Month: September 2005

Oh boy, this is gonna be great! — Kent ‘Flounder’ Dorfman

Someone has to.

Army Pfc. Lynndie England, whose smiling poses in photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib made her the face of the scandal, was convicted Monday by a military jury on all but one of the seven counts she faced. England, 22, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. She was acquitted on a second conspiracy count. The jury of five male officers needed slightly more than two hours to reach its verdict. Her case now moves into the sentencing phase, which will determined by the same jury of five Army officers. She faces a maximum 10 years in prison.

On the bright side, she’ll still get her three hots and a cot, so it ain’t all that bad. And when she gets out she can look forward to the obligatory book deal, the appearance on the Tyra Banks Show…oh, wait a minute — that only has another couple of months on air before someone at the network sobers up and kills the thing. Alright, scratch the talk show.

With any luck she’ll be able to book a slot on The Howard Stern Show and plug a website containing “unauthorized” Abu Ghraib photos along with a few playful beach snapshots.

Uh, well maybe we’ll scratch the beach shots too.

UPDATE: 3 years in prison

She willingly gets arrested and is carried away with a smile on her face awash in a sea of flashes from dozens of cameras. Jeez, the insanity over this woman has got to stop.

Cindy Sheehan, the California woman driven by her son’s death in Iraq to re-ignite the anti-war movement, was arrested Monday while protesting outside the White House.

Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests.

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was handcuffed, then led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, “The whole world is watching.” Others who were arrested also cooperated with police. Sgt. Scott Fear, spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, said they would be charged with demonstrating without a permit, which is a misdemeanor.

Park Police Sgt. L.J. McNally said Sheehan and the others would be taken to a processing center where they would be fingerprinted and photographed, then given a ticket and released. The process would take several hours, he said.

Like she had anything else to do. And I’m sure she’ll have plenty of offers from other moonbats to pay the fine.

And what is it with Drudge and this headline?

CINDY SHEEHAN ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE IN CUNNING STUNT

Is Matt a closet Metallica fan?

In the emotional retelling of tragedy, are facts important? Depending on the type of person you are, minute-by-minute details might be the only important part of the story. Others may discount factual data altogether because the delivery of the narrative is so compelling. At that moment, it is the outpouring of emotion that IS the story. 

When Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard last appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, his heart wrenching story about the drowning death of a colleague’s mother, and his subsequent on air collapse stunned America, giving him a strange sort of instant celebrity status. He was suddenly known as that guy who cried on TV. And not just a misty eye and sniffles. He was weeping. Broussard was inconsolable, and Tim Russert was left sitting there stunned like the rest of his viewers. It was a ‘television moment’ to be sure.

But before the sobbing, Broussard called over and over for explanations as to why the federal government relief efforts hadn’t yet materialized. He said that “bureaucracy had committed murder in New Orleans”, and that “bureaucracy should have to stand trial.” As he continued to direct his criticism toward Washington, Russert interrupted Broussard with this question:

Mr. Russert:  Hold on.  Hold on, sir.  Shouldn’t the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility?  Couldn’t they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?

Mr. Broussard:  Sir, they were told like me, every single day, “The cavalry’s coming,” on a federal level, “The cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming.”  I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry.  The cavalry’s still not here yet, but I’ve begun to hear the hoofs, and we’re almost a week out.

“But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she’s done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard.”

It was just after this exchange that Mr. Broussard retold the story we now know.

Then there was the news this past week that Broussard’s emotional retelling included details that conflict with the timeline of the tragedy.

Fast forward to Sunday, September 25th. Tim Russert called Aaron Broussard back to Meet the Press, and asked him about the discrepancies. Russert didn’t challenge the credibility of Broussard’s emotional outburst during his previous appearance. He did ask the Jefferson Parish president to react to criticism directed toward him by MSNBC and “blog organizations” who have looked into the facts behind his comments.

Mr. Russert: Mr. Broussard, the people who are questioning your comments are saying that you accused the federal government and the bureaucracy of murder, specifically calling on the secretary of Homeland Security and using this as an example to denounce the federal government. And what they’re saying is, in fact, it was the local government that did not evacuate Eva Rodrigue on Friday or on Saturday. And they’re making that, in fact…

Mr. Broussard: Sir…

Mr. Russert: Let me just finish. I’ll give you a chance to respond.

Mr. Broussard: Yes.

Mr. Russert: And, in fact, the owners of the nursing home, Salvador and Mable Mangano, have been indicted with 34 counts of negligent homicide by the Louisiana state attorney general. So it was the owners of the nursing home and the local government that are responsible for the lack of evacuation and not the federal government. Is that fair?

Mr. Broussard: Sir, with everything I said on Meet the Press, the last punctuation of my statements were the story that I was going to tell in about maybe two sentences. It just got emotional for me, sir. Talk about the context of everything I said. Were we abandoned by the federal government? Absolutely we were. Were there more people that abandoned us? Make the list. The list can go on for miles.

Those people should be strung up. Those people should be burned at the stake. And I’m sure Congress and the press is going to do that.

Mr. Russert: At the local, state and federal level.

Mr. Broussard: Sir, at every level. Are you kidding? This is a jigsaw puzzle. This is a mosaic. The blame will be shared by everybody.

So, thinking again about facts and emotions, who are you? Or better yet, which are you? Mr. Hard-As-Nails or Mrs. Touchy-Feely? Are you the type who can’t help but get caught up in the details of a story? Do you need all the pieces of the puzzle to fit perfectly before you can make the summary judgement, or is it the drama that grabs you?  

Call me Hard-As-Nails.

Did I feel terrible when I saw Broussard break down on national television? Of course I did. What I saw was a man who had (understandably) lost all ability to function with reason. He was living a nightmare and when he thought of the death of his colleague’s mother he had nothing left. It came out the only way it could. Seeing that video, I think it was amazing that Broussard could remember his own name. On camera, in front of millions of viewers, facts weren’t important to him. I can accept that.

But in the moments before the total breakdown, he did relay facts. He accused people of wrong doing. He pushed most of the blame in a certain direction and not a lot in the other. We now know that Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco had breakdowns of their own. Lives were lost due to the delay of relief into New Orleans. The federal government, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco deserve to be blamed for their inaction.

But did Broussard need to explain why he didn’t get the timeline correct regarding the day his colleague’s mother drowned? No, for reasons I’ve already given. Broussard said, “it just got emotional for me, sir”, and I have no reason not to believe him. 

So it was right for Mr. Russert to ask Mr. Broussard to come back to Meet the Press and answer the critics who care about facts. I was glad to hear Broussard state again and again that he believes all branches of government were to blame for the tragedy in New Orleans and that they should be held accountable. I think he needed to do that, and for me his statement to that end closed the book on the subject.

Gateway Pundit has all of the gory details, including a video. Proceed at your own risk.

MORE: Yikes! Michelle was there!

Even though Tony Blair has echoed George W. Bush’s position against any announcement of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, a document being drafted by the British government and planned for publication next month looks a lot like an announcement of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country. Tony Blair hopes that, despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003.

Britain has already privately informed Japan – which also has troops in Iraq – of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.

The increasingly rapid pace of planning for British military disengagement has been revealed on the eve of the Labour Party conference, which will see renewed demands for a deadline for withdrawal. It is hoped that a clearer strategy on Iraq will quieten critics who say that the government will not be able to ‘move on’ until Blair quits. Yesterday, about 10,000 people demonstrated against the army’s continued presence in the country.

Ah, so that’s what this is, the floatation of a trial balloon on the eve of a political gathering. A little further down in the story, Blair’s Defense Secretary, John Reid throws this qualifier into the mix.

Defence Secretary John Reid insisted that the agreement being drawn up with Iraqi officials was contingent on the continuing political process, although he said he was still optimistic British troops would begin returning home by early summer.

“The two things I want to insist about the timetable is that it is not an event but a process, and that it will be a process that takes place at different speeds in different parts of the country. I have said before that I believe that it could begin in some parts of the country as early as next July. It is not a deadline, but it is where we might be and I honestly still believe we could have the conditions to begin a hand-over. I don’t see any reason to change my view.”

“But if circumstances change I have no shame in revising my estimates.”

Political smoke and mirrors. No promises. No commitments.

In other words, a waste of time.

I spent a lot of time blogging Hurricane Katrina and I guess I just wasn’t up to it a second time. Plus, I knew there would be dozens of capable bloggers covering the story, so I didn’t bother. It was a good thing too because I decided to give this blog site a much needed internal overhaul (optimizing style sheets, templates, etc.). Over the past 48 hours, a nuclear bomb could have gone off and I wouldn’t have known it.

And now that the Hurricane Rita cleanup seems to be underway, it’s pretty clear that I missed the exciting part. How fortunate it was for me to stop by Joe Gandelman’s place. He’s wrapped up the event quite nicely.

And there’s always got to be someone live blogging the ‘event’. This time, CJ was at the controls navigating Rita.

Before I tore the guts outta this site and put it back together again, I put together this list of home-grown Texas bloggers who were covering Rita. If you haven’t visited any of these yet you should.

Some consultant made a lot of money off of this worthless map. 

Hurricane Rita evacuees are supposed to use this as a guide for the day they’re to return to Houston. Just who is going to adhere to this plan? Apparently, no one.

Heh, ‘pending’. Riiiiiight.

Note to self – the next time you get stopped for speeding, tell the cop about how you saw demons who urged you to go 10 MPH over the limit.

A man suspected of killing two tourists and injuring 12 others on the Las Vegas Strip told police he steered his car into the crowd on the sidewalk because they were staring at him like demons.

Stephen M. Ressa, 27, also told police he saw people with their hands in their pockets and thought they might be armed with guns, according to an arrest report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

“They were staring at him like they were `demons,'” the report said. “Ressa admitted he became angry at them, and intentionally steered the vehicle toward them.”

Drink enough and everyone will look like Mephistopheles…or Pamela Anderson.

Blogging has been light for the past 24 hours…I’ve been busy fixing/tweaking/breaking/fixing/breaking/fixing and tweaking this site. Wow…do you know how many land mines there are under the hood of a movable type install? I swear, I have grown 10 new gray hairs since Thursday evening. Still more to do, but not a whole lot. The heavy lifting is done.

From what little I’ve seen, Rita looks very different than Katrina – from planning, to evacuation, to damage (flooding) – amazing. And Houston looks good.

To the regulars who read PunditGuy, thanks.

More later.