Periodically I like to publish images of our military doing what they have been trained to do.

Oftentimes those images do say a thousand words, whether it be about the troops’ professionalism, their sacrifice and loneliness or the joy of finally coming home to their loved ones.

Those falling in the last category are my favorite images.

Being a dog lover, I also like photographs of those other loyal, brave and skilled members of our military: the military working dogs.

Here are some new images of them.

Enjoy!

Not quite military working dogs, but military and cute nevertheless.

Lead Image: U.S. Army Sgt. Nichole D. Sharp and her military working dog, Hatos, search a truck while assessing security in the new customs yard under construction near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the Spin Boldak district in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, April 8, 2013. Sharp, a military police officer, is assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division.

Read more about Military Working Dogs here and here

All images and captions: DOD

First, in a brief commentary from Al-Iraq News, in an article headlines Having Sown the Wind … America Reaps the Whirlwind, columnist Filah Al Mishaal expresses disgust at what the U.S. has done to his country, and asserts that the coming wave of terrorist attacks on America are a direct result of U.S. policies that created ‘Islamist political terrorist organizations’ in the first place.

America created al-Qaeda and extreme Islamist political terrorist organizations in many countries, to have them sow discord and sectarian conflict with left wing and nationalist parties in countries that were subject to its aggression. That includes Iraq, which is still paying the bill for America’s crimes and errors in the blood of innocent lives. The victims in Boston and other places are suffering as a result of a ball of fire striking back at America for its ever-increasing involvement in terror, according to the proverb: “they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”!

Then, in a velvet-glove version of the same narrative, columnist Jihad Al Muhaysin of Jordan’s Al Ghad, in an article headlined Bostonians Hit By the ‘Plague of the Century, writes that it was regrettable that innocent people were being killed in ‘counter-productive’ terrorist attacks before Boston, and it is just as regrettable now. And he lays responsibility for all of it at the foot of American foreign policy since the September 11 attacks.

Nowhere in the world is immune from this outrageous cycle of violence. The day before yesterday, Boston was the target. It is a sad thing indeed that the victims were helpless innocents who didn’t deserve to bear the burden of America’s global policies, and are not responsible for its consequences. The same applies to Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Britain, France, and any place on the surface of the earth. … The plague of blood unleashed after September 11 is now striking everywhere.

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Given the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks, which was considered destructive and self-defeating by large numbers of people around the world, there is a good deal of concern that something similar could happen in the wake of the Boston bombings. This editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada recalls what it perceives as the misplaced aggression of the Bush Administration, and expresses hope that the Obama White House will act differently.

The La Jornada editorial says in part:

It is pertinent here to recall that after the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington, the White House focused on terrorist threats from foreign organizations, mainly Islamic ones, as well as on governments that it deemed to be politically hostile, like the one headed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq – even if that Arab country had never launched an attack on American targets. Thus, Washington provided an answer to its own question [why do they hate us?], leaving in its wake devastation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and vast and fully justified anti-American resentment.

Another consequence of the security policy adopted after 9-11 – which was in fact a strategic repositioning of Washington in Central Asia and the Middle East – was to forget the multi-faceted and prolific history of domestic terrorism in the United States, formed by a mixture of White supremacists, ultra right wing groups, fundamentalist Christians and even radical formations of environmentalists and animal rights activists. In fact, up until 9-11, the worst terrorist attack within the continental United States had been the blowing up of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died and some 700 were wounded. This act was perpetrated almost 18 years ago (April 19, 1995) by a small group of ultra right wing conspirators headed by Timothy McVeigh, a decorated soldier who had fought in the first U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991.

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Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Once again it happens with sickening suddenness — a jolting shock that alters and cruelly mocks our assumption of “normalcy.”

On a weekend when the news cycle focused on North Korea’s rising threat, the struggle to enact gun control and a dumb written comment about the -murdered-by-the-Nazis Anne Frank by self-absorbed teen singer Justin Bieber, the venerable Boston Marathon run ended in horrific bomb blasts. The result: at least three dead (including 8-year-old Martin Richard who was greeting his dad at the finish line), at least 176 injured — and at least 25 missing one or more legs. With two flashes, the first successful terrorist attack on a U.S. City since Sept. 11, 2001 shoved the issues of national security and life’s uncertainty to the forefront.

Immediately after the bombing, President Barack Obama made a brief statement that included this: “I’ve updated leaders of Congress in both parties, and we reaffirmed that on days like this there are no Republicans or Democrats — we are Americans, united in concern for our fellow citizens.”

Oh, really?

It soon became clear that some on the left immediately began speculating that it was right-wing terrorism. Some on the right suggested it was Muslim terrorists. And — proving that not all nuts are on the shelves at Whole Foods — right-winger Alex Jones and left-winger Cynthia McKinney both hinted that somehow the government was involved. Many Americans talk about a war on obesity. How about a war on stupidity?

The fact is this: just as America has hurtled into the 21st century with all of the technological, cultural and economic changes that this kind of progress entails, the American lifestyle starting in the 1950s began to take a hit with mass killings and terrorist attacks and attempts. As a result, places where Americans can feel totally safe have dwindled. Rule out skyscrapers, walking on a university campus, being in a university hall, in high school, in elementary school, watching a movie, going to a fast-food restaurant — and more.

It was inevitable that sooner or later there would be an attack on some big sporting event and for years writers have speculated on attacks at other venues, such as malls. Our sense of vulnerability increases as the venues of safe havens decreases — even though the odds are low of being a victim of a terrorist attack.

In 2012, Robert Bailey of Reason estimated the odds of an American dying in a terrorist attack were 1 in 1.7 million. Other estimates from websites over the years varied — one had it one in 9.3 million worldwide. Others higher.

But odds matter little to the dead, injured and grieving families of terrorism’s and murder’s victims. Terror is just that: a murder-political technique designed to ostentatiously end in a body count that will terrorize, influence, bully or demoralize a populace and/or government. After a while there is a sameness where the murderers all seem the same and seemingly spawn each other. Right terrorism seeks the same dead body message as left terrorism and even incidents start to look the same.

The Daily Beast says former FBI counterterrorism investigator Mark Rossini saw some “disquieting” similarities between the Boston bombing and the March 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191, injured 1,800 and turned out to be the handiwork of a terrorist cell inspired by Al Qaeda.

In these kinds of horrific events, the names and political positions of the murderous groups may change. Because evil doesn’t only come in different forms. It copies and clones itself.

Copyright 2013 Joe Gandelman. This weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Is American use of Wahhabi terrorists as a foreign policy tool behind the Boston Marathon bombings? For Iraq’s Sotal Iraq, columnist Ahmad Kazem sees the attacks as a fork in the road for the United States, and worries that the American people are so caught up in ‘petty soap operas and mind-numbing television talk shows’, they are easy to convince that they are in danger, and that ‘wars are necessary for their own protection.’

For Sotal Iraq, Ahmad Kazem starts off this way:

Will the Boston bombings be the start of a terrorism transition for America, and an end to America’s support for Wahhabi terrorism and its masterminds in the Gulf? Or will it serve as a pretext to launch a new war, as occurred after September 11, 2001?

In the first instance, it would mean that America has learned from its mistake of supporting terrorism; The second would mean that America is becoming increasingly violent. After the events of 2001 in the era of the Bush presidency, America launched wars directly against Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing great destruction and death to civilians. During the Obama presidency, it has brought less direct destruction and death to civilians by relying on Gulf Wahhabism and its backers. To execute its savagery, America has paved the way for barbarians dressed as Wahhabis, Salafists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, delegating influence to the idiot Erdogan, the senile Saudi Prince Abdullah, and the prince of the Banana emirate Qatar.

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In a move that was certain to be controversial, and as one of his last acts as Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta authorized a new Medal, the Distinguished Warfare Medal (DWM), to be awarded to service members whose extraordinary achievements, regardless of their distance to the traditional combat theater, deserve distinct department-wide recognition.

Some of the recipients of this new medal who Panetta had in mind were the operators, or “pilots,” of remotely piloted platforms, or drones.

Criticism was swift to come, not only from outside the military — from those opposed to the use of drones — but also from troops and veterans when it became known that the new medal honoring drone pilots would rank above some traditional combat valor medals such as the Bronze Star and just below the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Through the White House’s “We the People — Your Voice in our Government” petition process, thousands of signatures were gathered for a petition to the Obama Administration to lower the precedence of the new Distinguished Warfare Medal.

The Petition read in part:

Under no circumstance should a medal that is designed to honor a pilot, that is controlling a drone via remote control, thousands of miles away from the theater of operation, rank above a medal that involves a soldier being in the line of fire on the ground. This is an injustice to those who have served and risked their lives and this should not be allowed to move forward as planned.

Many other groups and organizations joined in the protest.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, according to Military.com, fully concurred “that those far from the fight are having an immediate impact on the battlefield in real-time, but medals that can only be earned in direct combat must mean more than medals awarded in the rear.” VFW National Commander John E. Hamilton said in a statement released on February 14, “The VFW urges the Department of Defense to reconsider the new medal’s placement in the military order of precedence.” Hamilton added that the new medal and its ranking “could quickly deteriorate into a morale issue.”

Perhaps stung by the controversy created by the announcement of the new medal, and especially by the “precedence” of the medal over other decorations, Juliet Beyler, the acting director of officer and enlisted personnel management in the Pentagon, on February 15, attempted to clarify some aspects by providing “qualifying” examples such as:

… a service member who is involved in a cyber attack on a specific military target.

… an unmanned aerial vehicle operator who takes out a specific military target.

… a service member who is orchestrating and moving troops on a battlefield, but perhaps, is not physically present, but does something that contributes in some extraordinary way to the battle

Reacting to the criticism, the Pentagon put out statements such as this one by Pentagon Press Secretary George Little:

We are not diminishing at all the importance of the Bronze Star — that remains an important award for our combat troops and will remain so…We expect this award to be granted pretty rarely, and that factored in to the decision [on its precedence].

The explanations and clarifications have been to no avail. The outcry and backlash continued.

On March 12, the new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, ordered a review of the award, “in light of recent discussions concerning the new Distinguished Warfare Medal and its order of precedence relative to other military decorations” and directed Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to conduct the review. Hagel said that he expected to make a decision about the medal’s fate after assessing the findings.

Today, the Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum acknowledging that “the character of modem warfare has changed, and will continue to evolve,” expressing appreciation to his predecessor, Leon Panetta, for being “acutely aware of how remotely piloted vehicles and cyber operators were directly and significantly impacting combat operations” and for realizing as Hagel does “that the extraordinary and meritorious achievements of our Service men and women who employ this technology deserve distinct recognition.”

However, Hagel says:

Based on the April 9, 2013 recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and concurred in by the Military Department Secretaries, I agree that such recognition is best accomplished through the creation of a distinguishing device that may be affixed to existing medals at various levels rather than through award of the DWM. I direct that within 90 days, final award criteria and the specifics of the distinguishing device, as referenced in the April 9 recommendations, be developed and presented to me for final approval.

Hagel continues:

Utilizing a distinguishing device to recognize impacts on combat operations reserves our existing combat medals for those Service members who incur the physical risk and hardship of combat, perform valorous acts, are wounded in combat, or as a result of combat give their last full measure for our Nation. This memorandum supersedes the memorandum dated February 13,2013, that announced the creation of the DWM.

In a separate statement Hagel says:

When I came into office, concerns were raised to me about the Distinguished Warfare Medal’s order of precedence by veterans’ organizations, members of Congress, and other stakeholders whose views are valued by this department’s leadership.

After consulting with the service secretaries, along with Gen. Dempsey and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I directed them to review the Distinguished Warfare Medal. The medal was originally conceived to be awarded only to those men and women who, while serving off the battlefield, have an extraordinary impact on combat operations. While the review confirmed the need to ensure such recognition, it found that misconceptions regarding the precedence of the award were distracting from its original purpose.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the concurrence of the service secretaries, have recommended the creation of a new distinguishing device that can be affixed to existing medals to recognize the extraordinary actions of this small number of men and women. I agree with the Joint Chiefs’ findings, and have directed the creation of a distinguishing device instead of a separate medal.

[::]

The service men and women, who operate and support our remotely piloted aircraft, operate in cyber, and others are critical to our military’s mission of safeguarding the nation. I again want to thank my predecessor, Leon Panetta, for raising the need to ensure that these men and women are recognized for their contributions.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

It may cost less in monetary terms to go to war than not, depending on how you calculate it, according to Daniel Altman, who looks at it from multiple points of view, and comes to the conclusion that, arguably, it may well be much less costly to go to war with them in the near future than it is to continue with the status quo and wait for them to start it themselves.

My main problem with his analysis is he assumes both the South Korean government and the US government are rational actors looking at this economically. From my own point of view, he also forgets to calculation the opportunity cost of a non-free versus a free (or at least free-er) North Korea, which I wouldn’t know how to calculate but is probably a significant factor that also ought to be put into this sort of calculation–which would be a cold way of looking at the cost of the unimaginable suffering and oppression of the North Korean people caused by the existence of that vile regime.

But as I said, that assumes those with the decision-making power on war are rational actors who are taking things like this into consideration. I no longer believe they do. As a good old-fashioned neocon (you know, back when that word actually had a specific meaning: “a liberal with hawkish foreign policy views”) I have fundamentally soured on much advocacy for more than extremely limited military action, because I believe most or all democracies, except in unusual circumstances, work under the “war is the most unthinkably horrible thing you can ever do unless you’re directly attacked and have absolutely no other choice” line of thinking. Mass torture, mass mutilation, genocide, democide, these are nowhere near as bad as war–so many people have come to believe anyway. Thus it is nearly impossible to summon sustained effort for any long-term military conduct–although I will grant that with a Democrat in the White House, support for such an effort would likely be greater than with a Republican there.

Personally, even outside the economic costs, I believe the humane thing is, and has been for some time now, to launch an unannounced pre-emptive strike in which we precision bomb every known artillery, missile launcher, and communication facility, take out Kim and the leadership, then start aerial runs of food and medical supply drops with messages that the war is over and people are now free to come to South Korea if they want, while also broadcasting that same message via speaker and on all radio and TV signals currently used by the North Korean government in order to make sure it’s all heard.

It may sound audacious, but I really don’t think the North Koreans would under those circumstances be able to pose a credible threat, and the far greater likelihood is that their military more or less disintegrates and people just start wandering over to South Korea.

But see, that requires the belief that the initiation of force is not always and in all ways immoral, and that standing by and passively watching people be put through what North Koreans are put through is morally preferable to swift and decisive action. And most people just don’t think like I do. Most people either figure war is too awful to contemplate, or shrug and think “not our problem.” We’re not our brothers’ keeper, right?

It almost seems like pointless speculation; it’s pretty much a given in my view that nothing is going to happen here until Kim launches an actual nuclear strike. He’ll be able to continue to do anything he wants otherwise, and this will drag on for decades more.

All I can say to the North Korean people is, I’m sorry that my country, and that the world’s democracies, failed you. I know that’ll be cold comfort as you contemplate your starved and dead children and your mutilated and enslaved loved ones, but it’s the best I have to offer; not enough people in my country, which has the power to end the Kim regime in days any time it wants to, has the will to do it. To our shame.

Should the United States apologize to Iraqis and pay their country reparations? Now, ten years after an invasion that was illegal under international law and based on mistaken pretexts, Al-Iraq News columnist Jamal Muhammad Taqi argues that it’s time for America to make amends – but he has little expectation that it will.

For Al-Iraq News, Jamal Muhammad Taqi starts off this way:

To turn the page on the past, the least America and Britain can do for the Iraqi people is apologize and compensate them for the catastrophic material damage inflicted on themselves, their natural environment and their infrastructure. This is damage that will leave its mark for a century. The most practical punishment would be to see the U.S.-British agenda for which the invasion and occupation were carried out – thwarted. That would be the only reasonable punished for a crime unequaled by any in the world.

On the anniversary of the invasion, the above suggestion seems like some kind of dream or small talk between acquaintances, since the people who currently rule Iraq consider the invasion and occupation to have been necessary to liberate the country from those that used to rule! According to them, the Americans and British deserve thanks, gratitude, and sometimes compensation for what they lost in Iraq during the invasion and occupation. This is understandable coming from a group that collaborated from the beginning, and for which the invasion and occupation are the reasons for their hold on power. Naturally they owe everything to the occupiers and will inevitably stand against any of the above-listed demands. In any event, we’re not counting on those appointed to govern by the occupiers, but on all free patriots who are organizing themselves and shifting from armed resistance to political and legal resistance. And thanks to Allah, they are many!

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On Thursday, President Obama posthumously awarded our nation’s highest military decoration for acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty, the Medal of Honor, to Army Chaplain, Capt. Emil J. Kapaun.

Some of the story of Father Kapaun’s courage, selflessness and compassion that earned him such high honor was told by the President during the ceremony. For example, he said, “This is the battle we honor today. An American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, the love for his brothers, so pure, that he was willing to die so they might live.”

A significant part of “the rest of the story” about Father Kapaun’s heroism, sacrifice and, again, compassion is told by the narratives that accompanied the Medal of Honor “nomination package.”

Here it is as reported by David Fergun of the Army News Service:

“Among the documents and interviews within the nomination package, one of the narratives reads: “As Chinese Communist forces encircled [3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry during the battle of Unsan,] Kapaun moved fearlessly from foxhole to foxhole under enemy direct fire in order to provide comfort and reassurance to the outnumbered soldiers. When the Chinese commandos attacked the battalion command post, Kapaun and other members of the headquarters withdrew 500 meters across a nearby river, but Kapaun returned to help the wounded, gathering approximately 30 injured men into the relative protection of a Korean dugout.”

The narrative goes on to describe how the battalion became entirely surrounded by enemy forces. It recounts how Kapaun spent the next day, Nov. 2, repeatedly rescuing the wounded from “no-man’s land outside the perimeter.”

As the battalion’s position became hopeless, “Kapaun rejected several chances to escape, instead volunteering to stay behind and care for the wounded.” At dusk, he made his way back to the dugout.

“Among the injured Americans was a wounded Chinese officer,” the narrative continues. “As Chinese infantry closed in on their position, Kapaun convinced him to negotiate for the safety of the injured Americans.”

The narrative then describes how, after Kapaun’s capture, he intervened to save the life of a fellow soldier who was “lying in a nearby ditch with a broken ankle and other injuries. As Chinese soldiers prepared to execute” the soldier, “Kapaun risked his own life by pushing the Chinese soldier aside” thereby saving the soldier’s life.

The narrative continues with other acts of bravery and charity, both during the march north and throughout their ordeal at the prisoner of war camp. Kapaun died there, May 23, 1951.

Many prisoners of war were inspired by Kapaun, including Mike Dowe, who at the time was an Army first lieutenant.

Dowe recounted how U.S. soldiers ran out of ammunition in the Anju, North Korea, area in early November 1950, when “wave after wave” of Chinese communist forces launched a surprise attack across the border into North Korea.

Thousands of U.S. soldiers were taken prisoner and were forced to march northward in what Dowe termed “death marches.” Soldiers who were too weak or injured to keep up were shot, he said.

It was then that Dowe, who was a member of the 19th Regiment, 24th Infantry Division, first saw Kapaun carrying the wounded and encouraging others to do the same.

The POWs eventually were taken to a valley near Pyoktong, near the Yalu River in northwest North Korea near the Chinese border.

“I don’t know the name of that valley, but we called it the ‘Kapaun Valley’ because that is where Father Kapaun instilled in us a will to live,” he said.

Kapaun tended to the wounded and encouraged people to share and help each other, Dowe said. He also snuck out of camp at night and stole food, which he would bring back and share with everyone.

Then, in January 1951, the soldiers were moved to Pyoktong, along the Yalu River. The enlisted were located in a valley and the officers were separated and placed on a hill, Dowe said. Turkish prisoners were co-located with the enlisted.

Conditions in the camps were miserable during winter of 1950-51, which Dowe said was one of the coldest ever in Korea. Temperatures dipped to minus 28 Fahrenheit.

Dowe said the soldiers were still wearing their summer uniforms, because they’d been told they would be home by Thanksgiving 1950, not realizing at the time that the Chinese would join the North Koreans in attacking the United Nations forces.

All of the trees in the area had been stripped away, but there was a wood fence around the officer’s compound on the hill, Dowe said. Each morning, Kapaun got up before everyone else and went out into the subzero weather to collect wood from that fence, he said.

Kapaun would use that wood to heat water for coffee in a pan that he had fashioned from scrap metal. Dowe said he still has vivid recollections of that “little guy with the beard and scraggly hat pulled over his ears, made from the sleeve of a sweater, bringing coffee to everyone. You can’t imagine how good that was to start the day off for us.”

At night, the men would pass the time telling stories before falling asleep, Dowe said. A favorite topic was describing the food they’d like to order once they got home. “Some of the best stories were told by Father Kapaun, who described his mother’s cooking back on the farm,” in Kansas, Dowe said. Kapaun was always keeping the men’s spirits up, he added.

The chaplain continued to make nighttime forays outside the prison camp to the surrounding countryside, to steal food for the soldiers in the camps. Dowe often accompanied him on what he termed “ration runs.”

Sometimes they would raid a warehouse where 50-pound bags of millet and cracked corn were stored. Dowe said millet is like bird seed and very hard to digest. The two would first distribute it to the enlisted prisoners.

Soon, Kapaun became known as the “Great Thief,” Dowe said. He explained that the nickname was given to him, not just because he was so successful at stealing food, but also because it was learned that Kapaun prayed to Saint Dismas, who was the penitent thief crucified alongside Jesus, as described in the Bible.

The Chinese often tried to brainwash the POWs by lecturing them on the evils of capitalism and the virtues of a communist society, Dowe said.

“Father Kapaun would rebut the lectures with intelligent responses that the Chinese found impossible to counter,” Dowe recalled. “That would infuriate them. Some who resisted the lectures would be tortured or killed. We thought Father Kapaun would be killed as well.”

At one point, the guards took Kapaun away. “We thought that was the end for him,” Dowe said. Then, a few days later they brought him back to camp.

“They were absolutely afraid of him,” Dowe said, explaining why he was returned. “There was an aura about the guy. He was fearless. He had a way of addressing people that was frank and straightforward. They couldn’t understand why he wasn’t afraid like others. Threats and intimidation had no effect on him.”

More than half of the prisoners died that winter, Dowe said. They often died at night and the soldiers would drag the bodies outside. Every day there were burial details. Soldiers assigned to these details would carry the bodies about half a mile past the enlisted area in the valley and across the Yalu to an island where they would be buried.

“Father Kapaun always volunteered for burial details,” Dowe said. “He’d recover the clothing from the dead, wash it, and then provide clean clothing to the enlisted.”

Besides providing clothing to the soldiers, Kapaun would dress their wounds, offer words of encouragement and say prayers, Dowe said, adding that he did this despite being warned by the guards not to minister to the soldiers.

Despite warnings from the guards, Kapaun got up extra early on Easter Day 1950 to begin a special sunrise service. It would be his last Easter.

“It was a fantastic sermon,” Dowe recalled, saying it was the most “momentous event” in his life. He said hymns were sung and the echoes carried. Soon, he said, POWs up and down the valley were joining in.

“It was absolutely amazing. There were a few who claimed that Father Kapaun seemed to have a halo around him,” Dowe said.

The Chinese quickly arrived, but then became too afraid to stop the service, Dowe said.

The week after the sermon, Kapaun collapsed from a blood clot in his leg, Dowe said. There were some American doctors in the camp who treated it and he was walking and eating again soon after.

Kapaun then contracted pneumonia. The military doctors took care of that as well, Dowe said. After Kapaun recovered, guards became upset that he hadn’t died. They prepared to remove him to the “death camp,” a place where very sick prisoners were taken to die, and where no food or medical attention was given to them.

When the guards came, “we pushed them away,” Dowe said. “They brought in troops with bayonets and threatened everyone if people didn’t pick him up and carry him away.

“Father Kapaun told everyone to stop resisting and not to ‘fight them on my behalf.’ I was in tears,” Dowe continued, his voice tinged with emotion. “And then he turned to me and said, ‘Mike, don’t cry. I’m going where I’ve always wanted to go. And when I get there, I’ll be saying a prayer for all of you.’”

After Kapaun’s death, some of the guards who spoke English confided to Dowe that they were afraid of the “unconquerable spirit of a free man loyal only to his God and his country.”

After the war, which ended in a truce in 1953, Dowe was invited to testify to the committee involved in writing the POW Code of Conduct, which is still in effect today. Dowe said Kapaun had a strong influence on him and he shared that with the committee, which emphasized the “loyalty” and “keeping the faith” aspects of the code.

“Father Kapaun instilled that kind of loyalty in others, enabling them to maintain their honor, self-respect and will to live,” Dowe said. “I’ve seen over and over again that those who did not display that loyalty would invariably give up and die, often within 24 hours.”

Dowe said President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave him a personal commendation for his contribution to the committee. However, Dowe said the real credit should go to Kapaun, whom he credits with saving the lives of hundreds of POWs, directly or indirectly.

Following the war, Dowe went on to serve in the Army, retiring as a colonel in 1970 and then working as a defense contractor. He currently is a scientist at Raytheon.

He said he prays to Kapaun every night, asking him for help and guidance. And, he said, he knows Kapaun is in heaven praying for him and his fellow POWs.

Dowe said Kapaun had a positive impact on the many non-Catholics in the prison camp as well. He said the commander of the Turkish POWs told him as they were being liberated, “I will pray to my God Allah for Father Kapaun.”

Also read here

Photos: DOD

As we spend yet another weekend anxiously watching events unfold on the Korean peninsula and we express both our concern and support for our troops presently serving in South Korea, a ceremony at the White House on Thursday reminds us of the service and sacrifices of our military on that same peninsula more than 60 years ago.

For on Thursday, President Obama posthumously awarded our nation’s highest military decoration for valor in combat, the Medal of Honor, to Army chaplain, Capt. Emil J. Kapaun.

The story of Father Kapaun’s courage, selflessness and compassion that earned him such high honor is probably best expressed by the words of the commander-in-chief during the ceremony: “This is the battle we honor today. An American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, the love for his brothers, so pure, that he was willing to die so they might live.”

Only six other chaplains have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Chaplain (Capt.) Emil J. Kapaun was just 35 years old when he died in a prisoner of war camp during the Korean War. His remains were never recovered.

Kapaun was ordained a priest in 1940, and served under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wichita in Pilsen, Kan. In 1944, he began serving as an Army chaplain. In 1993, Kapaun was named a “Servant of God” by the Vatican, and is currently a candidate for sainthood.

Here are the remarks made by the President during the ceremony in the East Room of the White House where he presented the medal to Kapaun’s nephew, Ray Kapaun, as reported by David Vergun of the Army News Service.

“When commanders ordered an evacuation, he chose to stay and tend to their wounds,” Obama said. “When the enemy broke through and there was combat hand to hand, he carried on, comforting the injured and the dying, offering them some measure of peace before they left this Earth. When enemy forces bore down, it seemed like the end.

“Father Kapaun spotted a wounded Chinese officer. He pleaded with [him] and convinced him to call out to his fellow Chinese,” the president continued. “The shooting stopped, and they negotiated a safe surrender, saving those American lives.

“Then as Father Kapaun was being led away, he saw another American, wounded, unable to walk, lying in a ditch, defenseless,” Obama added. “An enemy soldier was standing over him, rifle aimed at his head ready to shoot. Father Kapaun pushed the enemy soldier aside. And then as the enemy soldier watched, stunned, Father Kapaun carried that wounded American away.

“This is the battle we honor today,” the president continued. “An American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, the love for his brothers, so pure, that he was willing to die so they might live.

“He carried that wounded soldier for four miles on the death march and when Father Kapaun grew tired, he’d help the wounded Soldier hop on one leg,” the president added. “When other prisoners stumbled, he picked them up. When they wanted to quit, knowing stragglers would be shot, he begged them to keep walking.”

The president then went on to describe how Kapaun cared for the soldiers right up until the time of his death.

Obama then presented the Medal of Honor to Ray Kapaun, Father Kapaun’s nephew.

Kapaun’s Medal of Honor nomination reads: “for conspicuous acts of gallantry and intrepidity, at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty, Nov. 1-2, 1950, during the Korean War.”

In a follow-up post we will read in more detail about the heroic and compassionate actions by Father Kapaun during the Korean War and during his captivity by the Chinese.

Today, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel inducted Father Kapaun into the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes.

In his remarks, Hagel described Kapaun as one of the unheralded heroes of the Korean conflict, noting the courageous Catholic chaplain had sacrificed everything so that others could live.

“In a day when real heroes are hard to find, at a time when America is searching for a center of gravity, it’s particularly important that we grab a hold of people like Father Kapaun and not just acknowledge those acts of heroism and gallantry in what he did as a clergyman but the composite, who he was and what he was about,” Hagel said at the Pentagon ceremony.

Accounts from survivors credit him for their ability to endure horrific camp conditions including severe cold, disease and starvation.

Kapaun would himself die as a prisoner, but not before serving as a leader to thousands of men captured along with him.

“I know of no finer example to point to,” said Hagel, as he inducted Kapaun, who hailed from Pilsen, Kan., into the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes.

Kapaun “just didn’t appear in the Korean War. Something shaped him,” the secretary added, as reported by Nick Simeone of the American Forces Press Service.

Photos: White House and DOD

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

Michael Totten ponders:

Kim almost certainly isn’t serious, but what if he is? How would we know? His attention-seeking theatrics are identical to the behavior of a lunatic hell-bent on blowing the region apart. If war breaks out next month, everyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the Korean Peninsula will slap their forehead and see, with the clarity of hindsight, that every warning we could possibly need, want, and expect was right there in front of us.

The North Korean military is nothing like Saddam Hussein’s or Moammar Qaddafi’s. Pyongyang has such an enormous array of artillery batteries targeting South Korea (the capital, Seoul, is only 30 or so miles away from the border) that hundreds of thousands of people could be killed over the weekend. North Korea would eventually lose at the hands of South Korea and the United States. It would be finished forever as a state. But the cost in lives would be unspeakable.

He has more to say right here, and I recommend reading the whole thing, but I will say this: we probably have a very good idea whether he’s serious, because we are almost certainly listening in on almost all the regime’s communications. It is plausible I suppose that the Obama administration is receiving warnings from people at the listening posts and is just not listening, but unlike those with Presidential Deranagement Syndrome (my new term for people with an unhinged hatred for whoever happens to be President at the moment, as there appears to always be a subset of such people in American politics no matter what) I am not inclined to think that even the slightly dovish Obama is likely to just ignore warnings that a lunatic is about to launch an all-out attack.

Of course I’ve made plain for some time now what I think the solution is to this; it is pretty much a given in my estimation that our intelligence services know with pinpoint precision where most of the North Korean artillery and missile launchers are and we probably have the ability to take most of it out very very quickly, and furthermore, we will probably be able to hear any communications they have making any such plans. I suppose we could get caught with our pants down but probably not, and frankly, as bloody-minded as it may make me sound, I honestly hope Kim III really is that insane and really does try it; something and someone needs to destroy that regime, and I’d like an excuse to see it done in my lifetime. Mass jamming their communications and taking out most of their weaponry capable of hitting Seoul, then just sitting on the border and waiting and inviting them to come over peacefully any time they want seems like the best option to me. But I remain cynical that anything like it will really happen.

UPDATE II:

Excerpts from comments by Secretary of State John Kerry on questions about the Korean situation during a joint press conference with Republic of Korea Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on April 12, 2013:

Well, if North Korea decides to fire the Musudan missile, which they have threatened to, and which people have been following, it would really be one more unnecessary, unfortunate, unwanted contribution to an already volatile, potentially dangerous situation. And so it would indicate, really, who is being provocative with an exclamation point yet again.

[::]

So it’s up to Kim Jong-un what he decides to do. It’s not going to change our current position, which is very, very clear. We will defend our allies. We will stand with South Korea, Japan, and others against these threats. And we will defend ourselves. And Kim Jong-un needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of the conflict would be…

[::]

… If Kim Jong-un decides to launch a missile, whether it’s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing, willfully, to ignore the entire international community, his own obligations that he has accepted, and it will be a provocative and unwanted act that will raise people’s temperature with respect to this issue. It should – I would say ahead of time that it is a huge mistake for him to choose to do that, because it will further isolate this country and further isolate his people who, frankly, are desperate for food, not missile launches, for people who are desperate for opportunity, not for a leader who wants to flex his muscles in this manner, that takes everybody to a bad place.

Now, with respect to the type of weapon or what they may have and the threats that he is making, let me make it clear – and this is the Pentagon’s assessment that I’m giving you – it is inaccurate to suggest that the DPRK has fully tested, developed, or demonstrated capabilities that are articulated in that report. So we do not operate under the presumption that they have that fully tested and available capacity. But obviously, they have conducted a nuclear test, so there’s some kind of device. But that is very different from miniaturization and delivery and from tested delivery and other things.

Does it get you closer to a line that is more dangerous? Yes. And that is precisely why we are standing here together at this moment, talking about the need to move in a better and different direction. And our hope is that in the next days, in my conversations in China and conversations in Japan, that we will find the unity necessary to provide a very different set of alternatives for how we can proceed and ultimately defuse this situation.

Final comment: I couldn’t make it more clear from our point of view. President Obama ordered a number of exercises not to be undertaken. I think we have lowered our rhetoric significantly, and we are attempting to find a way for reasonableness to prevail here. And we are seeking a partner to deal with in a rational and reasonable way. Our hope is that the vision expressed by President Park for negotiations and for a peaceful track is a vision that we can move too quickly. Because let’s face it, everybody here knows this: we’ve got enough problems to deal with around the world, and we don’t need some individual activities by one particular person threatening destruction and mayhem, chaos, in the ways that we’re seeing, no matter how based in reality it may be.

The greatest danger here, we all agree, is for a mistake. The greatest danger is that something happens and there’s a response to that something, and then things somehow inadvertently were to get out of control. And so we call on Kim Jong-un to recognize that this is a moment for responsible leadership and it’s a moment to try to reach for the good possibilities, not try to guarantee the bad ones.

Read more here

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UPDATE I:

Department of Defense Press Secretary George Little has issued the following statement on North Korea’s Nuclear Capability

In today’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense budget, a member of the committee read an unclassified passage in a classified report on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. While I cannot speak to all the details of a report that is classified in its entirety, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed, or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage. The United States continues to closely monitor the North Korean nuclear program and calls upon North Korea to honor its international obligations.

Added: The Congressman in question is Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo. According to an AP report, “The reading seemed to take Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise, who said he hadn’t seen the report and declined to answer questions about it.”
===

Original Post:

Most know that North Korea has developed a nuclear weapons capability. Most believe that North Korea has the capability of launching long-range ballistic missiles that can reach U.S. territory.

Today, the New York Times reports the breaking news that North Korea may have been able to “marry” those two capabilities, i.e. that North Korea “has learned how to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency has reached such a conclusion with “moderate confidence” and has delivered this assessment to senior administration officials and members of Congress.

If it is any consolation, the assessment “cautions that the weapon’s ‘reliability will be low,’ apparently a reference to the North’s difficulty in developing accurate missiles or, perhaps, to the huge technical challenges of designing a warhead that can survive the rigors of flight and detonate on a specific target,” according to the Times.

It may also be a consolation — of a different kind — to some that:

It is unclear whether other American intelligence agencies agree with the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has primary responsibility for monitoring the missile capabilities of adversary nations. In the case of Iraq, a decade ago, the agency was among those that argued most vociferously that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons.

Read more of this breaking news here

Image: www.shutterstock.com

The assassination by Islamist Taliban zealots of a leading candidate today for Pakistan’s May 11 elections is a foretaste of how the extremists plan to make the polls safe for their sympathizers and partners while terrorizing the moderate political parties. It is like a pilot run of how their Afghan allies might deal with elections in Afghanistan after US withdrawal in 2014.

News reports said gunmen on a motorcycle shot to death Fakhrul Islam, a candidate from Hyderabad. Another moderate politician Arbab Ayub Jan suffered a bomb attack near Peshawar but escaped death.

For the first time in Pakistani history, a civilian parliament elected in 2008 has survived its full term without being overthrown by the army. Three moderate Muslim parties formed the coalition: the MQM, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Awami National Party. All three are fielding candidates for the May 11 elections, which will choose a national government and governments for the four provinces that make up the country.

But the Pakistani Taliban, who are fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban against the US/NATO coalition, have branded the three moderate Muslim parties as “secular infidels”. They promised a few days before the armed attacks to assassinate both national and provincial candidates from the “secular” parties and disrupt their rallies.

Their goals are to prevent candidates from campaigning while intimidating voters to discourage attendance at rallies. In effect, the extremist militants are giving themselves a veto over who stands for elections and where. This is ominous because Pakistani Taliban are close to al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, although they operate separately within Pakistan.

The forthcoming elections are history making for the region because for the first time an elected civilian government would succeed one that completed its full 5-year term. In the past, civilian governments in Pakistan were at the mercy of army generals and not one made it through a full term between 1948 and 2008.

Now, the army is cooperating with the civilians and seems ready to step aside permanently from political power. But the Taliban have become a bloody enemy of moderate Muslim politicians and their ambition and cruelty are far worse than the army’s past.

Normally, the police and army are responsible for providing safety for the elections process but they have not had much luck in stopping the attacks. Some moderate politicians and other critics allege that many in the police and army, including the secret services, sympathize with extremists and do not want to act too forcefully against them. Senior army leaders strongly deny this and point to the thousands of casualties their men have suffered in over a decade of trying unsuccessfully to defeat the Pakistani Taliban.

The signals for Afghanistan’s elections in 2014 will not be encouraging if the Taliban succeed in preventing sufficient turnout for the Pakistani elections or disrupting canvassing by moderate candidates. That would leave the field open for their extremist allies to obtain political power through the ballot box and subvert Pakistan’s fragile democracy. Election results depend on turnout and victory for extremists is certain if their opponents are too fearful to enter polling booths. Only the army can protect them and that protection is not certain.

Their success would also provide knowhow for the Afghan Taliban to bring victory for their allies through elections after the US withdraw. That might provide space for a reentry of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan defeating America’s sacrifice of blood and treasure. It could also see the rise of an alliance of extremist governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a nuclear armed and militarist state with heavy conventional weapons, a modern air force and navy, and thousands of missiles. Its armory is far superior to that of Syria, Iraq or Iran. Extremist elected politicians in control of Pakistan can create threats for world peace more lethal than North Korea’s begging bowl bluster or Iran’s wily diplomatic maneuvers.

With Washington and Europe focused on North Korea and Iraq, the Taliban might slip through the cracks to turn Pakistan into a US-hating radicalized state governed by Sharia-law. With just a month to go, these elections deserve more attention.

Pakistan graphic via shutterstock.com

Has American non-intervention in Syria reached the point of diminishing returns? For Saudi Arabia’s Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Tariq Alhomayed expresses extreme disappointment with the Obama Administration, which he contends is jeopardizing global economic stability and physical security across the Middle East by not stepping to help the Syrian rebels before Bashar al-Assad is toppled – and a dangerous power vacuum emerges.

For Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Alhomayed writes in part:

To say that what is happening in Syria poses no risk to American security is nonsense, because the crisis in Syria affects the security of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and the entire Mediterranean. The failure in Syria means that the Arab world is confronted with its own Afghanistan in the Mediterranean, which means that a sectarian war is in the cards that will burn everything and everyone in the region, while fueling terrorism and destabilizing the whole of the Middle East, which in turn will deliver a blow to global economic stability. Just consider the damage pirates in Somalia have caused to the shipping industry – not to mention the position of al-Qaeda in Yemen, which has obliged Washington to repeatedly intervene there.

So the positions taken by the Obama Administration, not just today but yesterday as well, demonstrate both a lack of foresight and weak political leadership – especially with the rebels advancing and Assad besieged in Damascus. … Obama has the power to do all of this now. The problem we face is that he and his administration lack vision, are hesitant to act, and fail to see the danger of what’s coming. Assad is so close to falling. The danger is lies in what will come after him. So who is going to act? That is the question!

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR ARABIC AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Is the war in Afghanistan now a pointless exercise that entails murdering people until the time for withdrawal arrives next year? For Germany’s Der Spiegel, Jakob Augstein expresses consternation about how this war is ending, and wonders if Germany might have been better off before its military, the Bundeswehr, was talked into once again becoming ‘accustomed to war.’

For Der Speigel, Jakob Augstein starts off this way:

On Saturday, in northeastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province: American and Afghan troops battled their enemies. After several hours, as reported by The New York Times, the Americans called in air support. The house of the opposing commander was to be destroyed. When it was all over, the Taliban are dead. And according to the provincial government, ten children also lose their lives. Five women were also said to be injured. This is the reality of the war in Afghanistan – a war in which the Bundeswehr is participating. A war that is completely nonsensical. Because by the end of 2014 it should all be over. The foreign troops will pack up their things and withdraw – the way a circus packs up and moves on when a performance is over. But this is no game. Truth be told, it is murder. Because a senseless war can be called nothing but murder.

There was a similar attack in February. On that occasion, five children, four women and a man were killed. Afghan President Hamid Karzai subsequently forbade his own security forces from calling in NATO air support. Bombs from the air bring an indiscriminate death. And ISAF had already determined that it would no longer target residential buildings.

But apparently, that is no concern of the Americans. ISAF troops, among them Germans, are waging this war based on a meaningless routine. It is no longer about a goal – about victory or defeat, or about anything at all. It is just a matter of killing time until the troops pull out. One day, at midnight, the fight will simply end. This is surreal. Until then, only the dead who fall victim to this madness are real.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Bringing Syria’s Bashar Assad to the negotiating table has become harder following a widened rift between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in London today.

Kerry is moving towards providing military aid to the Syrian opposition, including body armor and night vision gear but excluding weapons, while Russia adamantly opposes anything that might strengthen the opposition fighters.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Refugee agency said its efforts to help Syrian refugees are at “breaking point” because it has received just $300 million out of a $1 billion request. Ominously, refugee numbers in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq have reached 1.3 million, up from just 30,000 a year ago, and could explode to four million by this year-end. In addition, over three million people are displaced internally. The distress of refugees and the displaced could lead to sexual exploitation of women and children as they grow more desperate for shelter and survival. Other UN agencies place the number of war dead at over 70,000 and homes destroyed at 1.3 million.

Fresh from three days of talks with Israelis and Palestinians, Kerry met Syrian opposition leaders in London before the talks with Lavrov. Washington and its Arab and Western allies are deeply concerned that the humanitarian disaster in Syria and the country’s destruction must be stopped quickly. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are throwing weapons and money at the rebels, hoping that they will either win or cause enough of a stalemate to force Assad to step down. The US has refused to provide weapons but pressure is growing for it to do so or, at least, declare a no-fly zone over the safe havens of opposition fighters.

Surprisingly, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are dragging their feet over paying $300 million each pledged earlier to care for refugees, although they strongly support the Assad regime’s downfall. Lebanon, which already has 400,000 Syrian refugees, is at greatest risk of instability because it is governed by a fragile political balance among Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. Syria has already degenerated into a sectarian war between Sunnis, backed by their Arab Gulf brethren, and Shia Muslims. Christians are caught in the middle but lean towards the Shia Alawites, who currently provide most of Assad’s political and military power. Before Bashar’s father Hafez took over Damascus in the late 1960s, Alawites were a long-oppressed minority under Sunni rule. Bashar is now fighting for his clan’s survival and may not give up until he is certain Alawites and their allies will not be decimated by a Sunni regime.

Russia is as outraged as the West at Assad’s savage military strikes against the Sunni rebels but continues to protect his back because it fears Sunni Arab hegemony in the region. More than chaos in Syria, it fears American weapons and military diplomacy underpinning a Sunni mid-east dominated by the traditionalists Gulf royal families.

After steady defiance, Assad has indirectly acknowledged that his days are numbered. However, he sees his regime as a bulwark against long anarchy in the region. “Everybody knows that if the disturbances in Syria reach the point of the country’s breakup, or terrorist forces control Syria, or if the two cases happen, then this will immediately spill over into neighboring countries first, and later there will be a domino effect that will reach countries across the Middle East,” he told a Turkish TV station.

Lavrov has repeatedly affirmed that Russia is not Assad’s ally. In London, senior diplomats said Moscow will be relieved to see an end to Assad but not in the way sought by the US and its allies. For Russia, Assad’s fate is not the issue. The issue is ever-increasing US military presence in the mid-east and central Asia. An unusual strategic plan published in Moscow earlier this week makes clear that President Vladimir Putin feels Russia is now strong enough to start rising again as a Super Power capable of competing with the US around the world. Lavrov’s attitude in the London talks reflects this new direction. If possible, Moscow will not allow Assad to fall. If he does collapse, Putin will not allow the Sunni royal families to dominate the mid-east region, as US proxies. He will keep Shia power alive by quietly bolstering Iran.

These maneuvers may cause the rift between Washington and Moscow to widen further putting an end to President Barack Obama’s reset of relations with Russia. Obama may have to choose soon between caution towards the Syrian imbroglio or coming out boldly to use no-fly zones and weapons-aid to help the opposition capture power, as in Libya. The relationship with Moscow is going downhill anyway because of Putin’s nationalist policies.

The most important consideration for the White House at this time is to prevent radical Islamist fighters from gaining political influence after Assad’s fall. The most dangerous is the al-Nusra Front, which is suspected of al-Qaeda links and has been declared a terrorist organization by Washington. The fog of war is so dense in Syria that its transformation into a terrorist safe haven cannot be ruled out unless the Islamic regimes arming the opposition currently are clairvoyant. Against this backdrop, the widening Russia-US rift bears watching.

As tensions on the Korean peninsula rise, with the next “milestone” and possibly key event being the imminent launch of a medium range (2,100 miles) missile — possibly multiple missiles is now being reported — by North Korea, and while we are hoping for the best, we should not forget the more than 28,000 US troops based throughout South Korea.

We should also keep in our thoughts the “command-sponsored” families accompanying approximately 4,500 of those troops.

TIME also mentions that “roughly 150,000 Americans” are now in South Korea, most of them within range of the North’s 13,000 artillery tubes.

Should readers want to express their support for and solidarity with these troops and their dependents, that great organization, the USO, is providing just such a venue.

By going to this USO web site you can add your name “to an urgent Pledge of Support that will be displayed at the six USO Centers throughout South Korea which receive more than 14,000 visits every month from troops and their families.”

The USO:

This is your chance to let our troops and their families stationed in the region know that, whatever they confront in the days and weeks ahead, the American people and the USO will be always by their side.

None of us can predict what will happen in the days ahead and all of us hope for an easing of the tension. But, whatever happens, we need to make sure our troops serving in this difficult situation know that they are in our thoughts and prayers.

Image: Courtesy USO

When I heard the initial reports that a State Department employee had been killed in Afghanistan, I sighed. And when I read the name and what I felt was a thoughtful message from the Secretary, I did what I suspect many of us do these days: I looked up the officer’s name on Facebook, guessing that someone young and in a place like Afghanistan was bound to have an account, a presence, through which she would share her experiences with her friends. I clicked on her name, saw her face, and realized that I knew her.

Or perhaps I didn’t know her, but only knew that I had seen her before. Seen her in the half-remembered days in-between my own assignments overseas. Seen her somewhere in the District or in Arlington at a ritualistic gathering of FSOs in a rented corporate apartment, drinks scattered on poorly made tables of blond wood or on pool furniture badly in need of new paint. Seen her from time among bottles of continually passed-on wine and bags of snacks from Trader Joe’s and vegetable dips from Whole Foods, or standing in line in cafeterias. What I knew as well were the rhythms of her life as a Foreign Service Officer, that we had likely shared the same locations (airports, baggage carousels, shuttle buses) and dislocations (first nights in strange lands, language struggles, loneliness).

That is what I think I recognized. What I am certain I recognized was the smile, the aura of the under-30 crowd, the disarming ordinariness (as opposed to banality) and eagerness of our newest public servants. That aura seems to me the norm now at Foggy Bottom, and in much of the country, and it’s probably a sign of my age as much as an indication of the lure of Washington itself.

The truth is I didn’t know her…

GO TO THE LINK to read the rest.

DATELINE: Zabul, Afghanistan

Taliban militants killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat named Anne Smedinghoff, 25 year old foreign service officer with the US State Department. Also dead are three US military, two US civilians and an Afghan doctor. The people died after being purposely targeted by an explosion while travelling to donate books to a school in the south.

The young diplomat from Illinois is the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year’s attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Officials said the suicide car bomber purposely came at the people just as a coalition of souls on this educational mission rolled by on the road… farther ahead in the caravan of vehicles was the governor of Zabul coming to the same school event.

Terrorism of this kind is not just the irreligious murder for the sake of murder. It is meant to frighten others into obsequiousness, groveling and apology. It is meant to make others walk on eggshells. That groveling may take place amongst the vulnerable poor and better off may be true for a time.

But historically, terrorizing idealists who murder to murder, overlook several negative outcomes that are assured; two are these: trying to gain and lay claim to and demand obedience in far more territory than they can actually govern in manpower. And, those intent on the low-tech high body count of terror, consistently overlook that murdering persons who are loved by others, actually raises the avenging sword against terrorists a thousand times harder and utterly relentlessly by those with often superior training and superior weaponry.

It can be said that killing creates a grotesque merrygoround on which riders are murdered, murdering each other, and replaced, murdered and replaced, murdered and replaced, ad infinitum. WHile the music bangs on. While the brass ring is forgotten.

Pax.

Would Fidel Castro have some pull with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un? The former Cuba dictator has a message for North Korea’s young ‘revolutionary’ leader. In this special edition of Reflections of Fidel, a column that Castro stopped writing in June 2012, the Cuban icon reminds his younger charge that he knew his grandfather Kim Il-sung, and that jeopardizing people at the heart of the world’s most densely populated region is as ‘absurd’ as it is unthinkable.

From the pages of the Juventud Rebelde, Fidel Castro starts off rather cosmically:

A few days ago, I referred to the great challenges currently confronting humanity. Intelligent life on our planet emerged approximately 200,000 years ago. More recent finding might demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse the existence of intelligent life with the existence of life, which, in its elemental form, emerged in our solar system millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists, the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds that followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This would be too long an introduction if it wasn’t to explain the gravity of an event as incredible and absurd as the situation on the Korean Peninsula, which is part of a geographic area that contains close to five billion of the seven billion people currently inhabiting the planet.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH – OR READ MORE ON THE NORTH KOREA CRISIS AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Today, Saturday, the USS Arlington (LPD 24) was commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., and officially joined the Navy fleet.

What is so special about this amphibious transport dock ship?

At least a couple of things.

The ship is named for the county of Arlington, Va. and honors the first responders and the 184 victims who died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon Sept. 11, 2001.

It is one of three ships built to commemorate the three 9/11 attack sites’ victims. The other two ships are the USS New York (LPD 21) — to honor the victims of the World Trade Center attack — and the USS Somerset (LPD 25), named after the Pennsylvania county where the passengers of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 perished after they heroically forced the hijacked plane down.

The USS Arlington features a tribute room where “200 pounds of steel salvaged from the Pentagon’s wreckage have been forged into a pentagon to be put on a permanent display” and also displays 184 gold stars throughout the ship “to remind crewmen of the victims and heroes of the 9/11,” according to the Washington Examiner.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos said in his congratulatory letter to the ship, “LPD 24 bears a name of great significance to our Navy and Marine Corps team. LPD 24 will forever represent the courage, devotion and teamwork that characterized our military and first responders on that modern day of infamy.”

The following images are provided by the U.S. Navy:

For those who like to skip the verbiage and get to the bottom-line fast:

An “Honor Flight” with 34 World War II veterans aboard will fly to our nation’s capital from Austin, Texas, on April 26 so that these members of the Greatest Generation can visit the World War II Memorial built in their honor. On the return flight home, a “mail call” will be held to distribute notes and letters mailed by friends and loved ones to the veterans. If you would like your note of appreciation to be on this flight, please skip to the end for details.

And now “for the rest of the story…”

One sad statistic that keeps making the news recently is how many World War II veterans leave us each year — each day.

In previous writings on this subject estimates were that these men and women were dying at a rate of 1,000 every day.

Subsequently, the figure quoted was 800 each day. The most recent statistics provided by the Veterans Administration (VA) tell us that an estimated 642 World War II veterans pass away each and every day.

While the declining numbers appear assuaging, one must keep in mind that every year, every day, there are fewer of these veterans still with us. The latest VA estimate puts that number at 1.4 million — out of more than 16 million men and women who served in our armed forces during World War II.

Why are these statistics significant?

First, because we must never stop honoring the service and sacrifice rendered by these members of the Greatest Generation who are still with us — even when there is only one of these heroes still with us.

Second, because there is so very little time left to show these men and women — most of them now in their 90s — our love and appreciation.

The World War II Memorial our nation dedicated in 2004 in Washington D.C. in honor of the 16 million who served and the more than 400,000 who died, is a token of such appreciation.

Would it not be fantastic if the veterans in whose honor the magnificent monument was built could visit it?

It so happens that, in 2005, Earle Morse, a retired Air Force officer, private pilot and a physician assistant, wanted to give some of these World War II veterans, many of them in their 80s then, the opportunity to visit their memorial.

What started out in the spring of 2005 as an “airlift” of six small airplanes, organized by Morse and flown by volunteer pilots and aircraft owners, carrying 12 delighted veterans from Springfield, Ohio, to Manassas VA, just outside of Washington, D.C. — the first “Honor Flights” — has now grown into a nation-wide “Honor Flight Network.”

Its mission: To do whatever it takes to fulfill the dreams of our World War II veterans to visit their memorial absolutely free.

Its “philosophy”: “Since America felt it was important to build a memorial to the service and the ultimate sacrifice of her veterans, the Honor Flight Network believes it’s equally important that they actually get to visit and experience THEIR memorial.”

Honor Flight Network is fulfilling those commitments in every respect. As of the end of 2012, Honor Flight Network had transported more than 98,500 World War II veterans to Washington, D.C. to see their memorial, operating out of 121 hubs in 41 states. Very aware of the aforementioned “statistics,” Honor Flight’s current focus remains on World War II veterans and those veterans from any war who have a terminal illness. However, this wonderful organization intends to also pay tribute to America’s other heroes who served during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, followed by veterans of more current wars.

One of the newest of Honor Flight Network’s “hubs” is Honor Flight Austin (Texas). It made its maiden flight, with a party of 25 local area veterans and with tickets provided by Southwest Airlines, in June of last year and has been going full blast since then.

Austinite John Tschirhart, a 93-year-old, decorated, World War II B-17 bombardier with 35 bombing missions over Nazi occupied Europe under his belt, hopeless romantic, aspiring movie producer and good friend will be on the next Honor Flight out of Austin on April 26, the “Vic Mathias Honor Flight.”*

Along with one female veteran and 32 other male veterans, Tschirhart will travel absolutely free to our nation’s capital, where Honor Flight will treat the veterans like celebrities and like the heroes they are.

One of the features of this trip — and a delightful surprise to the veterans — will be the holding of a traditional “mail call.”

Letters and cards written by family and friends to the veterans on the occasion of their trip will be handed out to them during mail call on the return flight.

Those who have read about this amazing veteran, John Tschirhart, may want to write him a short note or perhaps write a note to all the veterans on Honor Flight “Vic Mathias.”

I cannot think of a more fitting ending to an already fabulous trip than a “ton” of notes and letters from Americans who may have never met these veterans in person but who certainly want to be on the flight in spirit to thank these members of the Greatest Generation for what they did for our country more than 60 years ago.

The Honor Flight Organization says:

The length is not important—it’s the content that counts. We are asking for normal sized cards and letters only.

We must receive your letters by April 21, 2013

Please address your letters as follows:

HFA Veteran John Tschirhart — or to: All Veterans on Honor Flight “Vic Mathias.”
815 – A Brazos Street
UPS Box 498
Austin, TX 78701-2514

Finally, learn more about the Honor Flight Network and Honor Flight Austin and support them in their quest to make the dream of our World War II veterans come true.

* Mr. Vic Mathias, a prominent leader in Austin, was instrumental in helping Honor Flight Austin secure enough funding to make the Inaugural flight in June 2012, in which he participated. Mr. Mathias passed away on January 14, 2013.

Lead image: Austin, Texas area World War II Veterans hosted by Honor Flight Austin at the World War II Memorial. Courtesy Honor Flight Austin

What are the preconditions for an end to the North Korea crisis? While most Western observers would say a regime change in Pyongyang is the key, Beijing warns just the opposite. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Huanqiu, only a ‘guarantee of DPRK national and regime security’ coupled with a ‘normalization of North Korea’s economy’ will bring an end to the crisis. Meanwhile, according to the state-approved editorial, rather than asserting itself on the issue, China should ‘go with the flow.’

The Huanqiu editorial says in part:

After this latest action by North Korea, the U.S. and South Korea will find it difficult to come up with new countermeasures. The North Korea nuclear issue is almost completely out of control, and countries in the region are watching as Pyongyang, at least for the moment, has gained the advantage in its confrontation with the U.S.-South Korea alliance, and is creating instability in Northeast Asia.

Perhaps the outside world needs to take another look at North Korea in order to understand that there are a number of issues that will make the country harder to deal with in the future.

First, in the context of the Cold War paradigm that exists on the Korean Peninsula, the chances of persuading the North to give up its nuclear program are slim to none. Outside of course, the international community can insist that it will never acknowledge North Korea’s nuclear status. But it would be more realistic to seek a freeze in its nuclear status in order to prevent it from conducting new nuclear tests.

Second, preconditions for a soft-landing of this entire situation are a normalization of North Korea’s economy, as well as a guarantee of DPRK national and regime security. Until that happens, Pyongyang will continue to make trouble.

Third, the situation will not change if the South acquires nuclear weapons. Even then, South Korea will continue to be held “hostage” by the North.

Not since the crisis of October 1962 – 50 years ago, has the world seen such a risk of nuclear war.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR CHINESE – OR READ MORE ON THE NORTH KOREA CRISIS AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

UPDATE:

The April issue of “Airman,” the official magazine of the United States Air Force has a very interesting article that tells the story of military children who move frequently — including to overseas assignments — and the special challenges they face.

For example, read about Brent who lived in 10 different states, as well as three years in Germany:

I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska; then moved to Germany for three years. After Germany, we PCS’d to D.C. for a year, then spent a year in Alabama, two at Shaw AFB in South Carolina, two at Randolph AFB in San Antonio, two at Beale AFB near Sacramento, Calif., two at Hickam AFB on Oahu, Hawaii, three at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, Nev., and one at Fort Meade, Md.

And about Faith, a 12-year-old sixth grader, and daughter of a career Air Force officer:

My family and I move about every two years and I have lived in six different places. I was born in Germany, then I moved to Mississippi, then Tampa and Fort Walton Beach, Fla., South Carolina and now Alaska. We have been on vacation to Alaska, Germany, Florida and Hawaii. I did a lot of cool things like swim with the dolphins, feed sharks, swim with stingrays and go to a water park. My dad and I have ‘dada days,’ when my dad and I do cool things together like go skiing, ride ATVs, go to the zoo – anything really. My best dada day ever was when we were in Orlando and we went behind the scenes to an aquarium called ‘Discovery Cove.’ I swam with the dolphins! I want to be a marine biologist when I grow up, so it was amazing for me.

Read more here

Original Post:

One of the major concerns during my years in the military was what effect the constant moving, the frequent changing of schools, leaving of old friends behind and the difficult task of making new ones every one or two years would have on our young son.

Fortunately, he was able to cope well with what for some might have been major traumas.

But add to the frequent relocations, the painful separations during holidays and children’s birthdays, the prolonged absence of one of the parents and, worse, the deployment — sometimes multiple deployments — of the father or mother to a combat zone and one wonders how these “military children” have been able to handle such major challenges during the twelve years of war our country has experienced.

There are 1.8 million children in the “military system.”

These are some of the challenges they face:

As students, they move and change schools about three times more frequently than their civilian classmates. They live with the challenges presented by not only frequent moves, but parental deployments, and a host of life transitions that include reintegration and, for too many, the return of a profoundly changed parent. More than 900,000 of these children have had a parent deploy multiple times and more than 44,700 children are living with a parent’s wound, injury, illness, or death. For most military-connected children, they have known the meaning of war and felt the impacts of it on their family throughout their young lives.

No wonder Susan Conolly, the author of above comments, says, “In their own way, they too, serve our country.”

It is because facts as the above that I am always pleasantly surprised and proud to hear comments such as:

“It is remarkable to see these young people routinely rise to the challenges of military life and excel under what are very difficult circumstances.” (1)

“Through their unyielding support, military children increase not only their military parents’ strength, but also their resilience.” (2)

“Military children, youth and teens are an integral part of their military parent because they stand by them, they’re proud of them, they recognize their sacrifices and they take on additional responsibilities to meet the needs of their families” (3)

April is the Month of the Military Child and many agencies and organizations are focusing on and highlighting both the challenges and the accomplishments of these children.

As part of the celebration, a partnership made up of the Education Department, the Military Child Education Coalition and the Student 2 Student Initiative has organized an exhibit of nearly 50 paintings, drawings and writings by military children.

Terri Moon Cronk, American Forces Press Service, quotes Cindy Simerly, marketing chief for the Military Child Education Coalition and a military spouse as saying: “The exhibit reflects the works of military children — nearly 50 in all — from elementary to high school. On the back of each work of art, the children wrote what motivated them to produce their particular work.”

The exhibit will travel from the Education Department to the home of Vice President Joe Biden as part of Joining Forces, and from there, the exhibit is expected to be on display April 9 at the Department of Defense Education Activity’s headquarters at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Va.

For those who are unable to visit the exhibit, a digitalized version of the military children’s work, titled, “Art from the Heart,” is on the Military Child Education Coalition’s website.

Again Susan Conolly:

The month of April is a perfect time to pause and acknowledge [military children’s] sacrifices, resilience, and strength of character. Whether it is by public proclamations, special activities and events, or simply a few kind words spoken to a military-connected child, we encourage everyone to seek out opportunities to express appreciation for these remarkable children.

1. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the Army’s vice chief of staff, acknowledging military children’s challenges

3. Barbara Thompson, director of DOD’s office of family policy/children and youth.

Lead Image:

Lauren Sink, a high school junior, drew this picture of her Army father returning home. DOD photo by Terri Moon Cronk

Daryl Cagle

LEGAL NOTICE ON CARTOON: This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Reproduction elsewhere without licensing is strictly prohibited. See great cartoons by all the top political cartoonists at http://cagle.com. To license this cartoon for your own site, visit http://politicalcartoons.com

Stewart “Buz” Eisenberg is an attorney in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and together with co-counsel, represents two men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, both of whom have been “cleared for transfer” by unanimous consent of President Obama’s inter-agency task force, but nonetheless remain held in indefinite detention. I first interviewed Buz in 2008. On March 31, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing him again, by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Mr. Eisenberg.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present GTMO-detained client or clients by name, nationality, and age, and anything else of interest about them, or about what you know about events at Guantanamo, particularly the hunger strike?

Buz Eisenberg: Our clients are Mohammad Abdullah Taha Mattan, ISN 684, whom I represent with co-counsel Jerry Cohen, Gordon Woodward and Lauren Carasik, a 33 year old West Bank Palestinian, and Motai Saib, ISN 288, a 37 year old Algerian/Syrian dual national, whom I represent with Jerry Cohen. Both were picked up in Pakistan, and both are cleared for transfer (I note that many people, including habeas attorneys, use the term “cleared for release,” though this is technically not true, even though most men transferred are usually promptly released by their home countries or the other places they are sent.)

The government’s smoking gun on Mattan is that he may have stayed in the same guesthouse someone else had three weeks earlier.

As to the hunger strike, that seemed to be precipitated by events on February 6, 2013, when increased abuse of the prisoners’ Korans and cell shakedowns increased, and apparently, the strike got going on February 7th, and the shooting incident took place a short time thereafter, and events have just cascaded since. The removal of iso-mats (which detainees sleep on), family pictures, tooth brushes and tooth paste, and now, amazingly, drinkable water (“Camp Justice” and evidently the detention center has tap water that looks dreadful and which we have been told is not potable… but, as prisoners are being cracked down on for the hunger strike, our understanding is that the prisoners are being told to drink it now). We have had other very troubling reports, including one from David Remes’ client Uthman who reported to David on March 7th of this year (2013) that he observed a shooting by a guard in the GTMO prison recreation yard, where another detainee was struck in the neck with a rubber bullet – and which became one of the precipitating causes of the hunger strike now going on at Guantanamo. After witnessing the shooting, Uthman engaged in hunger strike himself, and after a few days was dragged by his neck to the infirmary, which in turn caused him physical problems. His weight has dropped from around 167 to 134 lbs, and his blood sugar counts have vacillated between 28 and 205 within a 48 hour period, according to David’s notes.

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of their habeas litigation, be it “habeas petition pending,”petition denied and appeal pending” or whatever else is applicable, and to the extent applicable, if you can identify who the judge or judges involved are and if there is any published decision or decisions of note.

Buz Eisenberg: Their habeas petitions are both stayed. Even if the courts would generally entertain habeas trials of men who have been “cleared for transfer”, there is also little incentive for cleared prisoners to proceed to trial. If they win, they remain “cleared” yet firmly entrenched in GTMO from which Congress has forbidden their transfer or release. And in the event they receive an adverse court decision from the habeas court, that would only undermine their “clearance” status and make it even harder to find a country willing to receive them, if ever the NDAA restrictions get lifted.

The Talking Dog: Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Buz Eisenberg: Gordon and Jerry were last in GTMO in January. Visiting hardly is worth doing. Even the last time I saw him our always pleasant client Mattan had descended into what I can best describe as a “hopeless” state. During his last visit, and for the first time, Jerry observed Motai not even wanting to come out for a visit. These men don’t want to be a burden on us, they know we are powerless to change the terrible situation in which they find themselves. I think Motai is resigned to staying at Guantanamo until he dies. We have all observed something profound about the human condition– when stripped of any hope that tomorrow will be better than a horrific today, part of living just sort of runs by you– something just bleeds out. This has been the pattern. And life without hope is no life. So much time has passed, hopes dashed so many times before, it’s all just too painful.

We’ve been doing this for nine years, and when we’ve talked to the men, we’ve always been able to tell them of some angle we wanted to try; of some legal strategy; of some creative plan. They always saw evidence that gave rise to hope, some other detainees were getting transferred. Now, for the last three years, everything hopeful has ground to a halt. We have run out of avenues to pursue, of hope to offer. All we can do is sit across from men chained to the floor, and tell them, “I don’t know”… I have nothing to say to inspire promise.

Gordon and Jerry observed that these men expect little at this point – without a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel the spark is draining from our clients. I’ll be going down with Gordon myself as soon as it can be arranged, probably the first of June or so. The availability of flights has been, of course, made more difficult by the government, interfering with the lawyer-client relationship. At this point, all we can bring down to our clients is a bit of companionship for a few hours over a day or two– a short diversion.

Mattan is extremely articulate and bright, but he is fading. Everything has been an empty promise. The men’s spirits are waning– they are shells of the men that they were.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes?

Buz Eisenberg: We don’t know if either is on hunger strike; we’re trying to contact them, but with GTMO, there are always difficult logistical issues. Not knowing is driving us crazy. From other attorneys’ clients’ reports, we believe the vast or overwhelming majority of Camp 6- the “compliant camp” — is now on hunger strike. The men used to be able to congregate. Of course, now there is a new military commander, and many things are different.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me, in light of the subject of the recent letter you signed on to directed to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, if you have had contact with your client since that time (by phone, mail, etc.), whether you believe the government’s recent (increasingly repressive) actions are a pretext by the government, for example, to cut off adverse publicity from GTMO, or perhaps to intercept communications between prisoner and counsel? Why do you think the government relented toward getting the flights reinstated?

Buz Eisenberg: [Rear Adm. John] Smith is the new guy in charge. At several levels in the chain of command, decisions have been made for draconian, unfair, undignified and frankly illegal conditions of confinement to return from the earlier bygone days, just as things were ten years ago. It is unclear why they would do so. Other than a complete stall in transfers out, there was peaceful collaboration between jailer and jailed at GTMO, but there has been a slow erosion in the humanity of the jailers. For us, it’s been harder to arrange client visits, and when we do, our time to meet is more constrained… we have observed much irritating back pedaling.

But now the new regime there seems hell-bent on exerting its power regardless of the self-destructive consequences. It will make the process of jailing tumultuous over needless, sadistic policies, unilaterally imposed on detainees and lawyers– it is hard to get there, and hard to do our job once there. It also makes the whole thing more volatile, and the inevitable result will be hunger strikes, such as the massive one presently occurring.

The Talking Dog: Can we lay this at the feet of the White House?

Buz Eisenberg: Not necessarily. The military, as do all large government bureaucracies, has a life of its own. As we were reminded with all the tumult around Benghazi, about just how broad the Secretary of State’s purview is. That’s why we wrote directly to the Secretary of Defense– we’re not sure even he knows exactly what’s going on. We’re hoping that some one will step up and get some action, realizing that a a complete breakdown at GTMO is not what anyone needs. At this stage of the game, there is no need for extreme controversy over conditions of confinement.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own clients and representation?

Buz Eisenberg: What media coverage? There has been some tiny space in the NY Times, BBC, CNN and Carol Rosenberg… and otherwise NOTHING.

On my best days, I like to think if there were no election, Syria were not exploding, there were no sequester or government shut down, maybe we’d be front and center. But on my worst days, I note it is much easier for most people to think of GTMO as “bunch of terrorists– let them die there.” It is much more comfortable just to let people wallow. I spoke to Lauren Carasik’s class at Western New England Law last week– a public interest minded, socially conscious group, and they had no idea even how many people were still at GTMO. Jaws dropped when they heard how few were charged with anything… I was incredulous as to how few knew anything. But the fact is, the media won’t sell papers in this economy telling people about this. For us, we have a dreadfully silent plague ongoing as our clients continue to suffer.

The Talking Dog: We have reached the point where more men have died at Guantanamo (and invariably under suspicious circumstances) than have been “convicted” under the controversial “military commissions,” and a number of those “convicted” have actually been released, while the majority held (86 out of 166) are actually “cleared for release.” President Obama has been handily reelected, notwithstanding the utter failure of his “close Guantanamo within one year” promise and evident decision to continue the logical arc of policies he inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. Further, Justice Stevens has retired, replaced with Obama’s own former solicitor general, who might or might not continue recusing herself from any Guantanamo related litigation. And so, in light of all that, do you have any predictions for Guantanamo, “preventive detention” and related issues for, say, the remainder of Barack Obama’s Presidency?

Buz Eisenberg: We need people like “the talking dog” and the Washington Post and the Podunk Register to let people know just how expensive and attention grabbing (in a bad way) the detention center really is. Indeed, just in terms of the number of military careers, so much time and effort and bad will internationally in maintaining this thing.

Of course, our hopes have been dashed so many times before, that it’s hard to keep the rose-colored glasses on…. but ever the pollyanna, I like to think that if the economy ever recovers and the school shootings stop, and people even pay less attention to March madness, maybe there will be interest in having Guantanamo and Bagram coming to an end. Why can’t we have trials? We’re great at having trials! Gorman and Bronte and Eisenberg will try to use our license for the purpose for which we took an oath– but we need someone to speak the Lindsey Grahams of the world into recognizing the folly of their ways, and what a folly the whole thing has become.

The Talking Dog: At over eleven and a half years since 9-11, with OBL dead, GTMO open over 11 years, the “high value detainees” commission trials dragging on, the war in Afghanistan (perhaps) over at the end of next year, do you see any way of getting the American public engaged in these issues, or any possible “public relations” angle that might help alleviate the seeming decision to simply close GTMO by having all of its occupants die there?

Buz Eisenberg: No, I think the long term hope rests in big time principals going front and center to take charge. Maybe a new Supreme Court, for example– the D.C. Circuit won’t change anything– maybe Justice Kennedy stepping up and deciding to push Boumediene to actually provide the real habeas relief that his opinion said it would. Instead, we get all this “deference”– the court “defers” to congress or to the executive or to the military– and ducks all responsibility. In the 60′s, you had a different result on things like voting rights or Miranda or Roe v. Wade and others, when judicial review was real, and political.

The Talking Dog: Can you tell me how your Guantanamo representation has effected you personally, be it professionally, emotionally, spiritually, or any other way you’d like to answer?

Buz Eisenberg: I just came back from a vacation in the South of France. We were in a tiny little village. There is a monument there to the five fallen sons of Provence who fell serving in the French Resistance against the Nazis. The stories you hear about that time are all about the futility– such a small group of people battling such a huge monster. But– you still fight. Maybe it feels futile– but, you can’t not fight. We’re not as heroic as those guys. My colleagues are nonetheless selfless, dedicated and unrelenting, but through their virtuous deeds, they can articulate just how much human harm is being committed in the name of prosecuting the war on terror. It has evolved to the point of drone attacks on whomever, wherever, that it is a political endeavor that utterly forgets humanity. We are now 300 million out of 7 billion, behaving as all the rest are entirely incidental to us.

I can’t stop my representation– though I’m limited by resources– I’m self-funded out of my retirement (Jerry and I both are)– but as long as there is a guy there, I’ll take another case. I don’t know how I will stop, even if there ends up being a bleak outcome. Some things you just do out of the oath you took.

The Talking Dog: I join all of my readers in thanking Mr. Eisenberg for that evocative interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the “war on terror” may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/”OARDEC” officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in “the war on terror”), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing “unlawful combatant” Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of “The Guantanamo Effect” documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

The Talking Dog is a proud graduate of Columbia University’s last all-male class (an illustrious group which featured noted celebrities Miguel Estrada and Peter Bocanovic). TD then completed law school at New York University in 1986, duly passed the bars of New York and New Jersey and since then has specialized in name changes for transsexuals, defending the downtrodden, and pursuing justice down stairways or alleyways or wherever else it seems to be hiding, often accompanied by his trusty paralegal (and Spanish translator) Sancho. TD lives in Brooklyn, NY, as do 2.4 million other people. He is a veteran blogger who has been at it for more than 10 years. This is cross posted from his blog The Talking Dog.

UPDATE:

On Thursday, Korea time, North Korea dramatically ratcheted up its bellicose bluster by warning that it had cleared its military to launch nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.

According to Agence France Presse:

“The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out “today or tomorrow”.

[::]

In a statement published by the state KCNA news agency, the Korean People’s Army general staff warned Washington that US threats would be “smashed by… cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means”.

“The merciless operation of our revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified,” the statement said.

The White House was swift to react to Pyongyang’s latest “unhelpful and unconstructive threats”.

Read more here

Original Post:

This is a roundup of the latest news and developments on the North Korea situation:

From the Department of Defense (DOD):

The Department of Defense will deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Guam in the coming weeks as a precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat.

The THAAD system is a land-based missile defense system that includes a truck-mounted launcher, a complement of interceptor missiles, an AN/TPY-2 tracking radar, and an integrated fire control system. This deployment will strengthen defense capabilities for American citizens in the U.S. Territory of Guam and U.S. forces stationed there.

The United States continues to urge the North Korean leadership to cease provocative threats and choose the path of peace by complying with its international obligations. The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and stands ready to defend U.S. territory, our allies, and our national interests.

Readout by Pentagon Press Secretary George Little on Secretary Hagel’s Meeting with Republic of Korea Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun, Byung-Se:

“Secretary Hagel reaffirmed to Minister Yun that the United States’ enduring defense and extended deterrence commitments to South Korea will not change and that it is our duty to remain vigilant during this time of heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula.

“The two leaders discussed the importance of the recent U.N. Security Council Resolutions that are designed to limit North Korea’s progress on its nuclear and missile programs. While the Department of Defense remains focused on fulfilling security commitments, Secretary Hagel stated that diplomatic efforts are fundamental to encouraging North Korea to pursue the path of peace.

From Foreign Policy.com:

The Pentagon’s response to North Korea now includes two destroyers as well as a sea-based X-band radar, or SBX, used to support ballistic missile defenses, and is now part of the mission. In addition to the USS John McCain, which the Pentagon announced earlier this week, Pentagon press secretary George Little yesterday said a second ship, the USS Decatur, was in the Pacific monitoring North Korea and “poised to respond to any missile threats to our allies or our territory.”

But when asked about the SBX that is also in the region, Little said it wasn’t part of the response to North Korea and that decisions about any future deployments of the system have yet to be made. “I believe it’s incorrect to tie the SBX at this point to what’s happening on the Korean Peninsula right now,” he said. But other U.S. officials tell Situation Report that the SBX — what looks like a floating oil rig with a huge golf ball atop ¬- is in the Pacific for good reason. While it was deployed under U.S. Northern Command March 24 as part of regularly scheduled testing, it has now been clearly plugged into the larger ballistic missile defense effort in response to trouble on the Korean Peninsula, Situation Report is told.

From CBS News:

Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material.

The move to block South Koreans from going to their jobs at the Kaesong industrial complex, the last remaining symbol of detente between the rivals, comes amid increasing hostility from Pyongyang, which has threatened to stage nuclear and missile strikes on Seoul and Washington and has said that the armistice ending the 1950s Korean War is void.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman, Kim Hyung-suk, said Pyongyang was allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong. But Kim said about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park Wednesday had been refused entry.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks during meeting with South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se:

Today, we discussed all of the issues that you would obviously imagine we would and even more. We covered a great deal, but I will start with North Korea. We’ve heard an extraordinary amount of unacceptable rhetoric from the North Korean Government in the last days. So let me be perfectly clear here today: The United States will defend and protect ourselves and our treaty ally, the Republic of Korea. The Foreign Minister and I also think it’s important to stay absolutely focused on our shared goal of a peaceful Korean Peninsula, free of nuclear weapons. And we agree that improved relations between North and South would ultimately help to move us towards that goal. That is a stated goal of the new President of the Republic of Korea, and we look forward to working with her to achieve that goal.

In order to put the North Korean nuclear genie back in its bottle, should China protect Pyongyang under its nuclear umbrella while forcing the regime to give up its nuclear program? For China’s state-run Global Times, columnist Zhu Zhangping offers some suggestions that may give Beijing a way out of its unquestioned backing of North Korea, and asserts that whatever benefit Beijing derives from keeping the Kim Jong-un regime in office, the danger of allowing him The Bomb is too great.

For the Global Times, Zhu Zhangping writes in part:

A top priority for China is to ensure the survival of the Kim regime and keep North Korea from collapsing. But should China continue to back North Korea no matter what it does? And even if North Korea’s nuclear development is targeted only at the United States, its nuclear programs bring huge risks to China – not the United States.

The third nuclear test in February was conducted just over 100 kilometers from China’s northeast border. Although Chinese authorities appeased the public by swearing that the mountains on the border would effectively prevent radiation spreading to China, the possibility that nuclear leakage could pollute underground water supplies cannot be ruled out.

Groundwater safety is not only a concern when it comes to Northeast China’s drinking water supply, but for food safety and even food security.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is the latest lesson. Fukushima Prefecture, where agriculture was a key industry, is highly contaminated and food production has been severely impacted. China cannot afford to risk a repetition of the Fukushima disaster in the Northeast.

What China should do now is offer North Korea protection under its nuclear umbrella, just as the U.S. does for Japan and South Korea, while forcing it to accept China’s advice and abandon its nuclear program. China faces bigger risks than any other country in the event of a fourth nuclear test.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Is the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad so integral to the Arab world, that holding an Arab League Summit without it is absurd? According to columnist Dr. Issa al-Shummas of Syria’s state-run Thawra Al Wehda, the League has given Syria’s seat to ‘the illegitimate child of Qatar and the CIA,’ and blocking the Syrian regime’s involvement would be like depriving a body of its ‘beating heart.’

For Thawra Al Wehda, in a staunch defense of the Bashar al-Assad regime, Dr. Issa al-Shummas writes in part:

Since Syria is the beating heart of Arab nationalism, how can the body of the Arab world meet at any summit without it? How can it function without the vital pulse of its heart? How can the limbs of the Arab body move while suffering from weakness and humiliation, and after having lost the blood of the original Arab nationalism supplied to them by the arteries of this heart? It is this heart which bequeathed to them a strong immune system, which was earned by countering the slippery slope toward the loss of nationalist identity and belonging.

As they sat on their plush seats, they allowed the illegitimate child of Qatar and the CIA to sit amongst them. [Reference to Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz al-Khatib]. They called him the representative of the Syrian people, who have not recognized him, so that they could make him a puppet they can tell anything they like to. And this, instead of allowing the legitimate father of the Syrian people, who built this seat according to Arab nationalist specifications and contributed to establishing the “Arab House” to do what is best for the children of the house – and not sow seeds of temptation and evil among them. That is what is being done by the group of Bedouins who, due to the power of oil and the dollar to which the weaker, more spineless members of the organization have submitted, have been made vulnerable to the loss of their Arab identity and role, and who have taken control of the Arab League.

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Do the people of Okinawa, who host 75 percent of America’s military presence in Japan, have a right to be angry that the central government wants to celebrate the day that all of Japan – except for Okinawa – had its sovereignty restored? With North Korea’s nuclear misbehavior and a sovereignty dispute with China as a backdrop, this angry editorial from Okinawa’s Ryukyu Shimpo Shimbun insists that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pay respect to Okinawans by canceling any such celebration.

The Ryukyu Shimpo Shimbun editorial says in part:

Under the Treaty of San Francisco, in exchange for Japanese independence, Okinawa was isolated from Japan and remained under U.S. military rule. As the head of every Okinawan municipality knows, April 28, 1952, the day the Treaty came into effect, is known as “Humiliation Day” in Okinawa. Not a single one of them will vote in favor of holding a ceremony to celebrate the “Restoration of Sovereignty” – and rightly not.

If Japan is a true democracy, and if it’s leaders wish to show they are willing to listen to the voice of Okinawans, their only choice is to forego holding this ceremony. The ceremony is also intended to commemorate the “60 year anniversary of Japan’s return to the international community.” But while the inequalities of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement are ignored, and servile diplomatic relations toward the United States continue, can Japan really puff itself up with pride at a “Restoration of Sovereignty?”

In the administration’s ceremony invitation letter to members of the National Diet, the fact that Okinawa, Amami and Ogasawara fell under American administration, and the reality of Japan’s distorted status as a sovereign state, aren’t touched upon at all. In the letter, the event is described as a celebration of the “complete restoration of the sovereignty in our country.” This shows a complete detachment from the realities of the situation.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR JAPANESE AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Patricia Bronte is a civil rights attorney in Chicago, and represents two Guantanamo detainees (Musa’ab al Madhwani and Saad al Qahtani). She is also one of the signatories to a recent letter by dozens of habeas lawyers to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, asking for his intervention concerning the recent events at Guantanamo, including a growing hunger strike among detainees. On March 30, 2013, I interviewed Ms. Bronte by e-mail exchange.

The Talking Dog: Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001, and to the extent you can answer, please tell me where your GTMO-detained client or clients were?

Patricia Bronte: I was at home in Chicago, having just returned from 8 months promoting the rule of law in Azerbaijan. Immediately after the attacks, my inbox was flooded with emails of sympathy and support from my Muslim friends in Azerbaijan.

The Talking Dog: Please identify your present and former GTMO-detained client or clients by name, nationality, and current whereabouts. To the extent you can, please tell me something about each of your clients, such as their age, family status, personality, circumstances of their capture, or anything else you believe of relevance.

Patricia Bronte: I’m attaching profiles of the two clients (Musa’ab al Madhwani and Saad al Qahtani) who are still at GTMO. (One of them was written by my co-counsel Mari Newman.)

The Talking Dog: Please tell me the status of their habeas litigation, be it “habeas petition pending,”petition denied and appeal pending” or whatever else is applicable, and to the extent applicable, if you can identify who the judge or judges involved are and if there is any published decision or decisions of note.

Patricia Bronte: Musa’ab al Madhwani – petition denied by Judge Thomas F. Hogan (see attached decision), appeal denied, Supreme Court certiorari denied, Rule 60(b) motion pending due to evidence withheld by the government.

Saad al Qahtani – petition stayed due to approval for release by Review Task Force.

The Talking Dog:. Can you please tell me the last time you visited your client or clients at Guantanamo, and can you describe the circumstances of your visit. If you could, can you contrast that visit with what you found at earlier visits, including the condition of your client(s), the restrictions on you as counsel and on your clients during your visit, the condition in which you found your clients, and anything else you believe relevant.

Patricia Bronte: I last visited my clients on Dec. 17, 2012. I perceived a deep despair and frustration in them, much deeper than at any time in the 7 years I have represented them. Understandably, they are frustrated that over half the prisoners have been cleared for release for more than 3 years, by unanimous agreement of nation’s top defense, intelligence, security, and law enforcement experts, yet they remain imprisoned. They do not understand why Obama claims to want to close the prison, but he seems unwilling to do anything that would make that happen – and recently closed the office tasked with closing the prison and repatriating or resettling its prisoners. The indefiniteness of their detention has taken a heavy psychological toll on the men. Even a death sentence, or a sentence of life imprisonment, would be better than the current limbo where they are trapped. The restrictions on me as counsel during this latest visit were stricter than ever before, but that issues pales in significance compared to what my clients are enduring.

The Talking Dog:. Can you tell me if your client or clients is or are participating in the present hunger strike, and whether they have participated in prior hunger strikes? Is there anything of relevance viz a viz detainees’ grievances, or the military’s treatment of the prisoners, or anything else of relevance that you can tell me about that situation, including, if possible, the current condition of your clients, as far as you know?

Patricia Bronte: For reasons unknown to me, I have not been able to speak by telephone with Mr. al Qahtani recently. I do know that my other client, Mr. al Madhwani, is participating in the hunger strike and has lost about 30 pounds. I’m attaching a statement dictated by Mr. al Madhwani on Thursday, March 28.

The Talking Dog:. Can you tell me, in light of the subject of the recent letter you signed on to directed to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, if you have had contact with your client since that time (by phone, mail, etc.), whether you believe the government’s recent (increasingly repressive) actions are a pretext by the government, for example, to cut off adverse publicity from GTMO, or perhaps to intercept communications between prisoner and counsel? Why do you think the government relented toward getting the flights reinstated?

Patricia Bronte: I do think the conditions at Guantanamo – particularly the indefinite detention without charge, but also other conditions – and the hunger strike are an embarrassment to the government, and I think the government would prefer that these matters not be reported to the American people. I do not know why the government has taken these extreme actions, or why it relented on the IBC Air flights that carry habeas lawyers and others to the base. Unfortunately, I believe that tension and conflict is inevitable until the government addresses the root cause of the problem: men held for 11+ years without charge and without hope of ever leaving the prison alive.

The Talking Dog: Can you comment on media coverage, in particular, of events at Guantanamo in calendar year 2013, and previously, and in particular, with respect to your own clients and representation?

Patricia Bronte: Until the last week or so, there was very little media coverage of Guantánamo in 2013. That’s not surprising. The President understandably does not want to call attention to his failed promises about Guantánamo – not just his promise to close the prison, but also his orders to implement the unanimous decisions to release half the prisoners, and to conduct periodic reviews of each prisoner’s status. None of that has happened, and the government naturally is not interested in calling attention to that fact. Couple that with the government’s ability to restrict media access to the prison, and the restrictions that govern lawyers’ ability to communicate with their clients and to reveal those communications publicly, and you can see why it is very difficult for the media to cover Guantánamo. The prison at Guantánamo was originally intended to be a legal black hole, and in some ways it is regaining that status.

However, since my co-counsel and I filed an emergency motion on Tuesday because our client had been denied drinkable water for 3 days, the media has expressed renewed interest in the prisoners at Guantánamo. I’m attaching a copy of our motion.

The Talking Dog: We have reached the point where more men have died at Guantanamo (and invariably under suspicious circumstances) than have been “convicted” under the controversial “military commissions,” and a number of those “convicted” have actually been released, while the majority held are actually “cleared for release.” President Obama has been handily reelected, notwithstanding the utter failure of his “close Guantanamo within one year” promise and evident decision to continue the logical arc of policies he inherited from the Bush/Cheney Administration. Further, Justice Stevens has retired, replaced with Obama’s own former solicitor general, who might or might not continue recusing herself from any Guantanamo related litigation. And so, in light of all that, do you have any predictions for Guantanamo, “preventive detention” and related issues for, say, the remainder of Barack Obama’s Presidency?

Patricia Bronte: I am probably naïve, but I continue to hope that President Obama will fulfill his Guantánamo promises in his second term. I do not think he wants a series of broken promises to be his legacy. We interned Japanese Americans during World War II, and the Supreme Court actually signed off on that. We now recognize that was a grave injustice, one unworthy of this great nation. I hope President Obama will not want this stain to overshadow the legacy of his presidency.

The Talking Dog:. At over eleven and a half years since 9-11, with OBL dead, GTMO open over 11 years, the “high value detainees” commission trials dragging on, the war in Afghanistan (perhaps) over at the end of next year, do you see any way of getting the American public engaged in these issues, or any possible “public relations” angle that might help alleviate the seeming decision to simply close GTMO by having all of its occupants die there?

Patricia Bronte: When I talk to people, they are often surprised to hear the truth about the 86 prisoners whose repatriation or resettlement is unanimously determined to be in the national security interest. So I don’t think people are unwilling to become engaged; they just are not sufficiently informed of the facts. As for a PR angle, I would think that the American public would be offended that taxpayers continue to spend $70 million per year to incarcerate 86 men whom no one believes should be in Guantánamo.

The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that you believe I should have asked but didn’t, or that the public needs to know concerning these issues?

Patricia Bronte: The Administration often blames Congress for its failure to fulfill its promises regarding Guantánamo. And it’s true that Congress has not acted responsibly or rationally on Guantánamo issues. But that’s largely because the President and his fellow Democrats have remained silent while Republicans persuaded Americans that the prisoners at Guantánamo really are all vicious terrorists. And in fact, the law in place for the past year and a half has allowed the President to release the 86 men who were approved for release in January 2010, through the national security waiver provisions of the defense authorization act. Not once has the President invoked those waiver provisions. Both the President and the Congress are responsible for the tragedy of the men at Guantánamo.
The Talking Dog: I join all my readers in thanking Ms. Bronte for that informative interview.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the “war on terror” may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/”OARDEC” officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in “the war on terror”), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing “unlawful combatant” Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of “The Guantanamo Effect” documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

The Talking Dog is a proud graduate of Columbia University’s last all-male class (an illustrious group which featured noted celebrities Miguel Estrada and Peter Bocanovic). TD then completed law school at New York University in 1986, duly passed the bars of New York and New Jersey and since then has specialized in name changes for transsexuals, defending the downtrodden, and pursuing justice down stairways or alleyways or wherever else it seems to be hiding, often accompanied by his trusty paralegal (and Spanish translator) Sancho. TD lives in Brooklyn, NY, as do 2.4 million other people. He is a veteran blogger who has been at it for more than 10 years. This is cross posted from his blog The Talking Dog.