This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Help my buddy out

    One of the best friends of this blog has been Robin from Chickenhawk Express. We chased Adam Kokesh across the internet together for months, and we both had our first grandchild the same week. She even nominated me for Best Conservative blog at the Weblog Awards – well, she made the cut for her traffic category – so shoot over to this link and vote. Often.

    I’m glad COB6’s son is safe – you have to send me your address if you want those cigars, buddy.

    The blog looks good – but I’ve lost my connection three times typing this – see ya’all soon.

    Here’s a photo from my room at 6am this morning – those are the last of Noel’s rains coming over the Dariens.

    The Panamanian women still love me 30 years later. 

  • I need a vacation

    Ya’all may have noticed some new authors around here lately, well, it’s because it’s time for my annual pilgramage to warmer climes. Last year I tried to post from paradise, but the internet was so spotty in my third world paradise, I couldn’t post often.

    Since I have a number of daily fans, I decided to turn over keys to this place to my three friends.

    GI Jane from The Foxhole and located in Ohio with whom I’ve slammed back some brews and picked crabs, COB6 from Cotchety Old Bastard, who lives in Texas and whom I’ve known since the first war against Hussein and Don Carl a former Marine who lives out in California.

    They all agreed to help me keep ya’all coming back while I’m gone, thankfully. Where’m I going?

    shared-relief-map-of-panama-1995.gif

    We’ll be staying in one of those tall buildings in the banner. The banner is actually a picture I took two years while dining with another commenter here, Renwaa.

    Well, I’m off to soak up some sun and some Havana Club, and take in the Independence Day festivities.

    Big thanks to my three buddies for taking care of the joint. Sorry – I drained the liquor cabinet last night. Don’t forget to wipe your feet.

    See ya’ll next Thursday!

  • The discussion over waterboarding is tortuous

    Evan Perez in the Wall Street Journal reports that Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey won’t go on the record as condemning waterboarding until he has the facts – like a judge should say in public;

    Though the support of several important senators is on the line, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey declined to say if he considers an interrogation technique that simulates drowning to be torture and therefore illegal, though he called the procedure “repugnant.”

    In a letter responding to questions from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey promised to review the interrogation methods used by the government to ensure they comply with the law, adding that if he finds anything illegal he would “rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports use of the technique.”

    A White House official defended the response provided by Mr. Mukasey because “he has not been briefed on classified programs. He’s a judge — and as any good judge knows, you need to have facts to make determinations.”

    Of course, this has sent the Left into hyperspace. The Washington Post reports Congressional reaction in Mukasey Losing Democrats’ Backing;

    The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has so far refused to schedule a vote on Mukasey’s nomination. All four Democratic senators running for president said before the release of Mukasey’s letter yesterday evening that they will vote against him because of his handling of the waterboarding issue.

    Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the Democratic front-runner, said yesterday that “we cannot send a signal that the next attorney general in any way condones torture or believes that the president is unconstrained by law.” Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), a member of the Judiciary panel, issued similar statements.

    Technorati will lead you to one-line posts like “If it’s repugnant, it’s torture,…” and “Looks like torture to me.” Deep thoughts all. I think that sucking the brains out of a child who is 3/4 birthed is repugnant, too, but I’m pretty sure the Left wouldn’t let me call it torture. Watching The View or Keith Olberman “looks” like torture to me.

    Trolling the “my brother waterboarded me” post at the Democratic Underground yesterday, I stumbled over this nugget;

    PearliePoo2 Donating Member (258 posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Oct-29-07 06:58 AM
    Response to Original message
    9. The line coming from the admin
    is that it’s a little “head dunking”
    Bullshit
    Apparently heart attacks DO happen and the victim is revived (sometimes) only to be subjected to it again and again.
    I think read that the head is inclined down and arms and legs are strapped tight.

    I’d be interested to learn where this particular member got the information that torturees have actually had heart attacks while being waterboarded – I’m pretty certain there’s no information available to the public that would support that contention. Reviving a person from a heart attack should be so easy that a potentially valuable asset can go through the process repeatedly – completely immature. It’s probably more of a fantasy he/she had during a bout of the Bush Derangement Syndrome – or saw in a movie once. 

    I’m not sure what, exactly the Left is trying to accomplish by even having this discussion. I’d like to think they’re just blinded by their own guilt-ridden consciences, but unfortunately, that’s probably not the answer.

    The answer is probably closer to the fact that waterboarding is a painless way to extract information from recalcitrant thugs who want to kill, or facilitate the killing, of innocent people – it works, and it’s leading us to victory over the blood-drenched thugs. That’s as good a reason as any for the Left to call for ending it. They haven’t had many victories against the people who are fighting and winning this war, so I guess they’re happy when they can score little victories that hamstring that thin red line that stands between us and the thugs.

    I’d like to know what the Left considers acceptable by the Bush Administration to extract information that saves American lives from hardcases. A stern expression? Witholding their daily ration of lowfat mocca latte? Making them read the Washington Times instead of the Washington Post?

    Just as in every other discussion we have with the Left, we can be sure their answer to the question would begin with “I don’t know, but….” They’ve got plenty of ideas about what the Bush administration CAN’T do, but none that are helpful.

    I predicted two months ago that President Bush will finish his term without an actual fulltime Attorney General because the Left will make it too hard for him to get one through the advice and consent process. That prediction is coming true.

  • DUmmies live up to their name

    From the same people who brought you the “Fire can’t melt chicken wire and cinderblocks in my backyard” experiment, we now have the “Waterboarding is torture” experiment from Allahpundit;

    “[I]f it isn’t torture, it can’t be that bad, right?” our hero wonders rhetorically before declaring it most definitely bad — and recounting how he went in for one, two, three, four rounds of the stuff. Which, incidentally, was fewer than his brother managed. A possible alternative standard: If it is torture, you probably wouldn’t be so willing to have it done to you.

    More experiment narrative from Jammie Wearing Fool;

    Let me tell you this, it’s not pleasant. And we were operating under circumstances where we absolutely knew that the other person wasn’t going to kill us with the technique.

    I was wiped out after four tries. My best time was 20 seconds, and I literally gritted it out. It took about all I had, so much so that right afterward on my last try I barely lasted 9 seconds.

    My brother tried it a few more times than I did. He beat me on average times, but his highest was 18 seconds.

    So who’s running the Left these days? Johnny Knoxville? Maybe they can try beheading each other next and see if that’s any easier to withstand.

    jackass.jpg

    I’m sure these goons think that waiting until after you smoke the pot to order the pizza is torture, too.

  • Precursor to 2009

    Last year Maryland had a Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich, and a $billion year over year surplus and a “rainy day” fund. Now, less than nine months after Democrat Martin O’Malley was sworn in as governor of Maryland – and during a substantial economic boom in the State, surpluses and “rainey day” funds are gone. In fact, the Democrat governor has called for a 20% increase in the state’s sales tax, an increase in income taxes and plans to tax the poor with legalized gambling.

    Marylanders are acting surprised that a Democrat would raise taxes – well, most of them, anyway. Yesterday they had a protest in Annapolis, the State Capitol reports the Washington Examiner;

    “No new taxes” was the rallying cry Monday of demonstrations by taxpayer, conservative and Republican groups around the State House.

    The relatively modest turnouts of about 300 people came just hours before Gov. Martin O’Malley was set to give a short pep talk to a special session of the General Assembly he called to raise a series of taxes.

    “I’m going to stand up and oppose every stinking tax,” said Del. Donna Stifler, R-Harford, typifying the comments of dozens of GOP lawmakers.

    Stifler said she was getting 80 to 100 e-mails and phone calls a day opposing any tax increases.

    And the guilty white people were there to counter-protest;

    Progressive Maryland, an organization of liberal social and labor groups, mounted its own quickly called rally to counter the Republican theme and support the governor’s tax package.

    “We believe the governor’s package represents by far the best deal for working families,” said Sean Dobson, executive director of the Progressive Maryland.  

    “Working families”. That’s the code phrase for non-working families. When Democrats claim something is good for “working families”, that means they’re going to screw the living shit out of working families. Paying taxes for 40 years has taught me that. 

    Former Governor Ehrlich also took the opportunity today to write an op/ed piece in the Examiner detailing the failures of the current administration;

    Here’s what leaders in Maryland don’t get: We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. With creativity and slower budget growth, legislators can align Maryland’s spending with its needs without raising taxes.

    Yet they inherently believe that low taxes are a problem that must be “fixed” in order to expand government’s reach into our wallets and our lives.

    Nowhere is that more evident than the bloated salaries doled out to political appointees. The new administration approved a whopping 58 percent pay raise for the head of the Public Service Commission, who then forced a 50 percent increase in electricity costs on one million state residents.

    The new comptroller gave three of his aides salary increases to $150,000 each — on par with Cabinet secretaries with infinitely greater responsibilities.

    These raises may be small in the context of a $30 billion budget, but they speak volumes about Annapolis’s lack of respect for Marylanders’ money. So, as our government leaders rush to Annapolis this week to raise our taxes, ask yourself: Have they made a real attempt to tighten government’s belt?

    O’Malley has threatened to cut $1.7 billion out of the budget – which probably isn’t a bad idea – but he plans to cut essential spending like fire and police services instead of cutting out the wasteful administrative spending in surveys and victim pandering ostensibly to force Republican lawmakers to pay the political price for the Democrats’ wasteful habits. O’Malley’s probably afraid to cut the wasteful spending because no one would notice the cuts except the lobbyists and he wouldn’t be able to hold the Republicans hostage.

    Can anyone see this happening after the 2008 national election? So far, Republicans in the Senate and the President have been able to stop wasteful spending habits of the Democrat Congress to some degree – but I suspect that if we had a Democrat president, Republicans would cave on nearly issue to protect their jobs. Remember how the Hagel Gang caved to Democrat pressure on the Iraq War right after last November’s elections? Well, imagine eight years of that behavior on every single spending bill.

  • Old Camoflage for The New Republic

    Yesterday I mentioned in passing Glenn Greenwald’s piece claiming that the Army is making The New Republic look bad (in the Baghdad Diarist blog event), instead of admitting that TNR’s editors were doing a damn fine job of accomplishing that all on their own. Greenwald claimed that the US military is now part of the Vast Rightwing BushCheneyHaliburtonMcHitler Conspiracy to discredit the Left’s media.

    Well, apparently, Greenwald got a response from a Public Affairs Officer in Iraq (h/t Patterico’s Pontifications). But the senior serving sockpuppet at Salon couldn’t just post a response to the Lieutenant Colonel, nope. He had to prove how much he knows about tracing emails to prove to his readers he’s able to answer questions that no one asked. Complete with Updates Zero through Seven. But my main concern is the tiny little part where Greenwald actually addressed the content of the email rather than the physical source of the email;

    Everyone can decide for themselves if that sounds more like an apolitical, professional military officer or an overwrought right-wing blogger throwing around all sorts of angry, politically charged invective. Whatever else is true, it is rather odd that this was the sort of rhetoric Col. Boylan chose to invoke in service of his apparent goal of proving that there is nothing politicized about the U.S. military in Iraq.

    I guess the little fella, Greenwald, didn’t like the fact that someone with opposing opinions bothered to email the intellectually vacant, emotion-driven Greenwald and screw up his weekend. The “angry and politically charged invective” was in response to Greenwald’s own angry and poltically charged invective. Should the LTC have written you – no probably not. But he did so take your medicine and stop acting like such a two-bit transvestite hooker.

    I remember hunkering down in the sand a decade ago waiting for the angry and politically charged invective to subside and give me permission to return fire, so I know where the LTC is coming from. It’s damn awful frustrating to not be able to tell the idiots in the media to stop their whining – and then of course, Greenwald whines even more when he’s called a whiner.

    Here’s a little fact you may have missed, Glenn, the Left (and, of course you – whatever your political persuasion is this week) has not been a friend to the military since…well, ever. Lyndon Johnson hamstrung them and fed them piecemeal into a meat grinder, when Nixon actually tried to win the war, the Left whined about “illegal” wars, Jimmy Carter stripped our training and resources budget so badly that we couldn’t get seven functioning helicopters into Tehran when he decided we had a purpose and Bill Clinton stripped the military of personnel and equipment then trumpeted that he’d created the smallest government since Roosevelt.

    Since this war started, the military has been called murderers, rapists, Koran-down-the-toilet-flushers, gestapo prison camp guards, and more recently, thanks to The National Review, puppy murderers, grave robbers, insensitive jerks and sexual perverts. All by the media - and all names and adjectives that have been proven false.

    And then along comes Glenn Greenwald and calls the military part of the Republican political machine. In all of the years – 20 of them – that I served, not once was I ever told by a superior how to cast my vote – in fact, I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 when I was a Specialist 4th Grade (that’s like a senior private, in case you’re wondering). I voted absentee ballot from my cot in Fort Kobbe in the Canal Zone. I regretted it within weeks after he took office – but my first vote was for a Democrat.

    It was the Democrats that made me Republican – not the military. In fact, it’s the media and the Democrats who continue to make the military Republicans. Is it right? Is it the way our founders intended? Nope, probably not – but if anyone can take the blame for the way it’s turning out – it’s you blivet-heads in the media that created a polticized military. So stop complaining about it and do something constructive. Send money to Soldiers’ Angels…anything except what you’re doing would be just fine.

    UPDATE: The Dread Pundit Bluto has the full text of the email from LTC Boylan, and after reading the whole thing, instead of just the parts Glennie thought we needed, I take back my statement that the LTC shouldn’t have written to Greenwald. The parts of the good LTC’s email that Greenwald selected for us to read were entirely without context. Surprise.

  • A point of honor

    Last night I got an email from Confederate Yankee who has often been running point on the Beauchamp/The New Republic story for the entire blogoshere. He asked me to support a boycott he was starting against The New Republic. Of course I said I would, then I fell asleep waiting for the Redskins to score. But I’m refreshed this morning and so so here’s the gist of the plan from CY;

    We know that TNR allowed all three of Scott Beauchamp’s stories to be published without being competently fact-checked, if fact-checked at all.

    We know that the editors of TNR, led by Franklin Foer, lied when they said that the stories had been competently fact-checked, we know they deceived their readers and misled at least one civilian expert in an attempt to create a whitewash of an investigation.

    […]

    We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

    Alfred A. Knopf Allstate Amazon.com American Gas Station
    American Petroleum Institute Astro Zeneca (current issue) Auto Alliance Bearing Point
    Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (current issue) BP (current issue) Chevron (current issue) CNN
    FLAME (current issue) Federal Express The Financial Times Focus Features
    Ford Motor Company Freddie Mac GM Grove Atlantic
    HBO Harvard University Press History Channel Hoover Institution (current issue)
    MetLife Microsoft Mortage Bankers Nuclear Energy Institute
    The New School New York Times Novartis Palgrave Macmillan (current issue)  
    Simon & Shuster John Templeton Foundation (current issue) University of Chicago Press University Press of Kansas (current issue)
    U.S. Telecom Visa (current issue) The Wall Street Journal Warner Brothers
    Warner Brothers Home Video W.W. Norton Wyeth Laboratories Yale University Press (current issue)

    I’d ask U.S. military veterans, military families, active duty personnel, and the vast majority of Americans who support our servicemen and women to call these companies, institutions and agencies to pull their advertising from TNR, effective immediately.

    […]

    We cannot force The New Republic to behave honorably, but we can make their dishonesty come at a price.

    I’m 100% behind this – Beauchamp has at least decided to rehabilitate himself, on the other hand, TNR hasn’t shown the least bit of remorse for their skullduggery.

    Blackfive‘s The Wolf and Chickenhawk Express are on board.

  • Beauchamp and second chances

    Like everyone else, I piled on Scott Thomas Beauchamp. His fables sounded like latrine humor to me, and it turned out that I was right. That post still gets a couple of hits every week – mostly from dot-mil addresses. I’ve taken pot-shots at Beauchamp every chance I got, but those days ended last week.

    I read Michael Yon’s “Beauchamp and the Rule of Second Chances: Pass it Along” last week and I felt a little guilty;

    Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it.

    Just like when I drew on my platoon sergeant experience when I refuted Beauchamp’s stories, that same experience tells me to forgive him his transgressions, for the moment.

    Yon’s conversation with Beauchamp’s former commander reminded me of my infantry platoon sergeant days. I’d occasionally get guys for whom my platoon was their their last chance in the Army. Out of all of them, in my twelve years of pushing platoons, I only chaptered one of them. The rest soldiered their asses off.  If Beauchamp’s leadership has that kind of confidence in his rehabilitation, I do, too.

    But, as I commented at one blog, if Beauchamp has his sights set on being a writer, he should get down on his knees and kiss Michael Yon’s feet for that great post Yon put up in his defense that’ll rehabilitate his image in the blogosphere.

    I’ll also concur with Yon as far as the fate of The New Republic’s staff;

    As for The New Republic, some on the staff may feel like they’ve been hounded and treed, but it’s hard to feel the same sympathy for a group of cowards who won’t “fess up and can’t face the scorn of American combat soldiers who were injured by their collective lapse of judgment. It’s up to their readers to decide the ultimate fate.

    The New Republic treed like a bandit . . . personally, I think they would make a nice Daniel Boone hat.

    Beauchamp’s redemption will come after personal sacrifice, TNR staff will never understand the concept.

    Confederate Yankee takes apart a poorly-researched LA Times /Tim Rutten attack on the military disguised as a defense of TNR (h/t The Jawa Report).

    Glenn Greenwald, sock-puppet extraordinaire, claims the Army is becoming an appendage of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy;

    But there is a secondary issue in this story that is being ignored — how the U.S. military, like everything else, is becoming rapidly politicized, fully incorporated into and following the model of the Republican right-wing noise machine.

    Or, maybe, you goofy, goofy man, the Army decided they’d rather release information for public consumption through sources that would release the primary documents instead of sources that are famous for releasing bits and pieces accompanied by talking points and saturated with misinformed opinions.

    How ’bout that?