Bob Casey doesn’t stand up for his constituents: he stands up for corporations and the prison industrial complex. He is a bad man, a coward, and not fit to hold office in Pennsylvania.

I pointed out that you don’t even need a high school degree to be a TSA screener.

“To be fair,” she said, “You don’t need a college degree to be a police officer either.”
“Well, you DO need an associates degree,” I said. “And then you have to go through the police academy, which has all sorts of stuff about criminal justice, dealing with the public, respecting people’s right.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” she conceded. “So, what I’d like to know is what you think TSA should do instead?” I began to discuss my experiences traveling back and forth into Canada, and the security measures they take there. “Generally, it’s a pretty intense interview, asking where I’m from, where I’m going, how long I plan to stay. The way back is often more intense,” I added, before describing the Christmas adventure a couple of years ago when Sam’s mom forgot he needed a passport to fly into the US, and I was stopped at 6:00 AM in a blizzard, driving him across the border. “It was a 45 minute game of ‘Twenty Questions: Prove You’re Not a Kidnapper,’” I remarked. “It was terrifying, but it was intelligent. They didn’t grab me at random, the border guard assessed the situation and decided there was reasonable suspicion. Frankly, I would have done the same thing in his shoes.”

“What we’re doing now,” I went on, “is worse than useless. Not only are we not catching people (look at the shoe bomber and the underpants bomber), TSA is creating a situation that’s building resentment and hostility. No one wants to cooperate with them, and as a result more people seem suspicious, and more people get patted down, and the anger just builds.”

“So you think that interviews might be more effective?” Ms. Newman asked.

“They can’t do worse than what we have now,” I said. “When I’m answering questions at the border, those guys are watching me. they’re watching my face, my eyes, they’re looking to see if I act sketchy or suspicious. That’s why they kept me for 45 minutes back in 2008: I looked and acted like someone suspicious. And if the border guards can do it, well-trained TSA screeners can do the same. But right now, it doesn’t strike me that they’re well-trained at all, and that puts me in a hell of a position: have my kid go through a machine that i think is dangerous (and which saves images, which have leaked out over the course of the week), or have him get manhandled by some stranger. I’m not happy with either of those.”

We went on like that for awhile, with Ms. Newman inviting ideas and input. It was really nice to be taken seriously, and to have a frank and challenging exchange of ideas. Finally I had to get back to work.

“Mr. Skwire, thanks for your attention to this issue,” newman said. “Please: if you or your son is flying, do not hesitate to call up the office before you go to the airport. We can make sure TSA is aware of your situation, and can ensure that nothing untoward happens to your son. And keep us informed if you hear more about TSA abuse, because Senator Casey is very interested in the issue.”

That won’t be a problem.

Yesterday I wrote to you about TSA’s abuse of American citizens and our children, and the disappointing response of the office, which made it sound as if Senator Casey is not concerned that the TSA is abusing its authority. I spoke again this morning with staff member Tayeesha, and she apologized for a flippant response. More importantly, she acknowledged that the office received calls about TSA all day, and that she will make sure the senator gets the message. Please extend my gratitude.

I wanted to share two more links with you (and I will try to write every time I read about TSA abuse).

The first is from a mother in Ohio, who was sexually assaulted by the TSA. I have excerpted it below:

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my buttocks, or reach forward to my vagina area.

She then moved in front of my and touched the top and underneath portions of both of my breasts.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my breasts.

She then felt around my waist. She then moved to the bottoms of my legs.

She then felt my inner thighs and my vagina area, touching both of my labia.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my vagina area or my labia.

She then told me that I could put my shoes on and I asked if I could pick up the baby, she replied Yes.

She then moved back to my belongings to finish scanning them with the paper discs for explosives. When she finished she said I was free to go.

I stood there holding my baby in shock. I did not move for almost a minute.

I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.

Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures.

I documented my call to Senator Casey at my blog, and it is regretful that the conversation indicates an office that was wholly out-of-touch with a serious issue. I’m glad the Senator’s staff has recognized the importance of americans’ civil rights and the safety of our kids.

Pleas inform the Senator that I expect him to take TSA’s abuse seriously, and to do something about it. It is bad enough that law-abiding adults are treated as criminals when we become airline customers, but groping us and our children MUST STOP. If Senator Casey is not prepared to take action on this, I will continue to point out what is going on in our airports, and ask why the Senator refuses to protect defenseless children.

Finally, I would like impress on you that Philadelphia’s TSA staff is incredibly abusive and unprofessional.
In this article, a TSA agent at Philadelphia International plants fake drugs in a passengers bag, as a joke: is that funny?

Here, Philadelphia’s TSA detained a college student, because he had Arab/English flashcards: must be a terrorist, right? Only terrorist would want to learn Arabic, right?

Here, Philadelphia’s TSA detained a passenger because he got a haircut. Seriously.

Here, we learn that TSA in Philadelphia has a bad habit of singling out women for “enhanced patdowns”.

Please ask the Senator to take action by writing a letter, calling for an investigation, writing an op-ed, or calling the Secretary of Transportation in to explain herself and her staff.

I have cc-ed this letter to other writers, bloggers, friends, family, and colleagues. I will also be publishing it on my blog later today, which as you may know, has a fairly substantial readership.

Sincerely,

Brendan Skwire

As I was saying, last November, the Justice Department announced that the terror trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan. Almost everyone in New York rallied around. This was seen as standing up to terrorism.

“It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Now everything’s flipped. The politicians are running for the hills, and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive,” said Bloomberg.

And the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere else. People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.

But this feels very wrong.

Collins goes on, ticking off all the ways Americans and the politicians we elect are nothing but selfish fucking pussies. Ben Nelson, whose price for health care is a special deal for Nebraska, a bridge so far even his own constituents rejected it.

Or the NIMBY reaction to imprisoning War on Terror (TM) detainees in the US: seriously, has anyone EVER escaped from a supermax?

It’s embarrassing that I live in a country run by and for such cretins.

Celebrating what was is a great way to honor what was.

World Trade Center – 27 July 2001
By Brendan Skwire

Before I really get to the meat of the matter, which is of course the completely over-the-top Fleshtones show this past weekend in New York City at the World Trade Center’s The Greatest Bar on Earth, I think I should give a little background info. This was easily one of the best Fleshtones shows I have ever seen, from the the surreal venue to the surreal audience to the surprise appearance by Gordon Spaeth to the climactic finish.

The Fleshtones were actually the beginning of a really long weekend; the plan was to see the band, stay at a friend’s house (I don’t live in NYC unfortunately), and head up to Maine for a bluegrass festival the next morning. So when I left my Philadelphia apartment, I was carrying a 50-pound frame pack on my back, wearing a gigantic cowboy hat on my head (atop a noggin so small it makes a ping-pong ball look like a hydrocephalic). The GBOE has a dress code: no shorts, tee-shirts, or sneakers, so I was also carrying some formal wear with me, which I changed into as the E train was pulling into its berth at the bottom of the Towers.

In short, I looked like I’d stepped out of the California Gold Rush of 1849; all I needed was a mule.

I don’t know if it’s because of the bombing a few years ago, but you have to go through a series of checkpoints before WTC security allows you up to the restaurant: the guards took one look at me, and started ordering me hither and yon to check my bags. At every turn I was met by an eagle-eyed security guard asking me where I was going, what I was doing. Eventually though, my bags were checked, my admission paid, and I made my way onto the elevators. “Next stop, 76th floor,” where we transferred elevators to travel the final 30 stories to the top of the world.

The Greatest Bar on Earth is way up on the tippy-top floor of the World Trade Center, affording a beautiful view of the East River, and all the bridges that span into Brooklyn. The room itself was beautiful, and eerie; very swanky rounded bars, cool lighting, lots of tables and couches. A warm golden glow permeated the place. The stage was on the northeast corner of the room; a railing separated the crowd from the dais. At stage right and left, rubenesque go-go girls in fur bikinis stood on pedestals, gyrating wildly under strobe lights, as the DJ pumped out garage rock. I bumped into Fleshtones bass player Ken Fox, who seemed a little bemused by the whole thing; the crowd mix could well have led to some tension.

You have to understand, besides the contingent that was actually there to see the Fleshtones, there was also a large percentage of the bar’s regular patrons, the black-clad yuppie crowd, drinking martinis and overpriced beers, oh-so-hip-and-aloof. And then there were the tourist types, a number of who were wearing Hawaiian shirts with cameras dangling from their necks, I don’t know where the hell they came from. Under the flashing strobes, every movement looked like it had been taken from one of those early stop-action cartoons from the 30s; I remember thinking “this could get pretty weird,” and during the first set that impression was reinforced. The Fleshtones were giving as good as they get, opening up with Hitsburg, Solid Gold Sound, Soundcheck 2001, $10.00 More (which was amazing), all of which got the regular fans up, dancing, and singing along, but seemed to go ZIP! right over the yuppies’ NASDAQ-filled heads. I mean for crying out loud, Ken and Keith are spinning around in circles, their arms linked with Ken fretting Keith’s guitar while plucking bass and vice versa, while Zaremba’s tossing the mic stand back-and forth like a Brooklyn James Brown clad in gold lame’, scenes from old go-go videos flashing on a movie screen behind them, and these oblivious squares are just sitting in front of the dance floor like bumps on a pickle, with their backs to the whole thing. I couldn’t understand it, so I started watusi-ing as hard as I could at them. It was an ugly thing, I guess, but necessary…

It wasn’t as if this was some band of shoe-gazers up there; from the opening chords of “Hitsburg”, Zaremba was over the rail and plowing into the audience, followed shortly by Ken and Keith; honestly, I’ve never seen the band work so hard to get their audience going. Endless tours of the tabletops and bars marked the first set, and slowly the frost began to melt.

I think the ice was finally broken when Keith launched into “Communication Breakdown” near the end of Set 1. The yuppies took the bait: hearing something they knew got more than a few of the 30-somethings out on the floor singing along and dancing, and by then they were snared, because the set ended with one of those endless medleys the ‘tones do so well. No matter what you do, you can’t back out of one of those; the feet and hips just take over, the head must surrender. For myself, I can’t even begin to list what songs they did, because between the singing along and dancing, I was way too occupied to take any notes.

During setbreak, a couple of us snuck out to the payphones where we enjoyed a quick joint. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mention this, but it just added to the overwhelming weirdness permeating the whole event.

“Should we use the bathroom?”

“Nahh, the porter in there will stop us.” [And may I digress? I've never seen one of those porter guys in action before, but this guy practically put the soap on my hands and scrubbed for me as I washed up. I could get used to this place...]

“Hey what about the payphones?” They were hidden behind an enormous red velvet curtain, and hell, the time seemed right. I mean, how many people do you know that can say they smoked up on the top of the World Trade Center? Afterwards, I talked to Keith a little bit, and overheard him remark about the tough crowd to Jesse (I hope I got your name right) from Los Dudes, who in turn told me that 15 years ago, when he had first moved to New York, his friend took him to see the Fleshtones, only to have the show sold out; a year later, unbeknownst to him, Zaremba was the engineer on Jesse’s first album. Go figure… Peter, for his part, was having a great time. “I really like this place,” he said (or something to that effect; I’m paraphrasing here), “You get used to being in dark rock clubs. This is like something out of David Lynch, it’s great.” (Peter, pardon me if it’s not an exact quote, I think I caught the spirit of it pretty well.)

It must have been the booze, because by set 2 the yuppies had joined the rest of us on the floor, and the fun really kicked into gear. Nothing like watching the writhing of a Prada-bag carrying mid-manager…

Set 2 opened with “My New Song” and “Soul City,” a tune I’m not familiar with. But then, good gravy, they pulled out a back-to-the-wall “That’s Your Problem,” right into “My Love Machine,” right into “I’m Not a Sissy Anymore,” and there was no turning back. The crowd was out of control, men and women wiggling and squiggling all over the place, with no regard for spilled drinks or bourgeois propriety. I walked over to the bar to refill my pint, and stood next to a young woman who could not take her eyes off the stage, like a deer caught in the headlights. I saw a May-December couple do the swim out on the floor. Things were getting to critical mass, and quickly.

And how could the crowd NOT have eventually gone nuts for this band? As I’ve written before, the genius of the Fleshtones is their combination of sincerity, with a good bit of tongue in cheek, and that throbbing, stomping, irristable beat. It’s like R&B taken to an almost absurd degree, and not even Jerry Falwell, moral crusader against fun, could have resisted shaking his ass if he was there. But I digress…

Ken did a great song I’ve never heard before, and hope to hear again, “Dreamin’ Bout Work.” Have I mentioned “Let’s Go” yet? I don’t think I’ve heard them do that song since early 1999 at TT’s in Cambridge, and it just about exploded my head.

And then. Then! THEN! Gordon Spaeth of all people shows up on stage, and starts blowing harp on “Goddamn It” and “Whatever It Takes”. The whole band was beaming from ear to ear, especially Bill, and another foray into the crowd went down, with Ken and Keith clambering over cocktail tables and shaky barstools to dance on the bar. I talked to Gordon later on, having never met him before, never mind seen him play live. Gordon admitted he’d never heard either of the songs he was tooting the Hohner on, and was wondering “Did I sound OK up there?” Yeah, he did.. it was perfect.

By this point, the night was getting on, and the boys let us go with 2 of the best performances I’ve seen yet of “How I Feel” and “It’s Alright”, which culminated in Keith and Ken marching through the crowd, returning to the foot of the stage, getting down on their hands and knees, and finally ROLLING AROUND ON THE FLOOR DOING LEG LIFTS, while breaking the song all the way down to the lowest of volumes, just a skeleton really, and then bringing it all the way back up to just about the loudest thing I have ever heard. If you haven’t seen Ken Fox break into an impromptu bass solo while prone, you have not seen ANYTHING my friends. I have to admit, I’m still hoarse.

Perhaps one of the best things about the show was the aftermath; instead of escaping to the relative quiet of “the band room,” the guys just hung out, mingling at the bar, shooting the shit with whoever was hanging around. Ken and Bill were at the bar enjoying some cold ones, while Peter was still on stage with the go-go girls grinning away and shimmying unapologetically. It was then, more than ever before I think, that I realized how truly great, how important, and how vital and visceral the Fleshtones really are. Here was a band who, when faced with a pretty stiff crowd, had them in the palms of their hands within 45 minutes, and then never let them go. In an age of contrived boy-bands, teenage pop-stars, pretend punk-rockers who hide in the bus after their arena shows, and self-indulgent singer-songwriter types, the Fleshtones are the most honest thing out there, and by “thing” I mean as a band, scene, and as people. It’s good to know that someone’s giving their life for rock-n-roll, because rock-n-roll desperately needs it.

Set 1: Hitsburg USA; Solid Gold Sound; Soundcheck 2001; Jack In The Box; $10 More; Dreg; The Vindicators; I Want More; Love’s In The Grave; Tearing Me Apart; Communication Breakdown; Super Rock Medley.

Set 2: My New Song; Soul City; That’s Your Problem; My Love Machine; I’m Not A Sissy Anymore; Dreamin’ Bout Work; Let’s Go!; Friends Of Bazooka Joe; Goddamn It (w/ Gordon Spaeth on harp); Whatever It Takes (w/ Gordon Spaeth on harp); How I Feel; It’s Alright.
� 2001 Brendan Skwire

Clinton said the United States seeks their release on “humanitarian grounds” and that North Korea should immediately grant the prisoners clemency and deport them.

“Obviously we are deeply concerned about the length of the sentences and the fact that this trial was conducted totally in secret,” Clinton said. “We’re engaged in all possible ways through every possible channel to secure their release.”

With the sentence, the likelihood seemed to increase that the prisoners would be used as pawns in the ongoing standoff between North Korea and its neighbors and the West.

Clinton said international concern over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions should be “entirely separate” from the trial.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that the administration is working for the journalists’ release, and that it hopes the North Koreans do not link their detainment to “other issues.”

“These women are innocent and should be released to their family,” Gibbs said.

Clinton: U.S. Pursuing ‘Every Possible Channel’ to Free Journalists Held in North Korea

The US is angry that North Korea has sentenced two American journalists to years of hard labor based on what are likely trumped charges.

We never do things like that.

I’ve heard that Sami al-Hajj, a journalist who has been held — and mistreated — for six years in Guantanamo is now in a plane en route back to his native Sudan. His plane is supposed to arrive this evening.

That will end a particularly shameful episode. Sami (whose name is also spelled Sami al-Haj) was a cameraman for Al-Jazeera who was arrested in Afghanistan, apparently because he was mixed up with someone else. I’ve written about Sami several times, including once early this year, and also once in 2006 and once in 2007. There was never any real evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist, and his lawyers have said that the interrogators quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions. Instead, they asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released, and he refused.

When Sami went on hunger strike, the authorities took away his reading glasses and his toilet stand, which makes going to the bathroom excruciating after an injury he received shortly after being taken into custody. American officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done.

Therefore we have lots of credibility.

Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released — in January, 2002 — he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.

And anyway, torture has made us stronger because now people know we mean business.

“(North Korea) is using the sentence as bait to squeeze concessions out of the U.S. amid heightened tension,” said Lee Dong-bok, a senior associate with the CSIS think tank in Seoul and an expert on the North’s negotiating tactics.

The US is upset with North Korea.
Behold the fruit of a poison vine.

Those who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — all GOP Senators (except Chafee) and Democrats Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Ben and Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and Joe Lieberman, plus 219 GOP and 34 Democratic House members — were in favor of keeping people like Boumediene at Guantanamo indefinitely without any right of judicial review. The only reason Boumediene was released is because the Supreme Court (by a 5-4 vote) ruled that law unconstitutional and he was thus able to have a court review the evidence (i.e., the lack thereof) against him.

Does anyone object to the term “moral depravity” being applied to those in Congress who voted to keep completely innocent people in cages for life without any opportunity to have a court review the accusations against them? If these members of Congress had their way, these completely innocent individuals would still be encaged at Guantanamo.

Paine is spinning in his grave fast enough to power the original 13 colonies well into the 25th Century. It’s very difficult for me to watch this. The story about the deep injusice visited upon this man (with the eager and gleeful permission of the walking stool samples we call “Congress”) is bad enough, but as a noncustodial parent, Boumedienne’s admission that…

“I just, I cry. Just I cry, because i don’t know my daughters

…cuts me to the quick. It literally hurts. I don’t know what it’s like to be waterboarded, and I don’t know what it’s like to be kept awake for 16 days straight, and I don’t know what it’s like to undergo any of the other depraved and perverse tortures the US put this innocent person through.

But I sure as fuck know what it’s like to miss your children and to be powerless to do anything about it. In an very basic sense, it’s emotional torture. My son is visiting right now, and it is always amazing to me how much he’s grown, both physically and intellectually, between visits. The fact that I miss out on his daily life drives me berzerk, and finally sent me to therapy a year or two ago. That therapy has made the depressive episodes fewer and less intense, but when i start missing him, it hits like a ton of bricks.

I’m free to make a trip to visit Sam whenever i want, and spend a LOT of my scarce money to do so. For example, thanks to some poor planning on his mom’s part, I’m not going to see him between July 12 and October 9, and even then it’s only for a long weekend, at a cost of about $500 round trip. So I’m planning to spend an additional $300 or so visiting him on histurf in mid-September. I simply cannot imagine missing out on 100% of my son’s first 8 years, and the emotional distance that would put between the two of us. He would be practically a stranger to me, as I’m sure Boumedienne’s children are to him (and he to them). It would kill me. I don’t doubt that Boumedienne cries: I know I have, and my circumstances are nothing compared to the medieval ordeal the Beacon of Freedom visited upon this poor guy.

For all the talk of “family values”, it is quite clear to me, and probably the world, that the United States government has no values whatsoever. we arrest, imprison, and torture innocent people for years on end, before dumping them in a foreign country without so much as an apology.

I hope Boumedienne sues the fuck out of the government, and I hope he wins big. i also hope that Hell exists, and that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and the rest of the gang end up there.

I’m about a year late to the table, but here’s video of Hitchens getting waterboarded. Something to think about when Dick Cheney and his daughter make the rounds of TV telling you something ain’t what it clearly IS.

Harry Reid: the spineless and powerless majority leader of the senate:

REID: Change course on what?

QUESTION: On funding the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

REID: Well, the decision to close Guantanamo was a right one.

I agree with President Bush. I agree with John McCain . I agree with Barack Obama . Guantanamo makes us less save.

However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States….

“QUESTION: If the United States — if the United States thinks that these people should be held, why shouldn’t they be held in the United States? Why shouldn’t the U.S. take those risks, the attendant risk of holding them, since it’s the one that says they should be held?

REID: I think there’s a general feeling, as I’ve already said, that the American people, and certainly the Senate, overwhelmingly doesn’t want terrorists to be released in the United States. And I think we’re going to stick with that.

QUESTION: What about in imprisoned in the United States?

REID: If you’re…

(CROSSTALK)

REID: If people are — if terrorists are released in the United States, part of what we don’t want is them be put in prisons in the United States. We don’t want them around the United States.”

That’s right: the Democrats are cowering before the defeated minority republican party, which has helpfully suggested that terrorists can’t be safely incarcerated in Supermax prisons, just like terrorists Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman.

And so they have decided to keep the Guantanamo detainees in legal limbo by refusing to pony up the $8 million needed to close the hellhole for good. this of course includes the large population of detainees who are wholly innocent of any kind of wrongdoing. Harry is scared of Republicans because he is likely to lose to one quite soon, Republicans are scared of everything and so Harry, of who clammyc writes accurately:

He is ineffective in pushing the President’s programs. He is ineffective as a leader of his party in the Senate. He is ineffective in getting any movement on items that the House easily passed (and while it is tougher in the Senate, an ever growing majority to levels not seen in decades gives him little to no excuse). He repeats republican talking points. He is the biggest roadblock to so many things that progressives hold dear as he controls the Senate agenda.

…is now scared of terrorists too because he thinks he’ll win some points with Republican voters. Such bravery. Such principles. Such guts. Give ‘em hell Harry!

Oh, and when you look at your scrotum, which apparently hangs from a hook on the wall of Mitch McConnell’s office, try to remember if it ever had balls in it to begin with.

I am greatly looking forward to your defeat. GREATLY.

Well, I call bullshit, and because I don’t believe in censorship, below are some of the photos that President Hope McChangefulness doesn’t want you to see (via Washington’s Blog and digby: all are sourced to the Sydney Morning Herald, which has a few more i haven’t posted here). Most of these were leaked six years ago by the way, so this newfound “concern” for our national security and the safety of our troops is a little hard to take. Be forewarned, they’re ugly and disturbing. And worse, according to janis Karpinski the majority of prisoners, perhaps as many as 90%, were innocent. So when you look at these photos, keep that little factoid in mind. All of this was done in your name, on our dime, to citizens of a country that never attacked us, had nothing to do with 9/11/01, and was in fact one of our greatest bulwarks against al Qaeda-style islamist extremism. I’m not making excuses for Saddam Hussein, but the man was a pan-Arab nationalist and a secular dictator who loathed the Wahabbi fundamentalists.

All in your name. Hiding the evidence of a crime doesn’t mean the crime never occurred.