Criminal defense attorneys have long objected to “experts” produced at trials by the Justice Department who often seem to closely follow trial theories rather than scientific or forensic data. I have handled cases where experts used by the Justice Department gave almost laughable testimony filled with errors in national security cases but courts continue to admit their testimony. This week, one such expert, FBI Special Agent Steven Kimball, fell apart on the stand when confronted with clearly conclusions over basic and easily ascertainable facts.
Tsarnaev’s defence attorney Miriam Conrad for example noted that the FBI identified a picture sent on the twitter account of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a picture of Mecca. This led to this exchange:
Conrad: “You said the picture [that forms the background of the second account] was a picture of Mecca.”
Kimbell: “Yes, to the best of my knowledge.”
Conrad: “Did you bother to look at a picture of Mecca?”
Kimbell: “No.”
Conrad: “Would it surprise you to learn that it is a picture of Grozny?”
Unfortunately, he might not be surprised at all given the loose standards imposed on such expert testimony.
Kimball was also forced to admit that highly incriminating tweets isolated by the Justice Department were actually quotes from pop songs, including a tweet referring to “I shall die young.” Kimball said that he was unaware that these were quotes from songs. Kimball admitted that he did not even click on some links in tweets cited by the government as incriminating. One of the links would have taken the reader to a song with the line “I shall die young.”
Kimball was also confronted by the fact that the FBI had isolated lines that were actually jokes form Comedy Central and various comedians. One could of course forgive an FBI agent for having a limited knowledge of humor sites. However, Kimball also misidentified a quote as having been made by the al Qaida-affiliated cleric Anwar al-Awlaki when it was really a quote from the Qu’ran.
Among the other examples was the highly incriminating use of the term “mad cooked” in tweets that was raised by Kimball. Kimball admitted on cross examination that he was entirely ignorant of the fact that this slang means “high” after he tried to guess that it might mean “Crazy.”
In the end, it was the testimony that seemed cooked. It was a great cross examination by Conrad, but it is unfortunately not unique.
The exaggeration of such evidence reflects the real issue at trial — death. The defense has already admitted that Tsarnaev carried out the attack. The issue is only the penalty and whether a single juror can be convinced that Tsarnaev was under the influence of his older, more radical brother. The misrepresentation of this evidence was intended to portray Tsarnaev as a dedicated terrorist and extremist like his brother. Instead, it seriously undermined the credibility of the prosecution before the jury in what was an extremely strong case for the death penalty.
Source: Guardian
Das war nicht einer ad hominem.
Ken,
LOL, das war doch lustig!
Inga and Ken –
Name the philosopher
@Herr Schulte
You write, “I realize that reading is hard but WWW stands for the World Wide Web. Everything after that is blather.”
This is what came after “WWW”: “I have never seen your sites before, thus they are suspicious. If you would rather say suspect, I cannot agree. I would agree they were suspect if I found trouble with the information, not the site itself.”
Do you now consider that “blather”? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to characterize it as being reflective of sloppy or stunted thinking?
“I realize that reading is hard…”
Insofar as your finding reading difficult is concerned, that was already evident, as demonstrated by your mangled comprehension of the Buchanan book review, when you thought it said that Buchanan assigned Churchill unilateral responsibility for starting WW II.
It’s equally evident that you find thinking even harder than reading, but this difficulty, too, can be ameliorated with the proper effort. There are many good books on critical thinking, as well as classical essays in philosophy.that, read with comprehension, could enhance your cognition, My two favorites in the latter category are Alfred North Whitehead’s *Process and Reality* and Rudolf Steiner’s *Philosophy of Freedom*, but you may find Heidegger’s philosophical writings more congenial, I don’t know.
In the meantime, as time and desire permit, I’ll continue to point out any additional cognitive lapses that you may exhibit in your posts here.
Being cognitively impaired to one degree or another isn’t something to be ashamed of, mein Herr, as long as you’re willing to make the requisite effort to overcome the handicap by learning to think more deeply and objectively.
So lange, denn jetzt.
Ken Rogers – I got an A in my graduate Critical Thinking class and an A in my undergraduate reading comprehension class. I have taught Introduction to Philosophy at the college level and though it is not my major field, I have read many philosophers. Personally, I am an Aristotelian Stoic.
Regardless of how well worded, an ad hominem attack is still an ad hominem attack.
You made a mistake, own it. You need to read what I actually say, not what you think I say. I am usually pretty straight forward.
@Herr Schulte
“You made a mistake, own it. You need to read what I actually say, not what you think I say. I am usually pretty straight forward.”
That very much depends on what you mean by straightforward, but let it pass, let it pass. 🙂
Inasmuch as we’d been discussing WW I and WW II, I should think you’d find it understandable that I didn’t recognize that you’d actually intentionally written “WWW I”, particularly in view of your previous imprecision in expressing yourself.
Be that as it may, I gladly concede my error, and want to reciprocate your demand, namely that you “own” the rather more egregious and less understandable mistake on your part, when you grossly misunderstood the review of Buchanan’s book, such that you thought Buchanan had assigned unilateral responsibility for WW II to Churchill.
“Regardless of how well worded, an ad hominem attack is still an ad hominem attack.”
In order to respond to this, I’ll of course need to know what you think constitutes the “ad hominem attack” to which you’re referring.
How did you come to habitually express yourself so oh, shall we say, cryptically? 🙂
Ken Rogers – now you are just being obtuse. If you read the sentence out loud you will see I am correct. The I is not one, but I (me). Again, if you go back to my original comment, you will see that I hedged my summary of your summary. And I have told you my reasons for disagreeing with it.
As for your failure to understand what an ad hominem attack is, I suggest that you look up the term, see some examples and then go back and re-read your comments directed to me.
@Max-1
“Ken Rogers
“I have a simple bumper sticker that reads: WAR IS TERRORISM.
Yes, on a massive scale, and therefore the very worst kind.
He’s not to strong in the science department though.
Ken, I guess no one told you that Paul knows it all and he’s above reproach in all things.
Inga –
This is the first thing you have been right about in months.
If wishes were pennies…
Could it be they are embarrassed to post links to Breitbart?
@Paul C. Schulte
Ken Rogers –
“1. I think I remember referring to him as ‘very hinged.’ Someone else may have referred to him as the Real Deal.”
If I have time and feel like it, I’ll find the post I have in mind. In the meantime, just plug in “very hinged” for “real deal.”
“2. Select whichever or whatever meaning fits for you.”
Oh, puhlease. This kind of fatuous response is why it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to take you seriously.
“3. Think of it as prophetic. If it makes you feel better, think of me as the Oracle of Delphi.”
It doesn’t, for the same reason it wouldn’t make me feel better to think of Junior, Is Our Children Learning and Bring It On, as a humanitarian thinker.
“4. Actually, I think that governments can be immoral or amoral, but never moral. There are things I expect my government to do and not tell me about.”
This enhances *very* considerably your authoritarian bona fides. I’m really glad I asked the question.
“5. Your links are suspicious. I have not seen them before and I have no reason to trust their validity. I would expect you to do the same with mine. Anyone who is well-read on the event (sic) leading to WWII know (sic) that I am correct. However, I would have to cite books rather than links.”
Well, by all means, cite some books, then.
Actually, no one’s links are capable of being suspicious, although they could be suspect, if you get a 404 message, for instance. Surely you mean that the *information* to which links provide access is capable of being suspect. But most serious students of anything, even those who don’t consider themselves scholars, weigh and try to integrate the information they access online or anywhere else with and against what they already know and with other information available from other sources. It’s called doing research.
But in your case, if you aren’t already familiar with a source of information, it’s ipso facto suspect? Between what you don’t want the government to tell you and what you don’t want to learn from unfamiliar sources, no wonder the thinking you’ve expressed in our exchanges has been so stunted and circumscribed.
If you’re saying that you trust only books as sources of information, you are of course, cutting yourself off from the most comprehensive and in depth source of information and knowledge in human history, the Internet, but if you think that eschewing it affords you important protection from the terrible danger of cognitive dissonance, then by all means limit yourself as much as possible.
I notice, however, that you didn’t respond to the excerpt from an important history book I called to your attention, *The Unnecessary War*.
What’s wrong? Is Buchanan too “liberal” a writer of books for you to even expose yourself to it?
Ken Rogers – you clearly like playing word games, however I do not have the patience for them. If it makes you feel better think of me as Cassandra, not the Oracle of Delphi. If, and I say if, you summarized Buchanan’s book accurately I do not agree with the thesis. There are too many players to blame in both WWI and WWII to lay the blame on Churchill.
I used to teach Research Strategies and one of the units was on Internet sources and evaluating them. In my many years doing research on the WWW I have never seen your sites before, thus they are suspicious. If you would rather say suspect, I cannot agree. I would agree they were suspect if I found trouble with the information, not the site itself.
@Paul C. Schulte
It’s additionally revealing of the imprecision of your thinking that you consider attending to the difference in meanings between “suspicious” and “suspect” as “playing word games.”
This kind of sloppiness in the employment of language mirrors, of course, a prior sloppiness in the thinking of the one employing the language used to express that thinking.
If you had given it any but the most cursory, i.e., sloppy thought, you’d have asked yourself, “Of what could a website be suspicious?” A police detective can be suspicious of a particular suspect, for example, but how can something without agency, such as a website, be suspicious? You clearly are unburdened by an overweening desire to think clearly and accurately and to express yourself accordingly.
You write, “In my many years doing research on the (sic) WWW I (sic) [Do you mean WW I or WW II?] have never seen your sites before, thus they are suspicious.”
Insofar as your being suspicious of websites is concerned, do you seriously mean to say that websites are ipso facto suspect based on the fact that *you* haven’t seen them before? If so, that bespeaks a remarkable desire to minimize the dimensions of your cognitive bubble, doesn’t it? To paraphrase Goethe, our consciousness either expands or contracts, but never remains static. Your aversion to sources of knowledge that you haven’t pre-approved seems to be a potent prescription for inducing contraction.
It is more broadly indicative of your sloppy thinking that you can write, “If, and I say if, you summarized Buchanan’s book accurately I do not agree with the thesis. There are too many players to blame in both WWI and WWII to lay the blame on Churchill.”
In the first place, *I* didn’t summarize Buchanan’s book, as evidenced by my employment of quotation marks and a link to the book’s reviewer’s site, and in the second place, even a cursory (sloppy) reading of the reviewer’s summary should have made it clear that Buchanan did not assign unilateral responsibility for WWII to Churchill, which would have been egregiously stupid of Buchanan had he done so.
“In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of *British statesmen–Winston Churchill first among them*–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins.” (My emphasis)
And:
“Among the British and Churchillian errors were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France”
Is attending to the difference between “British statesman” and “British statesmen” another example of “playing word games”? If so, for the sake of your credibility, I urge you to reconsider the value of playing word games.
You also write, “If it makes you feel better think of me as Cassandra, not the Oracle of Delphi.”
If you really want me to characterize your consciousness, at the risk of offending your very high opinion of yourself (“knows it all and above reproach in all things”), but based on the quality and content of the thinking that’s reflected in your posts here, it’s much more appropriate that I think of yours not as being oracular in either of those two senses, but as being that of “the good German,” that is, an authoritarian follower who wants his immoral or amoral government to do things without telling him about them:
“Actually, I think that governments can be immoral or amoral, but never moral. There are things I expect my government to do and not tell me about.” (Paul C. Schulte, March 13, 2015 at 6:21 pm)
Ken Rogers – I realize that reading is hard but WWW stands for the World Wide Web. Everything after that is blather. 😉
@ Paul C. Schulte
I’ve noticed that both you and “Real Deal” (your characterization) P HaW are loathe to provide links to sources on which you’ve apparently drawn when you make assertions such as that Roosevelt would have been “hung” (sic) had the Allies lost. (I think you meant “hanged” here).
At the risk of offending your apparently authoritarian sensibilities, I’m singularly unimpressed with vatic assertions. Show me the evidence, I suggest, or at least links to it so that I and others may assess on our own, the truth value of your pronouncements, regardless of how highly you may esteem them, personally.
From your defense of the “perfectly legal” behavior of the multinationals supporting the Nazis, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t laugh out loud, as I did, on reading this paragraph from the Senate Report I cited above:
” ‘Due to their multinational dominance of motor vehicle production, GM and Ford became principal suppliers for the forces of fascism as well as for the forces of democracy. It may, of course, be argued that participating in both sides of an international conflict, like the common corporate practice of investing in both political parties before an election, is an appropriate corporate activity.”
Am I wrong? 🙂
Ken Rogers – several things.
1. Have no idea what your reference to a “Real Deal” is.
2. You are right. It should be hanged, but for FDR hung will work. 😉
3. Vatic means seeing into the future, not the past. The term would have been correct in 1941, not now.
4. I have a deep sense of distrust of Congressional Hearings and Reports.
5. Given the links you have supplied, you would not accept mine. So, I put it to you, prove me wrong. 🙂
@PCS
1. In a previous post here in the comments section, you’d referred to P HaW as the “real deal,” one of the several exceptions you’ve made in your aversion to the ad hominem oeuvre. 🙂
2. Your meaning escapes me here, unless you’re implicitly deprecating FDR, but just don’t want to come right out and say how and why. Or is it just something that every right-thinking person should know? 🙂
3. I was using “vatic” in its sense of “oracular,” i.e., self-authorizing; without appealing to evidence or authority outside the oracle.
4. That’s a pretty sweeping generalization, isn’t it? What about the Church Committee Reports? Surely you were glad to have the intelligence agencies’ spying on Americans exposed, weren’t you? Or *were* you?
5. This is more than a little fatuous isn’t it? Are my links bloated harpies sprung from hell, and yours angels wafting down on wings of gold from Heaven? Even if you see it that way, there’s only one way to find out, and I can hardly “prove you wrong,” unless you supply them.
Ken Rogers –
1. I think I remember referring to him as “very hinged.” Someone else may have referred to him as the Real Deal.
2. Select whichever or whatever meaning fits for you.
3. Think of it as prophetic. If it makes you feel better, think of me as the Oracle of Delphi.
4. Actually, I think that governments can be immoral or amoral, but never moral. There are things I expect my government to do and not tell me about.
5. Your links are suspicious. I have not seen them before and I have no reason to trust their validity. I would expect you to do the same with mine. Anyone who is well-read on the event leading to WWII know that I am correct. However, I would have to cite books rather than links.
Darren – I have had a comment eaten.
restored.
Darren – thanks. 🙂
“### Ken, For some reason wordpress does not like links to amazon.com for sales of books. You can remove the link to Amazon and re-paste as a new comment. That should work for you.”
Yes, it seems that when I’ve copied and pasted just the link to Amazon so people could see reviews of a book, a huge image of the book pops up, rather than just the link to the Amazon site. WordPress is the only program I’ve experienced that does that.
Anyway, I cut and pasted the text without the image of Buchanan’s book and re-posted the text here, but it looks like both posts (with and without the book image) have showed up.
In the future, I’ll know not to provide a link to the Amazon site, itself, but to some other source of additional information about a book.
Thanks for calling to my attention what the problem’s been.
@Paul C. Schulte
Paul, You may also want to dip into Patrick Buchanan’s book, *Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World*:
“Patrick J. Buchanan’s *Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War* gets part of its title from a quote by Winston Churchill. Buchanan has brought the term up in several interviews a statement made by Winston Churchill.
” ‘In his memoirs, Churchill, who led Britain to victory in World War II, wrote:
“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once, ‘The Unnecessary War.’ There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.”1
“Buchanan is quoting Churchill’s preface to *The Gathering Storm*, the first part of a 6-volume series about World War II.2 When bringing up this quote, Buchanan typically follows it up with reversing the term back on Churchill.
‘The war was unnecessary,” Churchill said, “because of the constant blunders before the war that got us into it. It was the easiest war to avoid in all of history.’ That’s what Churchill told Franklin Roosevelt and he was right. What he didn’t say was a number of those blunders had been committed by Winston Churchill himself.’ ” 3
http://www.scottmanning.com/archives/unnecessarywar-whatdidchurchillmean.php
“Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment?
“In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen–Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.
“Among the British and Churchillian errors were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War”
Ken Rogers – the usual date given for the start of WWII is Sept 1, 1939 the day Germany invades Poland. The 6 week blitzkrieg is followed by the sitzkrieg while everyone gets mobilized and the Germans regroup and retool. Don’t forget the Soviets get at least half of Poland. Hitler hated France and was going to invade them regardless. Same with the the Soviet Union.
@Paul C. Schulte
“Ken Rogers – remember that Eisenhower was an administrator. He never commanded troops in battle. Had it not been for that Military-Industrial Complex that he warned of, he would have been charged of war crimes by the Germans along with FDR (because would have still been alive).”
Yes, I do remember that a lot of people didn’t vote for Eisenhower for President because unlike every other US General in the Western Theater, he hadn’t personally strangled any Nazis. That’s also why he made such a lousy POTUS, because he was an administrator, rather than a leader who knew how to get things done, like Generals Franco, Pinochet, or Cheney.
And speaking of the US Military-Industrial Complex, are you familiar with this little piece of WW II history?
“The following is excerpted from a report printed by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974:
” ‘The activities of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler prior to and during World War II…are instructive. At that time, these three firms dominated motor vehicle production in both the United States and Germany. Due to its mass production capabilities, automobile manufacturing is one of the most crucial industries with respect to national defense. As a result, these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximized corporate global profits.
” ‘In short, they were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world. The substantial contribution of these firms to the American war effort in terms of tanks, aircraft components, and other military equipment is widely acknowledged. *Less well known are the simultaneous contributions of their foreign subsidiaries to the Axis Powers. In sum, they maximized profits by supplying both sides with the materiel needed to conduct the war.* (emphasis added)
” ‘During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Big Three automakers undertook an extensive program of multinational expansion…By the mid-1930’s, these three American companies owned automotive subsidiaries throughout Europe and the Far East; many of their largest facilities were located in the politically sensitive nations of Germany, Poland, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, and Japan…Due to their concentrated economic power over motor vehicle production in both Allied and Axis territories, the Big Three inevitably became major factors in the preparations and progress of the war. In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM’s plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps….
“Ford was also active in Nazi Germany’s prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose ‘real purpose,’ according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing ‘troop transport-type’ vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford’s chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class)….
” ‘The outbreak of war in September 1939 resulted inevitably in the full conversion by GM and Ford of their Axis plants to the production of military aircraft and trucks…. On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored ‘mule’ 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich’s medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as ‘the backbone of the German Army transportation system…’
” ‘*After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing… Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne…* (emphasis added)
” ‘Due to their multinational dominance of motor vehicle production, GM and Ford became principal suppliers for the forces of fascism as well as for the forces of democracy. It may, of course, be argued that participating in both sides of an international conflict, like the common corporate practice of investing in both political parties before an election, is an appropriate corporate activity.
” ‘Had the Nazis won, General Motors and Ford would have appeared impeccably Nazi; as Hitler lost, these companies were able to re-emerge impeccably American. In either case, the viability of these corporations and the interests of their respective stockholders would have been preserved.’ ”
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm
It seems that your beloved Eisenhower’s-Ass-Saving Military-Industrial-Complex kind of hedged its bets, didn’t it?
Ken Rogers – we sold scrap metal to Japan that came back to us as bombs during Pearl Harbor, etc.
I am aware of the activities of some multi-nationals prior to WWII. What they did was perfectly legal. FDR had a letter from Hitler assuring him he did not want anymore territory after Czechoslovakia. The Germans were crafty devils by designing vehicles to be multi-purpose to get past the Versailles Treaty or training pilots and tank crews in the Soviet Union.
Of course, let us not forget that FDR was guilty of acts of war against both the Germans and the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor. Using the same criteria used at Nuremberg, he would have been hung had the Allies lost.
Take it up with the Washington Post and the Army.
Your numbers are wrong.
@P HaW
“Take it up with the Washington Post and the Army. Your numbers are wrong.”
Well, inasmuch as neither Fred Hiatt’s neo-con rag, the Washington Post, has ever been wrong about anything, nor has the Army, nor have you, I guess you want me to take your authoritarian word for their statistical rectitude in this instance, as you refuse to provide links to the statistics in question.
Is there anything else ex cathedra from your armchair you’d like me to consider?
We have a woman in our group of Navy Moms, whose son committed suicide after a couple of deployments to Iraq, it was devastating to her and her family. To hear Pogo dismiss the high incidence of suicide in veterans and active duty with PTSD is very upsetting. If you desire endless wars put some skin of your own in the game. Let’s see if the warmongers would be so eager for war if their own kids were subject to the draft and deployment to a war zone.
@Inga
Fortunately, there is currently no active draft in the US, there being an all-volunteer military.
Unfortunately, all too many parents are willing to condone, if not encourage, their children to join the US military while it is engaged in hostilities in foreign countries, with predictably tragic results.
When Bernie Sanders asked the two mothers to make their recommendations to spare others the pain of their families’ losses, both addressed multiple deficiencies in the VA’s treatment of veterans, but neither said a word about the deficiencies of a government that sends American men and women into combat in foreign countries, in the first place. The Military-Industrial Complex against which President Eisenhower warned is the ever-present 800-pound slavering gorilla in the room, but too few speak its name, let alone call attention to the grave danger to world peace that it poses.
Before Eisenhower gave *his* warning, two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Marine Corps General Smedley Butler provided his own in a little book entitled *War is a Racket*. Would that more Americans read it and took it to heart:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been.
“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
“How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
“Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
“And what is this bill?
“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
“For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1
Ken Rogers – remember that Eisenhower was an administrator. He never commanded troops in battle. Had it not been for that Military-Industrial Complex that he warned of, he would have been charged of war crimes by the Germans along with FDR (because would have still been alive).
@P HaW
I had asked, “Do you have an exit strategy from the slaughterhouse of this War on Terror of which you’re so enamored, or would you just like to see it go on as long as possible?”
To which you replied, “It’s Obama’s war. Ask him.”
It’s also the war started by his brainy predecessor, but “Ask Obama” from someone who has pimped for the War on Terror like there’s no tomorrow? I’m underwhelmed by the intellectual and emotional integrity of your deflecting my question in such a puerile and cute way. I take it from your evasion of the question, then, that you have no idea how to ever end the US WoT.
And yet you also wrote, “And no one seriously would like to see war go on as long as possible, so that’s a straw man argument.”
In the first place, a question is not an argument, which confusion is just the latest example of your tenuous grasp of logic, and in the second place, anyone who plumps for war, but offers no clue as how to ever end it, is implicitly supporting an indefinitely long version of the bloodthirsty adventure he’s pimping for.
You also wrote, “I never said I supported the current mechanism of the US War on Terror. Assumes facts not in evidence.”
Firstly, I’m not a witness in your fantasy trial, and secondly, I assumed nothing about your assessment of the current administration’s “mechanism” (your inappropriate word, not mine) of the US War on Terror. I have been responding only to what you have explicitly stated. You’ve yourself assumed that I was making some assumption.
Regarding the statistics of the physical and mental toll on the young men and women who aren’t, like you, members of the armchair-warrior set, but who have been maimed, killed, or emotionally scarred by physically participating in your righteous war on the evildoing Muslims who are, in your judgment, unfit to live, if you want me to consider the stats you provided, you’ll need to provide a link to their sources. I want to see what you got right, anything you may have gotten wrong, and what you may have left out.
The veteran-suicide stats I provided in my post aren’t “mine,” by the way, but those of the Veterans Administration, and I provided a link to its study. Here are some more recent statistics from another source:
Summary of Veterans Statistics for PTSD, TBI, Depression, and Suicide.
There are over 2.3 million American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (compared to 2.6 million Vietnam veterans who fought in Vietnam; there are 8.2 million “Vietnam Era Veterans” (personnel who served anywhere during any time of the Vietnam War).
At least 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have PTSD and/or Depression. (Military counselors I have interviewed state that, in their opinion, the percentage of veterans with PTSD is much higher; the number climbs higher when combined with TBI.) Other accepted studies have found a PTSD prevalence of 14%; see a complete review of PTSD prevalence studies, which quotes studies with findings ranging from 4 -17% of Iraq War veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder).
50% of those with PTSD do not seek treatment.
Out of the half that seek treatment, only half of them get “minimally adequate” treatment (RAND study).
Nineteen percent of veterans may have traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Over 260,000 veterans from OIF and OEF so far have been diagnosed with TBI. Traumatic brain injury is much more common in the general population than previously thought: according to the CDC, over 1,700,000 Americans have a traumatic brain injury each year; in Canada 20% of teens had TBI resulting in hospital admission or that involved over 5 minutes of unconsciousness (VA surgeon reporting in BBC News).
Seven percent of veterans have both post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
Rates of post-traumatic stress are greater for these wars than prior conflicts.
In times of peace, in any given year, about 4% (actually 3.6%) of the general population have PTSD (caused by natural disasters, car accidents, abuse, etc.).
Recent statistical studies show that rates of veteran suicide are much higher than previously thought (see suicide prevention page).
PTSD distribution between services for OND, OIF, and OEF: Army 67% of cases, Air Force 9%, Navy 11%, and Marines 13%. (Congressional Research Service, Sept. 2010).
Recent sample of 600 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan found: 14% post-traumatic stress disorder; 39% alcohol abuse; 3% drug abuse. Major depression also a problem. “Mental and Physical Health Status and Alcohol and Drug Use Following Return From Deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.” Susan V. Eisen, Ph.D.
Oddly, statistics for veteran tobacco use are never reported alongside PTSD statistics, even though increases in rates of smoking are strongly correlated with the stress of deployment and combat, and smoking statistics show that tobacco use is tremendously damaging and costly for soldiers.
More active duty personnel die by own hand than in combat in 2012 (New York Times).
Source: http://www.veteransandptsd.com/PTSD-statistics.html
And here’s a link to the congressional testimony of two mothers of young veterans who killed themselves after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, giving the statistics a human face. I’m pretty sure a hardened old armchair-warrior like you can stand to watch it:
Karen
There is no free lunch.
It costs money and time to track down lost documents. The state may advertise their ID as free, but you’ll have to pay elsewhere to get your birth certificate or other required documents.
One state has offered to help citizens obtain documentation, but they are the exception.
Voter ID is nothing but voter suppression aimed at the elderly, the poor, and students by Republicans.
Democracy becomes less and less important to Republicans every day.
Wadewilliams – are you hooked into the DNC talking points or the Obama talking points? You have really drunk the kool-aid.
From the CDC:
So veteran suicide rates at most mirror or are (more likely) are less than the national average compared to non-veterans.
“There was voter fraud in Texas during those elections. However, you need a better understanding of what happened. That fraud had absolutely no connection with voter ID. It had everything to do with the people guarding the ballot boxes – you know, election officials – all the voters were long gone.”
Yes, they were long gone. In fact many were so long gone they were dead.
Even in the earlier less correct study, “The average age of male veteran suicides was 59.6 years old — older than non-veteran male suicides.,
So the majority of suicides were not involved in the ME wars, but served in the early to mid-1980s, a time of few deployments.
“Do you have an exit strategy from the slaughterhouse of this War on Terror of which you’re so enamored, or would you just like to see it go on as long as possible?”
It’s Obama’s war. Ask him.
I never said I supported the current mechanism of the US War on Terror.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
And no one seriously would like to see war go on as long as possible, so that’s a straw man argument.