Sense of Events

The veil comes off global warming

2009-11-21T14:13:00.000Z

Here's a baffling headline: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out.

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

So why are they baffled? The question answers itself. Their predictive models are inadequate. Instead of simply admitting it, they are saying that nature doesn't play fair because the world is not conforming to their computer predictions.

[M]eteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

Because climate science is a financial racket more than a scientific discipline (more about that in a moment) the wonder is not that the warming predictions were wrong, but that scientists like Latif are finally admitting that they basically don't know what they're doing. Fact is, they have been doing science hardly at all. They've been running computer programs that confirm their own biases, the main one of which is to publish papers that please politicians who are ever-thirsty for more power. Climate alarmism is the hottest thing going for statist ideology today across the globe and politicians reliably keep the gravy train running for scientists who buttress it.

In fact, none of the modeling used to predict the end of the world as we know it accounts for:

The effect of water vapor, which accounts for 95 percent of atmospheric temperature effects,
The influence of clouds,
The influence of cosmic radiation of cloud formation,
An atmosphere that does in fact end in space - models mathematically assume the atmosphere extends to infinity,
The effect of deep-ocean, cold water flows,
The effect of sunspots,
The intensity of sunlight.

You get the idea. That climate science is not the fact-based, objective discipline its advocates claim is been made even more evident by the recently-revealed emails among climate scientists that prove their collusion in keeping the scam going.

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today. ...

Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind. ...

In one email, dated November 1999, one scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

The emails had been stored on servers of the University of East Anglia (England) Climate Research Unit. Their volume (63 MB), plus documents also released, mitigates against fraud by anyone except the warmist scientists, and that extending over many years. In fact, CRU's director has said the emails are genuine. Lots is email excerpts at that link. Charlie Martin advises caution of swallowing the emails as a smoking gun just yet since they seem just too perfect for warming skeptics' case,

But then, the whole package is very large — 63 megabytes — and seems to be very internally consistent. Several people have already corroborated a number of the emails as being ones they wrote or received. The package also includes substantial data and computer programs, which are being explored as this is being written.

It gets worse for warmism advocates. Proof that global "warming" is not happening came from an unlikely but unimpeachable source. Oprah Winfrey "Wants Biz In LA Not Chicago; 'Why Would Anybody Stay? It's Freezing Here, And I Have A Mansion In Montecito... .' "

When you've lost Oprah, you've lost America!

The New York Show Trials

2009-11-16T11:15:00.003Z

In 2003, US soldiers dragged deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein out his hole (literally) and took him captive. There followed demands by the Western Left that he stand trial by the International Criminal Court (which actually had no jurisdiction) or other Western-established and -approved court. Ultimately tried by an Iraqi court under Iraqi law, Saddam was hanged for his crimes by the nation of his principal victims. And so justice was done.

In the matter of KSM+four, the same issue pertains that I insisted was at the core of Saddam's trial. On that subject, I wrote a piece for the United Methodist News Service in which I pointed out that "Justice for Saddam must include full account of crimes." KSM and the others planned the attacks on America of Sept. 11, 2001, including training and funding the hijackers of the day. Of that there is not the slightest doubt. They have already not merely admitted it but boasted of it, both before and after their capture.

Herewith an excerpt from my 2003 UMNS essay that, with little modification, directly applies to KSM and his co-conspirators.

The primary question is, "What constitutes justice, and how shall it best be achieved?"

Rendering a judicial verdict against Saddam is not the most important goal because his murderous guilt cannot be rationally questioned. In even the fairest trial possible, "guilty" is the foregone conclusion, at least for his major offenses. Any other verdict would mock justice rather than uphold it.

The real value of a judicial proceeding against Saddam is to render a fair, accurate, public accounting of the terror of his regime.

Fully exposing Saddam's deeds to the Iraqi people and the world is the point. Enabling the Iraqi people to face their horrors so they may grow out of them is the point. Discovering the truth of Saddam's ties to nations and international agencies that propped him up is the point.

Saddam's trial "must be an opportunity to educate the nation and make the psychological transformation from the past to the future," said Laith Kubba, a prominent Iraqi expatriate and senior program officer for the National Endowment for Democracy. "What is important in these trials is not to put on trial the person of Saddam Hussein, but his deeds."

And yet there is no indication from the Eric Holder Justice Department that the decision to try KSM et. al. in New York, in a federal court, will result in a trial different in nature from any other trial held in the court. Any trial for KSM that even remotely possibly could reslt in a jury verdict of "not guilty" would be gravely unjust. It would mock justice, not render it.

There is no reason that a tribunal could not have been ordered by the president, even a public one. American law permits courts-martial or federal trials of foreign nationals who commit war crimes against U.S. forces. An inquiry into whether is guilty as charged cannot be a just objective of any court.

Clarice Feldman gets it right:

The trials will also surely be used as a platform from which to attack the Bush administration’s militant response to terrorism, which included the waterboarding of KSM. Those in the defense and intelligence communities and prior administration officials who have saved us from further outrages will surely be the targets of the defendants on a world stage. The defendants will be allowed to broadcast freely throughout the world by a press generally unsympathetic to those who nabbed these monsters and brought them to account.

To paraphrase an old friend, this would be a first: the victor dragging himself off in chains.

That didn't take long

2009-11-14T18:44:00.001Z

I posted yesterday that it was only a matter of time before the plight of the Palestinians would be used to explain away the violence of accused Ft Hood murderer Nidal Hasan.

Trust me, it won't be long before Hasan will be sympathetically portrayed as enraged by Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, the campaign against Hamas last year, etc. So what else could he do but shoot dozens of his fellow Americans? Terrible thing, tut tut, don'cha know, but really, he just couldn't take what The Jews were doing any more.

And I was right - and a short matter of time it was indeed. In fact, negative time. Reader "Ole55" pointed me to a piece in the University of New Mexico's Daily Lobo, "Fort Hood shooter violated numerous Islamic principles," except I guess the Islamic principles that justify mass murder as long as it's done from anger about the Palestinian problem. UNM alum Sami Shakir first condemns the killings and maiming, but only up to a point. And that point is where the Palestinians enter the stream of a Muslim's consciousness.

All this raises the question of what is wrong with Muslims that an educated man like Hasan resorts to a mindless act of savagery by shooting unarmed colleagues of his who trusted his care as a medical doctor. It is a complex problem but there is one major cause that torments Muslims and reminds them of their impotence almost daily. That issue is the Palestinian problem. As long as the Palestinians are humiliated and deprived of their basic human rights, the average Muslim will feel the throbbing pain of shame and the frustration of helplessness and irrelevance. For young men, this kind of mental anguish drives them to dark areas of the human mind where some might turn to demons.

Alas, it seems that until the Palestinian problem is resolved in favor of the Palestinians. there will be more such violence to come, says Shamir, coming seriously unhinged.

If the world does not help resolve this human tragedy for which both Palestinians and Israelis are paying the price, there will always be weak people like Nidal Hasan who will be vulnerable to the preaching of hate mongers like the terrorists who use Islam as the currency for their demented ideologies or Jewish extremists who preach violence against Palestinians, or Christian hate mongers who preach nuking the Muslims. If we care for the Palestinians and Israelis, we need to step in and enforce international laws on all, because the rest of the world is becoming a victim in this tragedy.

Let's see: we have Muslim terrorists who are "demented" (how true, good on Shamir for saying so), "Jewish extremists" preaching violence against the Pallys and "Christian hate mongers who preach nuking the Muslims," for which a citation would be nice.

Yet there are extremely few "Jewish extremists" attacking Palestinians - and the Israeli government ruthlessly prosecutes those who do. As for "Christian hate mongers" who want to nuke Muslims, well, show me the cite.

Yet of demented Muslim terrorists we have no shortage. And they are rewarded, not punished, by Muslim governments as long as they direct their terrorism against Western targets.

It seems not have occurred to Shamir that if the Palestinian issue is resolved at all, at least one of the three extremist groups he named will be unhappy with the resolution. And since the Muslims' demands are the most extreme, how does that bode well for peace?

Gold bull to grow longer horns?

2009-11-13T18:27:00.000Z

Forget "peak oil." We might have already reached "peak gold."

Aaron Regent, president of the Canadian gold giant, said that global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further to run.

"There is a strong case to be made that we are already at 'peak gold'," he told The Daily Telegraph at the RBC's annual gold conference in London.

"Production peaked around 2000 and it has been in decline ever since, and we forecast that decline to continue. It is increasingly difficult to find ore," he said.

Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970.

Scarcity of supply is only one reason gold's spot price has reached an all-time high or more than $1,120 per ounce. Doubts about the strength of the dollar have also made central banks, like India's and China's, increase their gold stocks.

Yet India's most recent gold buy was only 200 metric tons, a ting fraction of the more-than 145,000 tons of refined gold in the world. It's not just basic supply and demand factors running the price up, it's the global belief, shared by central bankers, that gold is real money and paper money is not. As confidence in the dollar falls around the world, there is an increasing movement to convert dollars and other currencies to something literally solid.

How high can gold go? Some analysts say that $2,500 per ounce is possible. But the downsides are severe. First, it means that truly colossal amounts of money will be parked in vaults and safes in the form of god, and not circulated in the globe's economies to create jobs and wealth. Second, it would show that the dollar has been devastated in value, which would be of terrible consequences for the American economy, and bad news for every other country.

Because swine flu is spread by vampires

2009-11-13T16:56:00.000Z

Headline: "Swine flu causes surge of garlic sales in Serbia"

Ft Hood: It's the Joooos!

2009-11-13T16:03:00.001Z

It was only a matter of time before someone declared that the Ft Hood killings involved, however, peripherally, a Jewish plot. Charles Krauthammer writes the the jumping to conclusions of the leftwing media (but I repeat myself) in their frantic attempt to divorce any hint if Muslim faith from accused murdered Maj. Nidal Hasan ("Explaining Away Mass Murder")"

WASHINGTON -- What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs.

"I cringe that he's a Muslim. ... I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists ... to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. [italics added- DS]

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

As I wrote yesterday, "Whose fault are the Ft. Hood killings? Ours, of course."

Be that as it may, I have argued for for years that anti-Judaism is a hallmark of the Left. The blinding glimpse of the obvious that Hasan's motivations absolutely included his radicalized Islamic beliefs is not acceptable to the Left. And, like almost anything else that challenges their reality-divorced worldview, the unacceptable notion is attributable to a conspiracy theory. There is no lack of evil conspirators in the set of the favorite Snidely Whiplashes of the day - the Religious Right, Big Oil, Big Pharma, for example - but always, lurking underneath every rock, ready to ruin the world as the Left wishes it to be, are The Jews.

It's The Jews who have fostered the ludicrous idea that shouting the jihadist war cry, "Allahu akbar!" ("Allah is great," I refuse to call the sick twisted deity imagined by Muslims, "God") has anything to do with, you know, Islam!

How long will it be before we are instructed that the actual killings themselves are an understandable result of Jewish conspiracy against Muslims in general? Trust me, it won't be long before Hasan will be sympathetically portrayed as enraged by Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, the campaign against Hamas last year, etc. So what else could he do but shoot dozens of his fellow Americans? Terrible thing, tut tut, don'cha know, but really, he just couldn't take what The Jews were doing any more.

Just wait for it. It's coming.

Related:

I was cited, along with other bloggers, in Antisemitism International 2003, an annual research journal of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Anti-Judaism = anti-democracy

And this is an interesting take.

Whose fault are the Ft Hood shootings?

2009-11-12T23:04:00.000Z

Why, ours, of course.

David A. Love, editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and theGrio, but not a physician, ascribes the whole grisly mess to "secondary" PTSD inflicted upon Maj. Nidal Hasan in his psychiatric work.

Secondary trauma involves the emotional and psychological effects of working with traumatized people. Therapists, social workers and others who associate with victims of violence can develop symptoms of PTSD. As for an Army psychiatrist such as Hasan, listening to the horrific war stories of his clients on a daily basis must have taken its toll.

This piece is political correctness run amok. Earlier in the piece is this nugget:

All of America's young white male ex-marines did not bear responsibility for Timothy McVeigh and his bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, so why should the Muslim community shoulder a burden that does not bear their name?

Well, McVeigh was never a Marine, but never mind. He was convicted and executed for mass murders after he truck-bombed the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. As a principal staff officer of US Army Criminal Investigation Command at the time, I played a part in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation task force. No one attributed McVeigh's crimes to PTSD, including McVeigh himself. Using McVeigh to shore up his argument is a strawman of no substance.

Just because we "should not jump to conclusions," as the president made sure to caution, does not mean that we can't draw conclusions at all. Mr. Love's article would have a lot more credibility if it at least tried to account for Hasan's long history of increasingly radicalized Islamism, that has by now been well-attested by witnesses both in Washington, D.C. and Texas. These accounts are so credible that the Army, FBI and DOD are doing the typical DC kabuki-two-step dance to make sure no finger gets pointed at them. That, my friends, is smoke (I worked in DC for five years) and for sure there is fire. But Love apparently doesn't even know about that topic. His eyes are shut to contrary facts.

To say at this point that Islamism had nothing to do with the acts Hasan is accused of makes no more sense than to say that John Wilkes Booth could not have been motivated by radicalized Confederate sympathies. Sorry, it just doesn't wash. There may well have been other factors impelling Hasan, but summarily and pre-emptively to push Islamism off the table marks Mr. Love as a decidedly unserious person.

Then come Dr. Scott Mendelson, M.D., practicing psychiatry at Roseburg VA hospital in Roseburg, Oregon, who writes,

Everyday, I treat combat veterans, many of whom suffer Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. ...

It has been suggested that Dr. Hasan's behavior may have arisen from a "nervous breakdown" he suffered due to the stress of treating so many young soldiers returning from war. Phrases such as "secondary" or "vicarious" PTSD are being tossed around. ... Let me be very clear about this, it is no more possible to get PTSD from listening to soldiers tell their tales of their traumatic war experiences than it is to catch gonorrhea from hearing one talk about an unfortunate sexual experience.

And the rest of his article is basically a disassembly of Mr. Love's arguments, from a medical-psychiatric perspective. He concludes,

Stress from dealing with the emotional trauma of returning soldiers does not explain and certainly does not excuse his behavior.

And yet we really have no evidence that Maj. Hasan was suffering from "Stress from dealing with the emotional trauma of returning soldiers." Commentators (and no one else, be certain) have simply assumed constructed a self-fulfilling tautology:

1. Dr. Hasan counseled combat veterans

2. Combat veterans are psychologically scarred and many or most have some level of PTSD

3. Dr. Hasan felt their pain to the point where he cracked up.

Therefore: Dr. Hasan blew away 41 people, a perfectly understandable outcome of feeling the pain of so many scarred combat vets.

Oookkaaaaayyy.......

And yet there is nothing in the public record that evinces support for the notion that Hasan was affected by "secondary" PTSD, which Dr. Mendelson says doesn't exist in the first place. What there is, is ample evidence that Hasan became an increasingly-radicalized Islamist who openly denounced his nation's military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the point of saying to his fellow doctors in a formal presentation that Americans who fight Muslims should have "boiling oil poured down their throats."

Conclusions are being jumped to, make no mistake. But the jumping is being done by the hand-wringing liberals and others (coff, Gen. George Casey, coff) who are shocked that someone shot 41 defenseless people, and who are devastated that the shooter turned out to be a Muslim. Whatever the facts, they tell us that the murderous spasm Hasan is charged with committing could not possibly have anything to do with his religion.

There's your conclusion, folks. Start jumping.

Hasan charged with 13 counts of murder

2009-11-12T19:11:00.000Z

Breitbart news:

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - The Army psychiatrist suspected in a deadly rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has been charged in a military court with 13 counts of premeditated murder.
U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman Chris Grey told a news conference Thursday at the Texas base that additional charges may also be filed against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Hasan is suspected of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian in last Thursday's shooting spree at Fort Hood. He was shot and wounded by two police officers at the base, and remains in recovery at an Army hospital in San Antonio. His attorney says he was read the charges at the hospital.

The code of military law is called the Uniform Code of Military Justice, UCMJ. The articles of the UCMJ that define crimes are called the "punitive articles." Each punitive article defines a crime and in so defining lays out what must be proved by the trial counsel (prosecutor) in the court martial. Murder is Article 118 of the UCMJ:

§ 918. Art. 118. Murder

Any person subject to this chapter who, without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when he— (1) has a premeditated design to kill; (2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; (3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to another and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or (4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson;

is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct.

In order for Hasan to be sentenced to death if he convicted, the court-martial must be convened as a General Court Martial (GCM) empowered specifically to render that sentence. Only a General Court Martial can render the death sentence. A General Court Martial is so called because only a general officer in command can convene it. There are courts that may be convened by commanders of lower rank than general, but the level of punishments they may sentence are considerably less.

[Army] officials said it is not yet decided whether to charge Hasan with a 14th count of murder related to the death of the unborn child of a pregnant shooting victim.

My guess is that Hasan will be charged with this crime, Article 119a:

§ 919a. Art. 119a. Death or injury of an unborn child

(1) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in conduct that violates any of the provisions of law listed in subsection (b) and thereby causes the death of, or bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to, a child, who is in utero at the time the conduct takes place, is guilty of a separate offense under this section and shall, upon conviction, be punished by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct, which shall be consistent with the punishments prescribed by the President for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child’s mother.

(2) An offense under this section does not require proof that—
(i) the person engaging in the conduct had knowledge or should have had knowledge that the victim of the underlying offense was pregnant; or (ii) the accused intended to cause the death of, or bodily injury to, the unborn child.

They can also charge Hasan with 29 violations of Article 124, Maiming, one for each person Hasan is suspected of shooting, although this article is not punishable by death.

The Mayans or your lying eyes?

2009-11-12T18:36:00.001Z

Yep, who ya gonna believe - the Mayans or your lying eyes?

The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOLAWKI) scenario in 2012 "revolves claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X -- or Nibiru -- heads toward or collides into Earth." But NASA's not taking that claim lying down.

"There is no factual basis for these claims," NASA said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.

If such a collision were real "astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye," it added. "Obviously, it does not exist."

As Casey Stengel said about a baseball record, "You can look it up." Or in this case, just plain look up. See anything coming right atcha? Didn't think so.

But that's not to say all is well. Don't forget the supernova and galaxy-attack scenarios. And then the massive gas cloud speeding toward a collision with the Milky Way! Then we learn that the earth's atmosphere may detonate. And then the asteroids. Then the black hole death stars! And we might be swallowed whole by the sun. And there's an intense beam of gamma rays coming our way. Then there was the fear that "human society is very quickly headed to a violent and disturbing end." Then the earth began to kill people for changing its climate. Then there is the voracious, galactic Hoover in Switzerland that will suck the whole planet into a black hole. And the massive destruction along the coasts of countries like the USA, UK and many on the African continent, within a matter of hours.

I tell ya, I'm starting to think that sooner or later, every one of us is going to wind up dead.

Can Obama save his presidency?

2009-11-11T15:18:00.001Z

I understand that not everyone thinks that president Obama has failed in his tenure so far to the point where he will go down as a failed president if he doesn't make serious changes PDQ.

Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com and a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, doesn't think so, either, but does think the day could be close at hand.

A good friend of mine, a Democratic mayor here in California, describes the Obama administration as "Moveon.org run by the Chicago machine." This combination may have been good enough to beat John McCain in 2008, but it is proving a poor way to run a country or build a strong, effective political majority. And while the president's charismatic talent – and the lack of such among his opposition – may keep him in office, it will be largely as a kind of permanent lame duck unable to make any of the transformative changes he promised as a candidate.

If Obama wants to succeed as president he must grow into something more than movement icon, become more of a national leader. In effect, he needs to hit the reset button. Here are five key changes that Obama can implement to re-energize and save his presidency.

Here are the five changes Kotkin identifies, without his expansive text on each point:

1. Forget the "Chicago way."

2. Focus on Real Jobs, Not Favored Constituencies

3. Step on the Gas. [For this one Kotkin means natural gas, the greenest energy source available right now and its use needs to be ramped up pronto.]

4. Rediscover America.

5. Chuck the Nobel; Embrace Exceptionalism.

Kotkin is optimistic that Obama can "hit his own reset button" and make lemonade out of the lemons of the year so far.

I am not so sanguine. I don't think that Obama knows how to hit his own reset button. Absent a near-truly catastrophic personal, not professional, crisis narcissistic people never do reset themselves. Furthermore, who is going to advise him to consider it? No one will print out Prof. Kotkin's essay and place it in Obama's inbox. He has surrounded himself with like thinkers and outright sycophants. Sort of like this guy.

There is nothing in Obama's resume that shows he ever had to hit his own reset button before. He has never had to make highly difficult, greatly consequential decisions that depended on his own personal reservoir of wisdom and experience. The years are long gone when he could have been mentored by people who could have taught him those skills and virtues. Even the Europeans realize now that Obama is in thrall with himself as much as the Europeans are.

Obama lives at the top of the Washington, D.C. political culture, a town that makes Hollywood look like a Sisters of Compassion convent. As his foundering continues, his staff and advisers will finally realize that, like RMS Titanic 97 years ago, Obama's ship of state has taken on too much water to stay afloat. When that dawns on them, they'll take to the lifeboats to save their own careers. They'll let the captain go down with the ship.

The most important question is how much of American's freedom and prosperity will go down with him.

Veterans Day 2009

2009-11-11T14:55:00.000Z

May I simply direct you to my essay for this day five years ago.

The never-ending world apology tour will continue

2009-11-11T13:44:00.000Z

Don Surber:

Obama plans Hiroshima and Nagasaki trips

President Obama could not find time to join in the celebration of teh 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall in Berlin.

But as he heads to Japan, Obama he promised a reporter that he will visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime in his presidency.

“The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency,” our president said.

How about Bataan? The Rape of Nanking? The Changjiao massacre? The Manila massacre? The Sook Ching massacre? The Kalagong massacre?

The 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor will take place in 25 months. Any0one want to start a betting pool on whether our country's president will attend that commemoration?

Well done, Mr. President

2009-11-10T20:18:00.005Z

I am listening to the president's address at Ft Hood on the radio - he just concluded - and I have to say it was outstanding.

The only grating note was when he spoke of the military exploits of his grandfather and other family members. It only served to highlight, however briefly, Obama's own lack of military experience and urge to inject himself into every occasion. But the moment passed quickly.

There was one line near the end that I cannot quote exactly, but it seemed very close to counting the slain and wounded as falling from an act of war. I don't think that the president actually was trying to do that, but the line struck me that way. I'll look it up when I get back to my desk, as I'm posting this via email from my Blackberry.

In all, a speech just about perfect for the occasion.

Update: Here's the line:

Here, at Fort Hood, we pay tribute to thirteen men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home.

Full text of the address is not on the White House's web site, but may be found on Huffington Post. YouTube links are Part One and Part Two.

Ft Hood shooter's rotten timing for condemned DC sniper

2009-11-10T18:27:00.000Z

Did condemned murderer and mini-jihadist John Allen Muhammad have a sinking feeling in his gut when he heard last week's news of the mass murders at Ft Hood, Texas, by a Muslim suspect who was heard to yell, "Allahu akbar"?

Muhammad is set to die tonight for shooting to death Dean Harold Meyers in in Manassas, Va., on Oct. 9, 2002. He and a then-minor accomplice are connected to 10 other fatal shootings in the area and some other shootings across the country. Through his lawyers, Muhammad applied for clemency but the Supreme Court declined to order a stay. Then the request reached the desk of Va. Gov. Tim Kaine, who won't stop Muhammed's execution.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said Tuesday he will not intervene to stop the execution of John Allen Muhammad, meaning the D.C. sniper will be put to death as scheduled at 9 p.m. EST.

Mr. Kaine, Democrat, made the announcement in a news release that also stated he was satisfied the case had been reviewed by the courts.

"Accordingly, I decline to intervene," Mr. Kaine said.

Gov. Kaine is known for his opposition to capital punishment even though he has refused to stay nine executions so far in his term. That he would have ordered clemency for Muhammad seems quite unlikely, especially because Muhammad's crimes were so coldly calculating.

Even so, timing could not possibly be worse for Muhammad. With the killings at Ft Hood last week by an apparent freelance jihadist, and the memorial service for the fort's slain taking place only a few hours before the time of Muhammad's execution, his chance of clemency was knocked right down to zero.

Obama comments on House health care bill

2009-11-10T15:02:00.000Z

Asked for a comment to the American taxpayer on the passage of the House's health care bill over the weekend, the president replied,

The horrific backlash against Muslims has begun

2009-11-10T01:40:00.003Z

At the end of an essay, Victor David Hanson explains what Homeland Defense Secretary Janet Napolitano has been up to since the murders at Ft Hood:

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas. Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Army Chieff of Staff, Gen. George Casey, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos.

Casey, when asked about the role Hasan’s Muslim faith may have played in the shooting, said the issue was something "we need to be very careful about."

"The speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” Casey said. “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

Sadly, I have learned that the long-dreaded backlash has already begun. However, these incidents are not being reported by the media, not even the fanatically rightwing FoxNews Channel, which breathes Islamophobia with every host.

DES MOINES, IA--Upset by killings at Ft Hood, Texas, by a suspect believed to have been motivated by his Islamic faith, a Methodist minister pulled his car next to the car of a Muslim woman attempting to change a flat tire. The minister changed the tire while the Muslim woman made sure her first-grade Muslim child did not stray out into traffic.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, immediately demanded that the woman's husband beat her severely with a rod no thicker than his thumb for spending time in the company of a man to whom she was neither married nor related by blood. It is not known whether the husband has yet complied.

MONTGOMERY, ALA.--Southern Baptists of this deep South city, enraged that a Muslim had apparently shot more than three dozen people at Ft Hood, gathered boxes of Gideons New Testaments and walked through Muslim neighborhoods passing them out and inviting the Muslims to Christian worship this Sunday.

The imam of Montgomery's largest mosque has filed a complaint with state authorities demanding that the Baptist churches' tax-exempt status be revoked for engaging in political activities.

"It is takfir for Muslims even to touch infidel books," he said, "so their gesture was extremely offensive to us. This incident just illustrates how hard Muslims have it in America."

HOPE, ARK.--After three known white supremacists were arrested while trying to set fire to the only mosque in the same town where Bill Clinton grew up, men of a local African Methodist Episcopal Church began patrolling the mosque's perimeter 24 hours per day.

The men are equipped with cell phones to call police and two-way radios to contact one another. AME Pastor Andrew Thomas said that no one would permit anything to happened to the mosque like happened to a few black churches in the 1950s.

"We don't know how long we'll walk these patrols," he said. "We have several men who served in the Army and Marines since Nine-Eleven who say that this is nothing compared to what they had to patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Other local churches volunteered to bring hot food and drink to the AME men. "The Church of Christ has been very helpful," said Pastor Thomas.

"The only thing we have to be careful about is not to set foot on the mosque's actual campus," he continued. "The congregants here told us that would defile their mosque."

[Satire off]

However, there is real discrimination against Muslims in the American armed forces that does need serious attention, but is unlikely to get it.

In the South Asian and Arab immigrant communities where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply unpopular, Muslim military members have often felt criticized for their service, Muslim chaplains, military members, veterans advocates and others said in interviews.

Some return exhausted and traumatized from their tours, only to hear at their local mosques that they will go to hell for “killing Muslims,” said Qaseem A. Uqdah, the executive director of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

“Imagine you are 20 years old and you hear you’re going to purgatory,” Mr. Uqdah said. He argued that Muslim groups must work harder to help their veterans cope with coming home. “We are failing as a community here in America."

No one oppresses Muslims more than other Muslims. And no one has killed more Muslims than al Qaeda and it's ideological allies.

Told ya so

2009-11-07T18:45:00.002Z

Sister Toldjah on the topic of President Obama's habit of private meetings with select reporters:

This is becoming a regular occurrence, isn’t it? What’s happening with this WH? Are they so concerned now about MSM journalists like Jake Tapper asking them tough questions that they’ve taken to meeting “off-the-record” with liberal talking heads (and David Brooks – I know, same thing) in an effort to get “the real truth” out? Answer: Most likely. Hell, that’s why they’re pretty much boycotting Fox News at this point, and demanding that other liberals follow suit or else, because they can’t stand the heat and prefer “friendlier” news outlets, so it only stands to reason that the same rule applies here with these “off-the-record” chit chats where no one outside of the “inner circle” knows what was said. But of course, the “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” rule applies here. Write a favorable column, or say favorable things about the administration on either your show or a show where you’re a guest, and you’ll continue to get invited to “off-the-record” WH get togethers.

So much for “open government, accountable only to the people.”

To which Cornell Law Prof. William A. Jacobson adds,

... I'm not sure the big issue is open government.

To me, it's Obama's obsession with image. Like the girl looking in the mirror who cannot seem to get that last strand of hair in just the right place, Obama never is satisfied with his media image.

Fox News is the stray strand in Obama's otherwise perfectly coiffed media hairdo, and the more Obama obsesses over that slight imperfection, the worse he looks.

As for Sister's observation that if reporters write stories favorable to His Presidency, they'd get private time with him, I said three weeks ago that this was an integral part of the Alinskyite attack plan against FoxNews:

The other media may expect to be flattered as "real" reporters and news organizations who are actually the ones being "fair and balanced." The more a White House reporters and editors toe the White House line, the greater access they will be granted, especially to power figures such as Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and, ultimately, Barack Obama himself, whom we may expect to give a one-on-one interview with the biggest suckup reporter gaining Dunn's favor. Reporters who don't fall into place will discover they are being frozen out of access and will have to rely exclusively on press briefer Robert Gibbs, which is the kiss of death to a White House reporter.

"Obama's obsession with image"? Are you kidding me? This is the Mae West presidency!

What is not forbidden is required redux

2009-11-07T15:28:00.000Z

Last July, I wrote in "What is not forbidden is required,"

That was how someone once described life in the old Soviet Union, a few decades ago. The state tells you what you may not do on the one hand, and what you must do on the other. Personal freedom? Fugeddaboudit. ...

The tragedy is that we are, as a nation, willingly surrendering an enormous level of our freedom to gain a little level of health care. We should remember, as Ben Franklin warned in 1775, if we give up liberty to obtain security, we will find ourselves with neither.

It stinks to be right. Now we learn that in the US House's health care bill to be voted on this weekend or next week is a section requiring every American to buy a government-approved health insurance or get fined plus jail time.

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

- - - - - - - - - -

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2].

- - - - - - - - - -

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

Hope and Change!

It's time to quote Alexis de Tocqueville again:

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Once again:

Constitution? We don't need no stinkin' Constitution!

Political correctness was not why Hasan was retained

2009-11-07T14:42:00.003Z

The full-bore media and blog frenzy about the motivations of Ft Hood's shooter suspect, Maj. Nidal Hasan, is fully underway. After Ft Hood's commanding general told The Today Show that Hasan was the shooter and that Hasan shouted "Allahu akbar," "Allah is great," while firing, I posted that he was unwittingly setting the stage for Hasan's acquittal, if Hasan is ever brought to trial. The repeated media and blog pronouncements that Hasan is guilty are also potentially poisoning the potential prosecution, with reporting missing the usual words such as "alleged" shooter or "accused" killer much more frequently than normal.

But the Constitution hasn't changed. Hasan presently has only been named a suspect. He has not actually been accused or charged with anything. Like anyone else, he enjoys the rights to enter into trial, if there is a trial, with the full presumption of innocence which the government must overturn beyond reasonable doubt.

One one side of the frenzy, the commentati are clear that Army commanders turned a blind eye to Hasan's reputedly-increasing Islamic radicalism because of political correctness. For example, Jerry Pournelle:

Political correctness was the cause of the Fort Hood Massacre, and we ought not forget that. The fact that someone could go through -- at government expense -- an undergraduate education with ROTC, then medical school at a US military institution, and remain a traitor to the United States is a significant warning. A very significant warning that the idea of Political Correctness has consequences we can't afford. Corruption of the Legions is one danger the Republic cannot endure.

On the other side, commentators are running away from the idea that Islam had anything to do with the shooter's motives; Chris Matthews, for instance, saying that "we may never know" whether the shooter's religion was a factor.

Dr. Helen demands to know why Hasan was not investigated long before this week. After all, it is reported that he left a trail of anti-American statements that came to federal authorities' attention at least six months ago, although in fairness it is not certain that this Nidal Hasan was the author, his name being more common that Westerners might imagine. So, asks Helen,

Was it political correctness and concern for his Muslim heritage that kept officials from looking further into his mental health? Was the army so desperate for a psychiatrist (there is always a shortage) they didn't dare do anything?

So was alleged killer Dr. (Maj.) Nidal Hasan given a pass because the Army 's policies and commanders are so cowed by political correctness that they simply turned a blind eye to his reported, increasing Islamic radicalism?

I think there was less PC at play in continuing Hasan's career than you think. I don't mean "none," but low enough not to be a major factor. He was most likely given a pass because he was a doctor who by all accounts performed his physician duties well. And the Army is short of doctors, in some specialties critically short.

[T]here just aren’t enough military doctors to go around. So many MDs have been deployed to war zones that coverage back home — for military family members, retirees, and garrisoned troops — has been spread awfully thin.

I spoke to one Army doctor the other day - a chief of family practice at a good-sized facility. Let’s call him Dr. Jonah. He oversees about a dozen doctors, each with at least 21 patients per day.

Which sounds like a lot - until you consider that he’s got a patient base of over 18,000. Which means that diabetics or hypertensives — who should be seen at least four times annually– are only seen once a year. "There are women who haven’t gotten pap smears in years, who go without mammograms for years," Dr. Jonah says.

"The people that the government promised would take care of their health care are not getting nearly the coverage they need," he sighs.

There are Army doctors in my church, near Ft Campbell, and they've told me the Army is short. My second son wants to go to medical school after he graduates college (he's a senior now). I asked one of the Army doctors what he needed to do to get the Army to pay for it.

"First, get accepted to an accredited medical school," he answered.

"Then what?" I asked.

"That's pretty much it."

The NYT reports that Hasan tried to get released from active duty, claiming he was being harassed because he was a Muslim. "But the Army, which had paid for his education and was in great need of psychiatrists, refused, family members said."

According to the AP, Va. Tech. says that Hasan was never enrolled in ROTC there. As an honors graduate in biochemistry from the university, he had no problem getting accepted in the Army's "become a doctor on our dime" program.

The reason Hasan never came under military scrutiny for his increasingly-radicalized Islamism I think had much less to do with political correctness than with the Army Medical Department's fear of losing a doctor, who by all accounts performed his medical duties well, and not having a replacement.

There are no Medal of Honor "winners"

2009-11-07T14:13:00.001Z

NewsBusters reports that yesterday the man to whom President Obama gave a "shout out" and identified as a "Medal of Honor winner" was never awarded the Medal of Honor. Dr. Joe Medicine Crow "was, however, awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in August." In fact, it from Obama's hand that Crow received the Medal of Freedom.

Be that as it may, there is no such thing as a Medal of Honor "winner." Lotteries are won, games are won, military decorations are earned. This may not seem like a big deal to civilians, but it is to military folks. One has earned the Medal or been awarded the Medal, but one never wins it. Those who hold the Medal are recipients thereof, not winners.

When the White House wants your opinion, they'll give it to you

2009-11-07T00:58:00.002Z

The White House is letting it be known to Democrat political strategists and consultants that if they ever want to work in Washington again they'd better not be seen anywhere near a FoxNews Channel reporter or camera, so says Tom Elia.

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, "We better not see you on again,'' said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue.'

Hope and Change!

Oh, BTW, for next year's mid-term elections, "Hope and Change" is out. "Wing and a Prayer" is in.

Update: Tom Elia's source was a piece in the Chicago Tribune. But the White House is saying that the story is false.

Quote of the day

2009-11-06T21:58:00.000Z

When you lose your job, politicians will stroke your back and tell you how sorry they are. But when they’re about to lose theirs, everything becomes an emergency. Black & Right

Stress on Army families is great, too

2009-11-06T18:28:00.000Z

From "Army Live," the official blog of the US Army: "Not Wanting to Let Go"

I recently came across the above picture (which I am sure many of you have seen already) of Paige Bennethum standing in formation with her father, pleading with him not to leave. Her father, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum was preparing to leave on a year -long deployment to Iraq.
Last week I attended the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition and had the opportunity to sit in on the Military Family Forums. On the final day, the topic for the forum focused on the effects of extended deployments on Soldiers, families and especially the children.
The Army psychiatrist, Col. Kris Peterson discussed with Army Spouses and support groups the seriousness of repeated, lengthy deployments and the effects they are having on children.
For example, he noted that yearly mental health visits for children under the age of 15 have increased from 800,000 in 2003 to 1.6 million in 2008. One out of three school-age children are at risk for psychological problems and about 30 percent of children have significantly increased anxiety.
In an effort to deal with that trend and provide a central place for Army children to get mental and physical help, Peterson and other experts at Madigan developed the Military Child and Adolescent Center of Excellence in Fort Lewis, Washington.
The team consists of pediatricians, psychologists, social workers and child and adolescent psychiatrists whom are looking at the latest research and strategically planning the way forward for caring for Army children in addition to sifting through existing programs to find what actually works.
Many times when we think about the U.S. Army we tend to focus just on the Soldiers. We must remember that there are children all over the country like Paige Bennethum whose father or mother is/will be deployed overseas for months at a time. These deployments obviously have a great effect on the children and that is why the U.S. Army is working hard to create and development programs and centers that will assist families through those difficult times.
Military families, we want to hear from you. Let us know what you think can be done to assist families in times of deployments. Children; share your stories of how you deal with a loved one being deployed.

The Obama amateur hour

2009-11-06T17:45:00.000Z

Hot Air cites a Washington Post piece on the administration's multiple fumbles in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Saith the Post,

Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration’s efforts in recent days as “amateur night at the Apollo Theater.” He said the administration did not game out the consequences of its demands on the parties — and then flinched. “They just dug deeper and deeper their own grave,” he said. “All of this talk of negotiations doesn’t cut the mustard in the region.”

To this and the rest of the critique a commenter wrote,

But really, he inherited this mess from Bush. And it came with some “structural deficits,” which make it look even worse today than it did a year ago.

(It’s so cool that I can just copy and paste this into every Obama thread, and never be off-topic!)

Heh, how true, how true.

Not that the administration's foreign policy failures in the Middle East are any different from the rest. Recall the White House's Honduras "policy," which is that the Congress and courts of Honduras may not follow the strictures of their own national constitution to remove a president who has clearly and ambiguously disqualified himself for continued tenure in office. Calling from day one for the reinstatement of ousted would-be strongman President Manuel Zelaya, the White House and Foggy Bottom expected the Honduran government to fold under their pressure. But the Hondurans bravely stuck to their rights. Instead, writes Jennifer Rubin at Commentary,

... the Obama team picked the wrong horse, found itself in a diplomatic dead end, found a mechanism to abandon its failed gambit, and now supports elections — the very position that the Honduran interim government and the administration’s critics have been urging from the beginning. Well, in fairness, it is a display of diplomatic genius compared with Obama’s Middle East policy.

Is Ft Hood's commander setting up Hasan's acquittal?

2009-11-06T15:20:00.003Z

If Hasan is to stand trial, Ft Hood's commander, Lt. Gen Robert Cone, will be the prosecuting authority. He needs to shut up now to keep the charges from being thrown out. Here's why.

Bear with me while I walk this dog. Persons serving in the armed forces are subject to a unique set of federal laws known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, UCMJ. Like any federal laws, the UCMJ is a Congressional enactment.

Under the UCMJ, service members to be tried by a military court-martial are legally charged not by a district attorney, for which there is no real military equivalent, but by the accused's commanding officer. (Military lawyers try the case on both sides, though.) Only a commander can sign the charge documents to set the ball rolling to hold a military trial, a court-martial. That means that the actual accuser of a soldier to stand trial is the soldier's commanding officer. In practice, this means that the accusing commander who signs the charges cannot be the commander who directs the court martial to be held since the UCMJ prohibits them from being the same person. Normally, therefore, an accused's immediate commander, usually a captain, signs the charges since captains cannot convene courts martial.

Felony offenses in the Army are tried by a General Court martial, so called because a GCM can be convened only by a general in the accused's chain of command. Lt. Gen. Cone is the commanding general of all Ft. Hood and is in Dr. (Maj.) Hasan's chain of command, although Cone is not the first general officer in Hasan's chain. As an Army doctor, Hasan is assigned to the Army medical Department, AMEDD, which in the Army is called a "stovepipe" command, meaning that operational command of day to day activities does not pass through Lt. Gen. Cone but administrative command, relating to AMEDD's "tenant" status on Ft. Hood, does pass through Cone.

Almost certainly Hasan's court-martial, if it come about, will be convened by Lt. Gen. Cone and members of the court's panel (jury) will be officers under Cone's command.

Here is why Lt. Gen. Cone may have already blown the prosecution. It is because of a principle in military law called Unlawful Command Influence on the trial of the accused.

In 1983 I took command of an artillery battery in 2d battalion, 3d Field Artillery Regiment, then stationed at Schloss Kaserne in the town of Butzbach, Germany. The 2/3 FAR was part off 3d Armored Division.

A legal scandal had recently been brewed by cases of convicted soldiers in the division whose cases had, as a matter of routine, worked up through the Court of Military review and the Court of Military Appeals. The division's commander, Maj. Gen. Thurman Anderson, had spoken on 10 or so occasions to groups of the division's officer and senior NCOs; part of the content of the general's remarks were held by the CMA to constitute unlawful command influence, or UCI in legal shorthand.

Justice.gov's summary of the controversy explains,

a. Major General Anderson assumed command of the Third Armored Division, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, on February 19, 1982. During the period from April to December 1982, General Anderson spoke at approximately ten different meetings, held at different locations
throughout his command, at which the topic of testifying on behalf of accused soldiers at courts-martial was raised. General Anderson's extemporaneous remarks were typically made in the course of lectures and discussions on a variety of topics. As the Court of Military Appeals summarized (Pet. App. 2a-3a), General Anderson "found it paradoxical for a unit commander, who had recommended that an accused be tried by a court-martial authorized to adjudge a punitive discharge, to later appear as a defense character witness at the sentencing stage of the trial, testify as to the accused's good character, and recommend that the convicted soldier be retained in the service." The court noted that "(s)ome of General Anderson's remarks were elaborated upon and possibly distorted by his subordinates. Be that as it may, his comments were later interpreted, or misinterpreted, to reflect an intent that a commander, first sergeant,
or other person from an accused's unit, should not give favorable presentencing testimony on behalf of an accused. This interpretation may have also extended to findings" at the guilt stage of courts-martial.

b. In late January or early February 1983, a military defense attorney in the course of a pretrial interview discovered that a noncommissioned officer believed that a policy existed in the Third Armored Division against servicemen offering favorable testimony at a court-martial in a defendant's behalf ... .

Ultimately, the courts afforded "some form of relief in all but 37 of the 219 cases." But convictions were not overturned because the Court held that MG Anderson's remarks were not directed toward any specific case that he had no personal interest in the outcome of any case brought before him.

But that is where Lt. Gen. Cone's remarks go "off the reservation." Cone has made public comments about the shootings at Ft Hood that directly and specifically refer to the alleged shooter, Dr. Hasan. TheHill.com reports, for example,

But Ft. Hood's base commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, said Friday on NBC's "Today" show that Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire yesterday in a rampage that killed 13 and wounded 30. "Allahu Akbar!" is Arabic for "God is great!"

Does this statement, and many others like it the general has made, cross the UCI line? Lt. Gen. Cone has directly stated that Hasan is the shooter, meaning that the general has effectively pronounced Hasan guilty. But in military law as in civil criminal prosecutions, the accused enjoys presumption of innocence until the panel finds him guilty beyond reasonable doubt at trial.

Update: For clarity's sake, the law empowers the military to convene trials for offenses for which the death penalty may be sentenced. Murder is such an offense. The General Court martial must be convened specifically empowered to adjudge the death penalty and the panel does not have to adjudge it. of course, any court martial may try only offenses listed in the punitive articles of the UCMJ. The Ft Hood shootings unambiguously fall under military jurisdiction because (a) they took place on a military installation, (b) the accused is a military member and (c) so were 12 of the 13 the victims. Military law does allow for the shooter to be tried for the murder of the civilian under the UCMJ because the killing took place on a military installation.