At THE AUTONOMIST: photos from last weekend's antiwar rallies. Not sure which is my favorite: the "Impeach the Gringos-- Viva Chavez" tee-shirt or the old geezer with the sign reading "Imperialist America is Humanity's Number One Enemy"...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 07:23 ||
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#1
Misguided friggin idiots. Useless air-sucking, space occupying fools. They should all go protest to the talibunnies, AQ or the rest of the terrorists. It is chickenshit not to. Most likely, you will find your your genitals somewhere else and your head severed from your body and laying on your chest or dumped in a gutter somewhere. Please try to go negotiate with them and spare us us your whiny self-deluded bullshit. Spare the rest of us your self-rightous delusional crap.
#2
This just makes me angry. They can all go fuck themselves! That Son of a Bitch dragging the flag deserves to have his ass beat with a Louiville slugger.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/25/2007 14:42 Comments ||
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Today is National Medal of Honor Day. Take time to remember:
BEAUFORD T. ANDERSON
After emptying 1 magazine at pointblank range into the screaming attackers, he seized an enemy mortar dud and threw it back among the charging Japs, killing several as it burst. Securing a box of mortar shells, he extracted the safety pins, banged the bases upon a rock to arm them and proceeded alternately to hurl shells and fire his piece among the fanatical foe, finally forcing them to withdraw.
WILSON DOUGLAS WATSON
Fighting furiously against Japanese troops attacking with grenades and knee mortars from the reverse slope, he stood fearlessly erect in his exposed position to cover the hostile entrenchments and held the hill under savage fire for 15 minutes, killing 60 Japanese before his ammunition was exhausted and his platoon was able to join him.
WILLIAM E. BARBER
Aware that leaving the position would sever contact with the 8,000 marines trapped at Yudam-ni and jeopardize their chances of joining the 3,000 more awaiting their arrival in Hagaru-ri for the continued drive to the sea, he chose to risk loss of his command rather than sacrifice more men if the enemy seized control and forced a renewed battle to regain the position, or abandon his many wounded who were unable to walk. Although severely wounded in the leg in the early morning of the 29th, Capt. Barber continued to maintain personal control, often moving up and down the lines on a stretcher to direct the defense and consistently encouraging and inspiring his men to supreme efforts despite the staggering opposition. Waging desperate battle throughout 5 days and 6 nights of repeated onslaughts launched by the fanatical aggressors, he and his heroic command accounted for approximately 1,000 enemy dead in this epic stand in bitter subzero weather, and when the company was relieved only 82 of his original 220 men were able to walk away from the position so valiantly defended against insuperable odds.
JIMMY G. STEWART
Exhausting his ammunition, he crawled under intense fire to his wounded team members and collected ammunition that they were unable to use. Far past the normal point of exhaustion, he held his position for 4 harrowing hours and through 3 assaults, annihilating the enemy as they approached and before they could get a foothold. As a result of his defense, the company position held until the arrival of a reinforcing platoon which counterattacked the enemy, now occupying foxholes to the left of S/Sgt. Stewarts position. After the counterattack, his body was found in a shallow enemy hole where he had advanced in order to add his fire to that of the counterattacking platoon. Eight enemy dead were found around his immediate position, with evidence that 15 others had been dragged away.
I'd like to add one who I'm reminded of every day I exit for work using the "Joseph Vittori Memorial Interchange" in Hopkinton, Mass. From the Wikipedia entry:
Corporal Joseph Vittori (1929-1951) was a 22-year old United States Marine who was killed in action during the Korean War. ...
With heavy casualties leaving a 100-yard gap in the Marine lines at the position, he fought a single-handed battle to prevent an enemy break-through. Leaping from one side of the position to the other, he kept up a withering fire of over 1,000 rounds in three hours. He made repeated trips through heavy shellfire to replenish his ammunition, manned a machine gun after its gunner fell, and despite enemy penetration to within feet of his position, kept the enemy out of the breech in his companys lines until he was mortally wounded. The next morning the Marines counted almost 200 enemy dead in the area.
#2
Sadly, these men were never able to take their courage to politics.
The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." - Thucydides
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/25/2007 16:16 Comments ||
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Not just grunts, either:
DEAN, WILLIAM F.
Rank and organization: Major General, U.S. Army, commanding general, 24th Infantry Division. Place and date: Taejon, Korea, 20 and 21 July 1950. Entered service at: California. Born: 1 August 1899, Carlyle, Ill. G.O. No.: 7, 16 February 1951. Citation: Maj. Gen. Dean distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the repeated risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. In command of a unit suddenly relieved from occupation duties in Japan and as yet untried in combat, faced with a ruthless and determined enemy, highly trained and overwhelmingly superior in numbers, he felt it his duty to take action which to a man of his military experience and knowledge was clearly apt to result in his death. He personally and alone attacked an enemy tank while armed only with a hand grenade. He also directed the fire of his tanks from an exposed position with neither cover nor concealment while under observed artillery and small-arm fire. When the town of Taejon was finally overrun he refused to insure his own safety by leaving with the leading elements but remained behind organizing his retreating forces, directing stragglers, and was last seen assisting the wounded to a place of safety. These actions indicate that Maj. Gen. Dean felt it necessary to sustain the courage and resolution of his troops by examples of excessive gallantry committed always at the threatened portions of his frontlines. The magnificent response of his unit to this willing and cheerful sacrifice, made with full knowledge of its certain cost, is history. The success of this phase of the campaign is in large measure due to Maj. Gen. Dean's heroic leadership, courageous and loyal devotion to his men, and his complete disregard for personal safety.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/25/2007 16:23 Comments ||
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#4
Billy Dean was a brave, brave man. But he shouldn't have been hunting tanks.
When I first heard this story on the radio station 1010 WINS here in New York City this morning, my mouth drooped open and I stared at myself in the mirror while shaving. Could this incredible story be true? According to Eric Beck (a supervisor for Taylor Recycling, a company hired to sort the debris hauled from the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks), the residual powders from the truckloads brought to Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island were used in a paving-like mixture to fill city potholes and pave streets.
Rest at link...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 11:12 ||
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#1
Personally, this culture of grief and memorials has gone too far...
Genesis 3:19
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/25/2007 11:23 Comments ||
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He does make a good point though..
there should be a common symbolic mass burial site with a memorial headstone where the family members can visit.
Either at a nearby cemetery or on a small portion of the site.
But this wish to entomb all of the debris and the banning of building on the footprints of the towers is carrying things too far.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/25/2007 11:43 Comments ||
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Agreed; but its hardly going too far to expect them to refrain from using the deathloam as pothole-filler.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 11:56 Comments ||
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#4
This to me seems less offensive than dumping it at a landfill.
Was there no piece of barren land available, some deserted quarry, some site offshore, where the material could have been deposited?
A landfill? With the trash?
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/25/2007 12:10 Comments ||
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#5
We've scattered a few friends of mine in the "potato patch" [Pacific Ocean] just outside the Golden Gate Bridge.
The last one was a Engineer/Architect buddy of mine who was a Seabee in the 50s. It was a warm sunny day with a slight inshore breeze and 6 porpoises played around the bow as we scattered Ray's ashes into the blue green water.
I'd like that myself but I wouldn't mind if my ashes served the useful purpose of filling a pot hole. After-all I've spent my entire life working in either Heavy and/or Residential construction.
#6
Filling a pot-hole is pretty useful. I'd rather be there than with the Pampers in the landfill. Course I really want to launched to Alpha-Luv Beta, the planet of try-it-again, this time with superior massage.
Not Scrappleface.
Former President Jimmy Carter has stepped forward and offered to mediate the escalating crisis between Iran and Britain over 15 British marines seized by Iran for allegedly entering their territorial waters.
As everyone knows, I have tremendous hands-on experience in handling a crisis of this nature, said Carter, who spoke briefly to reporters during a break from building a house for former Guantanamo Bay prisoners ...
Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) ||
03/25/2007 01:40 ||
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#1
Please God, prime some lightning bolt and split Peanut into two!
#3
Jimmy Carter that surrendered to st off the first set of hostage crises for Iran?
Yeah Jimmy, go right ahead. But there will be NO secret service escort. You're on your own.
We'll just put you on a rubber raft and push you across the Shatt'a'Arab to the Iranian part. Their coast guard will have a very warm welcome waiting for you.
#5
I think history is already showing us that the Iranians did not seize American hostages as much as they detained illegal foreign occupiers who were using an alleged embassy as a front, said Carter. In fact, I am launching an effort now to change the history books, so that we no longer refer to that incident as the Iranian Hostage Crisis but as the Iranian Anti-Zionist Uprising.
Are we sure this is fake?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/25/2007 7:17 Comments ||
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#6
I predict that Jesse Jackson and Ramsey Clark will get into the act soon.
#8
I am positive that Georgous George Galloway has already packed his kneepads and Binaca, and notified his adoring media whores that he is on the way.
Probably the only reason he isn't is that he can't figure out who in Teheran to get down on his knees in front of first.
#9
#2. Gorb, it's from The Nose on Your Face whose motto is: "News so fake you'll swear it's from the main stream media". Those guys are good. I shudda bookmarked it sometime ago. Done.
#10
these guys are good:
Top 9 Signs That You Unwittingly Hired Hillary Clinton As Your Babysitter
9. (tie) Your kids always complain that she keeps taking their allowances for the greater good.
9. (tie) When your daughter skinned her knee, she provided her with the same sub-standard medical care that your son received, even though he was not injured, in the interest of fairness.
8. You often return home to find your son curled up in the fetal position screaming, Okay, okay! I pinkie-promise Ill never vote Republican! Now make the ouchies stop!!
7. You find your kitten dead with two puncture marks on its neck.
6. Someone keeps writing Obama sukz! in shaving cream on your bathroom mirror.
5. (tie) She goes out of her way to be kind to your son Noam, but is pretty mean to your daughter Monica.
5. (tie) Your kids think shes weird because she put burned cork all over her face and kept talking like Forrest Gump to herself in the mirror.
4. All of your blue dresses were slashed with a steak knife and then burned.
3. After she leaves your kids keep asking what fast nightwing can spear a knee means.
2. The toilet seat was left up.
1. Kids complain that she continuously bilks them out of Park Avenue and Boardwalk when they play Monopoly.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2007 12:26 Comments ||
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"3. After she leaves your kids keep asking what fast nightwing can spear a knee means."
LOL!! Took a couple minutes but I finally got it...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 12:43 Comments ||
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#12
LOL - I like #2 too
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/25/2007 12:49 Comments ||
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#13
After she leaves your kids keep asking what fast nightwing can spear a knee means."
I still ain't got it.
How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.
Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us. Yeah, calling it the "War on Terror" was lame. Not perfidious, as Zbiggy suggests, just lame. All the rest of this horseshit opinion piece is just Jimmeh with a Polish accent.
The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.
But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."
To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.
That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.
Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence. Hence their task is to convince the public that it faces new threats. That puts a premium on the presentation of credible scenarios of ever-more-horrifying acts of violence, sometimes even with blueprints for their implementation.
That America has become insecure and more paranoid is hardly debatable. A recent study reported that in 2003, Congress identified 160 sites as potentially important national targets for would-be terrorists. With lobbyists weighing in, by the end of that year the list had grown to 1,849; by the end of 2004, to 28,360; by 2005, to 77,769. The national database of possible targets now has some 300,000 items in it, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and an Illinois Apple and Pork Festival.
More Zbiggybabble at link...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
He almost seemed like a serious person, way back (depsite his association with the slapstick Jimmah Admin.). He's now a preposterous comic figure - that is, he mouthes the stupefyingly dumb b.s. that passes for sophisticated analysis among a majority of Beltway lightweights.
#3
I fear a future ICBM threat from wackos who shout "Death to America" and smash barbed whips against their backs. Lock me up!
The last time Zbiggy and Jimmah sold out US allies from Persia to Central America to South Aftica to Korea, the Soviets began their winning streak. The enemy loved to hear Jimmah squack about "human rights" for Communists.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/25/2007 10:39 Comments ||
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#6
Wow. That's some serious denial...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 10:59 Comments ||
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#7
Sooooooooo! It was Jimmuah what ended the Commie menace. Who knew?
#8
Interestingly, I've heard some Russians claim that Jimmy won the Cold War. They said that by losing to the USSR all the time, Jimmy encouraged them to over extend themselves so they collapsed 10 years later.
Maybe we can have the Dems encourage the Moslems to overextend themselves too.
/sarc off
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/25/2007 13:38 Comments ||
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#9
Considering that modern Islamic fundamentalism was literally birthed on Brzezinski's watch, he really should shut his damned pie hole about any difficulties being encountered while we address the mess he left behind for us to clean up. This isn't even constructive 20-20 hindsight, it's counterproductive sniping from the sidelines.
There may be more to Irans seizure of 15 British sailors than meets the eye.
Opinion piece by Mario Loyola at NRO, noodling on possible connections between the seizure of RN personnel, Iran's nuclear ambitions and yesterday's events at the UNSC. Final paragraph:
So, long story short: It wouldnt surprise me if the British sailors were detained because the British did something to make the Iranians really angry. Khamanei dramatically upped the ante this week. We probably raised. And they probably raised back. The stakes in this nuclear-poker game just got a little higher.
RTWT...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/25/2007 14:43 ||
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#1
Time to go 'all in' or fold. Unfortunately the future of the free world rests on the decision.
Posted by: Jim ||
03/25/2007 15:15 Comments ||
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I ain't saying nothin, but if I did it would be under me nome 'deVille Mario Loyola
RUBs will amount to little more than a stream-of-consciousness note tapped out as quickly as I can, and posted without checking nary a tense or, comma.
For the first RUBS, lets start with day to day stuff. Ive been evicted from a trailer due to lack of space (something I cover more in a dispatch ready to launch tomorrow). Billions of dollars are spent on the war each month, millions of dollars fly around here like sparrows, yet there are no designated places for journalists? While so many soldiers and their families shout for coverage from Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq, I can sometimes be found from midnight to sunrise sitting outside, trying to transmit photos through a wireless network that only works sometimes. RUBS will be mostly sans photos.
A friend named "Q" called me this morning. I havent seen Q for more than a year. Q is a soldier, and this his second combat tour. I got to know Q up in Mosul in 2005. Q called on my cell to tell me he was at the PX. The PX is the big store on base where they sell shoes, frozen foods, and even 10 varieties of flat-screen televisions. The most expensive costs $2,000. When I got to the PX, there was my buddy Q, sitting at a table just next to the Burger King, Taco Bell and Popeyes chicken place. A soldier tossed a couple fries to a some sparrows while I asked Q how the war has been going for him.
We got a coffee at Seattles Best coffee joint, and while we stood in line, Q told me that one of his closest buddies was killed yesterday in combat downtown. He got shot in the head. Q is taking it like a soldier, which is to say he misses his friend. I didnt know what to say. Q wanted to buy my coffee. The memorial is will be on the 26th. Q had shot people himself in Mosul, and recently made it through Special Forces selection, but he was back here an infantryman. He had volunteered to come back to Iraq. Soldiers like Q are the reason I came back, because I know they deserve to have their stories told, and I know that Americans want to read them.
After some conversation, Q had to head back to his unit on a nearby base, and I sat there for a while thinking. Helicopters flew over. Last night there had been a lot of armor moving. Big Strykers, M1 tanks, Bradleys, all rumbling off to somewhere. A fight was scheduled for somewhere. Lights and dust. Creaking and groaning machines with powerful engines rumbled in the night. Dark helicopters flew overhead, and jets above them. War was unfolding. That was last night.
There are jackals around here, not just the metophorical ones, but the ones that yip, and sometimes bunches of them start yipping at once. Yesterday, while I was doing an on-air interview on my cell phone with Glenn and Helen on Instapundit, a jackal skulked around, walked up on a berm and just stared at me. I was staring back at the jackal while talking to Glenn and Helen. Often while I am talking with people in the States, they hear the helicopters flying, but none have ever said they heard the gunfire or explosions that sometimes occur while we are talking.
I have not left base in a good two weeks. This is unprecedented, given that sometimes I would run two or three missions per day, or at least try for five or six or seven per week. Trying to get living quarters and good communications is truly a waste of time. Only the richest or most determined news agencies dare come here for more than a brief stay. Most of the journalists seem to start cracking pretty quick anyway.
Generally its a huge waste of time and money to come here, and the hassle and risk to reward ratio is very bad. Ive spent more than a year embedded in Iraq, and numerous times public affairs people have made snide remarks that journalists should be happy they get to eat "their chow" for free. Of course, they dont mention that "their chow" belongs to American taxpayers, the same taxpayers they hurt when they squelch journalism from the war. Whether they do it directly, intentionally indirectly, or just by plain bungling the simplest stuff, like making sure writers have a surface to write on, whatever the case, I havent met anyone yet who knows how to write or hold a camera who comes to Iraq for free food. Its really not fun here, next to impossible to do the job, and the food is nothing special. After all, were not talking about covering the French army.
The dining facilities are interesting and vastly different throughout the country. Some are rough and soldiers are lucky and happy to get sandwiches. But here in Baghdad the mess halls are like restaurants. Steak and crab once per week. All the major sodas, lots of cake and ice cream, complete with African guards out front. Most people can enter the dining facility without a problem, but at the dining facility near my tent, I get searched every time because I have a press ID. Thats a nice touchwand the press before they eat. But I know first hand that it can get even more heavy-handed. One time, in 2005, after I wrote something they didnt like (Proximity Delays), I needed a guard to eat.
Inside the dining facility here, most of the workers are from places like India, Bangladesh and Nepal. They all smile and are very polite, but when I talk with them during times when its not busy, all seem unhappy. One man from Nepal told me that after he pays everyone off for having the job, he makes $275 per month. One of the Indian men working at a fast food joint on base (not saying which) said he makes $500 per month for 60 hours per week. No overtime or holidays. After hearing all that, I suppose the public affairs people are right: I am lucky to get a free lunch!
But considering all the planning, organization, logistics and resources that went in to putting up what amounts to a food court in a surburban mall, how hard would it be, really, for there to be a clean, well-lit press trailer, open 24-7, with some desks, chairs and lockers, wired for the internet? Not on every base, but on enough of them so that stories from everywhere else could get out on a regular basis. For a military that is the first to gripe about not getting enough pressin a kind of war where the press can determine the outcomeit seems fairly obvious that the first step would be to at least make sure there is a place for the press to work. If this were a few months into this war, I could understand it, but to not even be at square one this far in?
A general emailed in the past 24 hours threatening to kick me out. The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called Gates of Fire. Some of the senior level public affairs people whod been upset by Proximity Delays were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use Gates of Fire as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. Thats right. Im not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didnt) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.
Some readers might recall that LTC Barry Johnson denied my embed requests in 2006, but after I wrote Censoring Iraq, somehow the door opened up. Strangely, a couple days ago, LTC Barry Johnson invited me to be a panelist at a symposium in Washington D.C. on the role of blogs and bloggers in the news environment today. The intent is to help PAOs better understand the issues involved. Call me suspicious, but my whiskers tingled on that one.
Ill post a major dispatch within the next 18 hours. Lots of photos. I worked very hard for you. Theyll probably say I broke some kind of rules. Fact is, as soon as the public affairs people will start being part of the solution and not part of the problem, I can start writing about the successes and the soldiers like Q who are out in Baghdad even now, trying to make this work.
#1
Michael's great, and fair.
I detect a bit of resentment toward the press from the active military, and rightfully so. Now if we could translate that resentment into broken bones, the tide might begin to turn. As long as the press can walk around freely without someone taking a pound of flesh here and there, we will have a press that treats us like sheep.
You may not know, the Government is confining people on immigration violations while they await outcomes of their asylum petitions or deportation. Such a facility is here in central Texas, just south of Austin.
This is a long article, with the typical Statesman's bias, but this confinement of illegals maybe be unknown to some of you. It's only getting publicity, because it's so close to Austin.
Article is long, and behind registration block
Mods, delete is needed.. I couldn't figure out what to leave out.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
TAYLOR Conversations with her mother and the son she left behind in Somalia because she feared for her life there. Visits to her grandmother's tranquil vegetable garden. Walks past her grandparents' house on her way home; they were always waiting to greet her.
These recurring images filled Bahjo Hosen's dreams as she slept with her 2-year-old son, Mustafa, curled up next to her on a narrow metal bunk bed in a roughly 8-foot-by-12-foot cell with an open toilet and sink in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.
Bahjo Hosen and her son Mustafa, now 3, spent more than 210 nights at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former prison in Taylor, awaiting the outcome of their asylum petition. Immigration officials say such centers keep families together and ensure immigrants don't skip hearings. But critics say the lockups are inhumane and are pushing for alternatives.
ACLU lawyer Vanita Gupta, left, ACLU of Texas Legal Director Lisa Graybill and Barbara Hines, who directs the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School were part of a group that toured the Hutto facility last month.
Some cells at the Hutto center include a baby bed and children's toys. More than half of the almost 2,000 people who have been detained there since last May have been minors.
Mustafa and his mother, Bahjo Hosen, now live in an Austin home for refugees. Bahjo fled Somalia with Mustafa after her brother was killed by a powerful tribe, leaving behind her husband and older son.
On most mornings about 5:30, a guard's rap on the door jarred Bahjo awake, drawing a dark curtain on her dreams and beginning another day of confinement while she and Mustafa pursued asylum in the U.S. immigration system's slow-grinding bureaucracy.
"I never dreamed I would be in jail," said Hosen, who fled a Somalian clan's death threats, only to be locked up in the immigrant detention center in Taylor.
The former state prison is in the bull's-eye of a growing controversy over a federal policy that requires families like Bahjo and Mustafa to be confined on immigration violations while they await outcomes of their asylum petitions or deportation. The waits can drag on for days, months, sometimes years.
The controversy raises two questions: Is it inhumane to confine children and families for running afoul of immigration laws? And are there better alternatives than locking people up?
Critics answer yes to both. Lawsuits filed on behalf of 10 children confined in Taylor accuse federal officials of illegally and inhumanely housing children, failing to meet the standards of a 1997 court settlement for the care of minors in immigration custody, and ignoring Congress' orders to exhaust other options before detaining families in homelike environments.
At a hearing on the lawsuits last week, even U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks expressed exasperation at the restrictions under which families are living at the Hutto facility.
"This is detention. This isn't the penitentiary," Sparks said. Detainees "have less rights than the people I send to the penitentiary."
Sparks ordered that some restrictions on attorney visits with detainee clients be removed immediately.
But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials defend Hutto as a model facility that keeps families together while ensuring that they don't skip their immigration hearings.
They also say detention helps deter illegal immigration. In February, Department of Homeland Security officials credited detention and other enforcement efforts with a 27 percent drop in arrests of illegal immigrants since October, compared with the same period a year ago.
Advocates for detainees say a significant number of those confined at Hutto are seeking asylum and thus have strong incentives to attend their hearings. They say the government can enforce immigration laws without locking families up. In fact, Congress has allocated millions of dollars for nonpenal alternatives to detention. "The choice is not between enforcement of immigration laws and humane treatment of immigrant families," said Vanita Gupta, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "ICE can achieve both objectives."
Calls for change
The 512-bed detention center in Taylor opened last May amid calls in Washington for tougher enforcement of immigration laws. The only other family detention center, in Leesport, Pa., has 84 beds and opened in 2001. Simona Colon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer-in-charge at Hutto, testified in federal court that about 2,000 people more than half of them minors have passed through the facility. About 680 people have been released on bail or parole during the current fiscal year, and about 400 have been removed from the country. Another 405 are there now.
The Hutto facility enabled the government to end the so-called "catch and release" of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico when there weren't enough detention beds to hold them. (Because their deportation is easier, Mexicans caught illegally in the U.S. are usually returned to Mexico within hours of their arrest.)
In the past, most non-Mexican families were either separated and held individually or released together and told to appear later before an immigration judge. The government says that most didn't show up and that more than half a million immigrants who have been ordered deported are presumed to still be in the country.
But even as Congress responded to calls for tougher border enforcement, some lawmakers said they were troubled by the treatment of children and families arrested on immigration violations.
House and Senate appropriations committees first told immigration officials in 2005 to stop separating families and to find alternatives to penal detention when possible. Lawmakers cited a supervised release program already in use though not with families and said that if detention is necessary it should be in homelike environments. Current funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement calls for such an approach.
Many families are fleeing violence or persecution in their own countries and seeking asylum here. Federal officials say they do not track how many asylum seekers are at individual detention facilities. But in early February, Gary Mead, assistant director for detention and removal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, estimated that in a population of about 380 people at the Hutto facility, 75 families were seeking asylum conservatively, 40 percent of all detainees there at that time. (The population fluctuates daily as people are released and others are brought in.)
Some of these asylum seekers the government doesn't track the numbers ultimately win the right to stay in the U.S. Meanwhile, they say, they are treated like criminals.
Federal officials say they are caught in a dilemma.
"If we break families up and put them in separate detention facilities, we get criticized," Mead said. "We feel this is a humane approach."
Mead says detention reduces illegal immigration by thwarting smugglers who once exploited families by promising they would go free if caught entering the country with children. Federal officials also claim that smugglers sneaked kids in with strangers, trying to pass them off as family units.
That the Hutto center has never been filled to capacity, Mead said, is "a sign to us that word is getting out that coming as a family is not going to be a free ticket into the country."
Barbara Hines, who directs the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School and has represented several families held at Hutto, challenges that contention.
"The people that we see are fleeing gangs, domestic violence, and I think that they're trying to find safety wherever they can. So I don't think that they're deterred," said Hines, who is one of the attorneys for plaintiffs in the federal lawsuits. "And I think that's the problem with their enforcement policy: They lump everybody into one category, and they don't consider families and children."
Keeping watch
If the old policy of letting illegal immigrants go was called "catch and release," the supervised release program that federal officials use in select cases could be called "catch and watch."
The immigration and customs agency employs its Intensive Supervision Appearance Program only in Miami; Baltimore; Kansas City, Mo.; St. Paul, Minn.; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.,; and Denver. Since its inception in 2004 and through December 2006, 4,309 adult participants showed up at their court hearings 98 percent of the time.
Federal officials say participants are not public safety, national security or flight risks. They live in a house arrest-type situation and may be subject to unannounced home visits by authorities, wear a steel ankle bracelet that monitors their whereabouts and report to immigration officials at frequent intervals, said Jack Herzig, a Philadelphia attorney who has represented clients in the program.
"In comparison to prison, of course, (the program) has certain advantages," Herzig said. But he said it still takes a toll. "There is an emotional stress upon people in a position where they're not in prison but they're certainly not free. I don't think it's a placebo."
In 1997 the Vera Institute of Justice began testing supervised release in New York City for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. It found that in about 500 cases of asylum seekers, 93 percent of those released to the supervision of family members appeared at their final hearing.
Supervised release costs less than half as much as detention, the nonprofit organization said. Federal officials did not respond to a question about cost comparison.
Despite congressional committees' direction to use alternatives to detention when possible, U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, a member of one of those panels, said he thinks the Hutto facility "offers the optimal solution to our nation's growing illegal immigration problem."
Carter, whose district includes Taylor, toured the facility Feb. 23, saying afterward that it provides "a humane and safe alternative to 'catch and release.' "
"I'm confused as to how he reached that conclusion," said Lisa Graybill, legal director with the ACLU of Texas. "Perhaps he has different standards for how children should be treated in this country. It's indisputably a jail."
Mead suggested that placing families in supervised release is not practical, since immigration officials expect that most who are not seeking asylum will be deported relatively quickly.
However, Bahjo and Mustafa slept more than 210 nights in their cell in Taylor. By the time an immigration judge granted him and his mother asylum on Jan. 30, it was believed they held the dubious record for longest confinement at Hutto.
Their's is a classic example of why it's bad policy to detain asylum seekers, said Sonia Ansari, Hosen's attorney. Ansari said Hosen turned herself in to immigration authorities and posed little if any risk of fleeing.
"Bahjo believed in the process from the very beginning," Ansari said.
'A prison is a prison'
"We're not incarcerating families," Mead said last month as he led a tightly controlled news media tour of the sprawling Hutto facility, offering a rare glimpse into life inside its fluorescent lighted corridors.
During the 80-minute tour, officials showed off classrooms, a gym, cafeteria, a computer lab, common living areas and detainees' rooms. A sliver of light squeezed through the narrow window, roughly 10 inches wide by 6 feet tall, in each spartan cell. Some cells had cribs.
Reporters weren't allowed to interview detainees, who were seen briefly in their purple-and-green uniforms, eating lunch in the cafeteria and being escorted down hallways. Outside, coils of concertina wire rimmed the fence around the facility. The wire has since been removed.
The tour followed a drumbeat of complaints by detainees, attorneys and refugee and immigrant advocates alleging that immigrants have been denied adequate diets, education, recreation, and medical and mental health care.
Mead told reporters much work had been done to make the Hutto facility more family-friendly, and staff members outlined an array of services, including nutritious meals planned by dietitians.
At last week's court hearing, Colon and government attorneys stressed that their efforts to comply with the so-called Flores agreement, the 1997 settlement setting care standards for minors in custody, are constantly evolving. Colon cited a number of policy changes made in recent weeks or days, such as allowing detainees contact visits with family members. Previously, visitors and detainees were separated by a Plexiglas window and spoke by telephone.
The educational program a particular target of critics when it was one hour per day, then four has increased again to seven hours, though it includes two hours for lunch and recreation.
Civil rights and refugee advocates have previously called the changes window dressing that fails to address the issue of incarceration. They recommend parole for more families, especially asylum seekers who can establish identity and demonstrate a credible fear of persecution in their homeland.
"They could be serving food from the Four Seasons in there. A prison is a prison, and it needs to be closed," said Rebecca Bernhardt, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
Threats to detention
Bahjo and Mustafa Hosen slipped into the United States last June riding an inner tube across the Rio Grande. Somewhere near Hidalgo, a stranger gave them water. Bahjo insisted that the woman call immigration authorities so that she could surrender and request asylum.
She said that in Somalia, she had witnessed her brother's murder by members of a powerful Somali tribe. Islamic courts were pressuring her to reveal the killers' identities and threatened torture and imprisonment.
Fearing for her life, Bahjo fled with Mustafa, leaving her husband and 7-year-old son behind.
Now living temporarily in Austin at a home for refugee women and children, the 26-year-old Muslim with a warm, slightly gap-toothed smile reflected serenely on her stay at the Hutto detention center. Mustafa hovered at her side, a force of playful mischief.
At Taylor, Hosen received free legal help from the Political Asylum Project of Austin. She couldn't afford to pay $3,500 bails for herself and her son.
Hosen and other former detainees have often described detention at Hutto in stark terms, with guards and rules governing every aspect of their lives, from when they awoke to when they went to bed. Though cell doors were not locked, an opened door triggered a laser alarm, bringing guards to investigate. Head counts were held four times daily. Detainees couldn't move about the facility without guard escort.
When Mustafa began vomiting and losing weight, officials denied her request that he be given multivitamins. Though Hosen praised some guards for their compassion, she said others treated detainees like prisoners and threatened to break up families.
Once, a male guard walked in on her while she was using the toilet, a humiliating experience that left her distraught. Mustafa saw her crying. Yet Hosen said she harbors no ill will against the system that eventually welcomed her into the United States.
"Everybody needs life experiences," she said softly. "I'm not going to regret this. Never."
"She believes the conditions should be improved or the policy of imprisoning asylum seekers done away with, but she holds no grudge against the system," said Ansari, her attorney.
Meanwhile, dreams of a future in the United States are replacing the ones Hosen had in her cell. She said she wants to study and work perhaps as an interpreter and to be reunited in her new country with her husband and 7-year-old son.
#1
What is wrong with the ACLU? We have NO obligation to let these people into our country and the sooner they get sent back to country of origin, the better. The example the immigrant Somalis are showing in Minnesota is a perfect example of why we SHOULD NOT let these people enter America.
Posted by: Mac ||
03/25/2007 23:47 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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