Target Centermass

Day: February 13, 2006

  • Air Marshals Charged with Plotting to Smuggle Cocaine

    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.

  • White House Takes Fire in Cheney Hunting Mishap

    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:

    • First, check your arrogance. That the story wasn’t immediately spoon-fed to you but instead given to the locals by the locals is not a sign of a cover-up.
    • Second, piss-poor decorum in the White House on the trail of a relatively non-event will not win you points with the American public, a public that grows increasingly tired of such partisanship in our nation’s capital.
    • Third, a sense of perspective would help. After a hunting accident, there is no need for accusatory questions about the vice-president’s seemingly hoped-for resignation, however much the so-called journalist may wish for the demise of Cheney. Follow the story, but don’t try to invent one.

    And that is probably all I’m going to say on this matter, other than to wish the best for Mr. Whittington.

  • At the Movies with the United Nations

    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.

  • Quote of the Week, 13 FEB 06

    The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

    —B. H. Liddell Hart