained, almost like talcum powder. The soldiers call it moon dust, and it's more than six inches deep in some places, like a soft inland beach.

“It has the consistency of chocolate pudding when it's wet,” he continued. “Sometimes you think it's okay to walk on because the ground looks all cracked and dried up. So you go ahead and step on it, and then....GLORK!...your foot breaks through and you're more than boot-deep in the mud. You get that shit on you and it's not coming off. Winter is miserable.”



We ate in silence for a few minutes while he, apparently, wondered whether or not he should say what he was thinking.

“Are you going to bash us or what?” he finally said.

“I didn't come all the way out here in August just to bash you guys,” I said. I felt some sympathy for his complaint, but was at the same time tired of hearing it. “I write what I see and hear, good and bad. You won’t get bad press from me unless you act badly.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You'll be the first.”

I'm hardly the first. I know several journalists, political liberals as well as conservatives, who write it straight and don't wallow in soldier-bashing. But the soldier-bashing that's also out there sure does make an impression. Every journalist who embeds in Iraq must hear these complaints as often as I did, and I heard it daily.

We finished breakfast and loaded our gear and ourselves into the Humvees. The gunner in my Humvee made fun of our driver.

“We got guys like him in the Army,” he said to me and jerked his thumb toward the front seat. “Short. Skinny. All they're good for is driving.”

“Hey!” our short and skinny driver said in mock outrage. “You need us. Without us, y'all can't move out!”

Lieutenant Davies rode in the front passenger seat.

“What exactly are we delivering this morning?” I said.

“Rice, flour, cooking oil, baby formula, and Beanie Babies,” he said.

“No Beanie Babies,” said the gunner.

“No Beanie Babies,” said the lieutenant.

“We got Beanie Babies!” said the driver.

“Ok, Beanie Babies,” said the lieutenant. “We're basically following the Iraqi Police at this point. They know who in the area needs help the most. Ever since the insurgency was beaten the economy has flourished. Shops have opened up everywhere. It’s definitely a good sign. But unemployment is still really high and lots of people are desperate.”

We drove through blowing dust as the white sun rose above the plains of Mesopotamia.



A few Iraqi women were already out in the fields.

“Women do all the agricultural work,” Lieutenant Davies said, “as well as run the household. Iraqi men are lazy. They don't do shit.”

I heard something along the same lines from quite a few soldiers. I doubt I've ever been in such a masculine environment as I was during my time with the American military, but these guys sounded downright feminist when they talked about gender roles in Iraq, especially in Anbar Province which is noticeably more conservative and retro than Baghdad.

On the side of the road leading out of Ramadi two men wearing keffiyahs sat in wooden chairs in front of a butcher shop. They sipped from plastic tea cups next to a cow's carcass, its detached head, and a bloody hand axe.

“Oh, that's nice,” Lieutenant Davies said, “cutting up a cow on the side of the road like that.”

I tried to snap a quick picture, but was too slow.

We followed the road along the snaking Euphrates River through the desert. A mile-wide ribbon of green flanked each side of the river where hand-dug canals fanned out water for irrigation. After blowing through a few Iraqi Police checkpoints the convoy stopped in a dilapidated agricultural area.



It was only 7:00 in the morning, but already at least 90 degrees outside and getting noticeably hotter by the minute. I left my body armor and helmet on the seat in the Humvee. Farmland outside Ramadi feels safer than Kansas these days (at least when I'm with the Army) and my protective gear was an uncomfortable nuisance that made me feel paranoid and ridiculous. No one would let me go outside the wire unprotected in Baghdad, and I wouldn’t do it even if it were allowed. But many soldiers and Marines take off their helmets in and around Ramadi because it is no longer a war zone. No one said anything to me when I also took off my Kevlar.

An Iraqi Police officer screamed into the voice-garbling loudspeaker on one of the trucks and let the community know we were there to give them some food.



The police trucks and Humvees rolled along at perhaps one mile an hour as women, children, and a few men emerged groggily from their homes and walked up to the convoy.

Iraqi police officers handed heavy bags of flour and rice to adults and gave out smaller packages to the children.



I walked along and took pictures. Two Iraqi women cornered me and spoke to me in rapid-fire Anbar-accented Iraqi Arabic as though they expected me to understand everything perfectly.

“La etkellem Arabie katir,” I said. I don't speak too much Arabic. I could only understand a few fragments. They were utterly bewildered by this, as though I must be stupid for not comprehending. So they repeated the same exact sentences, only more loudly.



I didn't mind. They were simple people and they needed my help. I gestured toward the Iraqi police and suggested they follow me to one of the trucks where they could have a proper conversation with someone who lived there and really could help. All I could do was take pictures and notes. It was an awkward moment. I felt dumb and also like an intruder for seeing humble people in moments of weakness at dawn in front of their houses.



Children swarmed the roads and fought their way to the sides of the trucks. The Iraqi police yelled at them as they handed out items. The Americans quietly provided security for everyone while this was happening.



A traditionally dressed Iraqi men emerged from one of the houses and hugged some of the American soldiers. They seemed to know each other, and they exchanged a few words in Arabic.

Bundles of newspapers were pitched over the side of one of the trucks. Young Iraqi boys opened the bundles and handed them out to others one at a time.



Other young boys tugged on my shirt. “Mister, mister! Picture, picture!”

I did want pictures of children, but they were annoyed whenever I took pictures of anything else. “Mister, mister!”











“When I went home on leave someone called me mister at a restaurant,” Sergeant Shumiloff said. “I almost wigged out on him. What's the matter? he said. Nothing, I said. I'm okay.”


Sergeant Shumiloff

The Humvees and police trucks drove more slowly than I walked. We covered a mile or so of road, depleting the stocks of goods in the trucks as we went. Some Iraqi kids followed me on foot the entire time and wouldn't stop asking for pictures.

Make me famous! some seemed to be saying. Others, less fortunate, had different ideas in mind. Don't forget me, their faces seemed to say. Don't forget us. We're hurting.



One of the Iraqi police officers was so young I could hardly believe he was even 18. He carried a bat with him wherever he went and sometimes looked like he was ready to crack heads if the needy got too unruly.

“How old is he anyway?” I said to Lieutenant Davies.

“He is really young,” he said. “But he’s one of the best they have on the force. We’re trying to get him promoted.”

The Iraqi Police busted open boxes of Beanie Babies. The kids went wild as though large stacks of money were handed out. They pushed, shoved, hit each other, and yelled as each scrambled to get the next toy.









The young Iraqi police officer, whom the lieutenant said was the best, kicked a young boy hard and sent him sprawling into the dust. The poor kid cried for his mother. Tears mixed with the dirt on his face and muddied his cheeks. Nobody said anything to the officer or offered to help the boy up. I wondered whether I should try to rein him in if he did it again.

Iraq is a painful country. It hurts those who live there, and it hurts those who go there. It isn't the saddest place I've ever visited – Libya earns that dubious distinction. But it is the most distressing, not only because of the violence and horror almost everyone who lives there has experienced, and in many places still experiences, but because it's hard to shake the dreadful feeling that terrible forces are gearing up to punish the place even more.

Anbar Province, while broken by war, is sort of okay.





But the long shadow of Baghdad – which is anything but okay, and which was my jump-off point for Ramadi – falls over the city from the east. Nowhere in Iraq can be truly stable and secure until every other place is also secured.

The Iraqi Police handed something in small bags to the locals.



“What’s in the green bags?” I said to Lieutenant Davies.

“Sand,” he said.

“No, not the sand bags,” I said and laughed. “I know what a sand bag is. I mean the green bags the police are handing out.”

“Ah,” he said and laughed. “Chai.” Tea. “What’s sad is that these people are so poor they probably would be happy with useless handouts of sand bags at this point.”



One of the kids ran up to him, pointed to the east, said something in Arabic, and laughed.

“He asked if we would go over to the next tribal area and kill everybody who lives there,” the lieutenant told me and rolled his eyes. “He’s only kidding, but you see how it is here.”

We walked together in silence for a few moments.

“They think we can do a lot more for them than we can,” he said. “Like we’re all-powerful.” I’ve heard that many Iraqis think the Americans are so powerful they can fix Iraq at will any time, which means there must be some sinister reason why they want Iraq to remain broken. Some Lebanese I’ve met think the same way.

“President Bush can fix Lebanon in ten minutes,” a Beirut taxi driver once told me. “So why doesn’t he?”

“Some of them call me Sheikh Daoud,” Lieutenant Davies said. Daoud is Arabic for David, which is not exactly his name, but it’s close. “They say hey, you’re a sheikh, you can make stuff happen. I say, well, that’s just a nickname you gave me. We’ll see.”


Lieutenant Evan Davies

Everything from the trucks was finally handed out. It was time to head back to the Blue Diamond base even though there wasn’t quite enough for everyone to get what they wanted.

As I climbed into my Humvee and prepared to close the door, several children ran up to me and said “Football!”

“La football,” I said. No football.

We did not have any footballs.

“Football! Football!” a boy said and pointed at my feet.

I looked down. Sure enough, there was an American football at my feet.

Our gunner had already climbed into his turret. I pulled on his pant leg.

“Can I give them this football?” I said.

“What football?” he said.

“There’s a football at my feet.”

“Football! Football!” the kids kept saying.

“Nah, man, that’s our football,” the gunner said.

“Mister, mister! Football, football!”

“Give me that football,” the gunner said. I handed him the football and half expected him to toss it to the kids. “It’s my football!”

“Football! Football!” the kids yelled.

“Laaaaaaaaaa!” the gunner yelled. Noooooooooo! “Sorry, kids. Wal-Mart’s closed.”

And we drove away.

This is what it’s like now in and just outside Ramadi. This mission is the kind of thing embedded journalists see, which is why most war correspondents embed somewhere else. Soldiers Hand Out Newspapers and Rice isn’t much of a headline, and it’s even less of a scoop. But this is the kind of work soldiers do now every day in what was recently the most violent place in Iraq.

That doesn’t mean reporters who go somewhere else aren’t doing their jobs, but it mostly explains why you rarely see coverage from Anbar.

Every week I scour the news to find the worst of the worst for you. This week I bring you something special. You are about to read a classic Asshole Fuckface Roundup, if I do say so myself. So put on your face visor and get out your rubber gloves, because this one is going to get nasty.

I’m going to start with what may be my favorite asshole fuckface story of all time. Oh, sweet Jesus, it is delicious.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is in some deep shit. She is running for re-election next year and is a New England Republican. There aren’t many of them around anymore. She votes the way Bush wants her to, especially when it comes to the war. That makes her a serious Democratic target.

So, how is Collins going after her opponent? His voting record!

Oh, no. 129 votes! What a douche bag. She neglects to say that gives Allen a 98% attendance record, but what the heck, it’s an election!

The Maine GOP wanted to get in on the action and last week they sent out a press statement titled, “Welcome back to work, Tom Allen.”

Oh, fuck. Slama Jama! How you gonna answer that question, Tom? Huh, you flakey bitch! Turns out Tom answered the question very quietly, by having an aide phone the Maine GOP that afternoon. Insert balls in vice and….

Also, ahem, we are huge asshole fuckfaces.

Representative Darrell Issa is an awesome individual. He is the man who got the ball rolling on the recall of California Governor Gray Davis, which led to my state being governed by a giant embarrassment named Arnold. Issa was then rewarded with enormous support by Republicans and won himself a seat in the House.

Issa has a classy background. He has been arrested for stealing a car, convicted of possessing an unregistered gun, charged but not convicted of faking the theft of his own Mercedes for insurance money, and accused of carrying a gun into an office when he fired an employee. So, making a veiled threat against Representative Henry Waxman is not a surprise.

Uh, what? So, Waxman should not investigate mercenaries who seem to have just murdered a bunch of Iraqis because they might kill him if he goes to Iraq? And you’re a Representative in the House? Not a member of the mafia? Congrats, Darrell Issa, you just made the Asshole Fuckface Roundup! I can’t believe it took this long!

Just when I think the people at the White House can’t act like bigger asshole fuckfaces, they go and surprise me.

The British have pulled out of Basra and it appears they will withdraw their remaining 4,500 troops from Iraq next year. To date, 170 Britons have sacrificed their lives in the conflict.

But now that Britain has pulled out of Basra, the White House has decided to show their true colors and act like asshole fuckfaces. A senior White House foreign policy official broke down how the administration feels about the British soldier’s sacrifice.

Wow. Somebody just made the Asshole Fuckface Hall of Fame. The gall of these people is astounding. All I can do is wish eternal suffering on everyone involved in this administration. And remember, when MoveOn criticizes a general, the are disgusting.

Finally, nothing will land you on the Asshole Fuckface Roundup faster than fucking over our troops.

2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard spent a delightful 22 months in Iraq. 729 days to be exact. They had been deployed longer than any other combat unit in Iraq and were extended due to President Moron’s surge. Upon returning, several expected to take advantage of the GI bill. Platoon leader John Hobot was one.

Ha! That’s cute. This is America, John, where we fuck over our troops after we’re done with them. The government is now refusing to pay their education benefits because the soldiers came in one day under the requirement. Turns out the poor bastards needed 730 days on tour. Sorry.

The soldiers believe the Pentagon “deliberately” wrote their orders for 729 days instead of 730 to fuck them out of their education benefits, which would have been an extra $500 to $800 a month. Minnesota lawmakers are putting pressure on the asshole fuckfaces at the Pentagon to rectify the situation.

Congrats to all of this weeks asshole fuckfaces! You guys totally deserve it and you will all recieve a pair of FearTheReaper wrist bands!

If you read the front page of the paper tomorrow morning, you’ll see that the United States emphatically does not torture anyone. Of course, it may be buried behind ridiculous political puff pieces like why Barack Obama doesn’t wear a flag pin and whether John McCain is a full-blown idiot or just a sell-out to the Christian Right (seriously, why would you even pay someone to fucking write that garbage!?) should be a story about the following unequivocal statements from President Bush this morning:

Well, when you put it like that George, how could we ever doubt you? I mean, we all know your history of employing nothing but highly trained professionals. Trained professionals like Mike Brown, Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzales, George Tenet and trained professional organizations like Blackwater and Halliburton have been stalwarts of the Bush administration. We certainly have no reason to doubt that when Bush signs off on someone that someone knows what fuck they are doing.

Moreover, when Bush tells us that we’ve gotten good information from our interrogation techniques there’s similarly no reason to doubt his veracity. He’s never lied to us about those sorts of things before. Ever. The man tells the truth. He’s a truth-teller. In fact, if you wanted to just start calling him “Truthy” I’m sure he’d like that.

The problem is that despite all of his assertions to the contrary, there seems to be some “evidence” that the Bush Administration may (and I do want to emphasize the word “may” there) have been a little not-so-straightforward to the public about the whole “torture” issue in the past. But just by a tiny bit.

Oh. Well. That changes things a bit doesn’t it?

All sarcasm aside, the New York Times piece linked above is a fascinating look into the history of the Justice Department and the Office of Legal Counsel under Bush. Most importantly, it tells the story of the existence of the two secret memos referred to above. The first, which for the first time in U.S. history authorized all sorts of legally questionable interrogation techniques to be used not just by themselves, but in combination (naturally, you can never have too much of a good thing, right?) is deeply suspect and troubling from a legal perspective. The second, which said that the above techniques were not “cruel, inhuman or degrading” and thus that the McCain-Durbin sponsored bill would not apply to the use of those tactics (despite the fact that the bill was clearly intended to), is morally and legally reprehensible.

But morally and legally reprehensible is what gets you ahead in this administration. Just ask Steven G. Bradbury, Esq., the head of the prestigious Office of Legal Counsel at the DoJ. He’s the man who signed off on Memo #2, and is apparently a humongous toadie. Which, of course, is what Bush and Co. wanted when they gave let him know that he was being considered for the job as the head of OLC.

You’re not “implying” anything, Mr. Cooper. You’re coming out and fucking saying: give the advice we want or we will find someone else who will. That is, of course, exactly what Bradbury did.

It’s really fascinating that he relied on a Supreme Court ruling as to the unconstitutionality of torture when deciding whether a federal statute that seeks to narrow the acceptable range of practices from within constitutional boundaries. It’s also really dumb. But even beyond that, the opinion Bradbury signed off on essentially says this if you strip away the bullshit: Virtually no interrogational behavior is going to “shock the conscience” if you don’t actually have a conscience to shock.

One can see why the administration loves him so.

Yesterday Bush, as promised, vetoed the State Child Health Insurance Program bill.

Ugly, ugly, ugly. Denying health insurance to children because providing it is "the wrong direction" is the "political spin" here. SCHIP wouldn't "displace private insurance" for fucking anyone; it would *provide* insurance for kids who don't have it.

Here's what will happen in California, Gallegly's state:

More facts:

In 2005, there were 8.3 *million* uninsured children in the U.S. In 2006, there were 8.7 million.

These are children with asthma, with disabilities, with chronic ear infections, with toothaches, with eczema, with allergies; kids in foster care, kids with depression or ADHD. The idea that most people are basically healthy and that if you get sick without health insurance you can always go to the ER applies to "most people" because "most people" have had decent health care as children and haven't developed long-term or chronic problems because they lacked it. Untreated colds, head lice when you can't afford the medicine that kills them, eczema that drives you crazy--that kind of minor ongoing problem undermines kids' ability to attend school, undermines their ability to focus when they are in school, undermines their long-term health and the health of their entire families. ER visits for head lice or asthma are a fuck of a lot more expensive to the almighty taxpayer than providing kids with inhalers and topical medications.

And it's fucking pathetic that we have to resort to that kind of "it costs more not to treat them" argument for convincing the wealthiest country in the world to make sure kids can see a doctor once or twice a year.

The good news is that the Senate has enough votes for SCHIP to override Bush's asshole veto.

The bad news is that the House doesn't. We need 25 more Representatives to act like decent human beings and switch their votes.

So. Do the decent thing. Go here and find out who your representative is.

Then scroll down the list below to see if his or her name is on it. These are the folks who voted against SCHIP.

Write them (you can do so via the first link, or you can google their name and find a real honest-to-god mailing address) and tell them to change their vote. That's all you have to do.

If you want to do more, google the name of your state + "uninsured children numbers" and find out what percentage of kids in your state are uninsured. Mention that in your letter. If your representative was one of the good guys, write to the people on the list below who are from your state, admit that you're not in their district, but tell them you write as a resident of your state, and point out that their vote affects everyone.

If you want to do even more, talk to your friends and make sure they know about this. Tell them who their representative is. Urge them to write or call. Give them your representative's contact information. (A list of people who are *most* likely to change their votes is here, but even the dyed-in-the-wool assholes should hear how unpopular their stubbornness on this issue is with their constituents.)

If you want to do even more than that, print out a few flyers that say "Your Representative in Congress voted AGAINST providing health insurance to uninsured children," put your Representative's name, face, and contact information on it, and post them around town.

If you want to do even more than all of that, think of what else you can do and post it in the comments below.

Alabama

AL-1 Bonner, Jo (R)
AL-2 Everett, Terry (R)
AL-3 Rogers, Michael (R)
AL-4 Aderholt, Robert (R)
AL-6 Bachus, Spencer (R)

Arizona

AZ-2 Franks, Trent (R)
AZ-3 Shadegg, John (R)
AZ-6 Flake, Jeff (R)

Arkansas

AR-3 Boozman, John (R)

California

CA-2 Herger, Walter (R) -- did not vote
CA-3 Lungren, Daniel (R)
CA-4 Doolittle, John (R)
CA-19 Radanovich, George (R)
CA-21 Nunes, Devin (R)
CA-22 McCarthy, Kevin (R)
CA-24 Gallegly, Elton (R)
CA-25 McKeon, Howard (R)
CA-26 Dreier, David (R)
CA-33 Watson, Diane (D) -- voted "present" but did not vote aye or nay on the bill
CA-40 Royce, Edward (R)
CA-41 Lewis, Jerry (R)
CA-42 Miller, Gary (R)
CA-44 Calvert, Ken (R)
CA-46 Rohrabacher, Dana (R)
CA-48 Campbell, John (R)
CA-49 Issa, Darrell (R)
CA-50 Bilbray, Brian (R)
CA-52 Hunter, Duncan (R)

Colorado

CO-4 Musgrave, Marilyn (R)
CO-5 Lamborn, Doug (R)
CO-6 Tancredo, Thomas (R)

Florida

FL-1 Miller, Jeff (R)
FL-4 Crenshaw, Ander (R)
FL-5 Brown-Waite, Virginia (R)
FL-6 Stearns, Clifford (R)
FL-7 Mica, John (R)
FL-8 Keller, Ric (R)
FL-9 Bilirakis, Gus (R)
FL-11 Castor, Kathy (D)
FL-12 Putnam, Adam (R)
FL-14 Mack, Connie (R)
FL-15 Weldon, David (R)
FL-18 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R)
FL-21 Diaz-Balart, Lincoln (R)
FL-24 Feeney, Tom (R)
FL-25 Diaz-Balart, Mario (R)

Georgia

GA-1 Kingston, Jack (R)
GA-3 Westmoreland, Lynn (R)
GA-6 Price, Tom (R)
GA-7 Linder, John (R)
GA-8 Marshall, James (D)
GA-9 Deal, Nathan (R)
GA-10 Broun, Paul (R)
GA-11 Gingrey, John (R)

Idaho

ID-1 Sali, Bill (R)

Illinois

IL-6 Roskam, Peter (R)
IL-11 Weller, Gerald (R)
IL-13 Biggert, Judy (R)
IL-14 Hastert, J. (R)
IL-15 Johnson, Timothy (R)
IL-16 Manzullo, Donald (R)
IL-19 Shimkus, John (R)

Indiana

IN-3 Souder, Mark (R)
IN-4 Buyer, Stephen (R)
IN-5 Burton, Dan (R)
IN-6 Pence, Mike (R)
IN-7 Carson, Julia (D) -- did not vote
IN-9 Hill, Baron (D)

Iowa

IA-5 King, Steve (R)

Kansas

KS-4 Tiahrt, Todd (R)

Kentucky

KY-1 Whitfield, Edward (R)
KY-2 Lewis, Ron (R)
KY-4 Davis, Geoff (R)
KY-5 Rogers, Harold (R)

Louisiana

LA-1 Jindal, Bobby (R) -- did not vote
LA-4 McCrery, James (R)
LA-5 Alexander, Rodney (R)
LA-6 Baker, Richard (R)
LA-7 Boustany, Charles (R)

Maryland

MD-6 Bartlett, Roscoe (R)

Massachusetts

MA-10 Delahunt, William (D) -- did not vote

Michigan

MI-2 Hoekstra, Peter (R)
MI-4 Camp, David (R)
MI-7 Walberg, Timothy (R)
MI-8 Rogers, Michael (R)
MI-9 Knollenberg, Joseph (R)
MI-11 McCotter, Thaddeus (R)

Minnesota

MN-2 Kline, John (R)
MN-6 Bachmann, Michele (R)

Mississippi

MS-1 Wicker, Roger (R)
MS-3 Pickering, Charles (R)
MS-4 Taylor, Gene (D)

Missouri

MO-2 Akin, W. (R)
MO-6 Graves, Samuel (R)
MO-7 Blunt, Roy (R)
MO-9 Hulshof, Kenny (R)

Nebraska

NE-1 Fortenberry, Jeffrey (R)
NE-2 Terry, Lee (R)
NE-3 Smith, Adrian (R)

Nevada

NV-2 Heller, Dean (R)

New Jersey

NJ-3 Saxton, H. (R)
NJ-5 Garrett, E. (R)
NJ-11 Frelinghuysen, Rodney (R)

New Mexico

NM-2 Pearce, Steven (R)

New York

NY-26 Reynolds, Thomas (R)
NY-29 Kuhl, John (R)

North Carolina

NC-2 Etheridge, Bob (D)
NC-3 Jones, Walter (R)
NC-5 Foxx, Virginia (R)
NC-6 Coble, Howard (R)
NC-7 McIntyre, Mike (D)
NC-8 Hayes, Robin (R)
NC-9 Myrick, Sue (R)
NC-10 Mchenry, Patrick (R)

Ohio

OH-1 Chabot, Steven (R)
OH-2 Schmidt, Jean (R)
OH-4 Jordan, Jim (R)
OH-8 Boehner, John (R)
OH-10 Kucinich, Dennis (D) -- WTF?

Oklahoma

OK-1 Sullivan, John (R)
OK-2 Boren, Dan (D)
OK-3 Lucas, Frank (R)
OK-4 Cole, Tom (R)
OK-5 Fallin, Mary (R)

Oregon

OR-2 Walden, Greg (R)

Pennsylvania

PA-5 Peterson, John (R)
PA-9 Shuster, William (R)
PA-16 Pitts, Joseph (R)

South Carolina

SC-1 Brown, Henry (R)
SC-2 Wilson, Addison (R)
SC-3 Barrett, James (R)
SC-4 Inglis, Bob (R)

Tennessee

TN-1 Davis, David (R)
TN-2 Duncan, John (R)
TN-3 Wamp, Zach (R)
TN-7 Blackburn, Marsha (R)

Texas

TX-1 Gohmert, Louis (R)
TX-2 Poe, Ted (R) -- did not vote
TX-3 Johnson, Samuel (R)
TX-4 Hall, Ralph (R)
TX-5 Hensarling, Jeb (R)
TX-6 Barton, Joe (R)
TX-7 Culberson, John (R)
TX-8 Brady, Kevin (R)
TX-10 McCaul, Michael (R)
TX-11 Conaway, K. (R)
TX-12 Granger, Kay (R)
TX-13 Thornberry, William (R)
TX-14 Paul, Ronald (R)
TX-19 Neugebauer, Randy (R)
TX-21 Smith, Lamar (R)
TX-24 Marchant, Kenny (R)
TX-26 Burgess, Michael (R)
TX-30 Johnson, Eddie (D) -- did not vote
TX-31 Carter, John (R)
TX-32 Sessions, Peter (R)

Utah

UT-1 Bishop, Rob (R)
UT-3 Cannon, Christopher (R)

Virginia

VA-1 Davis, Jo Ann (R)
VA-2 Drake, Thelma (R)
VA-4 Forbes, James (R)
VA-5 Goode, Virgil (R)
VA-6 Goodlatte, Robert (R)
VA-7 Cantor, Eric (R)

Washington

WA-4 Hastings, Doc (R)

Wisconsin

WI-1 Ryan, Paul (R)
WI-5 Sensenbrenner, F. (R)

Wyoming

WY-0 Cubin, Barbara (R) -- did not vote

Mitt Romney just needs to walk away. His run for the White House is becoming a joke. People in his own party are beginning to make brutal ads about his past and they certainly don't want a Mormon in the White House.

Maybe Mitt hasn’t noticed, but the Republican Party has been taken over by Christian lunatics over the past 15 years. Guess whom Christian lunatics don’t like? Mormons! Might have something to do with the church’s polygamy history. Also, there is some controversy about the year 1827, when Joseph Smith dug up some golden plates in New York that had been protected by the angel Moroni and engraved by Mormon, a pre-Columbian prophet-warrior. Because the plates were written in “Reformed Egyptian,” Smith translated them by looking through “seer stones.” Turns out God wanted him to “restore” Christianity. You can see how the influential Christians, like James Dobson, might take a pass on Mitt.

A big pass. A recent Newsweek poll revealed that 28 percent of Americans would not vote for a Mormon. I wonder how many of them are Republicans? The poll found that a Mormon president came in below a Jewish president and a black president. That is pretty low on the Republican ladder.

Yesterday, the Log Cabin Republicans came out with an ad attacking Mitt for his “Massachusetts values.” Taking out Mitt is an amusing tactic for a gay Republican, considering his history of supporting gay rights, but we are talking about Republicans. Gay or not, they are fucking weird.



Shit, now I want to vote for him! But this ad will only be airing in Iowa and on Fox News, where conservatives will see it and probably turn against evil Mitt. The Log Cabin Republicans claim they only want people to know the truth about Mitt because no one really knows what he believes.

I wonder why they didn’t mention his history of supporting gay rights? That’s a weird thing to leave out.

Lastly, Mitt is not doing to well with the fundraising. Yesterday, the Mittman reported his campaign had brought in $18 million smackeroos. That is more than three times as much as the pathetic cult leader Ron Paul! Or is it?

Turns out of the $18 million Romney raised, $8.5 million came from a guy named Mitt Romeny. But that didn’t stop a campaign spokeswoman from talking about how great it was that he wrote himself a check, I mean, that tons of people support him.

Just go away, you have no chance. And it’s getting a bit sad. Like, John McCain sad.

Democrats, however, should pray that he wins the nomination.

Back in May, I brought to your attention the story of a chimp named "Hiasl", and the quest by Austrian animal rights activists to have him recognized as a "person," thereby granting him basic legal rights. The chimp, who's full name is now Matthew Hiasl Pan, has had his case thrown out by a judge. But the simian supporters aren't going down without a feces-flinging fight.

To bring you up to speed, Matty Boy was smuggled from Sierra Leone to be sold for pharmaceutical testing, before being brought to his current home after intervention by international customs. However, with the shelter in dire straits and Our Man Pan with veterinary and upkeep bills of almost $7000 a month, the AAAF is fighting to get him "personhood" and keep him living in Austria. But the chimpy court conundrum hasn't been without its setbacks.

A hearing date has not been set for the group's appeal to the Supreme Court. AAAF President Martin Balluch had this to say about their fight:

In closing, for all you naysayers out there, watch these YouTube videos and then I dare you to try and tell me chimps aren't little hairy people!

Besides the fact we're 96% alike on the genetic level, of course.







thefreak, as mentioned in his previous story, would love to one day have a chimp as a roommate. Fox would pick up the sitcom rights in a heartbeat.