Army Post Road

     This evening was neat. We went to dinner at Buffalo Wild (go figure, it was a Tuesday, when do we do that?) and then after that we went to Java Joe’s for coffee and that’s when the departure from the typical happened. As we found out, Java Joe’s has a Poetry Slam on the third Tuesday of every month which tonight happened to be. The four of us (my parents and Keely, who also happened to be the party at dinner) sat and listened to the first round (it was a three-round competition) and then they departed. I stayed and listened to another round. It was a very good thing. I hadn’t done anything like that for a while, other than listening to NPR occasionally when I’m driving. In middle school and the first part of high school I really enjoyed poetry so it was nice to go back to that for a little while. Plus there were a few cute girls there (too young for sure though).

     Senator McCain, I can’t help but wonder, do you have a crisis of conscience when you think about whether or not the movement you’ve spearheaded has spared men being detained by American and Coalition forces indignities and short-term suffering or whether it has hamstrung an interrogator from questioning someone vigorously enough to procure information to safeguard hundreds or thousands of American lives from a terrorist attack?

     Beau Elliot, a column writer for the Daily Iowan, and I have never seen eye-to-eye. I’ve pilloried him and some of his columns in letters-to-the-editor in the DI and likewise he’s mocked me (and Steve) in his column. Never, ever, would I have thought I’d be quoting him and recommending people read his column but today that day has happened. The best line from his column today is when he said, “It’s as if the UI policymakers walked up to the Exxon Valdez oil spill with a coffee mug, scooped out a cupful of gunk, and said, ‘There - problem solved.’” Read the rest of his column on the UI’s idiotic policy decision to ban smoking within 25′ of any door of a university building.

     Recently, Pope Benedict XVI quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palealogus in remarks he made at the University of Regensburg in his homeland of Germany. The quote the pontiff used, from a debate the emperor was having with a 14th Century Persian scholar, was as follows: “Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The pope makes this one quotation of words spoken some 615 years ago and what is the response of the followers of Mohammad? A nun is killed in Somalia, death threats against the pope rain in from around the world, churches were attacked and burned in Palestine, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared that it’s war against Christianity won’t end until Islam rules the world.
     Where in all this was Manuel II proven wrong? Where in all this moral indignation on the part of all the Islamic spokesmen is the condemnation? Nadia Igram, the vice president of the [University of Iowa] Muslim Student Association was quoted in the Daily Iowan as having said the pope needs to do a better job representing Islam accurately. Why is it the job of the Pope to represent Islam at all?? Why does the Pope’s discussion of Islam matter more than the actions of millions of Muslims around the world? This time last year Muslims around the world were rioting across Europe and Asia in reaction to cartoons in a newspaper. People were killed and terrorized, millions of dollars in property were damaged and destroyed and yet the criminals and terrorists who did it demanded apologies for the cartoons. When Christian missionaries are murdered, maimed, and out and out slaughtered in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and all across Islamic civilization, where are the riots in America and Europe burning Arab embassies and fireboming mosques? When Osama Bin Laden makes another video calling the United States the Great Satan, promising more 9/11’s, and calling us all infidels, where are the imams and mullahs being gunned down as they leave hospitals caring for the indigent sick?

     With this whole debate raging right now about what exactly Common Article 3 of The Geneva Conventions means as far as what “outrages upon personal dignity,” and “humiliating and degrading treatment,” mean I stop and wonder what the liberals in America and abroad really want to accuse the average American soldier of, what they really want to say each and every one of us is no better than to need detailed, specific, and explicit outlines of just exactly how to treat detainees. Do they want to say that the soldiers, operatives, and whomever else is in the course of their duties entrusted with the task of harvesting actionable intelligence are systematically ignoring the balance that must be stricken between gathering that which is essential for the security of our nation and preserving the dignity and health of the evil people they are tasked to parlay with?
     This whole debate was sparked when the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the military tribunals the president prescribed to try the preponderance of people being held in US custody in Cuba and around the globe were unconstitutional and failed to live up to Common Article 3. One of the biggest sticking points now to write legislation establishing the courts or tribunals that will hear these cases is just how much of the evidence against them the defendants and their attorneys are entitled to see, classified for national security reasons or not. Several senators, namely John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Warner, and a multitude of Democrats, believe that these terrorists (and believe me, 99.9% of the people in custody are terrorists, they weren’t just picked up and taken half-way across the world because they were drunk in public in Kirkuk) deserve to see information that I as an average Joe American soldier can’t see. Information that 90-some percent of the uniformed service members in the Department of Defense, even if they had a need to know, do not possess a security clearance high enough to see the information. Information that is known as Top Secret- Secret Compartmentalized Information. Information that less than 50 people, and usually fewer, ever know the whole picture of the information as it’s usually broken up into the smallest of chunks so people with very high security classification only know a small chunk so they can’t piece together this seriously detrimental stuff and even incidentally and inadvertently pass the most seemingly innocuous part of it along to their wives. Messrs. McCain, Graham, and Warner want this information to be made available to the terrorists at their trials.
     It all makes me think that they really are more concerned with fairness for the captured terrorists than they are in protecting American lives. I can’t help but come away with the impression that safeguarding every single last Constitutional protection for the terrorists is more important to them than gathering the information that could protect soldiers on the frontlines, pedestrians and workers in New York, the throngs of people on Capitol Hill and all around the Potomac, or even their grandchildren. Making things right for the terrorists seems more important to them than making things safe for Americans.

     Oh yeah, the flood of posts I promised two weeks ago never happened. I got distracted.

     Today, Maurice Clarett pled guilty to concealed weapons and robbery charges and was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. Last year, Pierre Pierce pled to third-degree burglary, assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, false imprisonment and fourth-degree criminal mischief and is out of prison already.
     Why has Pierre Pierce twice been given a near-free pass for rape and Maurice Clarett is spending more time in prison on only this first incident? Clarett robbed two people and ran from the police. Serious crimes. Pierce raped one woman so viciously her injuries precluded her continuing as a collegiate athlete after that point. Subsequently he held another woman hostage in her apartment at knife point and threatened her physically and sexually. Heinous crimes. Heinous crimes that we apparently aren’t really going to hold him responsible for.

     Ok folks, be ready for a deluge of posts tomorrow. Plenty stored up over the last two weeks of not being able to do anything besides government work and check the news and sports.

     Keely showed me this video, too. These guys are hysterical and geniuses.

     Keely showed me this video tonight after dinner.

     I still have no Internet or telephone (other than cell phone) connectivity in my quarters at Fort Riley. Still probably won’t for atleast another month.
     On the plus side, I am at my parents’ house at the moment and I’m heading to Iowa City after lunch. Mmmmm lunch. Mmmmm Iowa City.

*We interupt this quote post for a hilarious Rush Limbaugh quote:
“Yes folks, this is a very hard hitting show, but not in the groin.”*

     I must show shower soon before I go to lunch with my mother. I’ll post more over the course of the weekend (which is four days this time, woohoo!).

*Updated on Sunday, 3 September
The lined-out portions of the post are the parts I realized I couldn’t talk American goodly enough to get the post right. I am just that s-m-r-t.*