This week’s installment of the Life, Liberty, Property community’s Carnival of Liberty is up over at New World Man. Go read another fine collection of posts from a libertarian slant. Special kudos to the carnival’s Valentine’s Day theme.
UPDATE: I highly recommend Blog d’Elisson’s take on the Mohammed cartoon war. Follow the link at the carnival, as I won’t steal New World Man’s carnival thunder.
Here’s an absolutely despicable tale of betrayal of public trust.
Two federal air marshals scheduled to appear this afternoon on drug conspiracy charges are accused of smuggling 15 kilograms, or 33 pounds, of cocaine for $4,500 per kilogram, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said today.
Air marshals Shawn Ray Nguyen, 38, and Burlie L. Sholar III, 32, both of Houston, were arrested Thursday at Nguyen’s Houston home, where an informant had delivered the cocaine and $15,000 in “up front” money.
Nguyen and Sholar are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison and a maximum fine of $4 million.
The two air marshals had allegedly agreed with the confidential informant to bypass airport security at Bush Intercontinental Airport to smuggle the cocaine on board a flight bound for Las Vegas.
Joanne R. Oxford, special agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service in Houston, said, “The Federal Air Marshal Service takes these allegations seriously and is cooperating fully with the investigation.”
Whatever beliefs one may hold about the U.S. drug policy, one should certainly feel that government agents should not be violating that policy. There comes a point where betrayal of public trust is almost treasonous, and there is arguably nowhere, other than the U.S. military, in the post-9/11 world where the American public has placed so much trust for their own security than the federal air marshall program. If these two marshalls are tried and found guilty, I vote that they be skinned.
Accidental blood on the hunting ground is now predictably followed by a feeding frenzy in the White House media pool.
The Bush White House took a pounding from reporters today for not immediately disclosing Saturday night that Vice President Dick Cheney had accidentally shot a fellow hunter, sending him to the hospital with shotgun pellet wounds in his face and chest.
During his daily briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that Cheney had agreed to allow a member of the hunting party and an eyewitness to the shooting, Katharine Armstrong, to call a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on Sunday to report the incident.
The newspaper quickly posted the story on its website. Cheney’s press aides then answered some rudimentary questions, but provided few details.
The incident at the vast Armstrong family ranch in South Texas occurred about 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The victim was Harry Whittington, an Austin attorney, who was listed in stable condition today at Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi.
Peter Banko, the hospital administrator, said Whittington would be transferred to a “step-down” unit later today, indicating progress in the treatment.
McClellan insisted that the vice president’s and his staff’s overriding concern after the shooting was getting Whittington proper medical care. McClellan said that top White House aides, including chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., were being updated in Washington with fragmentary information throughout the night and into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
“The initial report that we received was that there had been a hunting accident. We didn’t know who all was involved, but a member of his party was involved in that hunting accident, and then additional details continued to come in overnight,” McClellan said.
“It’s important always to work to make sure you get information out like this as quickly as possible, but it’s also important to make sure that the first priority is focused where it should be, and that is making sure that Mr. Whittington has the care that he needs,” he said.
After the shooting, Cheney rushed to Whittington’s assistance, McClellan said.
[Sad attempt at NSA/Katrina tie-in deleted. Check the source if you want the garbage]
The White House’s hands-off role in Saturday’s accident seemed to incite many members of the White House press corps, who bombarded McClellan today with questions suggesting that the White House had been derelict in not getting the information out quickly Saturday evening.
McClellan referred numerous questions about the incident to Cheney’s press office. But one reporter, ABC News’ Jessica Yellin, complained that the vice president’s office was not providing the answers.
McClellan said that Card first informed Bush that there had been a shooting accident between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday.
At one point, McClellan seemed on the verge of losing his poise, as his voice began to rise amid the avalanche of questions being shouted at him. But he quickly regained his trademark composure.
“I think you can always look at — you can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job,” he acknowledged.
The story goes on to give the details of the incident, which are certainly worth reading — unless one is hoping to use the situation to demonize the vice-president.
Is this even news? Well, of course it is. The vice-president of the United States of America was involved in an incident resulting in a man being shot. How could that not be news? The Telegraph underlines this point by mentioning the following:
Historians speculated that this was the first time a vice-president had shot someone since Aaron Burr killed his rival, Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers, in a duel in 1804.
Is this well within the domain of late-night television satirists and humorists? Well, of course it is, and they have made use of it aplenty.
Now, I’ve stated what the story is. Here’s what I feel it isn’t: significant. There will be no long-term ramifications, except for a parade of disgusting sniping from the far left. This will provide no leverage for the anti-gun movement. Though I may agree with some of their arguments in some cases, any attempt to capitalize on this obvious accident will fail — they ain’t going to make a dent based on a birdhunt-shotgun peppering. This event may eventually become an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.
Here’s what else should be taken from the story: the media really need to reign themselves in before (I know I’m almost certainly too late here) they turn themselves into a parody of actual journalism. I only caught a few minutes of the White House press conference before work called me away, but disgust had already settled in over the display. My advice for the traditional media is as follows:
And that is probably all I’m going to say on this matter, other than to wish the best for Mr. Whittington.
The good:
Govts should pay for cartoon protest: UN
Iran, Syria and other governments that failed to protect foreign embassies from mobs protesting over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed should pay for the damage, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.
The cartoons’ publication in a Danish newspaper have triggered widespread protests across the Muslim world including violent attacks on Western diplomatic offices in a number of countries.
“The government has a responsibility to prevent these things from happening. They should have stopped it, not just in Syria or Iran but all around,” Annan said.
“Not having stopped it, I hope they will pick up the bill for the destruction that has been caused to all the foreign countries,” he told CNN.
“They should be prepared to pay for the damage done to Danish, Norwegian and the other embassies concerned.”
The bad:
UN report calls for closure of Guantánamo
A UN inquiry into conditions at Guantánamo Bay has called on Washington to shut down the prison, and says treatment of detainees in some cases amounts to torture, UN officials said yesterday.
The report also disputes the Bush administration’s legal arguments for the prison, which was sited at the navy base in Cuba with the purpose of remaining outside the purview of the US courts, and says there has been insufficient legal process to decide whether detainees continued to pose a threat to the US.
The report, prepared by five envoys from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and due for release tomorrow, is bound to deepen international criticism of the detention centre. Drafts of the report were leaked to the Los Angeles Times and the Telegraph newspapers, but UN envoys refused to comment yesterday.
During an 18-month investigation, the envoys interviewed freed prisoners, lawyers and doctors to collect information on the detainees, who have been held for the last four years without access to US judicial oversight. The envoys did not have access to the 500 prisoners who are still being held at the detention centre.
“We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government,” Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys, told the LA Times. “There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture.”
The report lists techniques in use at Guantánamo that are banned under the UN’s convention against torture, including prolonged periods of isolation, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, and humiliation, including forced shaving. [Note: humilition equals torture. Go figure.]
The UN report also focuses on a relatively new area of concern in Guantánamo – the resort to violent force-feeding to end a hunger strike by inmates. [Note: certainly a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Imagine the outcry had they been allowed to starve. I say fine — let ’em starve.]
And the ugly:
Bush agrees to work with U.N. on international force for Darfur
In a move that ultimately could lead to the deployment of U.S. troops to Africa, President Bush on Monday agreed to work with the United Nations on the creation of a new international force to stop ethnic killings in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Although Bush made no commitments on a possible role for U.S. troops, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he favors American participation in the peacekeeping mission. Bush and Annan sidestepped that issue during a White House meeting that focused on the mechanics of creating a peacekeeping force.
“When the planning is done and we come up with detailed requirements, then each government will have to indicate what they will offer and what they will do,” Annan told CNN after the meeting. “I hope that the U.S. and other governments with capacity will pull together and work with us in putting the forces on the ground.”
Annan said that international troops offer the best hope for ending the violence that’s claimed as many as 200,000 lives and left nearly 2 million people homeless. Peacekeeping troops from neighboring African countries have been unable to stop marauding militias that operate with support from the Sudanese government.
The campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing, orchestrated by Sudanese Arabs, targets Darfur’s African population. Humanitarian groups say the violence rivals the slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s.
Bush and other administration officials have shown little enthusiasm for putting U.S. troops in the middle of the ethnic strife, but they haven’t ruled it out. Bush, who has called the killings in Darfur genocide, didn’t even mention plans for an international force in brief remarks to reporters after his meeting with Annan.
He said only that they had “a good discussion” about the problem.
A State Department spokesman said that any discussion of sending U.S. troops to Africa is premature until the United Nations comes up with a more complete plan for an international force. The Pentagon is ready to send experts to U.N. headquarters in New York to help plan the peacekeeping mission and ensure that it has a large African component.
“It’s really premature to speculate about what the needs would be in terms of logistics, in terms of airlift, in terms of actual troops. And it’s certainly in that regard premature to speculate on what the U.S. contribution might be,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
One note about the ugly factor here: it is certainly an understatement to say the Sudanese situation is already quite ugly. Any U.S. military involvement only increases the potential for “Americanizing” the bloody mess.
The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
—B. H. Liddell Hart
This is not a good sign for the future relevancy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
NATO’s top commander of operations said on Friday he doubted whether the alliance would have enough troops to declare a long-heralded rapid reaction force fully operational in October as planned.
A delay to the 25,000-strong NATO Response Force (NRF) would be a setback to U.S.-backed efforts to turn the alliance that was Europe’s Cold War protector into an outfit capable of launching itself into crisis spots around the world at days’ notice.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. James Jones, in an interview with Reuters at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Sicily, said NATO allies still had not come up with the final 25 percent of the troops due to serve in the force.
“The reason I’m not confident is it isn’t resourced now,” Jones said, when asked if he was confident it would be fully operational by October.
“As things stand now, I can’t say that, missing 25 percent of a force, that I have a great deal of confidence that we’re going to generate 25 percent as if by magic. I’m hoping to get there,” he added.
Jones also said the alliance would scale back the first major maneuvers for the force, first proposed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, in the Atlantic island group of Cape Verde this June.
“We’ve downscaled the operation in terms of some of the manpower, which is really what costs a lot of money,” Jones said. He said some 6,000 troops would take part instead of a planned 8,000, insisting it would still be a valid test.
With the countries squabbling over financial and troop contributions for the relatively small response force, I find myself again questioning the worth of the Cold War-era alliance in the world of today and tomorrow.
Already happily playing the role of thorn in the side of the U.S., Hugo Chavez has decided to tweak the Brits as well.
Venezuela’s president has called on Tony Blair to return the Falkland Islands to Argentina, accusing the Prime Minister of being a “pawn” of Washington.
“We have to remember the Malvinas [the Argentine name for the islands]; how they were taken away from the Argentines. Mr Blair, return the Malvinas to Argentina,” said president Hugo Chavez.
The socialist leader has long been the most vocal critic of US president George Bush, but Mr Blair was added to his list of “imperialists” after the Prime Minister said in parliament on Wednesday that if Mr Chavez wanted to be respected, he “should abide by the rules of the international community”.
He responded: “Mr Tony Blair, you have no moral right to tell anyone to respect international laws, as you have shown no respect for them, aligning yourself with ‘Mr Danger’ [president Bush] and trampling on the people of Iraq. Do you think we still live in the times of the British Empire or colonialism?”
The Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner, has vowed that the islands will one day be part of Argentina, but has not aggressively pursued the issue since taking power in 2003.
That lack of Argentinian aggression is certainly based upon a brief but bloody lesson learned almost 24 years ago, a lesson that shows that Chavez’s comments are assuredly going to fall on deaf British ears.
Iran again grabs the opportunity to play the role of the little streetpunk in need of a good smackdown.
An Iranian vice president said he did not believe that the US would attack his country over its nuclear programme and compared defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to a vampire showing its teeth.
“Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not Afghanistan,” Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee said during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
“They still cannot leave (those two countries), it is impossible for them to invade Iran.”
The United Nations nuclear watchdog voted last week to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme – raising the stakes in the dispute over the Middle Eastern country’s nuclear ambitions.
The US and Europe suspect Iran is secretly developing bombs, but Iran insists the programme is for energy.
The US has denied it has any plans to invade the country, but Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with a German interviewer recently that all options, including a military response, were on the table.
Asked about that report, Mashaee said Rumsfeld was like “Dracula showing his teeth”.
Actually, yeah, I can kind of see the Dracula in Rummy. Then again, I kind of like that in a Secretary of Defense. It’s not the nature of the position to be the good cop in the greater scheme of things.
Well, at least Communist Russia didn’t sign another non-aggression pact with a Bolshevik-hating German dictator. Instead, today’s Russia opted for sheer symbolism in hopes of economic gain.
Spain and Russia signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism, local media reported on Thursday.
The two countries agreed to establish an international fund to help terror victims and share information about potential terrorists. They urged to maintain the role of the United Nations in fighting terrorism with multilateral efforts.
The two countries condemned terrorism in all forms, stressing that any anti-terrorism measures should observe human rights and adhere to international law.
Yes, this is purely window-dressing. Spain, soured on aggressively engaging Islamist terror by the Madrid bombings, is quite willing to go through the motions with strictly police endeavours. Meanwhile, Russis must play the game by harder rules, knowing their soft southern belly is exposed to Islamist possibilities. A pact between two governments saying they oppose terror means little; wake me when a civilized nation actually openly states they support it.
So what is the driving force behind this pact today? Money.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also called for boosting economic and investment ties between the two countries, saying Russia had large amounts of unexplored energy resources. He invited Spanish businessmen to invest in Russia.
The two countries signed a number of cooperation agreements on agriculture, sport, anti-drug trafficking, tourism and space exploration.
Again, money. Anything about terror is as meaningful as the wrapping paper on a child’s Christmas present — gone and forgotten in mere seconds.
Damn it, Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan, you’re such a tease.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who has criticized President Bush and other elected officials for their war support since her son was killed in Iraq, said today that she won’t run for office against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
“I felt that putting pressure on her from the outside would be more effective than working from the inside,” said Sheehan, 48, of Berkeley during a morning press conference.
Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, had considered running in the Democratic primary to energize other anti-war candidates. The primary is in June, and candidates must submit their statements by Feb. 14.
[…]
Sheehan, who has never held or run for elected office, considered a Senate run after accusing Feinstein of being out of touch with Californians on the situation in Iraq. Sheehan said the California lawmaker voted for authorizing the use of force in Iraq and will not support calls to immediately bring the troops home.
My, but that would have been good for some chuckles, and the media would have been left with no way to avoid covering Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan’s rather questionable ramblings.
Damn.