Sadiq Zoman -
Was It What He Did
or Who He Was?My story at:
AMERICAN STREETExcerpt:"As a teenage boy, Hungarian-born Elie Wiesel was deported with his family to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald, where his parents and younger sister died. In his book “Night”, Mr. Wiesel has left behind a bare-bones record of the horrific experience.
In one scene, late in the story, young Elie is demoralized to the point that he no longer sees a reason to go on living. There he was, a young man who should have everything to look forward to in life…suffering a great loss of meaning and spirit as he was treated worse than an animal by his fellow human beings.
How did his captors see him? Was young Elie something less than human to them? If there is any evil at work in this world, is it when we take the human framework and break it down to something worthless? What allows captors to be capable of such cruelty?
In good conscience, I must ask you this:
Was Sadiq Zoman tortured in Iraq, not for anything he had done, but simply for who he was? Was he tortured for no more than what the totality of his life experience and circumstance had led him to?
Why did Sadiq Zoman deserve such treatment?
Sadiq Zoman
I have read the words of Elie Wiesel and I have cried.
I think of the family of Sadiq Zoman and I shake my head and wonder,
"My God, what have we done? What have we become?"
Please read Mr. Wiesel's words about a terrifying night over 60 years ago.
Consider all....
Excerpt from NIGHT can be seen at American Street
Christopher Locke on Hunter S. ThompsonQUOTES ABOUT HUNTER S. THOMPSON FROM CHRISTOPHER LOCKE
ON LOCKE'S BOOK, "GONZO MARKETING" : Gonzo Marketing wasn't so much about marketing as about voice -- that indefinable quality of communication that unmistakably signals it's coming from a human being. But not just any old garden-variety human. This is where the indefinable part comes in. And the risk of a perversely inverted elitism. It's simply not possible to weigh or measure voice, but chances are good (if you're not dead from the neck up and the waist down) you'll know it when you hear it. Thompson had voice. [..]
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I think if there's a reason HST killed himself, I mean, if he really meant to do that, it was some manner of long-delayed reaction to what he describes in this -- to me, the most arresting -- passage of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
- C. Locke
Dems - "Positioning" Isn’t EnoughIt's all about ideas. You must be firm about what you believe before you can take a stand.
QUOTE FROM "THE PHILOSOPHY GAP" BY MICHAEL TOMASKY:I’ve been wondering lately, if there’s a deeper answer to the question of greater conservative sense of purpose? What if it’s not just about tactics, but about philosophy? [..]
I know this will sound really silly, but I’d like for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean and every other Democrat who’s interested to read Dewey and Lippmann and have a session in which they sit down and talk about it. Or a much simpler assignment, because it involves less reading and they’re busy people: Read Lyndon Johnson’s historic speech “To Fulfill These Rights” -- his commencement speech at Howard University in 1965 and the strongest philosophical justification for the Great Society that he ever issued in a single place -- and then sit down and debate what he said and figure out what their conclusions about LBJ mean for them today. Or Harry Truman’s speech to Congress laying out the Truman Doctrine. Et cetera, et cetera. [..]
AMERICAN PROSPECT
Irony Lost on
American EarsJUSTIN WEBB QUOTE: "I talked yesterday about the attractions of the plain speaking President versus the complex Europeans - but there is of course a downside to this simple virtue.
Complexity and texture is sometimes rather satisfying in cooking and in language. At the news conference the German Chancellor said the two men had agreed that they should not emphasise their disagreements.
The faint irony of this comment was lost on American ears. They have reported it as "diplomatic speak" - not as a rather clever and gentle way of disposing of the subject."
LINK- BBC
Plamegate: "One by Two by Six"This is important - read this excerpt from an article by Murray Waas - and read it carefully.
Prospect.org/Murray Waas:According to sources, Rove, in his interview with the FBI, said that he and others on the White House's political staff wanted to contain the political fallout from Wilson's allegations, and that they thought the charge of favoritism was a legitimate issue. Rove added that when he steered others in the direction of the now-disproved charges, he believed them to be true, in part because he regarded Novak as a credible news source.
When the Justice Department investigation began last September, the White House press corps repeatedly questioned White House press secretary Scott McClellan as to whether Rove was the person who leaked Plame's name to Novak. Initially, McClellan said that Rove had denied that he was the leaker.
Then, on September 28, The Washington Post reported:"Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. `Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,' the senior official said of the alleged leak. A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as `fair game.'"
A subsequent Newsweek story suggested that the Post had been incorrect in some details. According to the magazine's account, the calls to "at least six Washington journalists" took place after Novak's column appeared, rather than before. Furthermore, Newsweek made an assertion (confirmed by Wilson) that MSNBC talk-show host Chris Matthews called Wilson in July, a full week after Novak's column appeared, telling the former ambassador that "Karl Rove … said your wife was fair game."
When grilled on this variation of Rove's involvement, McClellan became evasive. McClellan insisted that the criminal investigation only centered on "whether someone leaked classified information;" questions regarding the "fair game" report were "down the road of rumor and innuendo and unsubstantiated accusations."
McClellan then warned reporters "not to read anything into what I said," refusing to answer questions about whether it was, in one reporter's words, "ethical for a senior administration official to advance a story about an illegal disclosure of a CIA operative, basically giving that story legs."
McClellan then repeatedly refused to exonerate Rove, according to a transcript of his remarks, instead insisting that any White House comments were merely a matter of "setting the record straight" rather than "spreading information to punish someone for speaking out," something the White House "would not condone."
As a result of the Post report, federal investigators are now hunting for not only the identity of the administration official who leaked Plame's name to Novak but also the administration official who told the paper about the telephone calls to the six other reporters. The investigators believe it likely, according to an attorney familiar with some aspects of the criminal investigation, that the source of the Post story may very well know the identity of the person who leaked Plame's name to Novak.
In interviews with potential witnesses, investigators have taken to referring to the story and its mysterious source as "one by two by six," meaning that one official may know the identity of two other administration officials who spoke to the six reporters.
"If they find 'one by two by six,' then just maybe… they have also found their guy," said one attorney familiar with the criminal investigation.
FULL TEXT available at American Prospect.
Sibel Edmonds is back in the newsWashington, DC, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- The Department of Justice has abandoned its claim that allegations made by a fired FBI translator are secret, paving the way for a court case that will air embarrassing allegations about incompetence, poor security and possible espionage in the translation unit of the Bureau's Washington Field Office.
-- WASHINGTON TIMES
