0001 GMT October 31, 2005

·         ·         IRAN LEADERSHIP DIVIDED Let us frankly saw we hoped the new Iranian president’s fire and brimstone speech against Israel meant that Iran was getting ready to do something so incredibly dumb that the west would have to invade and force regime change.

·         ·         But now reader macropetroni sends an article which says the Supreme Ayatollah, who actually is the final authority on anything in Iran, is not amused. Supreme has been apparently been warning the new president to cool it; more important than the warnings – which may not influence the new president as much as they might, because he is a revolutionary and ready to fight anyone, including his Supreme – is that Supreme has created a new system at the top, transferring some of his most important powers previously reserved solely to himself, to moderate Rafsanjani. This is the clearest indication of a deep divide in Iran – no news to Iran watchers, who have been discussing the divide for years; but – to our disappointment – it is clear that Supreme and company are ready to smack the impudent young pup, the President, till he learns to behave.

·         ·         UGANDA GRADUATES OUT OF IMF CLASS Good show: BBC says Uganda has economically progressed to the extent it no longer qualifies for IMF assistance.

·         ·         Proof – as if anyone needed it – that Africans are perfectly capable of good governance.

·         ·         PARIS RIOTING There are been more rioting after the funerals of two immigrant Muslim youngsters. The rioters say the police were chasing them and the boys ran into an electricity substation and were electrocuted. The police say they weren’t chasing the boys.

·         ·         Now wait a minute a minute, folks. Lets accept the immigrant community’s story. So the police are to blame? The youths have no responsibility to stop if the police are chasing them? So next time a suspect is running from the law and hurts himself, the police should pay him restitution?

·         ·         Are the French also losing their minds, to the extent the police have to deny they were chasing the boys?

·         ·         And what’s happen to the French police? Everyone knows you don’t riot in France unless you are prepared to get hurt badly. Of course, that’s the CRS you should be really scared of, the regular French police are no worse than any European police, but still, are the French police becoming wimps?

LETTERS

·         ·         FROM COLIN ROBINSON [Via telephone] It was not right for you to personally attack the IISS for saying the US would have to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq beyond 2008. The statement was made in a press conference and is not part of the publication being released, and the speaker made clear he regretted that this was the reality.

·         ·         Hmmm. We did tell Mr. Robinson that by our standards we were pretty polite to IISS, and compared to US talk radio, we are wilting violets when it comes to attacks. Mr. Robinson has worked at a US think tank, and told us – rather firmly,  we thought – that he did not have the time to listen to US talk radio as he had work to do. A wise stance – we too don’t bother to listen to US talk radio.

·         ·         FROM HALE CULLOM III  Don’t be so sure that international agreements on torture that the US is signatory to are worth very much. In Europe and in most other countries, treaties in effect supersede domestic law.

&n The USA has a different view as to the relationship of treaties to national legislation. Under US law, treaties and other  international agreements become  U.S. federal law, on the same basis as any other federal statute. (Article VI, US Constitution). Treaties, like US law, are superior to State statutes – but that’s as far as it goes.

In practice the equality of treaties with Federal law means that Congress can modify or repeal treaties by subsequent legislative action, even if this amounts to a violation of the treaty or international agreement as far as international law is concerned. The last enactment in time ALWAYS controls for US law purposes regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. Moreover, the treaty may be struck down or modified by the Courts, if it is found to run afoul in any way of the US Constitution.

Further, mere “executive agreements” – agreements with other countries that are not treaties, that is, not ratified by the Senate, are inferior even to State statutes. Finally, in Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979), the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the actions of President Carter in unilaterally abrogating the Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (Taiwan).

·         ·         FROM JAMES FREEMON  Until they include ‘None of the Above’ as a choice on our ballots, abstaining from voting is the only way we have of indicating our distaste for the bozo’s chosen to ‘represent’ us. When presented with the choice between a big government tax and spend Democrat, and a big government spend it regardless Republican, I chose not to participate in my own fleecing.

·         ·         I’ve paid my dues by proudly serving in the US military for 21 years. I have done my duty and repeatedly put my ass on the line for my country. It’s my right to ‘flip the bird’ to those I feel do not represent me, and are taking America in a direction I do not want it to go.

·         ·         Editor’s comment A mandatory voting system would have to include something akin to instant runoff: The voter would list his 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. choices; first past 50% would win. But what if I don’t want to vote for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on down to 100th? Your editor does not know enough about voting systems and invites opinions. Would a “None of them?” box work? You have done your duty, shown up, don’t like any of the rats, said so?

·         ·         FROM R.L. GOODSON, referring to our post about the extraordinarily high USAF jet training losses in 1950 as you US remobilized for Korea: “Cause of most of the training accidents was the unreliability of the aircraft.  F-80, F-84 had notoriously underpowered, unreliable engines, on occasion prone to explode in mid-air.  Jet aircraft are easier to fly than high performance, prop-driven aircraft.  Jet aircraft do not have the torque effect from the propeller of of a powerful reciprocating engine.  Granted, when the first swept wing aircraft were developed, i.e., the F-86, there were problems until the pilots learned about the different handling characteristics. Signed, An Old Navy Pilot (Vietnam Era).”

0330 GMT October 30, 2005

·         ·         INDIA, PAKISTAN TO OPEN 5 CROSSINGS ON KASHMIR LINE OF CONTROL For the first time since trouble over Kashmir began in 1947, India and Pakistan are to allow Kashmir residents on both sides of the Line of Control to cross over to seek help because of the earthquake. While residents of Kashmir will simply have to show up on the border with proper ID, relief groups will have to notify each side in advance.

·         ·         There has been no date put on how long the crossing will remain open.

·         ·         MORE ON THE GALLOWAY The senor aide to Vice President Cheney has been indicted in the Valerie Plame affair – not for giving her name to the press, because as early as 2004 the special prosecutor has decided the aide had no broken any law concerning naming a CIA agent. Instead, he has been indicted for perjury – in other words, not for the crime the investigation was investigating, but because he lied about his role, after it was determined he broke no law.

·         ·         Opinion We have zero interest in Mr. Cheney and his aide, though the Washington Post had a huge headline about the matter. We just wanted to emphasize to Mr. Galloway, that he’s for the high jump. It doesn’t matter whether he’s innocent or guilty of taking money in the oil for food scandal. If he has lied about anything in front of the Senate, any small little itsy bitsy teensy eensy thing, he’s committed perjury, and the Senate wants his head, they’ve got him by the short and curlies. If the Americans are indicting so senior a person to the Vice President of the nation simply because he did not tell “the whole truth”. GG has no chance.

·         ·         Not to worry, old chap. We’ll send you regular clippings concerning the mean things we say about you, to your prison, to keep you amused. And then people say we at Orbat.com are not nice people.

·         ·         UK TERRITORIAL ARMY AT LOWEST STRENGTH SINCE 1907, a big drop in enlistments because of Iraq is blamed.

·         ·         Analysis We’d better clarify the situation is quite different from the US drop in Guard and Army Reserve enlistments. A very substantial fraction of US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, worldwide, are reservists having a very hard time of things. The US has not decreed general mobilization, even in Vietnam reserve troops were not sent. The troops are being kept on at time for two years, many suffer great financial hardship. And reservists are being killed in large number.

·         ·         The UK has no doubt called up TA reservists, but nothing like on the US scale – please correct us, but we don’t think any TA battalions have been called up – and certainly the British losses are in any case insignificant.

·         ·         Opinion Our interpretation is that with the end of Empire, the modern Brit has jettisoned the crusader zeal so evident in America today zeal. The British feel they have been lied and misled by their Prime Minister, and that bad as Saddam was, things have been done in a slimy fashion.  We know this is also a big factor in the drop in US reserve enlistments. Young people are the ones who enlist, and they have to feel they are enlisting for a cause. The Brits don’t see a cause worth enlisting for.

GOODBYE KASHMIR, IT WAS REAL

·         ·         From the Editor of Orbat.com to the people of India: good people, the battle is over, the fight is done. The United States has once again prevailed over India and Pakistan, and we are well on our way to Kashmir as – at the minimum – an autonomous state within India and Pakistan. From there to independence is a short way.

·         ·         What tipped me off to the coming events? The words that there is no time limit on how long the border crossings will remain open. Into next summer for sure, as the winter has set in, the snows will not melt in the high mountains till May, and people in Pakistan Kashmir are going to continue needed help – at least – till June. Major disasters like the earthquake take years to recover from. Once Kashmiris, Indians and Pakistanis get used to the idea of a semi-open border, there will be great pressure to keep it open – and lots of goodies from our Man Sam as a big incentive. The Big Man has been pushing this idea for decades and is about to get his wish.

·         ·         I have fought the fight to get back Kashmir and all of Pakistan, to recreate a unified sub-continent, for 35 years, and have failed. To give up a principled fight because one is tired and has failed is immoral, and I committing not only an immoral act by giving up, but also treason against the land of my birth. To the few people who still care: I ask your forgiveness, but I have no other way. It is not even a matter of age. It is a matter of simple survival. I have bills to pay so I can simply survive. As long as I was in a 2-wage earner family, it was possible to survive, with many sacrifices. Well, Mrs. Rikhye decided after 28 years of sacrificing that my battles are not her battles, and she has opted – which is her right – to let me meet material needs on my own.

·         ·         I must, then, devote all my time to the business of earning money. Were I to come back to India, I could get by on what I would earn from 10 hours of work a week: even at today’s price, a one room flat, and a Vespa, are not difficult to come by for a person with my qualifications and skills. But my family is in the States: I cannot abandon my children, the youngest of whom is only 19, or my parents, who are 85 and 77. But living in the US, even at the minimal level I do, require a clear focus on earning. I have been thinking, were I to sell my house, I could clear my debts. A one room apartment and a Vespa can be earned in 10-20 hours a week in Washington, too. But if I sell my house, what do I leave for my children, except empty words about patriotism and duty and country, and where will my mother come when she can no longer manage on her own. I cannot go live with my children, and impose on them – my battles are not theirs, any more than they are those of the former Mrs. R.

·         ·         So I am not going to complain: win some, lose some. The odds of winning on this were very slim indeed when I returned to India in 1970 for the first time as a grown person. The people of India have no time or urge for the struggle, they want to get on with their lives, make up for the time they lost under five decades of “socialist” rule. I cannot blame them in the slightest, that the odds have decreased like the calculus limit that approaches zero but never reaches zero.

·         ·         It is possible that one day India will rise again a unified power. But then it is also possible that all the oxygen molecules in my room will gather in one corner, depriving me of the air I need to breathe. I would be foolish to plan my life around that contingency. So also I would be foolish to plan my life on the assumption that the people of India will decide once again that the struggle for One India is worth the sacrifice.

·         ·         To the US, I say: “Good job, Samster. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of your devoted servants and citizens worked for this development for many, many long years. It is a job well done, you have earned your victory. I have no condemnation of you: you have done what is in your national interest, had you not, if I were American, I would have to charge you for failing your country.

·         ·         You could not have done it without the Indians who made themselves available to see your point of view on a sane solution to Kashmir, for a consideration of course. Were it by some magic in an alternate universe I could decide for India, my first act would be a list of Indians to execute for selling out their country. If I could, I still would, and Kashmir would only be the latest in a frightening long list of crimes you have committed against your people.

·         ·         But that does not mean I blame you in any way. You had to do what you had to do. I wish it had been otherwise, that the men and women who have laid down their lives for 3000 years so that India could be a great nation  were the ones earning rewards, rather than you, the traitors, who have sold out your motherland. But is not to be so, and I pass no moral judgment on you, nonetheless.

·         ·         Perhaps I too would have sold out India for the material reasons you did, and for the chance for my children to make better lives in America. I remain acutely aware that due to the hard work of my father, I had to make no moral compromise to come to America, in a day when America was closed to all but 100 Indians a year – that was the Indian immigration quota before 1963. Even then, as immigration liberalized, it was impossible for a civil servant, a military man, an intelligence person, to afford to send their children to America for an education. The US government made it possible, you have kept your side of the bargain, America has kept its side. At least there has been honesty there.

·         ·         Because but for the grace of the divine I escaped making any compromises, I have no right to judge you, and I will not. But I remind you – and indeed this is surely the emptiest threat to have been hurled at you, as I have absolutely no power whatsoever to enforce, please remember, I do not not judge you, but I would still hang you if I could: treason is treason. I understand why you betrayed India, you would have my understanding – and my compassion – as you went to the gallows.

·         ·         Meanwhile, I must concern  myself with more mundane, but more practical matters, one of which is urgent, one not as much so.

·         ·         The not so urgent matter is, what should the state flag of Kashmir look like, when it finally because part of the great United States of America? You may laugh, but Kashmir is more valuable to America than India, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or any other place in the heart of Asia. Three words that any savvy retailer will tell you: “Location, location, location”. If I were American, and were told I could any place I wanted in Central Asia, but just one place, I would choose Kashmir without a second’s thought. To my younger readers: look at at an atlas and you will see why I would make that choice.

·         ·         The more urgent matter is that of a passport. Contrary to what Indians believe, I have kept my Indian passport even though under the new laws I will be deported should I make a single mistake that involves any offense against the law – I do not say crime for a reason – involving a theoretical punishment over 1 year/ It does not matter the judge fine me not a dollar, not sentence me to an hour in jail. If the offense is such that a sentence of a year, or greater than a year, can be imposed, it is not necessary the American authorities to as much as give me a chance to return home to say my goodbyes to my family, or to allow me to call a lawyer. I can be taken straight to jail from the courthouse, with no right of appeal, kept in jail while my papers are processed, and then be put on a plane to India.

·         ·         Yes, my dear American friends, this is your country today – and these laws predate 9-11.

·         ·         But I do not complain, and will not complain should that happen to me. America has been very generous to me from the day of my first arrival. I love this country and its people. Once India announced dual nationality, I applied for US citizenship precisely to avoid the above fate should I make a mistake – or even should anyone accuse me of a mistake and I not have the resources to clear my name.

·         ·         Yet, there are many reasons why I think America would be justified not to give me citizenship, for all its generosity to me, and I would understand. There is a more troubling problem: what sense does it make for me to give up that piece of paper with the Great Seal of India’s stamp on it, because my government has sold out, only to accept a piece of paper with the Great Seal of the United States, and swear allegiance to the government that purchased my government?

·         ·         But a passport is nice to have, who knows, I may once again want to travel to another country, just to see what lies on the other side of the mountain. So, when winter break starts, and I am a little freer from pressures of work and study, I shall look on the internet for a country that will give me a passport requiring more than the few hundreds dollars I could borrow on a credit card.

·         ·         If there is no such country, then would it be such a big deal to turn in my passport at the Indian Consulate, sign a form renouncing my citizenship, without having a new country and a new passport? It is perfectly possible to live in the US with one’s “Green Card” alone; beside, even with another country’s passport, I am still vulnerable to the peril of the one-year offensive law.

·         ·         Make haste slowly. I was the man in a hurry who made life-changing decisions on what sign for a departing international flight first caught my eye as I walked into Palam or Kennedy Airport.* I would go Monday to hand in my passport, in a respectful manner, to the clerk on duty. If only I could resolve one troubling question:

·         ·         I know it is the infirmity that comes with advancing age that makes me ask the question, and I cannot forgive myself for my weakness. I know no one else cares that Kashmir will soon be gone. How much do I really care, now that I can look to the future, and know that Kashmir will soon be gone?

·         ·         * Laugh if you will, but the chain of events that let me to return to India to start a revolution began when one day, in 1967, I cleared immigration at JFK after a flight from Teheran, and saw a big sign: “Announcing Delta’s Inaugural Service to Atlanta: $100 round trip”. I cannot vouch, at this distance for the exact words or price, but I had not even finished reading that one line when I found myself heading for the Delta counter, instead of the Eastern counter to use the ticket I held for Boston, and for wife and home. How the revolution began, and how it ended, you’ll  read all about in my memoirs, “My 20 years in India with the CIA”. But first I have to make money so I can take time off to write the memoirs, so its bye for now, until tomorrow…

 

0330 GMT October 28, 2005

·         ·         MORE FROM COLIN ROBINSON Orbat.com reader and contributor Colin Robinson and your editor have been exchanging emails over the  past 24 hours. We explained to Colin that AGTW has changed from pure news with limited comments to a more blog-like approach because, unlike immediately after 9-11, there are a number of really excellent blogs giving facts – we use some of them, and also our readers prefer the present mix of news.

·         ·         We do, however, think he has a point on mixing news annotated with analytical comment with opinion. We try and avoid that, by labeling all-opinion pieces as such, but we think, on reflection, we are not going far enough in keeping the two separate. Our manner of analysis can lead people to think we are simply giving our opinion.

·         ·         Now, we’re not going to ask you to click through yet another page. As it is we had to go back one page because our orbat.com people wanted their front page back, not that we’re doing a good job of maintaining it – time, always short. Now saying you should go back another page for the opinion wouldn’t be fair.

·         ·         So what we’ll do is to give news items and opinion pieces on the same page, but refrain from any opinion mixed with a news item, unless it is of the analytical kind: “we think this development implies such and such,” and save our personal comments under separate headings.

·         ·         If you have thoughts on this, or suggestions how we can do it better, please let us know.

·         ·         Colin, if we go for two separate pages, as you suggested, we need a second editor. There is no way I can deal with two pages: already I am stealing time from studies and sleep to do this page. If you or others have any workable idea, I’m happy to adopt it. Orbat.com belongs as much to its readers and contributor as it does to me.

·         ·         US TO REALIGN OKINAWA TROOPS TO GUAM Henry J. Cobb and Joseph Stefula send us news that the US has acceded to a long standing demand of Japan’s. US will reduce its footprint on Okinawa, relocated some 3rd Marine Division troops to Guam.

·         ·         Though the Japanese are not saying anything about a quid-pro-quo pro, Japan is apparently to allow a US nuclear-power carried to be based in Japan, reversing long-standing prohibition against such warships docking at Japanese ports.

·         ·         TERROR BOMBERS KILL 22 IN TEL AVIV, in two attacks last Sunday. Has been said about the Palestine people: no need for Israel to destroy them. They will destroy themselves. We don’t agree with Israel’s seizure of the West Bank. That doesn’t give terrorists the right to kill Israeli civilians. Attack the army if you must attack. Then we can respect you as fighters. Right now, you are not fighters, you are simply murderers of innocents.

·         ·         MORE ON THE GALLOWAY and we’re being serious. Non-American readers might wonder what is the big fuss about GG having lied to the US Senate? Isn’t he being picked on?

·         ·         Not really. President Clinton was impeached not because of what he did with Monica, but because by saying he had no relationships with that woman, he committed perjury. So why should GG be spared? That’s the law in America, and perjury is accepted as a crime under English systems of law.

·         ·         The media is all agog about the possibility the US president’s advisor Karl Rove will be indicted in the naming of a CIA agent. Arrested for naming the agent? No, for having lied about some conversations he had. So what makes GG special?

·         ·         Last, get this: a teenager who worked on the property of a prominent Los Angeles professional couple apparently killed the woman and then pushed off. He happened to call his mother to say he was with his girlfriend. Mom said, in effect: “Don’t come back, there’s cops all over the place”. Would you as a parent have done any different? I wouldn’t: protecting my child, right or wrong, is number one on my agenda and to heck with the consequences. So guess what? The mom is in jail, for having helped her son to evade arrest – he was arrested very quickly, by the way. When he called her, the law says her duty was to inform the cops and give them all information.

·         ·         So what’s so special about GG that he shouldn’t be indicted?

·         ·         CINDY SHEEHAN REDUX TO THE 5th POWER Wrong again, but that’s hardly an unusual experience for your editor. We thought Cindy Sheehan, the Anti-war demonstrator had gone away once the press saw through her. Not a bit. Jang of Pakistan tells us that on Wednesday she was arrested in front of the White House for demonstrating without a permit.

·         ·         Why we had to get this news from Jang of Pakistan is a mystery to us.

EDITOR’S OPINION – TORTURE: BACK TO THE FUTURE

·         ·         We are feeling like complete idiots ever since we learned that the US is signatory to an international convention against torture. All this time the US Government has been saying “Geneva does not apply”, and we’ve been defending the government by citing chapter and verse that yes, Geneva does not apply.

·         ·         But none of that is relevant because of this other treaty. We’re not angry at the government, because this slimy way of dealing with issues you don’t want to talk about – misdirection – is a common tactic in today’s American public life. Moreover, we would assume that even informed persons are ignorant about this other treaty, because all that we have seen – and admittedly we do not read as much Americans news as we should – is attacks on the US because it is not following Geneva.

·         ·         But we do owe it to our readers to set the record right. In light of the other treaty, then yes, Abu Gharib was wrong and illegal. That Geneva did not apply to Iraqi civil prisoners is irrelevant.

·         ·         Next, may we respectfully ask Vice President Dick Cheney if he has lost his senses? 90 to 9, the US Senate voted to ban torture of prisoners in American custody. When Senator John McCain, who spent five years being severely tortured, brings up such a bill, and when General/Secretary of State Colin Powell supports the bill, along with some very tough conservatives in the Senate, the impetus behind the bill has to be taken seriously. And we can say with confidence, the American people have spoken, and said no to torture.

·         ·         So Mr. Cheney does something exceedingly smart. He wants to exempt the CIA from the bill. So the headlines – you may expect – all over the world will scream “American government wants right to torture”. The Mr. Cheney prevails on Mr. Bush to threaten a veto of the bill.

·         ·         Get this folks: Mr. Bush has never vetoed a single bill, ever. But he says he will veto this one? So that the Senate can pass it again with more than the 2/3rds majority required to override his veto, so he can look like an utter fool because he has weakened his credibility, smeared America, and still had to let the bill pass?

·         ·         Someone, please tell your editor he has accidentally slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum and is in an alternate universe….

·         ·         WAIT A MINUTE YOU SAY, DIDN’T YOU DEFEND TORTURE in several of your opinions during and after Abu Gharib?

·         ·         If you think that, it is definitely our fault because often we don’t explain things as much as we would, had your editor not been ADHD.

·         ·         Your editor did not support torture at Abu Gharib. All he kept saying is, why is the US media and HR groups focusing on this issue when what happened at is no worse than the daily routine in American prisons? How come degrading an Iraqi prisoner is worse than degrading an American prisoner? Is the American less of a human than the Iraqi.

·         ·         We say again, that people who oppose torture by saying things like “it doesn’t work because a man will say anything under torture” are completely clueless, and wonder why they get to write long columns in newspapers and pontificate on TV when they are so obviously clueless.

·         ·         The very sad truth is that torture works beautifully, assuming you are careful not to kill the victim before you’re done. Do people honestly think that interrogators don’t know the victim will say anything? That’s why you torture heck out of him, send him back to his cell to recover, and then bring him out again, and again, and again, till you have the complete story. You still don’t let him go, because you may need him again in case you didn’t ask all the questions that you should have, or in case he did slip one over you.

·         ·         But what if he’s innocent? There is always that 1% chance that the man really is innocent of everything: he really didn’t know his brother Abe was hanging around with Bob, who unknowingly was carrying messages for Chuck, who thought he was helping Doug run a gambling ring whereas…. etc etc, you get the point.

·         ·         Interrogators are pretty good at finding out if you really are not the least bit involved. Of course, it may take a few sessions. And that’s too darn bad. No one said war is some kind of a court trial. The innocent suffer with the guilty, that’s the nature of war. What’s the sense of undertaking missions like the bomber attack on Saddam’s favorite eatery, which must have sent a powerful lot of people prematurely to the Great Eatery in the Sky, and then squall about the tiny chance an innocent man might have been tortured. In the bomber attack, the end justified the means: there was a reasonable chance the US would get Saddam, and if a hundreds other had to die while you missed him, its still a good tradeoff and justifiable.

·         ·         THAT SEEMS LIKE A PRETTY FRANK ADMISSION YOU THINK TORTURE IS ACCEPTABLE, DOESN’T IT? Well yes. But what your editor thinks is immaterial. If the US has signed a treaty it isn’t going to do bad things, it has to stand by the treaty. Moreover, using other methods may take more time, but they do work. Incidentally, if people are going to say dressing an Arab prisoner in frilly lace panties and making him dance with another man is torture, or having a female MP rub up against him is torture, or being shown pornographic movies is torture, then sorry, the proponents of that view can never be satisfied that the prisoner is being treated right, and if he is savvy, you will never get anything out of him. So when people say they are other means that work just as well, they should be pretty darn sure they can specify what these other

·         ·         And that’s all we need to debate. Its against US law to torture. End of the matter. Change the law if you think you can – and on this point you cant because America is against torture – otherwise observe the law. Savvy, Kemo Sabey?

·         ·         JUST A BY THE WAY Its difficult to accept with a straight face an Arab prisoner’s complaint – such as we believe has been made at Gitmo – that scantily dressed female MPs constitute an assault on his religion. First, you’re religious? Then why are you hanging around with killers who kill old men, women, and children without a second thought? Sorry, old boy, you are not religious.

·         ·         Second, why is the sight of a scantily dressed female an assault on your religion? Oh, we see, its because women are considered unclean by some of your co-religionists.

·         ·         That’s fine, what we’d like the HR types to explain is: why should we be paying the slightest attention to people who think like that? That’s discrimination against women, which is absolutely something you cannot get away in the US. So why should we be sensitive to some jerk’s sick feelings? Because they’re his religion, he says?