bookofdays

notes from their front line

I know I said I’d blog from California, but the trip proved unexpectedly tiring: physical challenges to  my vertigo presented by hills and wobbly public transit, the usual business-trip logistics, and intermittent Internet access in the various homestays. But most of all, my brain was full to bursting with stories -- from experts like Judy Ehrlich (link to TGW) and the directors of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers’  Guild, but more important, from veterans of America’s three most recent wars.

I talked to Vietnam veterans like Paul Cox, who “turned off the war,” he says, when his unit slaughtered mamas and babies in their huts; Mike Wong, who left after advanced training rather than go to Vietnam;  and Steve Morse, a born Quaker who went back in after  his court martial for insubordination, and followed the invasion of Cambodia. I talked to Gulf War veteran Daniel Fahey, who went on to become a leading voice for those exposed to depleted uranium. I talked to Stephen Funk, the first public conscientious objector of the Iraq war, whose unusual and lefty background and sweet, fey presence make him an unusual military voice – but who still says “it’s easier to talk to people who’ve been through the training.”

And to two funding members of Iraq Veterans Against the War – one of whom’s still in the National Guard, and another who was a member of the First Marine Expeditionary Force – yes, that one.

Paul Gregory House v...Sammy Alito?

Just back from California and  much to tell. But for right now, I want to  note that last Wednesday, while I interviewed brave antiwar veterans, the Supreme Court heard arguments in House v. Bell -- the case I wrote about here, when it was docketed. And according to the Linda Greenhouse ar the Times, the debate was mildly encouragng for House, and all for whom DNA proved their convictions were wrongly obtained.

An argument before the Supreme Court in a 20-year-old murder case suggested on Wednesday that the court might be willing to open the door a bit wider to death row inmates seeking access to federal court to present plausible but belated claims of innocence.

It was a gritty argument with an unusually intense focus on the evidence that a Tennessee jury considered in convicting Paul G. House of the murder of a neighbor, Carolyn Muncey. Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer were particularly steeped in the details and were deeply engaged on opposite sides of the case, debating it back and forth almost to the exclusion of the lawyers standing before them.

Like I said back then, it's unusual to find a SCOTUS case - even a death penalty case - that talks so explicitly about blood spatters and semen samples. (Then again, the Justices likely watch TV too.)

If Breyer et al. prevail, then my prediction of October may also come true.

Listen to the bigger, broader question the Court also accepted, leading to a rash of headlines like this:

What constitutes a "truly persuasive showing of actual innocence" pursuant to Herrera v. Collins sufficient to warrant freestanding habeas relief?

Listen to that gateway turning, in the Justices' mind, to a floodgate as the history of rotten jurisprudence - sleeping attorneys, watch-checking failure to cross-examine the forensics people, illiterate signed confessions and racist juries - is peeled open like some death-row Superdome. I don't know which Justice insisted it was OK to add the second question, but it's the one that could change the face of death row appeals (or not) very quickly.

Perhaps it's time to ask Sammy Alito, for whom "Scalito" appears to be, according to Dahlia Lithwick and others,  a kind nickname by all accounts,to give his perspective on the execution of innocents. The word, according to Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy. and Boalt Law School professor Goodwin Liu in the L.A. Times, is not promisng.

Such questioning, if done artfully, might just peel away Alito's"nice guy" facade once and for all.

r.i.p. - the first hero of my lai

“Didn't you take your life in your hands, Hugh, when you got out and told the American soldiers who had been killing that they'd better quit and let these people get out of the bunker,” Wallace asked Thompson, who wouldn’t answer.

“Yes sir, he did,” says Colburn. “And he didn’t even take a weapon with him. He had a side arm. He didn’t even have it drawn. He just placed himself … And I was thinking that, at that point, anything could have happened. And we watched Mr. Thompson go to the bunker and bring the people out.”

I learned at about 3 a.m. that Hugh Thompson had died: My first thought, after great sadness, was an additional sadness that I couldn't now speak to him, when giving him his honoured place in my history of dissenting soldiers.   I'll let Richard Goldstein's smart obit remind those who don't know or remember:

Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday in Alexandria, La. He was 62.

satyagraha in NOLA

Mahatma Gandhi and MLK would both be proud of what they've done in the Ninth Ward. Not the government - the people standing in front of bulldozers.

When I 've taught introductory composition to community college students, I often insisted on either beginning or ending with an examination of Martin Luther King's "Three Ways of Meeting Oppression." It was in the text as an example of structured argument, one that examined both acquiescence and violence before asserting

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way         of nonviolent resistance. Like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy, the principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites acquiescence and violence while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces  that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the         violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence  in order to right a wrong.      

I was then often tasked with explaining what King (and I) meant by "nonviolent resistance." Did he mean boycotts? Walking around with a sign? I sometimes, even before they hit the news, cited "peace teams" like the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who place their physical bodies between armies and civilians; much of the coverage, since four CPT workerx were taken hostage, has the same kind of incomprehension as my students expressed about King. And talking about Gandhi and satyagraha, actual resistance in this country, about civil rights workers battered by police in Montgomery, just felt like a history lesson.

If I were teaching this spring, I'd start with that essay, and I would have  this example to point to: Ninth Ward residents putting their bodies between their homes and the bulldozers.

john mccain figleafs a national emergency

Those of you who faithfully read this blog only need to know this: the Graham Amendment, the one all set to undo Rasul and kiss habeas corpus goodbye, just got worse. Forget all the press about John McCain's heroic stand on torture (where were you when Gonzales was confirmed, sir?) - in the dead of night, that gnarly little amendment says, basically, that all such declarations are moot: evidence from torture can still be used as evidence in military tribunals. Contact your Senators now, especially if (as for New Yorkers) they're on one of the relevant committees: tell them to refuse, if necessary, to sign the conference committee report.

How do we know all this? Because they love it. Thanks as always, Hilzoy, for pointing out that

According to an amended draft of the measure being circulated Thursday among the sponsors, Graham has agreed to language that loosens the restrictions on terror evidence that’s obtained through “coercive” interrogations that may occur in other countries. Whereas Graham’s previous draft had forbidden the use of such evidence—in accordance with standard rules of military justice—the new draft says that it should be barred only “to the extent practicable.” The latest bill language also now says that the “probative value” of evidence should be considered—in other words, whether the information is persuasive.

when PR falls on us like snow

Journalists say it over and over:  journalism is the opposite of public relations. We're supposed to be afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted, puncturing holes in the smooth stories played out by politicians, corporations, churches. I came to journalism by way on nonprofit, good-cause PR, and try to remember that the hallmarks of good PR – super-clear stories with exact endings, data that all point the same way – and suggesting that they don't make good journalism.

But we're in an era where PR masking as journalism has defined our politics, with sometimes tragic results. So how do we interact with power, when they've learned how to do what we do?

on a magic carpet (bomb) ride

I know, it's been forever: I'm reporting simultaneously for two different pieces, one about domestic violence in New York's immigrant communities and one, called informally "The Things They Carry," about a prototypical new veteran I've been following around. And I write this about to head into a meeitng of the Veterans Advisory Board of the NY City Council.

But knowing Seymour Hersh's new piece was hitting today, I had to read it right away, and deliver some of the most disturbing bits to you. And of course, in the time I took to put this together, Jehanne was already giving a more plangent frame to it all.

Everyone who, unlike TV-resistant me,  watched Wolf Blitzer last night already knows Hersh's harshest: that when the inevitable troop withdrawals happen, they'll be replaced by an escalated air war, right on Vietnam-Not-So-Lite Schedule: The Return of Carpet Bombing.

In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.

The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?

one hero smears himself, while another implodes.

I'm live-blogging a lecture by Floyd Abrams at Columbia Journalism School - because I can't believe what he's saying, in the process of supposedly discussing the constitutional right to protect confidential sources.

Abrams is a giant of First Amendment law, and I'd looked forward to meeting him from the moment I was admitted to the school's class of 2005 - even though I felt he was being manipulated by an Administration operative (go google "Judith Miller" + "White House Iraq Group").

Or maybe we should all hang ourselves.

Just an update on the Graham Amendment, that assault on our constitution that I posted about some time ago. Hilary and Katherine, the two heroines of Obsidian Wings, have stayed on the job, while the rest of us wrung our hands and chirped "Call your Senators."

Specifically, they're going after Senator Graham's completely bizarre statement that "Two medical malpractice claims have come out of this…. Never in the history of the rule of law of armed conflict has an enemy combatant, POW, person who is trying to kill U.S. troops, been given the right to sue those same troops for their medical care." 

First of all, you can just hear the balls rattling off old Mr. Graham's brain: he sees fake whiplash neck braces, people holding their heads, and a darn good talking point. I can't think he really means this:

"[redacted] is from Yemen. He had an injury to his shin and the US amputated more than necessary. However, because he has refused to cooperate with his interrogators, the US military refused for two years to give him a prosthetic limb. The clinic showed him such a prosthetic several times and said that he could only have it if he talked to his interrogators.

Other prisoners who have been denied prosthetic devices unless they cooperate with the interrogators include (...) [redacted] from Saudi Arabia who was denied a prosthetic limb for more than eight months, [redacted] from Yemen who was denied a prosthetic limb for more than two and a half years, and [redacted] from Tukistan (sic) who is without a prosthetic foot to this date, after three years."

* p. 16: One detainee reports the following:

"One mental health professional actually described to Mr. Begg how he could hang himself. She said that he could take his underwear, thread a blanket or trousers through this, and use it to hang himself. Mr. Begg has since been unable to get this image out of his mind, and it haunts him constantly. For a mental health professional to say this to a patient is the height of stupidity, irresponsibility, or sadism."

Moazzam Begg is also among one of the leading plaintiffs in Rasul v. Rumsfeld ( the suit that prompted Graham's legislation.),  and had his story dramatized in last year's Broadway play, Guantanamo. What he carries inside him I cant't imagine.

I just chose a piece of this section, from an extremely complex and important series of posts. PLEASE go  check out the whole series. Please go read.  Be aware. Write and talk about this whenever you can. (And for lobbying marching orders, check here.)

I'll  be back, to talk a bit about my newest pair of projects - my little contribution to the story of the things they carry.

sometimes the flashbacks burn your retina.

Italian journalists are taking revenge for Nicola Calipari in the best way they can:  they kept working, bringing us news we don't want but  need.  About Fallujah  - news that we could have guessed if we thought we could stand it.

In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

    -- The Independent, US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

I had just turned ten when photos of the napalmed Kim Phuc streamed across the AP wire.  I was probably still wearing that  Nixon button I got from my father; you can likely count me as one of the millions driven by that image to ask more questions about the war in Vietnam.

As much as they twist my stomach, I hope these images get out even more broadly.  Though I wonder - are people so saturated with fictional violent imagery that they won't have the same impact as 30 years ago?

(Via Hunter at kos.)