Legal and Illegal Orders: a continuing topic

We are facing a constitutional crisis and we need to take it seriously.

Learn the difference between a legal and an illegal military order people. Remember that term – legal orders. Do not be surprised to see this issue visited very soon on every headline in America. Not with Janice Karpinski – make that Brig. General Janice Karpinski, the commander at Abu Ghraib when the torture scandal broke, spilling her guts about Rumsfeld personally authorizing torture in a German court this very day.

Yeah. Look for the issue of legal versus illegal orders not just to come up in the immediate future, look for this issue to take center stage real fuckin’ soon. It’s about to get a lot of overdue press. Things are about to get real ugly real fast and a whole lot of American officials are about to face the very real possibility of Pinochet-type detentions if they venture outside the United States. Wait and see. I don’t know anything classified, but I think I know a bit more than you do, and I have a better analytic framework because of the life I’ve lived - and the shit is going to hit the fan in a big way in short order. Take that to the bank.

If I was alone in my assessments, the Army would not be short 3500 officers throughout the ranks, and the Army Reserves would not be short nearly 11,000 Lieutenants and Captains. Find the closest vet you can - neighbor, grandpa, uncle, cousin or classmate who just came back from the middle east, and ask them what those numbers mean. They are fucking scary to anyone with a military background. Troops must be led and officers do the leading. We are losing officers at a rate unforeseen in history with the exception of the Civil War when fully half of the U.S. military split off to form the Confederate military. If this war had the popular support that the cheerleaders portray, we would not have to resort to 17% of new recruits in on waivers that would have precluded service before this president and his grand scheme to seize oil (he is admitting as much now) broke the volunteer service it took 33 years to build, and destabilized an entire region of the globe with strategic and economic importance.

The cheerleaders like to point to the retention rates. Okay. Let’s have a look. You are in the desert and your time is up. You face staying an open-ended amount of time after your exit date passes due to stop-loss policies, or you can re-up and get a $40,000 bonus. No matter what you do, the day after you were supposed to go home you are still in Anbar getting shot at. You going to take the money, or just stay under protest? I have heard three different soldiers returning for second and third tours use the exact phrase “They ain’t letting me come home anyway, so I’ll take the money. At least my wife can buy a house and 40-grand’ll buy one where we’re from.”

How fucking heartening is that sentiment?

Cheney admits prisoners were waterboarded

This is a waterboard. The picture comes from the Genocidal Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh - Cambodia. This device got a lot of use during the brutal rein of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Today, Dick Cheney admited that the United States has engaged in torture of suspected terrorists. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview in a reich-wing talk-radio interview this afternoon. (Emphasis mine)

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.

"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

Usually we are told what the president really meant. This speaking out to explain the actions of Vice is unusual, since there were no firearms or alcohol involved.

(Hat tip to Enozino at We Torture for the photo.)