I voted for him. I support him on most things. But Obama is so wrong to avoid prosecuting those who tortured suspected terrorists. The US has been actively involved in prosecuting people throughout the world for the same kinds of deeds done for purposes allegedly fair but more often admittedly foul. The fact that others [...]
Way back when, during the Vietnam War, there were areas designated as “free fire zones.” Those were pieces of land that the U.S. military described to the locals, via air-dropped fliers in Vietnamese language, as subject to automatic weapon or artillery fire without asking questions. In the old Wild West parlance, “shoot first and ask [...]
I come late to the party, honoring the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I won’t waste space here reinventing what news and commentary you can find elsewhere. I do want to mention the sad irony of the recent report of the Senate Armed Services Committee on detainee abuse under the Bush [...]
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About 7 1/2 years ago, my wife felt frustrated that she had not received a promotion she had applied for. Everyone (her coworkers and associates) were surprised when someone else got the job instead of her. She worked for the Department of the Army then, before retiring in 2004. As Buddhists we recognize that sometimes we [...]
For those whose loved ones are there now or who suffer after effects from time they spent in combat, Iraq and Afghanistan remain an immediate concern. For others, like myself, the conflicts are an abstraction. The sufferings of the soldiers and the civilians do not pain my psyche. I have to remind myself again and [...]
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Comes now a military (meaning a U.S. military legal officer, not some outsider) defense lawyer saying he was shown an SOP manual for interrogators provided by the Pentagon that urged them to destroy handwritten notes of questioning to avoid the potential disclosure of harsh interrogation techniques. It just keeps on coming. I don’t think I [...]
I caught a bit of Good Morning America this AM. They featured a story about the seven month ordeal of Amanda Knox, an American student jailed in Italy without charges–apparently on suspicion of complicity in the death of her roommate. GMA painted a grim story, tugging at the heart strings of viewers by interviewing the [...]
Let no one accuse the Washington Post editorial and news staff of fraternizing with one another or perhaps even of observing the same world around them. This is especially true when it comes to their respective observations of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
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Forty years ago today, shots rang out in Memphis, killing the Reverend Martin Luther King. I was in Hawaii that day, on R&R from Vietnam. I returned to my unit in Bearcat, the 9th Infantry Division basecamp 25 miles east of Saigon after the riots had spread across America. Things were not much more wonderful [...]
About 18 months ago, U.S. troops deaths in Iraq passed the number of civilians dead as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (which had NOTHING to do with either Iraq or Saddam Hussein). Now the U.S. deaths in Iraq exceed 4,000 people, more than 1,000 beyond the number of Americans killed in the 9/11 [...]
Continue reading about Past 4,000 Dead in Iraq–More than 1,000 beyond 9/11