Mad Dog

Trump actually called James Mattis by his nickname “Mad Dog” when introducing him as his nominee for secretary of defense because, let’s face it, when they handed him a list of possibles, he stopped when he got to the nickname, pointed a stubby finger at the page and shouted “That’s the guy!”

Much has been made of M.D. not being a torture advocate. His position on war crimes is another matter. In the Bush years he routinely intervened to stop trials of marines for murdering civilians and other atrocities and to overturn sentences. The case I particularly followed was that of a group of marines who decided to form a rogue death squad and sneak off base at night to go out hunting for a suspected insurgent. Well, he wasn’t home, so they decided that the next best thing was just to grab and kill any random Iraqi they could find, who turned out to be an invalided former cop (and grandfather of four) who happened to live next door, Hashim Ibrahim Awad or Awad the Lame as he was known. Mattis decided that this murder wasn’t worth more than 17 months in prison (including time awaiting trial).

There are other reasons Mattis would be a bad secretary of war (at least Trump isn’t bringing Rummy out of retirement), including the important principle for a democracy of civilian leadership of the military, but his repeated acts in support of impunity for war crimes should be quite enough to demonstrate his unfitness for the office.

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Awad the Lame redux

The conviction of Sgt. Lawrence “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder” Hutchins III for a murder in Iraq in 2006, has been overturned.

As you may recall from my previous posts, his squad went out on a rogue mission to kill a suspected insurgent, but when that guy turned out not to be at home, they decided that any ol’ Iraqi would do and kidnapped and shot dead the man in the next house, who turned out to be Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a former policeman retired on medical grounds and known as Awad the Lame. Then planted an AK-47 and a shovel on him so they could claim he was planting an IED, even though they seem not to have had an actual IED, which you’d think would be a snag in their cunning little plan. Anyway, the army held him seven days and got a confession without his lawyer being present, so he’s out.

Fun exercise: google this story and count how many of today’s news reports mention Awad the Lame’s name.

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The best Marine he can be

Evidently I missed the 2007 conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III for the kidnapping and murder in Iraq in 2006 of Awad the Lame, a former cop crippled in the line of duty who Hutchins and other pissed-off Marines randomly chose to murder, and left a weapon and a shovel with his body to try and make him look like he’d been planting IEDs, being overturned in April. So Hutchins, the last of the convicted Marines to be released for the 2006 killing, is back on active duty (although the Navy is appealing the court decision). “I’m going to be the best Marine I can be today,” the war criminal told the AP, which isn’t quite as quotable as “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder.”

Awad the Lame redux

Lawrence Hutchins III is petitioning for clemency for his part in the murder of Iraqi citizen, Awad the Lame, in Hamandiya in 2006. If released, the sheriff of Plymouth County, Mass. will give the man – quoted at his court-martial as saying “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder” – a job as an emergency medical technician. Hutchins has written to the parole board that he now knows that shooting random innocent Iraqis eleven times is wrong. So that’s okay then.

Ensuring fair treatment

An email from the Fred Thompson campaign begins a section, “Fred on the Issues” thusly: “Whoa now. Let’s hold our horses a minute and think about the calls for new tax increases to fix our infrastructure problems....” That’s just the sort of ersatz folksiness so sorely missing from this campaign. Can you imagine the drawl-off of an Edwards-Thompson debate?

Headline of the day: “Accused Says He Was Just Milking Goat.”

Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who seems to have extensive powers to prevent carriages, if you will, of justice, let two of those convicted in the killing of Awad the Lame, Tyler Jackson and Jerry Shumate, go free 4 months early from their plea-bargained terms of 21 months. The release, according to a statement from the Marines, was to “ensure fair treatment.” To whom, they did not say. Mattis also granted clemency to another participant, Robert Pennington, who was given an 8-year sentence just 6 months ago. Mattis cited his age and lowly rank, failing to note that it is generally young people of low rank who are sent into combat. If 21 was below the age at which Pennington was expected to be responsible for his actions, maybe he shouldn’t have been given a gun and sent to Hamdaniya in the first place. Awad the Lame (whose 4 grandchildren are pretty young too, if anyone cares, which one might have cause to doubt given that Awad the Lame is referred to only as “an Iraqi man” in the NYT, San Diego Union-Tribune, and LAT articles I consulted) was killed 16 months ago, in April 2006. Of the 8 men tried in 2007, all of whom pleaded or were found guilty, only 1 is still in prison. And Mattis is still reviewing his sentence.

On Thursday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart did a segment on Bush’s use of “in other words.” Stewart gets upwards of a million bucks a year, I get the satisfaction of a job well done. Life is just so completely entirely fair. The clip is on the Daily Show website, for however long those things stay up. He explains to Chimpy, “We understand what you’re saying. The look on our face isn’t confusion, it’s disbelief. In other words, we understand, we just don’t fucking get it.”

If I can serve as unpaid gag writer/researcher for the Daily Show, the least you people can do is complete one joke for me (I can’t seem to think of a punchline worthy of the set-up). Giuliani says that he misspoke when he claimed yesterday that in 2001 he was at Ground Zero “as often, if not more, than most of the workers.” So what did he really mean to say? I was at my cigar club as often, if not more... I was at my mistresses’ apartment as often, if not more... I was giving interviews to Fox News as often...

I’m guessing they have a separate line for reincarnation licenses at the Llasa DMV

Cpl. Marshall Magincalda is sentenced to time served for the murder of Awad the Lame. And demotion to private. Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, however, gets 15 years.

Marine Sgt. Major Jeffrey Morin, CentCom’s top enlisted officer, who is already just one letter away from the esteemed title of Military Moron, says the “surge” is working. “They are buying generators -- you don’t buy those unless you have confidence.” Confidence that electrical power for more than a couple of hours a day will never be restored.

Sentence of the day, from a BBC report out of Tibet: “From 1 September, all reincarnations of ‘Living Buddhas’ would need government approval, Xinhua news agency said, citing the State Administration for Religious Affairs.” The original headline for that story in the Times of London, which has sadly been de-snarked since its original posting: “Buddhas Must Get China’s OK to Reincarnate.”

Speaking of reincarnation, what do you have to have done in your previous life to come back as... this?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me

Gen. Rick Lynch, Military Moron, says that the enemy in Iraq is “the most vicious enemy we’ve ever seen. He has no respect for human life”. So Lynch will launch a wave of aerial bombing.

Sgt Lawrence Hutchins III has been convicted for the murder of Awad the Lame, but without premeditation, presumably because he and his men killed Awad the Lame after the guy they premeditated murdering wasn’t at home (by the way, none of the 8 were charged with conspiracy to murder that guy). Still, nice to see one member of the death squad convicted of actually killing Awad the Lame, the charge for which everyone else slid, either by acquittal or plea-bargain. Hutchins may have assured his conviction by his reported remark on the night, “Congratulations gents, we’ve just gotten away with murder.” For some reason he was acquitted of kidnapping. Hutchins was also the only defendant who didn’t claim post-traumatic stress.

Wars have repercussions for decades, including lethal ones. Last week several Vietnamese children, three I think, were killed by a 1970s landmine. This week a British man died at 86 from the effects of having been beaten by the Germans when he was a prisoner during World War II.

Public executions return to Iran. Fun for the whole family.

The America I know is the last, best hope for that child looking up at a helicopter

Like Trent Thomas, Cpl. Marshall Magincalda has been convicted of conspiracy to murder Awad the Lame, but not of the actual murder and kidnapping or of making a false statement, although unlike Thomas he was found guilty of housebreaking and petty larceny. Both juries (all members of which served in Iraq) seem to have come to agreements to ignore some of the elements of the crime so that they can justify handing down ridiculously light sentences.

Venezuela’s RCTV has finally begun operating as a cable station, only to find that Chavez is going after its license there too, demanding that it register as a “national content provider,” with the obligation to break into its programming to broadcast every one of Hugo Chavez’s four-hour-long speeches.

Barack Obama gave a foreign policy speech today intended to dispel Hillary’s attacks on him as a foreign-policy light-weight (which he is, as is she). I have only read it rather than seen it, but on the page, at least, it is an effective speech, with lots of really good lines. Totally misguided, but you gotta respect the quality of the rhetoric. For example, after 9/11, “Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century’s stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state.”

Obama effectively rebuts Hillary Clinton, as he’s been doing since the last debate, by linking her approach to that of George Bush: “The lesson of the Bush years is that not talking does not work. Go down the list of countries we’ve ignored and see how successful that strategy has been.” The funny thing about this is that Hillary went into that debate planning to call him “naive and irresponsible” about something, the way Reagan had that “There you go again” line prepared, and this just happened to be the opening he gave her.

As good as the speech is, I’m not sure how big a market there is for it. Are there a lot of people out there who like The War Against Terror (TWAT) but just dislike the way Bush has waged it, who want to pull out of Iraq in order to invade Pakistan? Or, as he calls it, “the right battlefield.”

Some of the rhetoric doesn’t stray far from the Bushian/Cheneyesque. Four times he spoke of the need to “take out” the terrorists. “We are in the early stages of a long struggle.” “Bin Laden and his allies know they cannot defeat us on the field of battle or in a genuine battle of ideas.” They may (questionably) know the former, but they certainly do not believe the latter. “[W]e will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal”. I’m sure I’ve heard Bush say that, and I’ve never been clear exactly what we were supposed to have done.

“In ending the war, we must act with more wisdom than we started it.” Wow, talk about setting the bar low for yourself.

He has some specific proposals, like a world-wide network of secret police to “to take down terrorist networks from the remote islands of Indonesia, to the sprawling cities of Africa.” And a “$2 billion Global Education Fund to counter the radical madrasas”. Oh good, the Christian nation will fund anti-Islamic propaganda, and give education programs a bad name in the Muslim world.

And he will go to Korea. Sorry, does everyone remember that Eisenhower campaigned on a promise that he would “go to Korea,” without quite saying what it is he would do when he got there, play a few rounds of golf for all anyone knew? Anyway, Obama says, “In the first 100 days of my Administration, I will travel to a major Islamic forum and deliver an address to redefine our struggle.” “I will make clear that we are not at war with Islam”. Bush also says that, so I don’t know how impressed the Muslims will be.

His image of non-Americans, which he repeated no fewer than six times, is of a child looking up at a helicopter. We’re in the helicopter. Or we are the helicopter, I don’t know. Foreigners, though, are definitely children in this scenario. “That child looking up at the helicopter must see America and feel hope.” “I will speak directly to that child who looks up at that helicopter, and my message will be clear: ‘You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.’” “The America I know is the last, best hope for that child looking up at a helicopter.”

Pakistan, shit, I’m still only in Pakistan.

You can’t just shoot anybody

Latest revelation from the court-martial of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III for the murder of Awad the Lame: it was inspired by a 1999 Willem Dafoe movie I’ve never heard of, “The Boondock Saints,” about some guys in da neighborhood who decide to do the vigilante thing and kill members of the Russian mob. The Onion’s A.V. Club describes it as “Less a proper action-thriller than a series of gratuitously violent setpieces strung together with only the sketchiest semblance of a plot... clearly designed to appeal to heartless armchair sadists.” Much like, well, you know.

The witness who gave us this tidbit, Lt. Nathan Phan, admits that he really did once order Hutchins to choke a prisoner unconscious. Phan, who is testifying in exchange for not being charged with beating up prisoners, agreed that maybe that order contributed to the lawless environment that led to the murder of Awad the Lame.

The Pentagon has been talking a lot about “bottom-up” reconciliation in Iraq. Evidently, while parliament and the Maliki regime may be failing to achieve anything, there’s just boatloads of bottom-up reconciliation, which is conveniently immeasurable – unbenchmarkable if you will – but which they’ll be happy to tell you a few anecdotes about. And Sunni militias, which the US is arming, they count too, because sectarian militias have always been such a force for reconciliation. Says Gen. Petraeus of what either he or the WaPo call these “grass-roots forces,” “This is a very, very important component of reconciliation because it’s happening from the bottom up”. Must be a definition of reconciliation with which I was not familiar.

The Post also checked in with Col. Ricky Gibbs, who is helping Sunnis form militias in Baghdad itself. He was telling some Sunni leaders (however that is defined – the article doesn’t say), “You have the green light. But they have to follow the rules. You can’t just shoot anybody. No vengeance . . . But the bad guys -- I don’t care. Go get them.” See, now they know they can only shoot “bad guys.” I don’t see what could possibly go wrong with that.

I’m not really sure whether the American military types are really so stupid as to believe this is an effective military measure and that these militias in Anbar and now Baghdad will focus their lethal attentions exclusively on “Al Qaida in Iraq,” or if this is a “divide et impera” tactic to put pressure on Maliki and the Shiites – the longer you take passing an oil law, the more guns we’ll give to your enemies.

A proud moment for George W. Bush

Tony Blair says there is a “sense of possibility at the moment” in the Middle East. He does not say if there is a possibility of sense.

Lance Cpl Stephen Tatum said (not under oath) at his hearing that during the Haditha Massacre, he killed civilians in their home because he didn’t know that there were civilians in civilian homes: “I didn’t know there was women and children in that house until later.” In fact, he had another word for them: “I really couldn’t make out more than targets.” He said that if he had known, “I would have physically stopped everybody in that room from shooting.” However, witnesses have testified that he was told, gave an order to kill them, then went back and did it himself. Also, last year he told investigators, “targets women and kids can hurt you, too.”

And in the court-martial of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, the mastermind behind the abduction and murder of Awad the Lame, we are told that he hatched the plan after hearing that another squad had kidnapped and murdered a suspected insurgent and got away with it. Hutchins’s lawyer says that at the time he was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and poor leadership. For example, he was once ordered to choke a prisoner into unconsciousness.

According to the NYT, every week or two Bush calls up Maliki and they have a drunken discussion about God, or something.

Bush held a little photo op as he received the report from Donna Shalala and Elizabeth Dole on the medical treatment of wounded soldiers. “And so they took a very interesting approach. They took the perspective from the patient”. Also present, Bob Woodruff of ABC, who was injured in Iraq. Bush told him, “Congratulations on the will to recover.”

Bush’s handlers decided that he should celebrate that report and demonstrate his commitment to the wounded by going jogging with two of them.


Afterwards, he said, “Running with these two men is incredibly inspirational for me.” So it was all worth while.


“And it should be inspirational to anybody who has been dealt a tough hand.” No, no, George, it’s their legs that are made of metal, their legs.


He added, “It’s a proud moment for me, a proud moment.” It was unclear what he felt he had to be proud of.

We will help you

Thank god, the long national nightmare of the Cheney presidency is over.

Corp. Trent Thomas says that it was God’s will that he not go to jail for killing Awad the Lame: “God’s willing for me to get out.” Also, that kidnapping and murdering a civilian was entirely justified: “I believe we did what we needed to do save Marines’ lives. I think anybody who understands what war is or what combat is understands.” The LAT analyzes why Thomas is a free man, and is the first newspaper to mention his race.

The RAND Corporation produced a report (pdf) for the Pentagon, Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation. They must know something about marketing the unmarketable: they got the Pentagon to spend $400,000 on this study. Which is about the need to change the “branding” of the Iraq and Afghan wars, because if there’s been anything missing in these wars, it’s “the application of select, proven commercial marketing techniques.” Which the authors like to call “shaping,” as in, “To ensure victory, U.S. forces must effectively shape the indigenous population.”

“It is exceedingly difficult to identify target audiences in complex and dangerous operating environments, and there is often a lack of access to segments of a population critical to conducting message pretesting.” Yes, it’s hard to run a focus group in a war zone. (When I wrote that, I was mocking. But on page 46 they do actually call for focus groups, quoting someone complaining that “products” intended for use on the Taliban were being “pretested” on civilians rather than on Taliban prisoners.) (And on pages 63-4, it discusses the difficulties in doing surveys before the actual invasion, suggesting “virtual focus groups with members of the population via Internet chat rooms.”)

A failure to synchronize messages is called “information fratricide.”

“First, the U.S. military should adopt the business strategy of segmentation and targeting whereby it would partition the indigenous population into selected groups based on their
level of anticipated support for coalition presence and objectives. Positioning is another marketing tool of potential value, one used to create an intended identity for each product that is meaningful, salient, and motivating to the consumer marketplace.”

“Customer satisfaction refers to the level of contentment consumers experience after using a product or service. Popular satisfaction with U.S. force presence can similarly determine allegiances.”

Soldiers should be issued “smart cards containing shaping themes.”

It suggests “harness[ing] the influencing power of indigenous government employees and security forces by having them keep blogs about their experiences with coalition forces and the indigenous government.”

It notes that the enemy too engages in “shaping” activities: intimidating journalists, filming their operations, providing basic services, that sort of thing. Also, culturally specific things like issuing fatwas. “These are particularly challenging to U.S. shaping efforts, as there is little opportunity to reply in kind.”

It documents several inadvertent affronts to Muslim sensibilities: “As coalition helicopters fly over urban areas, the gunners, whose feet hang from the aircraft, have inadvertently offended thousands of Iraqis who gaze above. Similarly, the use of dogs in house-to-house searches and the wearing of dark sunglasses have also angered some in the Iraqi population.”

“Interactions between U.S. service personnel and civilians drive popular perceptions of the U.S. force. Business practices that help align customer service representative actions with the intended brand identity can benefit the U.S. military.”

“Brands such as Starbucks and Apple have captured the hearts and minds of consumers and have reaped financial windfalls in return.” Hey, Trent Thomas is available for one of those “I’m a Mac”/“I’m a PC” commercials.

The keys to branding: “Know your target audience through segmentation and targeting.” I think the Iraqis have really had quite enough of segmentation and targeting. “Strategically synchronize the U.S. military brand.”

“These perceptions will constitute the U.S. military brand identity and will heavily influence how the population aligns its support. A force that is perceived as helpful and serving the best interests of the population will be far better accepted than a force perceived as hostile, insensitive, and rude.” Did I mention the Pentagon paid $400,000?

“Like commercial firms that must update unattractive brand identities, so too should the United States consider updating its military’s brand identity to suit current and future operational environments.” See, the problem is that “Since before World War II, the U.S. military has developed a brand identity based on a force of might.” And this brand identity is out of date for counter-insurgency wars.

They suggest the brand identity “We will help you.”


The main difficulty establishing that brand identity is when the US military goes out and kills people: “Virtually any kinetic operation has the potential to alienate civilians.”

If you kick down doors, they suggest, have someone there to fix the doors. If you accidentally kill someone and give out one of those $2,500 condolence payments, “determine whether the indigenous population and the afflicted families accept the prescribed payment as fair and reasonable.”

Try to achieve “customer satisfaction.”

The Marine Corps, it’s me

An email from the McCain campaign presents yet more fun facts about John McCain: John McCain’s favorite movies include “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Some Like it Hot.” His favorite actors include Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.

Bush, today: “Failure in Iraq would send an unmistakable signal to America’s enemies that our country can be bullied into retreat.” Bullied. Bullied!

Interesting factoid, in a BBC article about the Uganda government’s plan to introduce compulsory military training: there’s only one African country with a military draft, Eritrea.

Yesterday in the hearing for Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum re the Haditha Massacre, there was a debate over what the evidence showed about the death of a 4-year old boy. The investigator believes someone stood over him and deliberately executed him. Tatum’s lawyer proposed that “it was much more likely that the boy had been huddled at a woman’s bosom when the Marines burst into the room and sprayed it with gunfire after first tossing in a grenade.” So that’s okay, then.

“Insultingly light sentence,” I predicted. Corp. Trent Thomas was sentenced to zero jail time for the killing of Awad the Lame. He has been reduced to a private and been given a bad conduct discharge from the Marine Corps. Thomas had begged to be allowed to stay in the Marines: “I’ve never been good at anything until I came to the Marine Corps. It’s pretty obvious Michael Jordan was meant to play basketball. Tiger Woods was meant to play golf. The Marine Corps, it’s me.”

Bush and Sugar Ray Leonard. You know, I’m not ordinarily a big fan of the pugilistic arts, but...

Guilty-ish

Corp. Trent Thomas has been convicted of kidnapping and conspiring to murder Awad the Lame, but not for premeditated murder, making a false official statement, housebreaking or larceny. Now, if he was guilty of the things he was convicted of, then he was guilty of all the other charges, which were elements of the same crime. So what the jury did was to “compromise” with the facts in order to avoid the mandatory life sentence attached to the premeditated murder charge and allow themselves to give Thomas what I predict will be an insultingly light sentence.

Fun fact about courts martial: the jurors vote by secret ballot.

Two more courts martial in this case will begin later this month.

This one’s for you: ||||||||||||||||||||||||

The Haditha Massacre hearing for Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum heard today from another corporal who shot a few people that day but was given immunity. Cpl. Humberto Manuel Mendoza says that when they raided a house, shooting a man in the house for, you know, looking at them, he found two women and several children in a bedroom, informed Tatum, who said, “Well, shoot them.” Tatum then went back and did it himself (in the news reports I’ve read, the names and ages of the dead are nowhere to be found). Tatum would later tell investigators, “women and kids can hurt you, too,” adding, “I stand fast in my decisions that day, as I reacted to the threats that I perceived at that time.” Threats like women and kids. Which are the sort of people you tend to find in, you know, homes. Tatum was known to opine (this is after the massacre) that the way to fight a war is to go into a city and kill every living thing.

You’ll remember that the Haditha Massacre began after a roadside bomb killed a Marine. When the unit sent the Marine’s pack to his parents, they signed it, Tatum adding 24 hatch marks, representing every civilian massacred at Haditha, and the words “This one’s for you.” Tatum’s lawyer suggested the marks referred to a rosary.

And in the other war crimes trial I’ve been following, Trent Thomas’s court-martial concluded today, with his lawyer claiming that the prosecution never claimed that the man Thomas murdered was in fact Awad the Lame or even an Iraqi, so he should be acquitted. Not sure I follow the logic. “There was not murder. There was a killing,” he said. Well that’s okay then.

Vanity Fair has an article on the development of torture techniques by a couple of Mormon psychologists the government hired with your tax dollars. Subtle stuff, as you’d expect from a psychologist. Actually, the authors don’t know if the CIA actually did use that coffin they built to soften up Abu Zubaydah by burying him alive... but the idea was approved by White House lawyers.

Deadly force is the proper response to a threat

Today in the court-martial of Corp. Trent Thomas for the murder of Awad the Lame, a doctor at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda claimed that because Thomas was so often exposed to bomb blasts in Iraq, he may have received a hitherto unnoticed brain injury that caused him to be incapable of saying no to orders.

But how does that explain the same symptoms in [insert name of idiot pro-war politician of your choice here]?

In another war-crimes trial, that of Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum for his part in the Haditha Massacre, Tatum’s lawyer insisted that he was under attack, or at least that he’d heard a metallic sound which might have indicated that he was under attack, or at least that he knew a house was “hostile” because his squad leader was shooting at it, so he did too. The lawyer argued, “He was taught that deadly force is the proper response to a threat.” Actually, his rules of engagement said he also had to know what he was shooting at, it was written down on a card and everything, but his lawyer says they can’t prove he actually had the card at the time. He added, “We would have chaos on the battlefield if every lance corporal questioned every order given by a staff sergeant.” Yes, much better to have a mass slaughter of civilians than to have chaos on the battlefield. Chaos is so... chaotic.

If somebody is worth shooting once, they’re worth shooting twice

Another corporal in Trent Thomas’s unit, Saul Lopezromo (who did not participate in the killing of Awad the Lame), testified that their unit had been criticized for not beating up enough Iraqis during their patrols. He also said that when Thomas shot Awad seven times after he had already been shot by others in the unit, he was engaging in what Marines call “dead-checking” (i.e., killing off the wounded rather than, say, providing medical care). “If somebody is worth shooting once, they’re worth shooting twice,” said the corporal, who said that dead-checking is routinely taught at Camp Pendleton boot camp. Um, someone might want to check into that.

He also said that shooting a random Iraqi was in fact “killing the enemy... Because of the way they live, the clans, they’re all in it together.” I see a bright career ahead of him in anthropology. Or genocide.

Awad the Lame, we hardly knew ye

The court-martial of Corp. Trent Thomas seems to be going pear-shaped. Prosecutors are saying that the murdered Iraqi may not have been Awad the Lame, although they’re also saying they have DNA evidence that he was, but they are changing his name on the charge sheet to “an unknown Iraqi.” I don’t know what that’s all about, and it doesn’t help that the only news source covering this case is the San Diego Union-Tribune. The defense is jumping on this confusion to claim that the guy killed in Awad the Lame’s home on the last day Awad the Lame was ever seen alive could have been anyone, even, Dum Dum DUMMMMM... an insurgent! Specifically, the cousin of the man the Marines intended to kidnap, frame and murder. Thomas’s lawyers seem to think that if the man his unit chose at random to kidnap, frame and murder when they couldn’t find the guy they wanted to kidnap, frame and murder was in fact an insurgent, then no crime was committed.

You don’t surge on a permanent basis

A court martial has begun in the murder in April 2006 by 7 Marines and a Navy corpsman of a man in Hamdania, Iraq. They came up with a plan (without orders) to kidnap and kill a suspected insurgent, then plant an AK-47 and a shovel on the body, to make it look like he was caught in the act of planting IEDs. Not finding him at home, they mulled it over and decided (this is the part I want to hear more about during the trial) to go ahead with their cunning plan, only with whoever they could randomly snatch from a nearby house. Who turned out to be known as Awad the Lame. The lawyer for Corp. Trent Thomas said he simply “had no choice but to do what he did” because “Marines in combat don’t challenge orders.” Well, when the order is to murder a civilian in cold blood (which, by the way, is not my idea of “combat”), maybe it’s time to start.

By the way, since this is a crime of xenophobia, it might affect our perception of the story to know, as none of the wire services report, that Corp. Thomas is black. I’m not saying that’s explanatory of anything, just that race is not irrelevant in this country, this world or this war. They did manage to mention the less salient fact that he has two children (Awad the Lame had 11, and I forget how many grandchildren; the stories mention that he was a grandfather without giving either number, being more interested in humanizing the American killer than the Iraqi victim).

Excuse me, I meant to say alleged killer. The BBC a couple of days ago reported that police somewhere or other had “foiled an alleged plot.”

This weekend, Karl Rove was at the Aspen Ideas Festival, one of whose ideas was, hey, let’s invite Karl Rove. Karl Rove came with his own ideas: 1) Al Qaida is responsible for 80-90% of the bombs killing American soldiers in Iraq (complete nonsense, of course, but weren’t the Bushies trying to blame all those bombs on Iran?), 2) “we will be redefining the mission because the goal of the surge was to get us to a place where we could redefine the mission”; 3) Guantanamo is the bestest prison camp ever: “Our principle health problem down there is gain of weight, we feed ‘em so well.” Sometimes through tubes inserted in their nostrils.

The odd idea that the purpose of the “surge” was actually to give the White House time to think up a purpose for the surge was repeated by White House spokesmodel NEW NICKNAME ALERT! NEW NICKNAME ALERT! Tony “Frat Tony” Fratto: “It shouldn’t come as any surprise that we here in the Administration . . . are thinking about what happens after a surge... A surge, by definition, is temporary in nature. You don’t surge on a permanent basis.”

Palestinian president-for-life Abbas accuses Hamas of letting Al Qaida into Gaza “and through its bloody behaviour Hamas has become very close to al-Qaida.”

You don’t normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles

The WaPo has a new detail about the Afghan secret police’s helpful editorial suggestions to the press: the correct term is not “warlord” but “freedom fighter.”

8 Marines are charged with killing an Iraqi and planting a “throw-down” shovel and an AK-47 on his body to make him look like he was planting an IED (how that works without also planting an IED on him, I don’t know). That Iraqi’s name? “Awad the Lame.”

But remember, 99.9% of American troops are killing people only in approved ways, so why focus on 0.1%? Unless it’s the richest 0.1% of Americans. Those people need a tax cut.

(Update: more details this morning. The Marines, after a fruitless night staking out some holes, waiting for someone to put an IED in them, went looking for someone named Gowad, but figured Awad [the Lame] was close enough. Hat tip to Zeynap, who hasn’t been posting enough lately.)

For 9 months, the Pentagon kept from the families of two dead soldiers that they had been killed, deliberately, by Iraqi soldiers. As they stand up, we stand down, or at least duck.

After threatening to shoot down North Korea’s missile if it is tested and then realizing, Oh yeah, we can’t actually do that, the US is refusing NK’s offer to forego the test if direct talks resume. The US rejects that because it’s just not polite. Sez John Bolton, the poster boy for polite, “You don’t normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.” No, you “refuse to rule out any of our options” – isn’t that what we always say about Iran?