New documents released Tuesday regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.
The documents, released by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents. They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.
The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River as punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents.
I want to stop for a moment and note a few things.
First, this story was sent to me by a friend of many years who vehemently opposes any form of torture and coercion. He has very vocally made that position well know.
I have been really busy this week, and have gotten a lot of emails about ACLU related stories, so here is a round up of the more interesting ones, along with a few thoughts.
A previous recipient of ACLU assistance, the Westboro Baptist church took one on the chin at a funeral when they were chased out. Via Stop the ACLU:
While my sympathy is with the families at the funerals, and my scorn is firmly directed toward Phelps and his people, I have to also deplore the violence aimed at them, particularly the window breaking. They had been humiliated and chased out. Enough.
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Also at Stop the ACLU, the case invlolving the Mt Soledad Memorial took an encouraging turn, as the California Appeals Court reversed the lower court ruling.
The court finds that 1) the appeals are not moot; 2) San Diegans for the Mount Soledad War Memorial and Mike Shelby are aggrieved parties for the purposes of the appeal; and 3) the transfer of the cross under Proposition A does not in itself violate the First Amendment establishment clause or the California Constitution…and the attorney’s fees award has been reversed!
This weeks Blogburst from Stop the ACLU, written by Jay.
So, America voted for change? They should be careful what they ask for because they will get it. For those that voted or stayed home in order to send the Republicans a message on election day…congratulations! Your all important “lesson” will now backfire in your face. You just cut off your nose to spite your face. Not only have you helped to give both Houses over to the left, put Nancy Pelosi in as the Speaker of the House, and completely destroyed any chance of getting a Constitutionalist majority in the Supreme Court, but groups like the ACLU seem to think this election was a mandate for their insanities. Look, you can’t say we didn’t warn you.
Yesterday voters nationwide rejected candidates who failed to uphold civil liberties and rejected ballot initiatives that undermine fundamental freedoms of all Americans.
I have a low opinion of the ACLU, that is fairly obvious. I won’t go into detail why again.
But I am also fair enough that I have always given them credit when they come down on the proper side of an issue, as they did last week. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.
The scene was the rally at Bellevue Community College (BCC) last week, sponsored by Sen Maria Cantwell (D) and featuring Sen Barack Obama (D).
The rally was published to the school and all students were invited to attend. Additionally, several teachers canceled classes so students could attend and write a report on the rally’s activities.
5 such students showed up to attend the rally but were denied entry by the Cantwell campaign staff for wearing Mike McGavick tee shirts. Mike is the Republican candidate for Maria’s Senate seat. The young men were physically ejected from the line. BCC attempted to intervene but the staffers refused claiming they had ultimate authority to reject anyone as they had the hall rented. That point is under dispute, as the whole campus was invited.
Intro: Every Wednesday I participate in what bloggers refer to as a blogburst. The purpose is to focus a lot of attention on a single subject. The subject of this particular blogburst is the ACLU.
The ACLU is, to me, a very complicated and contradictory organization. It purports to support and depend the bill of rights and other other constitutional protections, and indeed many of the causes it takes on are clear violations of the various constitutional principles.
The problem is that many more of them, and what to my reckoning appears to be the majority, involve the suppression of Christian and other "traditional" type of values. The most notable and hypocritical seem to be cases involving the distancing of Christianity from schools or government. The reason I highlight these as being hypocritical is that they often parallel cases the ACLU has taken the opposite position on when it concerns other faiths such as Islam.
It just seems to me that an organization that declares itself to be the guardian and watchdog of constitutional protection do more to violate the constitutional rights of the people they should support.
I don’t want to attach too much significance to this, but it does raise questions. The fact that Christianity seems to exist in a double standard in American schools is fairly obvious. This is just one more example, with a surprising source.
The suit challenged the content of a seventh-grade history course at Excelsior Middle School in Byron in the fall of 2001. The teacher, using an instructional guide, told students they would adopt roles as Muslims for three weeks to help them learn what Muslims believe.
She encouraged them to use Muslim names, recited prayers in class, had them memorize and recite a passage from the Quran and made them give up something for a day, such as television or candy, to simulate fasting during the month of Ramadan. The final exam asked students for a critique of elements of Muslim culture. Source
Imagine if a Church used the power of its tax exemption as a lever towards political campaigns. Can you imagine the outrage from groups like the ACLU if a Church used its tax exempt donations to create political ads opposing candidates that did not adhere to certain “American values” as interpreted by that Church? What if a Christian Religious organization were to use its official title to oppose certain political issues such as abortion?
Here is a prime example of how the philosphy of “seperation of church and state” being overzealously pushed has confused many school officials into violating student’s Constitutional Rights. The Rutherford Institute will be defending this student’s rights. Somehow it slipped under the ACLU’s radar.
Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a civil rights lawsuit in defense of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of a seventh grader who was ordered by Maryland middle school officials to stop reading her Bible during free time at school or face disciplinary action.
…
On September 14, 2006, seventh-grader Amber Mangum was approached by the Vice Principal at Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School in Prince George’s County, Md., while reading a Bible in the school cafeteria during her lunch period. In keeping with school policy, students are allowed to read books or engage in interpersonal communications during non-instructional time at school, including lunch periods. Furthermore, published administrative procedure of the Prince George’s County Public Schools provides that “[s]tudents may read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, and pray before tests to the same extent they may engage in comparable, non-disruptive activities.”
I want to take a quick moment to express why I participate in the Blogburst most weeks.
The ACLU is an enigma to me. On the surface their goals are noble, lofty and just. And, as critics have often told me, they have been involved in some very important and supportable cases.
But too often I find myself wondering if their liberal agenda is at work cherry picking their cases. Too many of their cases seem to take such an extreme position.
So my goal in regard to the ACLU is to expose their extremism and hopefully be a part of the encouragement of an agenda that is less about activism and more about constitutionalism.
In case you haven’t heard, a group of dissenters from the ACLU are rebelling and calling for a change in the current leadership of the main organization. The summary of things this new group is fed up with is hypocrisy and the ACLU is full of it. Purging the ACLU of its hypocrisy is bound to be a Goliath task.
LSU, again, asks the obvious question: What is so fundamentally bad with voter and election integrity, that the ACLU and Democrats almost consistently oppose it? Would someone please explain that one to me?
The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed its disappointment with the House passage of a bill placing undue and unnecessary burdens on Americans’ fundamental right to vote. H.R. 4844, the "Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006," requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote in federal elections. In addition, beginning in 2010 voters would be required to present a photo ID that was issued based on proof of citizenship in order to vote. The measure passed by a vote of 228-196.
The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:
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"I really was blown away by the depth of your writing -- do you write for a living? If not, why not? Count me among YOUR fans." ~ Melanie Morgan, Syndicated Talk Radio Host
"One of the best Northwest Blogs" ~ Bryan Suits, Radio Talk Show Host KFI 640am
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New blog recommendation: ST reader Karl’s blog Leaning Straight Up
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