SOUTHERN HYPOCRISY

You should look at a recent statistical map which shows the skyrocketing rate per 100,000 of women in the United States with the AIDS virus. The map roughly mirrors similar colorful maps which in the past have shown the rates of poverty, poor educational results, the murder rate, the amount of money per student invested in education, the greatest poverty rates... on and on. On every map over recent years, the deep South always shows the worst results—the most deaths, the dumbest children, the most impoverished people. Face it, the conservative philosophy sounds great to the uneducated mind, but in the long run, ordinary people always come out worse when they have to live it. It just takes them awhile to figure it out.

Admitted, in this AIDS map, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and a few other New England states show the same high rates as those in the deep South and Florida and, always, in Bush’s home state of Texas, but most of the northern states and the west manage to show more enlightened, liberal attitudes which make life better and safer for the average Joe and Jo. The border states do pretty well too. Perhaps that’s because they remained in the North during the Civil War.


MORE AMERICAN ATROCITIES

Look on page 28 of the December 20, 2004 NEWSWEEK to verify what I’ve quoted below. Add this one to the number of atrocities American troops have committed while in Iraq’s wartime situations. Anybody with half a brain could see this coming. All us peaceniks saw it coming. That’s why we say war should be a last resort—cause of what it does to men in combat, cause of the ruined lives, cause, of course, cause it wasn’t necessary. And it’s so bad because of the senselessness of the war, it’s utter lack of real purpose. In such senseless situations, Vietnam taught those of us wise enough to learn, men do even more senseless things than when they feel their war is just and useful. Anybody with half a brain knows what a useless mess this war was.

O, Swiftboat liars of the future, who lie about men like Kerry who tell the truth, shove this one down your gullets:

[open quote] BY BABAK DEHGHANPISHEH

It was supposed to be a routine search. Hunting for gunmen and weapons in Baghdad's Sadr City, a squad of GIs raided a house, slapped a set of plastic cuffs on the lone occupant and left him outside. But the squad found only a single AK-47, allowed for self-defense under U.S. military rules. Spc. Allen Crandall partially disabled the weapon, then cut the Iraqi's cuffs and led him inside with Sgt. Michael Williams. Crandall set the AK-47 on a table by the door and turned to leave. As he did, he says he heard Williams saying, “I feel threatened.” Then two shots from Williams’s M16. Testifying on the Aug. 28 incident last week in Iraq, Crandall told an Army panel: “[Williams] said the Iraqi went for his weapon.”

Something went monstrously wrong in “the 1-41"—the U.S. Army’s First Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment. Out of 500 or so battalion members, Williams is one of six now facing murder charges in five separate shooting incidents since August. Two of the victims were also 1-41 troops, gunned down at a Kansas farmhouse in September. In a courtroom last week at Camp Victory,
outside Baghdad, 1-41 members described a dysfunctional unit with too much bloodlust and not enough accountability. Witnesses said the battalion’s Charlie Company held a macabre contest to see who would get the first confirmed kill of the unit’s second Iraq tour.

Three 1-41 members gave their lives on the battalion’s first tour last year. After a few months’ rest in Fort Riley, Kans., the battalion began a new tour this summer. Things soon went bad. On Aug. 18, Company C was hunting insurgents in Sadr City. Williams’s squad stopped a dump truck, and an Iraqi climbed out. “Light
him up!” the sergeant ordered, according to testimony, and the squad opened fire, killing the unarmed man. Williams and a squadmate reportedly got into an argument over which of them had scored Company C’s first kill.

Staff Sgt. Johnny Home pleaded guilty last week to killing a wounded 16-year-old Iraqi the same day. He insisted it was a mercy killing. A squad-mate, Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban, is awaiting trial for murder in the same incident. Ten days later, during the Aug. 28 search, Williams and Spc. Brent May led another unarmed Iraqi back into his house, where they allegedly left him dead. "May asked if he could shoot this one,” testified their squadmate Spc. Tulafono Young. “Specialist May was sort of bragging ... that he had shot the guy in the head.”

Then came the deaths in Kansas. Aaron Stanley and Eric Colvin stayed behind when 1-41 returned to Iraq in July. The two sergeants were facing a list of drug charges, including distribution of amphetamines, use of amphetamines and possession of marijuana with intent to sell. On the night of Sept. 13, they were at Stanley’s rented farmhouse near Clay Center, 30 miles from Fort Riley, when Staff Sgt. Matthew Werner and Spc. Christopher Hymer drove up—and were fatally shot. Police arrived after Stanley called 911 to say he had shot two men trying to break in. Nevertheless, on Oct. 16 the Army filed charges of premeditated murder against Stanley and Calvin. So far the Army has kept a tight lid on its 1-41 investigations. But the slowly emerging details keep getting uglier.

With COURTNEY CLOYD in clay center. [close quote]
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"The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." —Emporer Hirohito of Japan (Bush could take a lesson here.)