Eric Umansky

Checkpoint check-in

From the AP:

U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women - one of them about to give birth - when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday.

Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday....

"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."

U.S. commanders have recently moved to improve  checkpoint tactics.  It can't happen soon enough.

Handy

This, I believe, is one  of the best words I have recently had the great fortune of learning--with my own brain:

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 31, 2006

Pleonasm, \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:
1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.

(Word-smithing hat-tip to Manda.)

Let's Talk Already

Israel should open negotiations witho Hamas  even if Hamas doesn't formally recognize Israel. Oh, I'm not saying that. It's just the opinion of a former head of Israel's bad-ass Mossad spy agency:

"To demand of Hamas that they should recognize Israel as a condition is to set a very high bar over which they must leap," Halevy said in an interview Monday. "I think it's unnecessary." ...

"They're not very nice people. They're not very pleasant people. They're not very good," he said. "But they are very, very credible."....

"It may not work, but aren't we strong enough to be able to try it?" he asked. "I think Israel is strong enough to try it."

Neighborhood blogging in Baghdad

The NYT's Web site has a powerful--and well-hidden--post from an Iraqi blogger describing his recent, horrific night.

Stop and track the flowers

Take a moment to measure the lilacs--if you have them in your backyard.It will help researchers track global warming.

The Lodi Backstory

A month or so ago, a jury convicted a young man in northern California of, basically, training to be a jihadist. I wrote a few sentences about it and moved on.  I knew the charges were a bit sketchy--based almost completely on disputed confessions. ButI had no idea how sketchy.

The LAT's magazine has the sad, enraging story. Here, simply, is a snippet of the confession:

"So jihad means that you fight and you assault something?"

"Uh-huh."

"Give me an example of a target. A building?"

"I'll say no buildings. I'll say people."

"OK, people. Yeah. Fair enough. People in buildings . . . I'm trying to get details about plans over here."

"They didn't give us no plans."

"Did they give you money?"

"No money."

"Guns?"

"No."

"Targets in the U.S?" the agent asked again.

"You mean like buildings?"

"Yeah, buildings," the agent nodded. "Sacramento or San Francisco?"

"I'll say Los Angeles and San Francisco."

"Financial, commercial?"

"I'll say finance and things like that."

"Hospitals?" the agent suggested.

"Maybe, I'm sure."

"Who ran the camp?"

"Maybe my grandfather."

"Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda runs?"

"I'll say they run the camp. . . . Yeah, that's what I'll say."

And now we have evidence that one juror was pressured to change her verdict. Great.

The East Timor I Remember

I was in East Timor in 1999 when the country was wrecked by Indonesian-back militia. Those were some of the scariest moments of my life--and one of the most uplifting. A people who had faced a near-genocide succeeded in kicking out their occupiers, not with guns by with ballots.

Now something of a civil war has erupted. My friend Marc Cooper echoes my sense of my dispair. "The scenes unfolding in East Timor," he writes, "suggest there's something very corrupt in the soul of our species."

East Timor has been a society traumatized by violence--for decades. It should be no big surprise that the children of that violence fall back into it. That makes it no less depressing--just the reality.

 

Why should we care about detainee abuse?

We should care because the issues raised by a policy of cruelty are too fundamental to be left unaddressed, unanswered or ambiguous. We should care because a tolerance of cruelty will corrode our values and our rights and degrade the world in which we live.

It will corrupt our heritage, cheapen the valor of the soldiers upon whose past and present sacrifices our freedoms depend, and debase the legacy we will leave to our sons and daughters. We should care because it is intolerable to us that anyone should believe for a second that our nation is tolerant of cruelty. And we should care because each of us knows that this issue has not gone away.

-Alberto Mora, formerly the Navy's top lawyer, who objected to policies of prisoner abuse.

Fridays with Glenn and Jeff

My latest Pajamas chat--where again, I weirdly agree with Mr. Instapundit on a whole host of things, including the dumbness of the GOP's response to the Jefferson raid.

Ring a bell?

Does this description of Enron--from the NYT's coverage--remind you of anybody else's managment style:

Paula Rieker, an executive with the company's investor relations group, testified to her fear of correcting Mr. Skilling when he made what she considered to be false statements to investors. Vince Kaminski, a top risk analyst, spoke of how Mr. Skilling became increasingly difficult to contradict as Enron won plaudits from the marketplace. And Ben F. Glisan Jr., the treasurer, portrayed an "Emperor's New Clothes" culture, where no one was willing to challenge the rule-bending and recklessness as the company's executives charged into one ill-considered business line after another.

Hmmm.... it's on the tip of my tongue.