9/12/24

 Thursday, September 12, 2024

1960 John F. Kennedy states he does not speak for the Roman Catholic Church, and neither does the Church speak for him.

2005 Israel completes its unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip after dismantling Israeli settlements and withdrawing its soldiers

2011 Closing on our house in Bayside

In bed around 9 and up around 2:45.    

Prednisone, day 121, 10 mg., day 28/28.    Prednisone at 5 a.m. Morning meds at 1 p.m. after filling the pill boxes.

The New Yorker, In the Dark, podcasts.  In The New Yorker online there is a site titled The War Crimes That the Military Buried, subtitled The largest known database of possible American war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the military-justice system rarely punishes perpetrators.  It is apparently a 'newsletter'  authored by Parker Yesko and dated September 10, 2024, though it appeared online before then.  It includes this:

What we’re publishing is not a complete record of the atrocities committed by the military since 9/11; it would be impossible to know them all. This is a repository of the seven hundred and eighty-one possible war crimes investigated by the U.S. military that we were able to identify. You can explore an index of information about the incidents, investigative findings, adjudicative outcomes, and our source materials.

Below, we’ve displayed detailed accounts of the hundred and fifty-one cases that investigators determined to be criminal. Each has its own story, but many start and end the same way: with a horrific act perpetrated by members of the military which was then punished lightly or not at all.

What follows is a compendium of atrocities committed by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq over the 20 years between our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and our notoriously messy-executed withdrawal in 2021.  It is shocking reading, but as far as I can tell, it is receiving no attention in the mainstream media.  MSM pays significant attention to atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians and by Russians against Ukrainians, e.g., the Bucha massacre, but little attention to hundreds of war crimes committed by Americans and covered up by the American military, including the Marine Corps.  Of course, I may be wrong about all this since I've been making a point of not watching broadcast television and cable news for the last two weeks and the New Yorker report is recent, but I doubt that much attention will be paid to this damning report, either by the MSM or by the public. I wonder whether Rachel Maddow will cover the story on her weekly program next Monday.

War entails unspeakable violence, much of it entirely legal. And yet some violence is so abhorrent that it falls outside the bounds of law. When the perpetrators are U.S. service members, the American military is supposed to hold them to account. It is also supposed to keep records of wrongdoing in a systematic manner. But the military has failed to do so, leaving the public unable to determine whether the military brings its members to justice for the atrocities they have committed. To remedy this failing, the reporting team of the In the Dark podcast has assembled the largest known collection of investigations of possible war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—nearly eight hundred incidents in all. Much of the time, the reporting concluded, the military delivers neither transparency nor justice.

The database makes it possible, for the first time, to see hundreds of allegations of war crimes—the kinds that stain a nation—in one place, along with the findings of investigations and the results of prosecutions. The picture that emerges is disheartening. The majority of allegations listed in the database were simply dismissed by investigators. Those which weren’t were usually dealt with later, by commanders, in a justice system that can be deferential to defendants and disbelieving of victims.

 , , , , 

With the assistance of an experienced foia litigation team, we repeatedly sued the military. Over four years, the agencies released enough documentation to us that, assisted by other source materials, we were able to put together a collection of seven hundred and eighty-one possible war crimes, perpetrated against more than eighteen hundred alleged victims, that the U.S. military took seriously enough to investigate. 

Of the seven hundred and eighty-one cases we found, at least sixty-five per cent had been dismissed by investigators who didn’t believe that a crime had even taken place. Soldiers would return to the United States and confess—to women, health-care workers, job interviewers—that they’d murdered civilians or prisoners, but military investigators would find that the allegations couldn’t be substantiated.  . . .

In a hundred and fifty-one cases, however, investigators did find probable cause to believe that a crime had occurred, that the rules of engagement had been violated, or that a use of force hadn’t been justified.  

We identified five hundred and seventy-two alleged perpetrators associated with these hundred and fifty-one criminal cases. Only a hundred and thirty of them were convicted. The records show that they rarely received lengthy prison terms. Much more often, their cases were dealt with by commanders, who have broad discretion to punish their troops with extra duty, demotions, or reprimands, circumventing formal prosecution altogether. (The commanders themselves almost never seemed to face consequences for the misdeeds of their subordinates.) Fewer than one in five alleged perpetrators appear to have been sentenced to any type of confinement, and the median sentence was just eight months. “The conviction rates and the rate of sentencing for these kinds of very serious person crimes is just far below what you would see in the civilian system,” Roman [an expert consultant] said. 

Just thinkin' . . . I have been living for 83 years and 19 days.  When I was born in 1941, my life expectancy was 63.1 years, 20 years less than my current age.  According to the most recent data from the Social Security Administration, the life expectancy for an 83-year-old American male is an additional 6.31 years, for a total life expectancy of 89.31 years.  In the ancient advanced Minoan civilization on Crete, the average life expectancy was about 30 years.  In 1770 in Europe, it was about 34.  Old age is at best a mixed blessing.  Ezekiel Emanuel may be a bit weird for saying that he wishes to die at age 75, but he has a point about diminishing returns once one passes 65 or 70.

I would never say it to their surviving spouses and children, but I have often thought that there are some advantages to dying young.  Bob Friebert at age 75, heart attack.  Tom St. John at age 78, heart attack, Bill Guis at age 74, cancer (not good), David Branch, much younger, amyloidosis (not good), Bill Roush, younger yet, loneliness, dissipation?, (not good.)  There have been many days when I have wished to be dead, not from depression or mental illness, but because of physical pain.  It started more than 15 years ago with chronic pelvic pain and ulcers in my bladder.  For quite some time, I thought of suicide every day, every night.  Eventually the pain went away after the third fulguration and it stayed away for 9 or 19 years before reappearing and requiring another fulguration in March of this year.  Before that chronic pain problem was resolved however, I started on another, with my bout of polymyalgia rheumatica and severe pain in my shoulders, wrists, and hands, which again had me thinking it would be better to be dead than to live with that pain and loss of the use of my arms.  When that problem was resolved with prednisone, I developed a new chronic pain and inability to stand for longer than a minute or two.  Am I pleased that I didn't die during those periods of "suicidal ideation"?  Yes, but I wonder what the next challenge of old age and decrepitude will be.  May I hope for a quick death from a cardiac event or stroke or does a more challenging ending await me?

QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR.  Walt Whitman

Approaching, nearing, curious,

Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?

Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?

Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?

Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,

Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching?

. . . . 

For a short time in 2009 when I was experiencing chronic and serious pelvic pain, I kept a journal which I have held onto.. Excerpts:

3/26/2009  Up at 8 @ 10 hours sleep.  Intermittent pain during the night, moderate pain on awakening till @ 10:30 a.m.  I received a call from Dr. Silbar's office to schedule "a look inside your bladder" on 4/1 at Rawson Avenue office.  I informed the caller of my bad eperience at Froedtert with the urodynamics test..  I don't know whether the nurse-trainee was especially ham-handed or whether the intense pain  was a result of my bladder-urethra-prostate-penis anatomy but I hope never to have a similar experience. . . .  By 2:30, the pain has increased to 5 or 6, L.T. and perineal.  Walking becoming painful . . . Still having a hard time keeping all the medications straight, especially the new ones: cytotec 4 times a day with food, amitriptyline, omeprazole, 1/2 hour before morning and evening meals. 

3/31/09 Very intense pain woke me up at 1:30 a.m..  Kept me awake for about an hour.  Still painful when I arose at 10:30 a.m.  Got better after about an hour.  More pain late afternoon into the evening. . .

4/1/09  Made it through the night w/o significant pain.  If my (?_ permits, I'll drive to OHareAirport to pick up Sarah who is returning from Abu Dhadbi this afternoon. . . . Just as I arrived at the international Terminal parking lot, sarah called to report that the plane was taxiing  l l 

4/7/09  Made it through the night without significant pain, 2 nights in a row.  Today is the catheter procedure. . . . The catheter procedure was painful but less painful that the one I suffered through  at Froedtert a year ago.  I wondered if Dr Silber really believed I could follow his instructions to "relax" as he worked to thrust the catheter past my wrethral sphincter which very decidedly did not want to open the door to my bladder.  The neck of my bladder was also inhospitable.  Ouch and ouch.

4/10/09 Good Friday.  8"15 pm blood in urine.

The next notes start on March 26, 2019.  10 years with no notes.  Alas.