What's equally troubling is that these two are the ones we have evidence for, and you have to suspect there are more that we don't. This is very, very bad and likely to get worse.
Whenever I read these stories (assuming this is all correct), I always think that it seems entirely predictable that this happens. I have no idea how I would behave in a war, and God willing, I'll never have to find out. But I have to think that large periods of time spent worrying about dying and wondering whether someone you see every day has a hand in it, can't be good. I don't know what's normal, but three tours, including Faluja--honest to God, I feel for everyone involved, both the dead and their killers. I just can't believe these things happen independent of immense stress.
it's just a few bad apples.
I think this is actually true. It's just that the longer you leave apples out, the more of them go bad.
Let's bring 'em home before the whole crop spoils.
I think "these things" happen under reasonably well-known circumstances.
Guerrilla war in which the civilian and enemy populations intermingle
Vanishingly small occupation force shuttled around the country to perform an impossible (given men, materiel) task of pacification
Absence of training for occupation / colonization
The U.S. army has never been trained to act as a permanent occupying force and until WWII, no part of the U.S. military had a formal doctrine for fighting guerrilla wars. Even after WWII, the doctrine has been allowed to take a back seat.
So you get these situations, where people who have not been trained to do a job, are asked to do it under circumstnaces in which even a highly and specifically trained force would find it difficult. So yes, they begin to shoot back too quickly. So yes, they begin to shoot people fairly indiscriminately, pour encourager les autres.
That's what I get for saving this for the morning summary, along with the various other links. (It's not a new story, but you'll have to wait for my post, I guess.)
"Please, can we just bring our armed forces home?"
I'd prefer to wait for the Iraqis to ask, though. That's apt to start a big argument, I know. But I think their views are more important than the views of Americans as regards this.
It is very terrible to hear that US troops may have murdered civilians in cold blood. It is perhaps the most terrible thing an American citizen can ever hear. But the response LB suggests simply cannot be the way American policy in Iraq is decided. These atrocities - and let us pray that the reports prove inaccurate - horrify. Yet in the month of April alone 979 Iraqi civilians were killed; the vast majority, if the linked source is to be credited, were not killed by coalition soldiers. If the claim is that removing US troops will lead to better results for Iraqis, then let us have that argument. If the claim is that our duty to our own troops necessitates our removing them even if this leads to worse results for Iraqis, then we should have that argument too. Sadly, one option that does not remain to us is to just “stop killing people”: not if we ever want to oppose force. But of course, everyone here knew that already.
There's a third option, too, which is that even though removing U.S. troops may lead to civil war/more Iraqi deaths in the short run, that our continued presence is politically so inflammatory and destructive that we may have to just accept that we should never have gone in, that we've really fucked up, that we cannot fix it, and that the Iraqis themselves are going to live (and die) with that reality for who knows how long. There really may not be a "better" solution.
13: I had accepted that option long before we went in. There was never going to be a good outcome to this. And this is nothing compared to what awaits us if someone doesn't stop the lunatics in charge from attacking Iran.
14: No, it's my old bugaboo of Padilla. I really don't understand why people weren't more bothered by that. I order my liberties: life, liberty, property. We can debate where the various flavors of liberties go and how they're ordered, but physical liberty has to be at the top of the list. The govt. announced it could take away that liberty from a citizen on the basis of its own discretion, and nobody blinked. I still can't believe that. It was at exactly that moment that I became alive to the possibility that neither Emerson nor mcmanus were entirely crazy.
Here, as in Haditha, we have unsanctioned action that the perpetrators knew was wrong. That's criminal activity, and it happens in the States. What is particularly worrisome here is that (a) our military did it, (b) we all sort of suspect that it happened because the military is over there, (c) we think it might be more widespread than we know, and (d) we believe there are going to be more opportunities for this to happen. It's terrible. But it's not sanctioned, it's not US citizens, and we properly expect the US public to be angry and upset about this. This bothers me a lot less.
11: Sure, we should have that argument, I was too sad to spell it out in the post. After three years of occupation, we aren't visibly bringing Iraq any nearer to a state of peaceful stability; after stories like this, and like Abu Ghraib, and like every story about an Iraqi civilian being accidentally killed by the US military, I cannot believe that US forces are anything other than a source of fear and disruption to the Iraqi people.
Our leaving may not make things any better, but I don't see a strong reason to believe that it will make things worse, and at least we can stop sponsoring the commission of these terrible crimes.
baa, I don't know if you read apo's link in 2, but I think it's an important thing to read. If conditions for the marines are not as described in that link, that would make me happy, but I'd like to see the source. If conditions are as described, I wonder what options you have in mind to change the situation? Do you think it's just a matter of shuffling around the forces we have more efficiently? Increased ethics training? A draft?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly curious what you think should be done. I don't have any good ideas myself, which leads me to lean strongly towards the "get the hell out; it's not a good choice, but it's the best we can do" solution.
M/tch, I don't have any particular expertise on military affairs to bring to bear. I do think the presence of coalition forces is preventing murder on a larger scale than we have seen to date; but I can't pretend to know how to make their efforts more efficient/moral/selective. It doesn't seem obvious to me why the current war effort requires that marines live in such appaling conditions, but smarter, more experienced, and better men than me will need to provide the answers.
LB, I agree if one thinks that US troops aren't acomplishing anything, then it makes sense to get them home. But don't you think it's very likely that the presence of an overwhelming force makes a real shooting civil war and ethnic cleansing/murder on large scale less likely?
It doesn't seem obvious to me why the current war effort requires that marines live in such appaling conditions, but smarter, more experienced, and better men than me will need to provide the answers.
Um, how do we know who are the smarter, more experienced, and better men? What sort of model for a democracy fighting a war do you have in mind?
I think it may postpone it, in favor of a seething low-level civil war. I don't think our presence there is causing the situation to move toward a state where we will be able to leave without precipitating an intensified war. I don't have a good solution, but keeping the lower intensity civil war bubbling along forever doesn't seem like one either.
But don't you think it's very likely that the presence of an overwhelming force makes a real shooting civil war and ethnic cleansing/murder on large scale less likely?
I don't think we do have an overwhelming force there. It can apparently overwhelm unarmed men, women and children, but that's a pretty low bar. The calls for actually deploying an overwhelming force, made by what I would think would definitely qualify as smarter, more experienced, and better men, have been consistently disparaged by this administration since even before the invasion.
The argument in 11 is consistently delivered with no acknowledgement of how the United States armed forces came to be in this position, where there are no good options. It is properly read with a gloating delivery, and paraphrased as "Heh. Suckers. Guess you're in a tight spot now right?"
>It can apparently overwhelm unarmed men, women and children, but that's a pretty low bar.
Well that was snarky M/tch. So much so, and so unfairly at the expense of soldiers who spend most of their time hunting murderers with guns, that I am tempted to suspend my general good humor. That never helps, of course, so I'll keep it clean. Sure, the coaliation forces don't have Iraq wrapped up. Would that they did. But if you think a Shiite army could march on a Sunni city and kill everyone with the US army around, you are part of the alternate-reality based community. Could such an event occur with no US troops present. I fear it could.
I think I'm a bit with baa, here. I don't know that we can prevent the low-level civil war, but I think we can prevent it from just exploding. At this point, I think the best we can do is to take each group aside and tell them that we'll abide by whatever deal to which they all agree, as long as it's within certain broad (humanitarian) parameters. If someone tries to force worse terms on the other parties, we'll come in on the other side until everyone gets back to the table. FWIW, I think this can also be done (I assume) with Murtha's over the horizon force. Also, I'm not looking to leave Iraq better than it was under Hussein, just better than it will be (at the worst) if we leave.
For me, the limiting factor is our willingness (as a country) to stay. If we're unwilling to stay until such a deal can be forced, we might as well leave now. And, in my heart, I suspect that's where we are.
Are you then upset that the US sent its armed forces into Iraq? Do you have any regrets about that? Or is what's done done, and best to move on? I didn't read any reflection in 11 about how this situation came about.
I really don't see what's wrong with baa's 11, but I'm more despairing. If we still had the ability to work on civilian infrastructure (utlities, etc.) with a certain degree of safety I'd think we still had the chance to do more than be a barrier between today's conditions and civil war. Like Tim, I doubt we can stay a barrier longer than these conditions will last.
8: It's not at all clear to me that the people who should be voting are the currently living Iraqis, they know they haven't died yet, and will assess things differently. I don't claim to know how to get the opinion of Iraqis who have died since the start, but we need to get it.
19: I don't have reason to think that many small-scale conflicts of either the same or greater duration in time will be better, and it seems like that's what'll happen with continued deployment.
I don't think you can really call the civil war low level any longer. The civilian death rate is higher than Lebanon at the height of theirs. Will things get worse if we pull out? Yeah, probably. But we're going to pull out eventually, and things will get worse then anyhow. We aren't making progress toward building a peaceful society there. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is exactly why we never should have invaded in the first place.
It might sound callous—and god knows it's morally bankrupt after we shattered their country—but just going ahead and ripping off the band-aid is the least bad option left. The ethnic cleansing is already happening. Dozens of bodies with electric drill holes are showing up on the streets every day. Formerly calm spots like Basra are spiralling out of control. We don't control shit in Anbar any longer. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are internal refugees.
It's fucked up beyond belief and we don't even understand the conflicts, much less have any clue how to resolve them. I'm increasingly convinced we're only there to spark a dispute with Iran (funny how we've managed to insert large numbers of troops into the countries that border Iran on both sides).
Time to get out. Half a trillion dollars is enough.
I am less sanguine about the over the horizon force, but I agree that forcing a workable political solution is job one for the US right now. Also, I haven't been meaning to dodge your point about Padilla, I just don't have much useful to say.
Well that was snarky M/tch. So much so, and so unfairly at the expense of soldiers who spend most of their time hunting murderers with guns, that I am tempted to suspend my general good humor.
Perhaps it came across as snarky, but it wasn't meant to be, and certainly not at the expense of our soldiers and marines. We've put them in a situation where it seems, based on these reports, that they don't have the force necessary to actually control things, i.e. overwhelming force, but obviously they do have the force to take out their understandable frustrations under incredible stress on innocents. It's our responsibility for putting them in this situation, and it bears discussing.
Meanwhile, to (yes, unfairly) parody your response to 19, you say, "who knows?" So you feel qualified to say that you think we're doing more good than harm by staying in Iraq, but you don't feel qualified to say whether you think that we're devoting enough resource to the job, or whether you tend to think, e.g. Shinseki was more right, or whether Rumsfield was more right, regarding necessary force levels.
I really am not wanting to be snarky, baa. This is an incredibly depressing topic, and I see no good solutions to it, but I want the best, both for our country and for Iraqis. I would honestly appreciate your thoughts on the question posed in 22, and on the general question ofwhether you think we're devoting sufficient resources to the war in Iraq.
The civilian death rate is higher than Lebanon at the height of theirs.
I have a Lebanese friend who, when drunk and pushed, will say that he is glad Syria came in, because it stopped the worst of the civil war and yielded something like order. The awful truth, I worry, is that it can get so much worse in Iraq. And perhaps from there it spreads. Again, I'm willing to leave, greatfully, if we can get them to "worse than under Saddam, but stable." We'll still be jerks, and reviled throughout the world, our reputation in the ME will be dead for a long while, but maybe that's the best of a bad situation.
Also, I haven't been meaning to dodge your point about Padilla, I just don't have much useful to say.
I'm not sure I have that much useful to say either. (Except that Luttig's a complete whore and should be forcibly exiled from the country.) It just remains one of those things that shocks me every day; it's much more in the front of my mind than 9/11, for example. Different strokes, I guess.
The studies were done after Korea, when the experienced reservists did not perform to expectations. Combat:30 days sustained, 90 days lifetime. Then battle fatigue sets in, exhibited in a variety of ways, from suicide to fragging to PTSD to brutalization. I don't think any soldier in Vietnam saw this much combat, I am almost certain no WWII infantryman faced bullets like this. This was absolutely predictable, had been predicted, so must be intended. I think to "sharpen the knife" for the next war, abroad or at home.
Watched "Band of Brothers" the other day. Last episode, Major is told by general that firing his weapon in two events and commanding two others from a distance is plenty of experience to get stars.
Watching all 9 hours, I doubt that Easy Company or the 101st saw that 90 days:5 shooting days in Normandy, 10 days in France, 30 days in Bastogne, 5 days in Germany and they were the superstars of combat. Especially the 20 that survived all the way from Normandy.
This isn't news. It wasn't chickenshit that officers were rotated so fast in Vietnam. Combat kills minds or creates monsters. 3 tours, always looking to get blown up or shot? Lost 30 guys in the Company? Murtha knows what's going on. It is intentional. It is evil. You can guess the plan as well as I.
And I'm sorry, the answer is not in peace. There is no peace. We are too big too powerful, we have air and sea dominance everywhere, and our supriority will be exercised. If not by the next, then by the one after that. The answer is a really big military, several times the present size, and liberals willing to use it wisely. The choice is not no Empire, Empire is what we are, we can't resign or retire. The choice is Marcus Aurelius or Caligula.
mcmanus: I don't think any soldier in Vietnam saw this much combat, I am almost certain no WWII infantryman faced bullets like this.
By "soldier in Vietnam" you of course mean "non-Vietnamese soldier in Vietnam" and by "WWII infantryman" you of course mean "except for the Germans and Russians".
Quoting a possibly dubious source (some site on Vietnam war myths):
The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter.
47:The WWII numbers are what I understood. The Vietnam numbers are surprisingly high, but we know the results in loss of effectiveness. It wasn't necessarily that draftees were bad soldiers, but that they were overstressed in the year spent in Vietnam. Westmoreland possibly wanted 1/2 million in order to provide relief and rotations. I don't know the details of duty in Iraq, if for instance they get a week in Kuwait every month.
And of course types of combat can vary. Hitting the beach at Tarawa is different from patrolling the jungle is different from house-to-house searches. Whether the one week of likely death(WWII) is more or less stressful and debilitating then 6 continuous months of possible death or dismemberment is for psychologists to determine. My guess is that the latter is worse.
I would welcome correction, better data, or cites/sites. Most of what I know is from a West Point presentation I saw on C-Span.
The good news is, we can expect more of the same kind of quagmries for the forseeable future, since it looks like no Democrat can possibly win nationally no matter who the candidates are.
54 - Is it really, though? All I read them as saying is that the article is BS. They don't give any compelling reasons for why it is BS, though.
Which to believe: blog post or an article with, like, a billion footnoted sources? Not saying the RS article necessarily gets it right or that I fully support all of the claims but I don't think 54 is a reason to dismiss it outright.
There does seem to have been a determination on the part of some left partisans that this line of inquiry was not helpful, and they commenced to shout down and disparage it on the morning after the election.
Teresa Neilson Hayden's formulation, iirc, that these guys now in power act like they have no fear of ever losing another election, appeals to me more and more.
I dunno. I'm inclined to believe the article, obviously. But that's likely based more on my own instict and prejudices. And copious footnotes don't always mean accuracy (see Coulter, Ann).
I've seen debunking of the exit-polls claims before, and don't know what to think about it (that is, I understand the exit-polls claim, that they're quite accurate and the fact that they were so far off is suspicious -- the debunking is over my head).
I didn't see any response to an issue that appears really compelling to me, on its face -- the down-ticket anomalies. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I've always 'known', in an unexamined kind of way, and the RFK article agrees, that it's very odd for down-ticket candidates to outpoll the Presidential candidate of their party. And Kerry got beat like a red-headed stepchild by down-ticket Democrats in Ohio. There may be an answer to this, but I haven't seen it.
Also, the recount fraud -- fixing the samples so the full recount wouldn't happen? That really happened, and is being prosecuted. I hate to do too much "where there's smoke there's fire" reasoning, but the combination of that and any other weirdnesses that stand up makes me very worried.
I took the post to be saying that many of the claims in the article had been shown to be false already, but it would have been nice if they'd said which claims and linked to where they'd been shown to be unfounded.
I'm strongly anti-Kennedy as a matter of family tradition (see my 'About' page), and I'd believe that the article is shoddy and overblown, but the links in the Editors' post don't come close to addressing everything it raises.
Yeah, I, like LB, feel like shit went down. (All those well-documented irregularities? Nearly all of them benefitting Bush? Come on.)
I don't know if this line of questioning is "helpful" in the sense of overturning the electoral results or whatever, but if Democrats are really destined to lose over and over again because of massive, coordinated fraud, then that's worth talking about, since it concerns the present and future, and not just the past.
Careful. Ann Coulter's books are crammed full of footnotes, but it turns out most of them are pure crap.
After the vaccines cause autism debacle, I read RFKJr skeptically, but The Editors is being overly dismissive. The polling data in and of itself doesn't prove much, but it does lend circumstancial evidence to monkey business having been committed. I work with statistical data every day, and for all of the polls, with their various methodologies and samples, to consistently trend in the wrong direction is certainly evidence of something, though whether that's problems with the polling or the election remains an open question.
However, that fraud occurred on a grand scale really isn't a question. It certainly did. Maybe enough to be decisive, maybe not. It still needs to be examined and god knows we have to fix our electoral system 'cause that shit is broke down and busted. Badly.
Unfortunately, the DC Democrats are too dysfunctional/timid to fix it. Chris Bowers is right: we need to be confronting it individually rather than through the Battered Wife SyndromeStockholm Syndrome Democratic Party.
55 was a little harsher than I intended. Sorry, Editors.
62 pretty much sums up my feelings. I don't think lingering on the issues as a matter of complaining is useful but trying to figure out actionable measures to prevent future fraud is important. You can do that without agreeing on whether issues raised about 2004 were actually fraudulent or just had the appearance or allowed the opportunity for fraud.
(I volunteered in Lucas County in 2004 and things stunk to high heaven there. The article doesn't even mention that someone broke into Democratic Headquarters there a few months before the election and stole all of their computers.)
That's a bad word to pick up, because it confuses lawyers (and we are the center of the universe, who must be catered to). Our 'actionable' is a perfectly respectable word meaning "giving rise to a cause of action; something that could be the basis for a lawsuit." The new corpo-speak word means something like "Anything that you could take action based on" which is confusingly close to, but completely different from, the legal usage. Stamp it out, I say!
Just out of curiosity: how many folks remember the years in which "The Editors" posted under his real name? It's not just me, right? (Note: if you look at archive pages, his name is still on all the first couple of years of posts.)
(I was baffled at the notion that after years of posting under your own name, switching to a pseudonym would work, but I now have to admit that a lot of people act as if it does.) (Similarly "Jane Galt.")
What do you want me to say? That Project Vote Fraud will knock over the pillars of civilization like dominoes? That it's going to bring about a prematurely-induced dark age? Should I E-mail you? Should I put this on your "action item list"?
It seems mannerly to address people as they wish to be addressed -- I remember knowing The Editors' name, but I've forgotten it. And Galt gets McArdled all the time.
I think we, frankly, are too timid to fix it. I'm tired of blaming elected Democrats. They are timid because we are timid. The rolling stone article is well reasoned and well written, and there is no for accompanying each mention of it with an apology. There is good evidence that Bush was fraudulently elected. We don't want to admit it, because we don't want to accept the action that admitting it would require from us.
It still needs to be examined and god knows we have to fix our electoral system 'cause that shit is broke down and busted. Badly.
We need to fix the electoral system, but we can't do it until we win elections. People worry that talking about election fraud depresses our voters, and makes marginal voters think we're shady.
I really am becoming a corporate tool.
I'm going to assume this was said with no small amount of pride.
70 -- I remember that also. Currently Googling for The Editors real name will bring up The Poor Man as the top hit, or anyway it did last time I tried this which was not too long ago.
and from way back, regarding baa's civility, go ahead and lose it. I've lost mine. Our soldiers aren't facing murderers. They are facing soldiers. They aren't protecting our freedom, and I don't think they are preventing an Iraqi civil war--at most they are delaying one. It is silly to think that we can wait out a civil war by keeping troops around an extra year or too. Silly argument upon silly argument leads one to suspect disingenuousness.
Just out of curiosity: how many folks remember the years in which "The Editors" posted under his real name? It's not just me, right? (Note: if you look at archive pages, his name is still on all the first couple of years of posts.)
(I was baffled at the notion that after years of posting under your own name, switching to a pseudonym would work, but I now have to admit that a lot of people act as if it does.) (Similarly "Jane Galt.")
"It seems mannerly to address people as they wish to be addressed...."
Of course. And that's why I didn't repeat the name; I'm just curious how it's working out as measured by impromptu survey here, is all. Yeah, I see Jane's real name more often; not sure why.
Whoops, sorry for the double-posted comment. Plis delete.
Text: Is 79 really a fair reading?. He's saying that the only way to fix the problem is to not depress voters and make marginals not think we're shady, it's not a judgment of the priority you imply. It might be a judgment that fixing election fraud is a higher priority than talking about.
I remember the Editors posting under his real name! I usually call him The Poor Man in other settings; and my feeling is like LB's, call people what they go by. (Galt is a different case since I believe she went from pseudonymous to not; she publishes a lot of stuff under her real name. Also, The Editors' pseudonymity isn't ineffective in that if you Google his real name you get TPMI.)
In re Bowers in 65, why is Bev Harris a nutjob? I'd like to know if this is true.
And dKos just went down so I can't check the comments of that post to see if the issue was addressed.
Perhaps it is unfair. I think that Democrats have been afraid of sounding crazy for too long. Republicans do not share that fear. Rather, they call Democrats crazy. A large portion of the populations responds to being told who is crazy better than being shown who is crazy.
I don't think we can fix election fraud without talking about it. We've been concerned with marginal strategery for too long.
Or, here is my concern: if Bush were actually able to win an election fraudulently--which is not a crazy hypothetical--how would we be able to stop election fraud going forward? The way would not be to win a few more marginal voters. Because, you see, the votes aren't being counted anyway.
If we have reached that point, I fear that we will never get our democracy back. Call me crazy.
Yeah, I remember when The Poor Man was not pseudonymous. That was back when he was funny. Now he's just shrill.
Anyhow, the point is that sitting back and waiting for something to be done about voter fraud is just waiting for Godot. It's really up to us as citizens, not as party members, to do whatever we can about it.
But, you know, what? Writing to our elected representatives? I've done that. Volunteering at the polls? In the past, admittedly not for the last few years. But what else other than talking about it, and working on exposing it to the extent that it's happening? And 88: Me too. It's not that I think it's going to happen, more that I am no longer certain that it can't.
text, never is a long time, but I too believe that it would take several more cycles of Dude!Crazy! results before people stood up en masse and demanded their country back, Velvet-style.
89: Oh please, I have an old comment [link fixed. LB] more NSA-worthy than 88 (link is to thread, not comment, and the comment isn't under the name washerdreyer).
I mean, several elections of Dude! Crazy! results would mean several years of unelected government, spending a good amount of its time figuring out how not to be kicked out.
But then, there's probably a good chance that Bush was duly elected and that nobody is presently considering how to steal future elections.
I actually meant to include the link, though. Parts of that comment, and my not linking directly to it right now, are examples of being uselessly paranoid.
I believe, based on essentially nothing at all, that close elections get stolen, and that there isn't much we can normally do to stop this. So it's important to either win by a sizeable amount, or to own the machinery (e.g., Secretary of State in FL) on the ground.
What I like best is, "Congman Murtha seems to have forgotten the Constitution,and the Bill of Rights, and the fact that in American, you're innocent until proven guilty." Only if you get a trial, fucker.
Well, perhaps his conception of "innocent until proven guilty" disallows saying,/i> someone committed a crime until that alleged crime has been adjudicated in a court of law, but thinks it perfectly acceptable to imprison an American citizen in a naval brig without such process.
Also, I really hope he called Murtha a traitor at some point.
People misuse that boilerplate constantly. You're to be considered innocent before proven guilty by the judge and jury. Random people are, of course, free to say whatever the hell they want.
It's bad form for elected officials to speak up, to be sure, as they might be considered to be poisoning the jury pool. But random citizens? Just a matter of personal judgment.
In Murtha's case, as I've repeatedly pointed out, Congressman John Kline (R) has said the same things as Murtha many times in describing the allged crimes. The only distinction is that Murtha advocates a rapid deployment of troops from Iraq, and Kline doesn't, and, of course, Murtha is an Evil D.; these two things make him a "traitor," a "loser-defeatist," an "exploiter of events in favor of his political agenda," etc., etc. (Heavens, a politician cites facts and allegations in support of his preferred policies: film at 11!)
92: The answer is to get to the polls, or otherwise volunteer on election day, in an informed manner. Go in knowing some of the BS you might run into, and know what to do about it. There are groups such as TechWatch (coordinated by Verified Voting, but I can't find a link on their site) that go observe polling places to watch for technology problems. BlackBoxVoting is likewise devoted to voting technology, though more specifically the issue of paperless voting. The ACLU in 2004 produced "Voter Empowerment Cards" for some states with information like what to do if you were challenged at the poll, what hotline to call for advice, things like that. Name the issue, there's probably a group for it. Start looking for them now, and finding out what to do if you observe problems with the election at a polling place, and then do it.
Also, I remember when The Editors used Their Name.
People misuse that boilerplate constantly. You're to be considered innocent before proven guilty by the judge and jury. Random people are, of course, free to say whatever the hell they want.
That saying 'Hey, aren't people innocent until proven guilty,' in an accusatory fashion when someone points out wrongdoing that has not yet gone to trial is stupid. There is no moral or social obligation on the part of people generally to withhold judgment on a situation until the legal process is complete.
And I mostly agree with Gary about withdrawal. Save that if say Sadr & Hakim manage to take the gov't, ask us to leave, even they I would resist. We could not escape responsibility for the possible ensuing genocide and ethnic cleansing, or full-scale civil war. Luckily, I think Sistani wants us to stay.
I think we are in Iraq forever, folks. We leave when, like Germany, the Iraqis really want us to stay, when we become irrelevant except as cash cow. I want 2008 to be about increasing or changing the resources devoted to making it work.
119: The rules of evidence and rights of the accused are very important to me. I value them highly, even though my rhetoric may not always be consistent with those values. It's rhetoric and polemic.
But as far as I am concerned, OJ is not guilty. I am the last person in America to think so, but there I am. With OJ maybe giggling at me.
Thank you, Bob. I've added a few late additions in the last hour.
I think well of the Scottish possible verdict of "not proven," myself. Yes, it has problematic aspects, but so does having a guilty person go free with "not guilty" (not that I don't prefer to risk that rather than have more innocent people convicted, to be sure).
Let me make it a little clearer. What I might know about a case outside a courtroom is not necessarily what a jury should know. It is very important to me for example, and currently quite relevant, that the fruits of an illegal or improper search be inadmissable. And I would prefer to watch a murderer go free than abandon that principle. Other's discomfort has weakened those protections.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is important both inside and outside the courtroom.
Isn't "innocent until proven guilty" just shorthand for the following principle "No one should be subjected to criminal punishments or similar harms unless the fact that their actions satisfied all elements of the alleged crime has been demonstrated to a very high burden of proof and they have been given an opportunity to attempt to competently rebut (I don't believe in the existence of the "rule" against split infinitives) such demonstration and to present any affirmative defenses if such exist."
I think it is, and therefore that it does not apply to the Murtha situation under discussion.
More properly, doesn't innocent until proven guilty point out only that the State bears the burden of proving guilt; the accused never (in theory but not much in practice) has to prove his or her innocence.
Still, whether or not this phrase exactly and technically applied to what bob mcmanus is saying in 115, I think the sense in 112 and 115 is right, at least to the extent that we should try to keep separate in our minds our suspicions, assumptions or fears regarding what the facts are and statements that try to make stronger claims about the facts.
Notwithstanding the above, I am not sure that Congressman Murtha is subject to the criticism of treating the accused Marines as being guilty, he just said that there were accusations, an investigation and, he had been informed, facts supporting the allegations. Nothing much wrong with that.
116: I don't disagree with what you say about what IUPG means, only I think that there is a broader principle behind such a rule, a principle which migh be thought to apply outside the courtroom, and was trying to enunciate what the principle was.
As for everything else, maybe statements like these two are being conflated, "George Hodel committed the Black Dahlia murder" and "A jury should find George Hodel guilty of the Black Dahlia murder."
I would have responded more quickly, but it took me forever to think of crime I believe was committed by a particular person but that the evidence does not support that belief beyond a reasonable doubt.
it took me forever to think of crime I believe was committed by a particular person but that the evidence does not support that belief beyond a reasonable doubt.
Right, but in a sense that is the case here. We do not know the whole story of what happened at Haditha, all we have are the facts which support the allegations of war crimes. But given that no one has heard from the accused Marines yet, one could not reasonably say that there is evidence of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Again, I do not think that Murtha or LizardBreath or many of the people commenting here have failed to make this distinction in talking about it, I'm just saying that I think it's an important distinction. (to me)
one could not reasonably say that there is evidence of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt....I'm just saying that I think it's an important distinction. (to me)
We're not keeping you from meeting with your comrades at the ACLU, are we, lib?
I went to a couple ACLU meetings in law school. Their commitment to free speech did not extend to wanting to hear my alternative views of civil liberties.
I did not go to law school until I retired from the Army. I graduated less than 10 years ago.
Seriously, though, Nadine Strossen of the ACLU is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, so my comment is mostly about the particular group of people at my school and not the organization as a whole (as far as I know).
I've been a paid-up member of the ACLU at various times when I could afford it.
"Their commitment to free speech did not extend to wanting to hear my alternative views of civil liberties."
But if the government tried to prevent you from airing them, they'd defend you. Freedom of speech doesn't imply that anyone is, or should be, forced to listen to you, as it happens.
I don't have any problem assuming innocence of any particular individual Marines, and that they should get a day in court, with a high burden. The question of American culpability, though, in the Iraqi court of public opinion is another matter entirely. Sure there are going to some people going on a scintilla standard, and nothing is ever going to convince them. But for most people, I'd guess it's a preponderance standard. Trials of individual servicemen on a reasonable doubt standard aren't going to get us off.
And if there's nullification, as I think there was in the Corsetti trial, well, we're definitely going up the river.
I am in no way a so-called "apologist" for terrorists, but the defense of our own "bad apples" raises this question: Immediately, the people in charge of this war cite the fact that these people have seen horrors, including their own friends being killed, and that can really desensitize people and drive people to commit attrocities. Well, the people of Iraq have seen horrors--limbless, bloodied bodies, etc--since this war started and more Iraqi civilians have died as "collateral damage" than people killed on 9/11. So when they decide to kill innocents, why don't they get the "desensitized to violence" defense?
"Seriously, though, Nadine Strossen of the ACLU is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, so my comment is mostly about the particular group of people at my school and not the organization as a whole (as far as I know)."
I've met her, actually. Rather briefly. When Avedon Carol, a friend since ~1975, who was one of the founders of the British group Feminists Against Censorship, and a major speaker in Britain on issues of censorship, particularly as regards pornography (she's entirely against censorship of it), and surrounding issues (Avedon is American, but has lived in Britain, and been married to to a British guy, for about 20+ years now), was in town (NYC) and we were hanging out and she was going in to have lunch with Nadine and asked me if I'd like to come along.
As it happened, Nadine pled busyness, so instead we chatted in her office for around 10-15 minutes, and then had lunch with her assistant, but anyway. Whoop-de-doo.
"So when they decide to kill innocents, why don't they get the 'desensitized to violence' defense?"
Cuz they're Bad Guys, of course. But, seriously, nobody reasonable gives that as an excuse for Our Guys; nobody reasonable confuses an explanation with an excuse. No one in the Marine leadership has spoken up to "defend" murder. (Random civilians or blog commenters, yeah, but there are always people willing to speak up for any POV, no matter how outrageous or disgusting.)
New Salem Pax post, the Republic of Fear, the mayonnaise question again, and new Haditha story:
Marine commanders in Iraq learned within two days of the killings in Haditha last November that Iraqi civilians had died from gunfire, not a roadside bomb as initially reported, but the officers involved saw no reason to investigate further, according to a senior Marine officer.
Everyone will be on this tomorrow. (I should have another roundup then.)
I've definately been shocked by these reports, but we've had reliable reports practically since the beginning of this adventure of soldiers killing families by accident, or executing disarmed insurgents. Can't say I care too much about the latter. (I would if I thought that taking the moral high ground in those situations would have any effect. But I doubt it. And the insurgents should all go fuck themselves over a cliff, anyway. Ah well.)
Re: withdrawal. First, I don't think full pull-out is an even on the table at the moment, not with current leadership. Permanent bases, remember? I'm not even sure a Democratic leadership would change the official US position vis-a-vis those.
Second, is there any point to keeping our troops there? There have been a few out-of-hand dismissals of this possibility in this thread. I'm guessing these opinions are inferrences based upon past performance. But that reasoning is too loose to satisfy me. Reports indicate that sectarian violence in Iraq is on the rise and getting nastier. If we pull out, it seems that we'll watch a huminitarian crisis worse than Rwanda. That's real hard to stomach. If we let that happen, we can kiss whatever shreds of national credibility we have goodbye. And I know that the muslim world is ticked at us now, but won't the converting of Iraq into a killing fields multiply their antipathy towards us?
These are high prices to pay, and they're why I can't support withdrawal. I don't know if we can stop an all-out civil war, but we should try. I know there's not a lot to be done when sectarian hatred is so broadly spread among the populace. Honestly, to me, the best option seems to split the country into three parts. Sure, some people would get mad about that, but considerably less mad than if a horrible civil war was let loose.
Dunno, you've got the blue states on the West Coast, the Northeast and Great Lakes states, and then everything else. Seems pretty workable. (I'll go back and read the thread now.)
but we've had reliable reports practically since the beginning of this adventure of soldiers killing families by accident, or executing disarmed insurgents. Can't say I care too much about the latter.
At least one reason we care about the latter is because we worry that not caring will lead to things like Haditha.
Dunno, you've got the blue states on the West Coast, the Northeast and Great Lakes states, and then everything else. Seems pretty workable.
Basically, we need a Union party, if only to create a mythos that claims a set of shared values that need to protected, and that compels people to vote for Dems as a means of protecting those values.
Seems like a good idea until you get into the specifics of it, at which point it becomes very obviously unworkable.
Absolutely? I'm imagining a logistical and authoritative nightmare, but a nightmare that's preferable to the nightmare of unleashed civil war. Of course, does it need to be said that I'm out of depth here?
At least one reason we care about the latter is because we worry that not caring will lead to things like Haditha.
I'm being lazy, but it was upthread here or somewhere else where someone reacted to the news that the marines were now to undergo ethics training with a "now they're doing ethics training??" I don't sympathize with that snark because the position has been taken, as law, as common sense, that most people possess basic agreed-upon values, such as "don't shoot unarmed civilians, particularly women and kids." It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents. Ergo, I don't see a slippery slope between executing the former on the battlefield and Haditha.
It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents.
I think there is a strong agreed-upon opinion that this is against the normal laws of war. And deciding that those laws don't apply because the combatants are illegal or some such is a big stride down the slippery slope -- we've already seen this with the suspension of the Geneva Conventions for a bunch of prisoners who then mysteriously got tortured, sometimes to death, even when everyone knew they were innocent.
It was for a long time a custom, at least in europe and japan, that if you took up arms against another person, and lost, your life was forfeit. Mercy, or quarter, was a nice gesture, but it wasn't immoral not to give it. I'm bringing this up because I think it resonates a bit with our intuitions. I agree that many people are aware that executing a disarmed combatent is against the laws of war. But would people do it anyway? Especially the type of people who go to war - what is their moral intuition about this? That's what I meant about it being a bit of a grey area. (To further complicate things, there's possibly also the worry that the surrendering combatant might have a bomb.) I'm not 100% on this, but I still think there's a difference in moral intuition between responding to a combatent and unarmed noncombatents.
re: killing innocent prisoners. How good is our information here that they were innocent? The killing by itself is very, very bad, for all sorts of reasons I don't need to deliniate. But, as to actually saying that they were innocent, AFAIK we have only circumstancial evidence and the prisoners' testimony - not the most reliable thing. I'm not even going to say it's even unlikely that we've drowned/beat to death innocent people to death, but I'm really holding out hope that such is not the case.
136: The problem is that the ethnic groups in question aren't neatly divided among their 'areas'. Once you split up the country, the minorities in each area get ethnically cleansed or massacred, and we're not talking about insignificant numbers here. (Oh, and the Turks invade Kurdistan.)
It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents.
Just to be clear, if we had only guilty prisoners in Abu Gharib, you think it accords with the intuitions of most people that it would have been OK if we'd just walked the cells and shot them all? I don't think that's at all true. I certainly wouldn't want other armies to treat US soldiers that way.
How good is our information here that they were innocent?
Quite good in some cases -- for instance, that cab driver who got beaten to death in Afghanistan. It's my understanding that there's no positive evidence to show that he ever performed an agressive act against the US (I haven't rechecked -- I could be wrong. But that's how I remember the coverage.)
And the European law of war has forbidden the killing of surrendered prisoners for getting up to a millenium now. If you google "Henry V", "law of war" and "Prisoners" (I haven't, but it should work) you should find some discussions of the medieval law of war in this regard).
141: One point is that, in order to start down a slippery slope to something everyone (but the LGFosphere) agrees is wrong, like massacring innocent civilians, you don't need to start with little things that everyone agrees is wrong. You can start with big things on which there is some dissent, but that are in important ways like massacring unarmed civilians -- in this case, they involve killing people who are just lying there and aren't now any threat to you.
Another is what LB said in 144 part 2. You can go back less far and find lots of people whose intuition was that slavery was OK; this doesn't mean anything for our moral reasoning now.
"Seems like a good idea until you get into the specifics of it, at which point it becomes very obviously unworkable."
No more or less unworkable than the Pakistan/India split. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people died in that. Similarly the population shifts in Europe in the post-WWII period. Or Stalin moving people around.
All immensely horrible on an almost unimaginable scale. But not uncommon events in history, which is far more bloody than we like to think about.
I'm not advocating this in the slightest. I'm just saying that "unworkable" in this context doesn't mean "can't happen."
142: "Once you split up the country, the minorities in each area get ethnically cleansed or massacred, and we're not talking about insignificant numbers here."
Yup.
" (Oh, and the Turks invade Kurdistan.)"
What worries me more and most about this scenario is not just that, but that potentially Saudi Arabia and maybe even Jordan and Syria and other Sunni states come in to aid and maybe fight besides the Iraqi Sunnis, and Iran on the side of Iraqi Shiites, and the whole region melts down, at least for a while. That would be yet far worse, obviously, than Iraqi-internal ethnic cleansing, massacres, and population transfers.
"Quite good in some cases -- for instance, that cab driver who got beaten to death in Afghanistan."
Dilawar, the guy the soldiers found entertaining to give a peroneal strike to to hear him scream "Allah!" Until he died. Read about him.
There are more than three groups in Iraq, they are intermixed throughout, and about a quarter of the population lives in Baghdad. Giving the Sunnis just the areas where they are the majority leaves them with no natural resources to speak of, consigning them to abject poverty compared to the two other regions. They will never in a million years accept that.
This is quite late on the thread, but an election law professor in Ohio has posted a
persuasive analysis of Kennedy's article in Rolling Stone. The gist is that while Ohio's 2004 election was fraught with error including partisan manipulation, the credible evidence doesn't show that Kerry would have won absent the errors & fraud.
From the link -- "To believe that the exit polls prove election fraud, you have to believe that a group of people somehow managed to orchestrate the manipulation of results in not just one but in many counties, all of which run their own elections."
Yup. I'm tired of this argument. I do not find it persuasive.
143: No, b/c then you're off the battlefield, and you've accepted the combatents' surrender. It seems inarguable that we have a "no backsies" moral intuition here.
Matt, I'm thinking about the slippery slope argument...
Apo, you've convinced me that the partitioning is probably impossible. (with the resources argument. I was prepared to accept moving populations around. What else can you do with peoples that want to end each other?)
Although that does answer one of my questions -- the downticket race cited in the RFK article. If the race in question was non-partisan, so that the voters didn't necessarily know the political affiliation of the candidates, then that fact doesn't necessarily need much explanation.
If the race in question was non-partisan, so that the voters didn't necessarily know the political affiliation of the candidates, then that fact doesn't necessarily need much explanation
I'm not entirely sure of what you are getting at here, but the downticket issue is discussed in the article linked to in 150, and the points made there make sense to me.
Yeah, that was what I meant to say. Kerry being wildly outpolled by a judge running on the Democratic line struck me as completely inexplicable. After reading the article linked in 150, Kerry being wildly outpolled by a judge not running on the Democratic line is less weird. (Still might be weird based on the facts on the ground, but it's not wildly implausible on its face.)
No, b/c then you're off the battlefield, and you've accepted the combatents' surrender.
What? So the crucial issue here is being on the battlefield? Presumably, disarmed combatants have surrendered. If all you're saying is that we should be allowed to shoot a combatant who throws down his gun and runs away, I agree. But that seems trivially true. If you're saying that the important issue is that the combatant has surrendered, but is on the battlefield...so what?
The crucial issue, it seems to me, is that the combatant either does or does not continue to be a threat, now or in the future. Whether this is true on the battlefield or jail. If that's not the issue, I really don't see why we can't shoot them in jail. And if it's OK to shoot them, it's OK (at least at the levels we know about) to torture them.
Tim, I'm not actually trying to advocate a position, here. I was arguing in support of a)I don't care that much if they kill these guys because b) I don't see a slippery slope. My (b) was too simple, and I'm rethinking it.
The moral choice I was considering was that, at the time of the throwing down of the gun, the winner of the situation has a choice of whether or not the accept the surrender. You argue that there is no choice - the surrender must be accepted.
But, sidestepping for now, I don't see why recognizing a choice at the moment of surrender would negate POW rights once a surrender is accepted.
157: I just meant that you're either in (what amounts to) custody or you aren't, battlefield or not. If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail. I don't see what waiting for transportation has to do with it.
I don't see why recognizing a choice at the moment of surrender would negate POW rights once a surrender is accepted.
At a minimum, if you make unclear whether unambigous surrender will be accepted, you make surrender less likely.
If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail.
If you refuse mercy, you haven't taken them into your custody. If you accept the surrender, you have.
At a minimum, if you make unclear whether unambigous surrender will be accepted, you make surrender less likely.
Certainly. A good point. But doing things like this:
In the battle for Fallujah the insurgents feigned surrender, waving white flags to approach within killing range of U.S. Marines and Iraqi government forces...They booby-trapped their fallen comrades' corpses and shot at crews trying to collect the Muslim dead.
Does make it hard to play fair and accept all surrenderings.
Charley, I don't understand the point of your questions, but, okay:
a) Where two sides face off in combat
b) a person willing to kill another person with violence
c) possessing a weapon solely used to facilitate killing.
and, the answer to the other question is that it's a descriptive claim. You can think of it in legal, moral, and pragmatic terms.
I'll leave you, Michael, from this bit of Article 3 of the First Geneva Convention:
1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
Michael, I take it, then , that an insurgent's house isn't a 'battlefield' unless he uses it to engage in hostilities. Other then while he is so using it. And a bus that a member of AQ is riding from his hiding place to visit his sick mother isn't a battlefield either.
Does make it hard to play fair and accept all surrenderings.
Michael, I'm not sure I have followed exactly where this argument is going, so forgive me if I have missed your point, but if I understand it correctly, this is nothing new. No enemy the US has fought since World War II has made much of an effort to follow the Law of War with respect to their treatment of our soldiers. Our soldiers have been routinely tortured, killed after surrendering, etc. Even so, we have consistently (and correctly, IMHO) taken the view that we will, nonetheless follow the Law of War. We do so for pragmatic reasons (international opinion, winning hearts and minds, etc.) and for reasons of principle. There is nothing new about what is going on in Irag that should change that position.
Descriptive? Really? So when you said, "the winner of the situation has a choice of whether or not the accept the surrender," you were using choice the same way I use it when I say "I have the choice to take the letter-opener out of my desk and go on a rampage through my office, because summer associates aren't supposed to work weekends"?
My understanding was that they spend 10 or so weeks trying to seduce us, so that they can "[show us] what the practice of law in New York is like" after we've committed a greater amount of our time to them.
Also, I don't really care, as I volunteered for an assignment yesterday after being explicitly told it would require working at least part of this weekend. But I wasn't told prior to excepting that the assignment was to compare two 175 page documents and mark the ways in which one differs from the other.
Our soldiers have been routinely tortured, killed after surrendering, etc.
Well, this isn't the point, although it is still entirely possible that my real point is nothing new. The point was that, and my knowledge is imperfect on this, that it seems that the insurgents feign-surrender. So, you see weapons dropped and white flags and people cowering on the ground...have they really surrendered or do they have hidden arms/bombs? Do you risk your life and your buddies' lives on the bet that they're really surrendering?
Yes, Deltaview can do this. From the conversation I had when I took the assignment, I'm fairly sure the assinger wants me to do it manually, lord knows why.
"If all you're saying is that we should be allowed to shoot a combatant who throws down his gun and runs away, I agree. But that seems trivially true."
Um, not according to the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war, last I looked. It's execution and a war crime, and we convicted many Germans and Japanese of this crime.
This is not a small point. It's murder, rather than a legitimate act of war.
159: "If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail."
Yeah, but if you do, you should wind up in jail for the rest of your life, absent extenuating circumstance. Again, this is a war crime, and a major reason so many Germans were tried.
"But I wasn't told prior to excepting that the assignment was to compare two 175 page documents and mark the ways in which one differs from the other."
Whether proofreading or copyediting a novel or other book, I must have done this to twice or thrice sized documents hundreds of times; I'm unclear -- are you indicating this is unreasonable, or extra effort, or what?
175 pages is light -- a half-day job, maybe a full-day job, depending. If unusual, maybe a two-day job. Conceivably more, but tackling a 700-page job is more of an effort, but not unusual. Perhaps there's something unusual about the job? (I generally got ~$14/hr.)
I'm thinking maybe you also meant "accepting," since I can't make sense of "prior to excepting."
I certainly meant accepting, stupid mistake on my part. I was simply hoping the work would be more interesting, not suggesting that it's an unreasonable thing to ask me to do. Neither do I think 175 pages is unduly lengthy and nowhere suggested that it would take me more than one day.
I must have done this to twice or thrice sized documents hundreds of times
I'm unclear, do you want us to acknowledge your heady proofreading experience, or do you want us to sympathize with the hard work you've done?
175 pages is light -- a half-day job, maybe a full-day job, depending.
I'm unclear. Is this meant to brag that you're really fast, or is it meant to say that w/d shouldn't fret about it taking too much time, or to say that w/d is making a big deal out of nothing?
I generally got ~$14/hr.
I'm unclear. Is this bragging about how you did great work with little pay, or with what you considered a lot of pay?
176: but a legal document? 175 pages of legal document is like 17,500 pages of anything else. Back when I was doing legal proofreading, it was always a two person job: one to read, one to mark discrepancies, and both to kick each other awake.
179: I responded in what I thought was a reasonable manner, though I was a little annoyed by your comment (I'm not sure what about it annoyed me) and now you read one comment questioning your tone and feel alienated? That seems like an over-reaction, though I understand that different people read things different ways.
181: That's how we do it on my journal, and it works really well, but not how I'm doing it at this job.
'176: but a legal document? 175 pages of legal document is like 17,500 pages of anything else. Back when I was doing legal proofreading, it was always a two person job: one to read, one to mark discrepancies, and both to kick each other awake."
Man, I wish it worked that way back when I was being paid for legal proofreading on my own in the Eighties. I could have made twice as much.
Yes, Deltaview can do this. From the conversation I had when I took the assignment, I'm fairly sure the assinger wants me to do it manually, lord knows why.
That is fucked up for so many reasons I'm not sure where to begin. Really, the practice of law--even in a big New York law firm--is not supposed to be this astonishingly stupid.
But my time is, according to what we were told in summer associate orientation, billed at a discounted number of hours based on how long it should take someone to do things. Also, how's the new job and city treating you?
right, as a summer associate you should really just be writing research memos. Infrequently. My other thought was that some first or second year associate had stuck you with this, without bothering to think up the most effecient means of completing the project. You should know, if that's the case, that the first or second year associate will have absolutely no say as to your offer.
WD -- Maybe he/she wants to see how good an eye you've got. Because there are going to be times in your career when you'll have to compare documents manually.
There are a few of us old farts who have the temerity to demand that junior lawyers learn to do basic research by hand -- using actual books -- and do it often enough to stay proficient. Why, why, they cry. Because you never know when you'll have to do it.
Two months ago, I got a 5 minute break so I could send an associate to the courthouse library to find and fetch a case on an unforseen point of law raised by the other guys. I didn't think the other guy was right, and it turned out he wasn't -- but I wouldn't have been able to show it without a couple of cases, and I wouldn't have had them if my associate didn't know how to use books.
Obviously I have no idea what your assignment is about. Maybe the assignor is an idiot or a sadist. No matter -- it's good practice using your own abilities. My advice is to embrace it.
CharleyCarp, I will grant you that it is good to know, for example, how to look things up in books as well as on the computer. However, comparing documents by hand when you can do it electronically is bad for a number of reasons. First, it is a gross waste of time, time for which a client may be billed. Summer associates need to learn that they have a duty to the client to do things in the most efficient manner, rather than to churn work on the theory that the client will never notice. Of course, if the partner responsible for the bills knows about the wasted time, the partner can write the time off, but what are the chances that the relationship partner knows? Second, this is not preparation for practice. If I were in a situation where I needed two documents compared and it was not possible to do it electonically (unlikely, given the availability of OCR software to make hard-copy documents into electronic files), I would have a paralegal do the time-consuming work of finding the changes, not a lawyer--the paralegal should be just as able to find wording changes as a lawyer, and costs the client half as much. Indeed, when I was at a big firm, in the few instances when we needed things hand-compared, we gave the task to proofreaders, who cost the client even less and who did the job even better. IMHO, whoever gave washerdreyer this task is teaching him a bunch of things wrong about the practice of law.
Sorry for the rant. This is a pet peeve--there is enough necessary tedium in legal practice without adding stupid, inefficient, wastes the client's money tedium to the mix.
I'll grant you that thoughtlessness is the more likely explanation. And that an effective course of action for WD would have been to offer to do it electronically, and if that's refused, do it manually, and then check it electronically.
I certainly agree that one need not be a lawyer for this task. And that someone with other training (Mr. Farber, for example) is a better choice.
I wouldn't prefer a paralegal over a summer associate for a number of tasks, especially the more tedious and more transient. First, they're not always cheaper. (Mine aren't). Second, I want to use my paralegals, who after all are going to be here as the matter develops over the next several months, not get rotated over somewhere else next week, for tasks that build intellectual capital. Finally, and frankly, a good paralegal is worth more to me, over the next 3 or 4 years, than some new associate. Even if I'm not paying them as much. Great ones are not easy to find, and they're highly sought after.
I presume that the client won't see much, if any, of a bill for this.
If I might venture off the deep end in terms of speculation, I'll wonder aloud if in the political configuration of WD's firm, a summer associate is about the only person the assigning person can order around, inasmuch as he/she must share secretaries, paralegals, document clerks, etc. with people with greater pull and higher priority. I don't think a lesson in powerlessness -- if this is what it is -- is that far out of place in a big city law firm.
At least at the firm I'm working at, I'm pretty sure that clients aren't getting billed for anything we do. That's because they are, in my opinion, giving us way too much time to do stuff on the theory that we know basically nothing. For example, I was given an assignment last week; the estimated time on it was eight hours, and it ended up taking me about an hour and fifteen of actual work.
Despite the fact that clients clearly aren't being billed, we're supposed to bill eight hours a day anyway.
"Finally, and frankly, a good paralegal is worth more to me, over the next 3 or 4 years, than some new associate."
As a long-ago, self-created, sorta-auto-didact semi-paralegal (who managed to get paid for the faking of it a few times, decades ago), I'm glad to hear it.
I'll wonder aloud if in the political configuration of WD's firm, a summer associate is about the only person the assigning person can order around, inasmuch as he/she must share secretaries, paralegals, document clerks, etc. with people with greater pull and higher priority.
Likely true. And it also is true that managing summer associates is an important learning experience for junior associates, and that mistakes will be made as they learn. But still, the task washerdryer describes is like something out of Anonymous Lawyer. It's far from the worst I've ever heard, but it's not good.
Not long after writing 194, I went to lunch, and as I was walking along the street, came upon three young folks discussing, with some animation, a footnote in a brief I'd filed last night, to which the response is due tomorrow.
They seemed too excited to be real associates, and young enough to be summers.
Note to summer associates: don't discuss strategy on street corners. Especially not within a block of the offices of opposing counsel whom you would not recognize.
CC: Just so I better estimate how worried I should be about occassions on which I fail to follow that advice, how many firms are still all the way downtown? Fried Frank is across the street from me, I'm not typing the name of the firm I'm working at, who else?
Notwithstanding that the center of gravity of big New York law forms is in mid-town, there still are a number of big firms downtown. And, of course, a lot more small firms like the one I'm in. As in mid-town, you can't swing a dead cat down here without hitting a lawyer.
Yeah. It's a preliminary matter in a fast moving case. We argued the issue, prior to anything being filed by anyone, on Friday, and got a scheduling order later that day. I filed Saturday, the other guy files Monday, and the judge says he'll rule Tuesday.
electronic filing is a godsend, except when you are stuck implementing changes until midnight because it no longer matters that the courthouse closes at 5.
still, in my very limited experience, it's a rare case where the judge sets a saturday deadline for a brief.
it's also a rare case where a partner would file his own brief, or where three summer associates from the opposing firm would have read the brief the day after it was filed, on a Sunday, in order to discuss a footnote in the streets.
But then again I've only been out of law school two years. At any rate, W/D, take heed not to discuss any footnotes in the streets--not animatedly, at least.
Text: it's a TRO case, but the TRO has been mooted by the other side's agreement to maintain the status quo for 6 weeks, and the court's committment to dispose of the case, on the merits, in that time.
As for doing my own filing, obviously I don't do it when my secretary is here, or one of my crack associates. (And I made the Saturday filing from home, after watching a movie). I'll be doing more of it for a while, as explained in the Rage post on my blog-let.
Having followed that link and read a couple of posts, I'm trying to figure out what comment in this thread made me think CC was commenting from New York.
I've mentioned my husband's unfortunate last name: replacing it with a reasonable equivalent, he once worked at a small company with three employees: Weiner, Woody, and Cox.
But can we stop killing people?
WHAT?! What would wanna do that for??? Killing people and blowing shit up is the best part of war!
Why would you wanna stop NOW?!?! We're just getting to the best part! I've got my popcorn and everything!
Satan
['I especially love those humanitarian interventions. Heh. Heh. Heh. I love humanitarians.']
Posted by Satan | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 6:59 PM
What's equally troubling is that these two are the ones we have evidence for, and you have to suspect there are more that we don't. This is very, very bad and likely to get worse.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:20 PM
No, no, apo. Like Abu Ghraib, it's just a few bad apples.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:22 PM
Whenever I read these stories (assuming this is all correct), I always think that it seems entirely predictable that this happens. I have no idea how I would behave in a war, and God willing, I'll never have to find out. But I have to think that large periods of time spent worrying about dying and wondering whether someone you see every day has a hand in it, can't be good. I don't know what's normal, but three tours, including Faluja--honest to God, I feel for everyone involved, both the dead and their killers. I just can't believe these things happen independent of immense stress.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:37 PM
it's just a few bad apples.
I think this is actually true. It's just that the longer you leave apples out, the more of them go bad.
Let's bring 'em home before the whole crop spoils.
Posted by Big Ben | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:42 PM
I think "these things" happen under reasonably well-known circumstances.
The U.S. army has never been trained to act as a permanent occupying force and until WWII, no part of the U.S. military had a formal doctrine for fighting guerrilla wars. Even after WWII, the doctrine has been allowed to take a back seat.
So you get these situations, where people who have not been trained to do a job, are asked to do it under circumstnaces in which even a highly and specifically trained force would find it difficult. So yes, they begin to shoot back too quickly. So yes, they begin to shoot people fairly indiscriminately, pour encourager les autres.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:46 PM
That's what I get for saving this for the morning summary, along with the various other links. (It's not a new story, but you'll have to wait for my post, I guess.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:52 PM
"Please, can we just bring our armed forces home?"
I'd prefer to wait for the Iraqis to ask, though. That's apt to start a big argument, I know. But I think their views are more important than the views of Americans as regards this.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:53 PM
When you say not a new story, you mean that the accusations of the Iraqi police were reported back in March? The confirming videotape is new, I think.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:56 PM
Which Iraqis? I believe polls say that the population, if not the government, wants us gone.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 7:58 PM
It is very terrible to hear that US troops may have murdered civilians in cold blood. It is perhaps the most terrible thing an American citizen can ever hear. But the response LB suggests simply cannot be the way American policy in Iraq is decided. These atrocities - and let us pray that the reports prove inaccurate - horrify. Yet in the month of April alone 979 Iraqi civilians were killed; the vast majority, if the linked source is to be credited, were not killed by coalition soldiers. If the claim is that removing US troops will lead to better results for Iraqis, then let us have that argument. If the claim is that our duty to our own troops necessitates our removing them even if this leads to worse results for Iraqis, then we should have that argument too. Sadly, one option that does not remain to us is to just “stop killing people”: not if we ever want to oppose force. But of course, everyone here knew that already.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:09 PM
It is perhaps the most terrible thing an American citizen can ever hear.
Honestly, it's really not.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:14 PM
There's a third option, too, which is that even though removing U.S. troops may lead to civil war/more Iraqi deaths in the short run, that our continued presence is politically so inflammatory and destructive that we may have to just accept that we should never have gone in, that we've really fucked up, that we cannot fix it, and that the Iraqis themselves are going to live (and die) with that reality for who knows how long. There really may not be a "better" solution.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:15 PM
>Honestly, it's really not
Is "you have killed your father and married your mother" what you had in mind?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:16 PM
13: I had accepted that option long before we went in. There was never going to be a good outcome to this. And this is nothing compared to what awaits us if someone doesn't stop the lunatics in charge from attacking Iran.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:26 PM
14: No, it's my old bugaboo of Padilla. I really don't understand why people weren't more bothered by that. I order my liberties: life, liberty, property. We can debate where the various flavors of liberties go and how they're ordered, but physical liberty has to be at the top of the list. The govt. announced it could take away that liberty from a citizen on the basis of its own discretion, and nobody blinked. I still can't believe that. It was at exactly that moment that I became alive to the possibility that neither Emerson nor mcmanus were entirely crazy.
Here, as in Haditha, we have unsanctioned action that the perpetrators knew was wrong. That's criminal activity, and it happens in the States. What is particularly worrisome here is that (a) our military did it, (b) we all sort of suspect that it happened because the military is over there, (c) we think it might be more widespread than we know, and (d) we believe there are going to be more opportunities for this to happen. It's terrible. But it's not sanctioned, it's not US citizens, and we properly expect the US public to be angry and upset about this. This bothers me a lot less.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:36 PM
Yeah, I agree, Apo. That's what makes the whole thing so awful.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:43 PM
11: Sure, we should have that argument, I was too sad to spell it out in the post. After three years of occupation, we aren't visibly bringing Iraq any nearer to a state of peaceful stability; after stories like this, and like Abu Ghraib, and like every story about an Iraqi civilian being accidentally killed by the US military, I cannot believe that US forces are anything other than a source of fear and disruption to the Iraqi people.
Our leaving may not make things any better, but I don't see a strong reason to believe that it will make things worse, and at least we can stop sponsoring the commission of these terrible crimes.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:49 PM
baa, I don't know if you read apo's link in 2, but I think it's an important thing to read. If conditions for the marines are not as described in that link, that would make me happy, but I'd like to see the source. If conditions are as described, I wonder what options you have in mind to change the situation? Do you think it's just a matter of shuffling around the forces we have more efficiently? Increased ethics training? A draft?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm honestly curious what you think should be done. I don't have any good ideas myself, which leads me to lean strongly towards the "get the hell out; it's not a good choice, but it's the best we can do" solution.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:49 PM
M/tch, I don't have any particular expertise on military affairs to bring to bear. I do think the presence of coalition forces is preventing murder on a larger scale than we have seen to date; but I can't pretend to know how to make their efforts more efficient/moral/selective. It doesn't seem obvious to me why the current war effort requires that marines live in such appaling conditions, but smarter, more experienced, and better men than me will need to provide the answers.
LB, I agree if one thinks that US troops aren't acomplishing anything, then it makes sense to get them home. But don't you think it's very likely that the presence of an overwhelming force makes a real shooting civil war and ethnic cleansing/murder on large scale less likely?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:06 PM
In other depressing news, this is worth a read.
Hat tip: apostropher
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:06 PM
It doesn't seem obvious to me why the current war effort requires that marines live in such appaling conditions, but smarter, more experienced, and better men than me will need to provide the answers.
Um, how do we know who are the smarter, more experienced, and better men? What sort of model for a democracy fighting a war do you have in mind?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:15 PM
I think it may postpone it, in favor of a seething low-level civil war. I don't think our presence there is causing the situation to move toward a state where we will be able to leave without precipitating an intensified war. I don't have a good solution, but keeping the lower intensity civil war bubbling along forever doesn't seem like one either.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:15 PM
But don't you think it's very likely that the presence of an overwhelming force makes a real shooting civil war and ethnic cleansing/murder on large scale less likely?
I don't think we do have an overwhelming force there. It can apparently overwhelm unarmed men, women and children, but that's a pretty low bar. The calls for actually deploying an overwhelming force, made by what I would think would definitely qualify as smarter, more experienced, and better men, have been consistently disparaged by this administration since even before the invasion.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:20 PM
The argument in 11 is consistently delivered with no acknowledgement of how the United States armed forces came to be in this position, where there are no good options. It is properly read with a gloating delivery, and paraphrased as "Heh. Suckers. Guess you're in a tight spot now right?"
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:26 PM
>It can apparently overwhelm unarmed men, women and children, but that's a pretty low bar.
Well that was snarky M/tch. So much so, and so unfairly at the expense of soldiers who spend most of their time hunting murderers with guns, that I am tempted to suspend my general good humor. That never helps, of course, so I'll keep it clean. Sure, the coaliation forces don't have Iraq wrapped up. Would that they did. But if you think a Shiite army could march on a Sunni city and kill everyone with the US army around, you are part of the alternate-reality based community. Could such an event occur with no US troops present. I fear it could.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:28 PM
Oh honestly, Modesto, you read that as gloating? I have not the words.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:30 PM
I think I'm a bit with baa, here. I don't know that we can prevent the low-level civil war, but I think we can prevent it from just exploding. At this point, I think the best we can do is to take each group aside and tell them that we'll abide by whatever deal to which they all agree, as long as it's within certain broad (humanitarian) parameters. If someone tries to force worse terms on the other parties, we'll come in on the other side until everyone gets back to the table. FWIW, I think this can also be done (I assume) with Murtha's over the horizon force. Also, I'm not looking to leave Iraq better than it was under Hussein, just better than it will be (at the worst) if we leave.
For me, the limiting factor is our willingness (as a country) to stay. If we're unwilling to stay until such a deal can be forced, we might as well leave now. And, in my heart, I suspect that's where we are.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:31 PM
Are you then upset that the US sent its armed forces into Iraq? Do you have any regrets about that? Or is what's done done, and best to move on? I didn't read any reflection in 11 about how this situation came about.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:34 PM
29 -> 27
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:34 PM
I really don't see what's wrong with baa's 11, but I'm more despairing. If we still had the ability to work on civilian infrastructure (utlities, etc.) with a certain degree of safety I'd think we still had the chance to do more than be a barrier between today's conditions and civil war. Like Tim, I doubt we can stay a barrier longer than these conditions will last.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:40 PM
8: It's not at all clear to me that the people who should be voting are the currently living Iraqis, they know they haven't died yet, and will assess things differently. I don't claim to know how to get the opinion of Iraqis who have died since the start, but we need to get it.
19: I don't have reason to think that many small-scale conflicts of either the same or greater duration in time will be better, and it seems like that's what'll happen with continued deployment.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:42 PM
That should be: "what's so wrong." I can see the disagreement, but not to the level of seeing it as gloating.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:42 PM
Is Satan in 1 Ash?
32 posted and written when the last thing I'd seen was 25.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:46 PM
I don't think you can really call the civil war low level any longer. The civilian death rate is higher than Lebanon at the height of theirs. Will things get worse if we pull out? Yeah, probably. But we're going to pull out eventually, and things will get worse then anyhow. We aren't making progress toward building a peaceful society there. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is exactly why we never should have invaded in the first place.
It might sound callous—and god knows it's morally bankrupt after we shattered their country—but just going ahead and ripping off the band-aid is the least bad option left. The ethnic cleansing is already happening. Dozens of bodies with electric drill holes are showing up on the streets every day. Formerly calm spots like Basra are spiralling out of control. We don't control shit in Anbar any longer. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are internal refugees.
It's fucked up beyond belief and we don't even understand the conflicts, much less have any clue how to resolve them. I'm increasingly convinced we're only there to spark a dispute with Iran (funny how we've managed to insert large numbers of troops into the countries that border Iran on both sides).
Time to get out. Half a trillion dollars is enough.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:50 PM
SCMT,
I am less sanguine about the over the horizon force, but I agree that forcing a workable political solution is job one for the US right now. Also, I haven't been meaning to dodge your point about Padilla, I just don't have much useful to say.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:51 PM
35: "we're only there" s/b "we're primarily there"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:56 PM
we'll abide by whatever deal to which they all agree
Unfortunately, no such deal exists.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:04 PM
35 is my thinking exactly (well, maybe I'm less sure about our intentionality with respect to Iran).
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:04 PM
Well that was snarky M/tch. So much so, and so unfairly at the expense of soldiers who spend most of their time hunting murderers with guns, that I am tempted to suspend my general good humor.
Perhaps it came across as snarky, but it wasn't meant to be, and certainly not at the expense of our soldiers and marines. We've put them in a situation where it seems, based on these reports, that they don't have the force necessary to actually control things, i.e. overwhelming force, but obviously they do have the force to take out their understandable frustrations under incredible stress on innocents. It's our responsibility for putting them in this situation, and it bears discussing.
Meanwhile, to (yes, unfairly) parody your response to 19, you say, "who knows?" So you feel qualified to say that you think we're doing more good than harm by staying in Iraq, but you don't feel qualified to say whether you think that we're devoting enough resource to the job, or whether you tend to think, e.g. Shinseki was more right, or whether Rumsfield was more right, regarding necessary force levels.
I really am not wanting to be snarky, baa. This is an incredibly depressing topic, and I see no good solutions to it, but I want the best, both for our country and for Iraqis. I would honestly appreciate your thoughts on the question posed in 22, and on the general question ofwhether you think we're devoting sufficient resources to the war in Iraq.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:08 PM
The civilian death rate is higher than Lebanon at the height of theirs.
I have a Lebanese friend who, when drunk and pushed, will say that he is glad Syria came in, because it stopped the worst of the civil war and yielded something like order. The awful truth, I worry, is that it can get so much worse in Iraq. And perhaps from there it spreads. Again, I'm willing to leave, greatfully, if we can get them to "worse than under Saddam, but stable." We'll still be jerks, and reviled throughout the world, our reputation in the ME will be dead for a long while, but maybe that's the best of a bad situation.
Also, I haven't been meaning to dodge your point about Padilla, I just don't have much useful to say.
I'm not sure I have that much useful to say either. (Except that Luttig's a complete whore and should be forcibly exiled from the country.) It just remains one of those things that shocks me every day; it's much more in the front of my mind than 9/11, for example. Different strokes, I guess.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:15 PM
he is glad Syria came in
And it would be better if Syria and Iran came in than for us to be there. This is the shitty hand we have dealt ourselves.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:21 PM
The studies were done after Korea, when the experienced reservists did not perform to expectations. Combat:30 days sustained, 90 days lifetime. Then battle fatigue sets in, exhibited in a variety of ways, from suicide to fragging to PTSD to brutalization. I don't think any soldier in Vietnam saw this much combat, I am almost certain no WWII infantryman faced bullets like this. This was absolutely predictable, had been predicted, so must be intended. I think to "sharpen the knife" for the next war, abroad or at home.
Watched "Band of Brothers" the other day. Last episode, Major is told by general that firing his weapon in two events and commanding two others from a distance is plenty of experience to get stars.
Watching all 9 hours, I doubt that Easy Company or the 101st saw that 90 days:5 shooting days in Normandy, 10 days in France, 30 days in Bastogne, 5 days in Germany and they were the superstars of combat. Especially the 20 that survived all the way from Normandy.
This isn't news. It wasn't chickenshit that officers were rotated so fast in Vietnam. Combat kills minds or creates monsters. 3 tours, always looking to get blown up or shot? Lost 30 guys in the Company? Murtha knows what's going on. It is intentional. It is evil. You can guess the plan as well as I.
And I'm sorry, the answer is not in peace. There is no peace. We are too big too powerful, we have air and sea dominance everywhere, and our supriority will be exercised. If not by the next, then by the one after that. The answer is a really big military, several times the present size, and liberals willing to use it wisely. The choice is not no Empire, Empire is what we are, we can't resign or retire. The choice is Marcus Aurelius or Caligula.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:21 PM
Except that Luttig's a complete whore and should be forcibly exiled from the country.
Can we send Yoo with him too?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:22 PM
Hell, Bush may be deliberately wrecking the Army so whoever follows him can't be a "War President"
He really is radically evil.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:31 PM
mcmanus: I don't think any soldier in Vietnam saw this much combat, I am almost certain no WWII infantryman faced bullets like this.
By "soldier in Vietnam" you of course mean "non-Vietnamese soldier in Vietnam" and by "WWII infantryman" you of course mean "except for the Germans and Russians".
Posted by ajay | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 2:54 AM
Quoting a possibly dubious source (some site on Vietnam war myths):
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 4:53 AM
Today, More along similar lines.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 7:17 AM
47:The WWII numbers are what I understood. The Vietnam numbers are surprisingly high, but we know the results in loss of effectiveness. It wasn't necessarily that draftees were bad soldiers, but that they were overstressed in the year spent in Vietnam. Westmoreland possibly wanted 1/2 million in order to provide relief and rotations. I don't know the details of duty in Iraq, if for instance they get a week in Kuwait every month.
And of course types of combat can vary. Hitting the beach at Tarawa is different from patrolling the jungle is different from house-to-house searches. Whether the one week of likely death(WWII) is more or less stressful and debilitating then 6 continuous months of possible death or dismemberment is for psychologists to determine. My guess is that the latter is worse.
I would welcome correction, better data, or cites/sites. Most of what I know is from a West Point presentation I saw on C-Span.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 9:09 AM
The good news is, we can expect more of the same kind of quagmries for the forseeable future, since it looks like no Democrat can possibly win nationally no matter who the candidates are.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 10:09 AM
quagmires, obvs.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 10:11 AM
Quagmries light the corner of mind.
Sandy, desert-colored quagmries...
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 10:13 AM
Today's Haditha roundup. It's long.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:11 PM
Hmm. The Editors tell me that RFK Jr. piece in Rolling Stone I linked to above is bullshit.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:19 PM
54 - Is it really, though? All I read them as saying is that the article is BS. They don't give any compelling reasons for why it is BS, though.
Which to believe: blog post or an article with, like, a billion footnoted sources? Not saying the RS article necessarily gets it right or that I fully support all of the claims but I don't think 54 is a reason to dismiss it outright.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:39 PM
There does seem to have been a determination on the part of some left partisans that this line of inquiry was not helpful, and they commenced to shout down and disparage it on the morning after the election.
Teresa Neilson Hayden's formulation, iirc, that these guys now in power act like they have no fear of ever losing another election, appeals to me more and more.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:51 PM
I dunno. I'm inclined to believe the article, obviously. But that's likely based more on my own instict and prejudices. And copious footnotes don't always mean accuracy (see Coulter, Ann).
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:52 PM
I've seen debunking of the exit-polls claims before, and don't know what to think about it (that is, I understand the exit-polls claim, that they're quite accurate and the fact that they were so far off is suspicious -- the debunking is over my head).
I didn't see any response to an issue that appears really compelling to me, on its face -- the down-ticket anomalies. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I've always 'known', in an unexamined kind of way, and the RFK article agrees, that it's very odd for down-ticket candidates to outpoll the Presidential candidate of their party. And Kerry got beat like a red-headed stepchild by down-ticket Democrats in Ohio. There may be an answer to this, but I haven't seen it.
Also, the recount fraud -- fixing the samples so the full recount wouldn't happen? That really happened, and is being prosecuted. I hate to do too much "where there's smoke there's fire" reasoning, but the combination of that and any other weirdnesses that stand up makes me very worried.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:53 PM
I took the post to be saying that many of the claims in the article had been shown to be false already, but it would have been nice if they'd said which claims and linked to where they'd been shown to be unfounded.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:54 PM
Re #55: Is this your inner Catholic going weak in the knees at the Kennedy name? Always trust The Editors. Even when they are wrong.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:54 PM
I'm strongly anti-Kennedy as a matter of family tradition (see my 'About' page), and I'd believe that the article is shoddy and overblown, but the links in the Editors' post don't come close to addressing everything it raises.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:57 PM
Yeah, I, like LB, feel like shit went down. (All those well-documented irregularities? Nearly all of them benefitting Bush? Come on.)
I don't know if this line of questioning is "helpful" in the sense of overturning the electoral results or whatever, but if Democrats are really destined to lose over and over again because of massive, coordinated fraud, then that's worth talking about, since it concerns the present and future, and not just the past.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:57 PM
And it's not just a 'feeling'. It's the down-ticket stuff plus the documented recount fraud.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:58 PM
True. Didn't mean to imply truthiness on your part.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 12:59 PM
a billion footnoted sources
Careful. Ann Coulter's books are crammed full of footnotes, but it turns out most of them are pure crap.
After the vaccines cause autism debacle, I read RFKJr skeptically, but The Editors is being overly dismissive. The polling data in and of itself doesn't prove much, but it does lend circumstancial evidence to monkey business having been committed. I work with statistical data every day, and for all of the polls, with their various methodologies and samples, to consistently trend in the wrong direction is certainly evidence of something, though whether that's problems with the polling or the election remains an open question.
However, that fraud occurred on a grand scale really isn't a question. It certainly did. Maybe enough to be decisive, maybe not. It still needs to be examined and god knows we have to fix our electoral system 'cause that shit is broke down and busted. Badly.
Unfortunately, the DC Democrats are too dysfunctional/timid to fix it. Chris Bowers is right: we need to be confronting it individually rather than through the
Battered Wife SyndromeStockholm SyndromeDemocratic Party.Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:01 PM
55 was a little harsher than I intended. Sorry, Editors.
62 pretty much sums up my feelings. I don't think lingering on the issues as a matter of complaining is useful but trying to figure out actionable measures to prevent future fraud is important. You can do that without agreeing on whether issues raised about 2004 were actually fraudulent or just had the appearance or allowed the opportunity for fraud.
(I volunteered in Lucas County in 2004 and things stunk to high heaven there. The article doesn't even mention that someone broke into Democratic Headquarters there a few months before the election and stole all of their computers.)
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:03 PM
I just used the word "actionable". I really am becoming a corporate tool.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:04 PM
That's a bad word to pick up, because it confuses lawyers (and we are the center of the universe, who must be catered to). Our 'actionable' is a perfectly respectable word meaning "giving rise to a cause of action; something that could be the basis for a lawsuit." The new corpo-speak word means something like "Anything that you could take action based on" which is confusingly close to, but completely different from, the legal usage. Stamp it out, I say!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:11 PM
I prefer "action-ready".
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:13 PM
Just out of curiosity: how many folks remember the years in which "The Editors" posted under his real name? It's not just me, right? (Note: if you look at archive pages, his name is still on all the first couple of years of posts.)
(I was baffled at the notion that after years of posting under your own name, switching to a pseudonym would work, but I now have to admit that a lot of people act as if it does.) (Similarly "Jane Galt.")
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:16 PM
What do you want me to say? That Project Vote Fraud will knock over the pillars of civilization like dominoes? That it's going to bring about a prematurely-induced dark age? Should I E-mail you? Should I put this on your "action item list"?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:19 PM
It seems mannerly to address people as they wish to be addressed -- I remember knowing The Editors' name, but I've forgotten it. And Galt gets McArdled all the time.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:20 PM
I think we, frankly, are too timid to fix it. I'm tired of blaming elected Democrats. They are timid because we are timid. The rolling stone article is well reasoned and well written, and there is no for accompanying each mention of it with an apology. There is good evidence that Bush was fraudulently elected. We don't want to admit it, because we don't want to accept the action that admitting it would require from us.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:20 PM
no cause for
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:20 PM
It still needs to be examined and god knows we have to fix our electoral system 'cause that shit is broke down and busted. Badly.
We need to fix the electoral system, but we can't do it until we win elections. People worry that talking about election fraud depresses our voters, and makes marginal voters think we're shady.
I really am becoming a corporate tool.
I'm going to assume this was said with no small amount of pride.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:21 PM
70 -- I remember that also. Currently Googling for The Editors real name will bring up The Poor Man as the top hit, or anyway it did last time I tried this which was not too long ago.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:22 PM
and from way back, regarding baa's civility, go ahead and lose it. I've lost mine. Our soldiers aren't facing murderers. They are facing soldiers. They aren't protecting our freedom, and I don't think they are preventing an Iraqi civil war--at most they are delaying one. It is silly to think that we can wait out a civil war by keeping troops around an extra year or too. Silly argument upon silly argument leads one to suspect disingenuousness.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:23 PM
Just out of curiosity: how many folks remember the years in which "The Editors" posted under his real name? It's not just me, right? (Note: if you look at archive pages, his name is still on all the first couple of years of posts.)
(I was baffled at the notion that after years of posting under your own name, switching to a pseudonym would work, but I now have to admit that a lot of people act as if it does.) (Similarly "Jane Galt.")
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:25 PM
"People worry that talking about election fraud depresses our voters, and makes marginal voters think we're shady."
Do you think that depressing our voters and making marginal voters think we're shady is a more serious problem than election fraud itself?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:25 PM
For some reason I thought this comment used the name Megan, rather than the one it actuall does.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:26 PM
"It seems mannerly to address people as they wish to be addressed...."
Of course. And that's why I didn't repeat the name; I'm just curious how it's working out as measured by impromptu survey here, is all. Yeah, I see Jane's real name more often; not sure why.
Whoops, sorry for the double-posted comment. Plis delete.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:28 PM
Text: Is 79 really a fair reading?. He's saying that the only way to fix the problem is to not depress voters and make marginals not think we're shady, it's not a judgment of the priority you imply. It might be a judgment that fixing election fraud is a higher priority than talking about.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:29 PM
I remember the Editors posting under his real name! I usually call him The Poor Man in other settings; and my feeling is like LB's, call people what they go by. (Galt is a different case since I believe she went from pseudonymous to not; she publishes a lot of stuff under her real name. Also, The Editors' pseudonymity isn't ineffective in that if you Google his real name you get TPMI.)
In re Bowers in 65, why is Bev Harris a nutjob? I'd like to know if this is true.
And dKos just went down so I can't check the comments of that post to see if the issue was addressed.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:30 PM
Perhaps it is unfair. I think that Democrats have been afraid of sounding crazy for too long. Republicans do not share that fear. Rather, they call Democrats crazy. A large portion of the populations responds to being told who is crazy better than being shown who is crazy.
I don't think we can fix election fraud without talking about it. We've been concerned with marginal strategery for too long.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:31 PM
The Editors' pseudonymity isn't ineffective
Do you mean "is"? Or am I missing a level of negation?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:32 PM
isn't ineffective s/b isn't effective
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:32 PM
Right, I expected the second sentence as a response, and I'm not sure if it's right or not, but that's just a judgment about effectiveness.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:32 PM
Or, here is my concern: if Bush were actually able to win an election fraudulently--which is not a crazy hypothetical--how would we be able to stop election fraud going forward? The way would not be to win a few more marginal voters. Because, you see, the votes aren't being counted anyway.
If we have reached that point, I fear that we will never get our democracy back. Call me crazy.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:34 PM
Hello Mr. NSA personage! Understand that what I write is SATIRE! I'm almost a troll at this site! Don't come to my home!
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:38 PM
Yeah, I remember when The Poor Man was not pseudonymous. That was back when he was funny. Now he's just shrill.
Anyhow, the point is that sitting back and waiting for something to be done about voter fraud is just waiting for Godot. It's really up to us as citizens, not as party members, to do whatever we can about it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:43 PM
83: "Galt is a different case since I believe she went from pseudonymous to not...."
Nah. Same progression as The Editors. Posted under her own name for a long time at her blog before switching.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:43 PM
But, you know, what? Writing to our elected representatives? I've done that. Volunteering at the polls? In the past, admittedly not for the last few years. But what else other than talking about it, and working on exposing it to the extent that it's happening? And 88: Me too. It's not that I think it's going to happen, more that I am no longer certain that it can't.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:45 PM
There was a post at "Le Blog Bérubé" not too long ago that treated the Editors, The Poor Man, and the real name pretty interchangeably, I think.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:46 PM
text, never is a long time, but I too believe that it would take several more cycles of Dude!Crazy! results before people stood up en masse and demanded their country back, Velvet-style.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:47 PM
I don't think we have it in us anymore. We'll go quietly. Or already have.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:53 PM
89: Oh please, I have an old comment [link fixed. LB] more NSA-worthy than 88 (link is to thread, not comment, and the comment isn't under the name washerdreyer).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:54 PM
I mean, several elections of Dude! Crazy! results would mean several years of unelected government, spending a good amount of its time figuring out how not to be kicked out.
But then, there's probably a good chance that Bush was duly elected and that nobody is presently considering how to steal future elections.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:56 PM
I actually meant to include the link, though. Parts of that comment, and my not linking directly to it right now, are examples of being uselessly paranoid.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:57 PM
time to make your disclaimer, w/d. come on, you were funnin'.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 1:57 PM
100, bitches!
Posted by NSA Guy | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 2:01 PM
I believe, based on essentially nothing at all, that close elections get stolen, and that there isn't much we can normally do to stop this. So it's important to either win by a sizeable amount, or to own the machinery (e.g., Secretary of State in FL) on the ground.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 2:10 PM
Meanwhile, there's this dumbass.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 2:13 PM
What I like best is, "Congman Murtha seems to have forgotten the Constitution,and the Bill of Rights, and the fact that in American, you're innocent until proven guilty." Only if you get a trial, fucker.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 2:37 PM
Well, perhaps his conception of "innocent until proven guilty" disallows saying,/i> someone committed a crime until that alleged crime has been adjudicated in a court of law, but thinks it perfectly acceptable to imprison an American citizen in a naval brig without such process.
Also, I really hope he called Murtha a traitor at some point.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:09 PM
"Only if you get a trial, fucker.'
People misuse that boilerplate constantly. You're to be considered innocent before proven guilty by the judge and jury. Random people are, of course, free to say whatever the hell they want.
It's bad form for elected officials to speak up, to be sure, as they might be considered to be poisoning the jury pool. But random citizens? Just a matter of personal judgment.
In Murtha's case, as I've repeatedly pointed out, Congressman John Kline (R) has said the same things as Murtha many times in describing the allged crimes. The only distinction is that Murtha advocates a rapid deployment of troops from Iraq, and Kline doesn't, and, of course, Murtha is an Evil D.; these two things make him a "traitor," a "loser-defeatist," an "exploiter of events in favor of his political agenda," etc., etc. (Heavens, a politician cites facts and allegations in support of his preferred policies: film at 11!)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:11 PM
73 has it
Blame Journos, Quakers & Hippies
Lindsay Beyerstein links to This Modern World who links to Instapundit who links approvingly to madness. I comment, with my usual hysterical cackle.
PS:Gary, if I am full of it re combat fatigue, feel free. I promise not to flame war.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:12 PM
92: The answer is to get to the polls, or otherwise volunteer on election day, in an informed manner. Go in knowing some of the BS you might run into, and know what to do about it. There are groups such as TechWatch (coordinated by Verified Voting, but I can't find a link on their site) that go observe polling places to watch for technology problems. BlackBoxVoting is likewise devoted to voting technology, though more specifically the issue of paperless voting. The ACLU in 2004 produced "Voter Empowerment Cards" for some states with information like what to do if you were challenged at the poll, what hotline to call for advice, things like that. Name the issue, there's probably a group for it. Start looking for them now, and finding out what to do if you observe problems with the election at a polling place, and then do it.
Also, I remember when The Editors used Their Name.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:30 PM
People misuse that boilerplate constantly. You're to be considered innocent before proven guilty by the judge and jury. Random people are, of course, free to say whatever the hell they want.
I agree, but I'm not sure what your point is.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:30 PM
"I agree, but I'm not sure what your point is."
That the eight jillion crazed rightwing bloggers and commenters saying otherwise are nuts.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:34 PM
That saying 'Hey, aren't people innocent until proven guilty,' in an accusatory fashion when someone points out wrongdoing that has not yet gone to trial is stupid. There is no moral or social obligation on the part of people generally to withhold judgment on a situation until the legal process is complete.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:34 PM
Gary's post on Haditha (53) is excellent work.
And I mostly agree with Gary about withdrawal. Save that if say Sadr & Hakim manage to take the gov't, ask us to leave, even they I would resist. We could not escape responsibility for the possible ensuing genocide and ethnic cleansing, or full-scale civil war. Luckily, I think Sistani wants us to stay.
I think we are in Iraq forever, folks. We leave when, like Germany, the Iraqis really want us to stay, when we become irrelevant except as cash cow. I want 2008 to be about increasing or changing the resources devoted to making it work.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:45 PM
119: The rules of evidence and rights of the accused are very important to me. I value them highly, even though my rhetoric may not always be consistent with those values. It's rhetoric and polemic.
But as far as I am concerned, OJ is not guilty. I am the last person in America to think so, but there I am. With OJ maybe giggling at me.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:50 PM
112 to 110. Sorry
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 3:51 PM
"Gary's post on Haditha (53) is excellent work."
Thank you, Bob. I've added a few late additions in the last hour.
I think well of the Scottish possible verdict of "not proven," myself. Yes, it has problematic aspects, but so does having a guilty person go free with "not guilty" (not that I don't prefer to risk that rather than have more innocent people convicted, to be sure).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 4:02 PM
Let me make it a little clearer. What I might know about a case outside a courtroom is not necessarily what a jury should know. It is very important to me for example, and currently quite relevant, that the fruits of an illegal or improper search be inadmissable. And I would prefer to watch a murderer go free than abandon that principle. Other's discomfort has weakened those protections.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is important both inside and outside the courtroom.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 4:14 PM
Isn't "innocent until proven guilty" just shorthand for the following principle "No one should be subjected to criminal punishments or similar harms unless the fact that their actions satisfied all elements of the alleged crime has been demonstrated to a very high burden of proof and they have been given an opportunity to attempt to competently rebut (I don't believe in the existence of the "rule" against split infinitives) such demonstration and to present any affirmative defenses if such exist."
I think it is, and therefore that it does not apply to the Murtha situation under discussion.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 4:29 PM
Stupid sidebar. Make comment appear now!
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 4:52 PM
re: 116
More properly, doesn't innocent until proven guilty point out only that the State bears the burden of proving guilt; the accused never (in theory but not much in practice) has to prove his or her innocence.
Still, whether or not this phrase exactly and technically applied to what bob mcmanus is saying in 115, I think the sense in 112 and 115 is right, at least to the extent that we should try to keep separate in our minds our suspicions, assumptions or fears regarding what the facts are and statements that try to make stronger claims about the facts.
Notwithstanding the above, I am not sure that Congressman Murtha is subject to the criticism of treating the accused Marines as being guilty, he just said that there were accusations, an investigation and, he had been informed, facts supporting the allegations. Nothing much wrong with that.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 5:02 PM
116: I don't disagree with what you say about what IUPG means, only I think that there is a broader principle behind such a rule, a principle which migh be thought to apply outside the courtroom, and was trying to enunciate what the principle was.
As for everything else, maybe statements like these two are being conflated, "George Hodel committed the Black Dahlia murder" and "A jury should find George Hodel guilty of the Black Dahlia murder."
I would have responded more quickly, but it took me forever to think of crime I believe was committed by a particular person but that the evidence does not support that belief beyond a reasonable doubt.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 5:23 PM
Posted by 116 s/b 118 | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 5:23 PM
it took me forever to think of crime I believe was committed by a particular person but that the evidence does not support that belief beyond a reasonable doubt.
Right, but in a sense that is the case here. We do not know the whole story of what happened at Haditha, all we have are the facts which support the allegations of war crimes. But given that no one has heard from the accused Marines yet, one could not reasonably say that there is evidence of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Again, I do not think that Murtha or LizardBreath or many of the people commenting here have failed to make this distinction in talking about it, I'm just saying that I think it's an important distinction. (to me)
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 6:27 PM
one could not reasonably say that there is evidence of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt....I'm just saying that I think it's an important distinction. (to me)
We're not keeping you from meeting with your comrades at the ACLU, are we, lib?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 6:34 PM
from meeting with your comrades at the ACLU
I went to a couple ACLU meetings in law school. Their commitment to free speech did not extend to wanting to hear my alternative views of civil liberties.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 6:42 PM
Yeah, but that was in, what, the thirties? We're living in a whole different world now, Ideal, and the ACLU has changed with it.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 6:46 PM
Yeah, but that was in, what, the thirties?
I did not go to law school until I retired from the Army. I graduated less than 10 years ago.
Seriously, though, Nadine Strossen of the ACLU is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, so my comment is mostly about the particular group of people at my school and not the organization as a whole (as far as I know).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 6:50 PM
I've been a paid-up member of the ACLU at various times when I could afford it.
"Their commitment to free speech did not extend to wanting to hear my alternative views of civil liberties."
But if the government tried to prevent you from airing them, they'd defend you. Freedom of speech doesn't imply that anyone is, or should be, forced to listen to you, as it happens.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 7:15 PM
I don't have any problem assuming innocence of any particular individual Marines, and that they should get a day in court, with a high burden. The question of American culpability, though, in the Iraqi court of public opinion is another matter entirely. Sure there are going to some people going on a scintilla standard, and nothing is ever going to convince them. But for most people, I'd guess it's a preponderance standard. Trials of individual servicemen on a reasonable doubt standard aren't going to get us off.
And if there's nullification, as I think there was in the Corsetti trial, well, we're definitely going up the river.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 8:06 PM
I am in no way a so-called "apologist" for terrorists, but the defense of our own "bad apples" raises this question: Immediately, the people in charge of this war cite the fact that these people have seen horrors, including their own friends being killed, and that can really desensitize people and drive people to commit attrocities. Well, the people of Iraq have seen horrors--limbless, bloodied bodies, etc--since this war started and more Iraqi civilians have died as "collateral damage" than people killed on 9/11. So when they decide to kill innocents, why don't they get the "desensitized to violence" defense?
Posted by stroll | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 8:29 PM
"Seriously, though, Nadine Strossen of the ACLU is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society events, so my comment is mostly about the particular group of people at my school and not the organization as a whole (as far as I know)."
I've met her, actually. Rather briefly. When Avedon Carol, a friend since ~1975, who was one of the founders of the British group Feminists Against Censorship, and a major speaker in Britain on issues of censorship, particularly as regards pornography (she's entirely against censorship of it), and surrounding issues (Avedon is American, but has lived in Britain, and been married to to a British guy, for about 20+ years now), was in town (NYC) and we were hanging out and she was going in to have lunch with Nadine and asked me if I'd like to come along.
As it happened, Nadine pled busyness, so instead we chatted in her office for around 10-15 minutes, and then had lunch with her assistant, but anyway. Whoop-de-doo.
"So when they decide to kill innocents, why don't they get the 'desensitized to violence' defense?"
Cuz they're Bad Guys, of course. But, seriously, nobody reasonable gives that as an excuse for Our Guys; nobody reasonable confuses an explanation with an excuse. No one in the Marine leadership has spoken up to "defend" murder. (Random civilians or blog commenters, yeah, but there are always people willing to speak up for any POV, no matter how outrageous or disgusting.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 8:52 PM
New Salem Pax post, the Republic of Fear, the mayonnaise question again, and new Haditha story:
Everyone will be on this tomorrow. (I should have another roundup then.)Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 11:22 PM
I've definately been shocked by these reports, but we've had reliable reports practically since the beginning of this adventure of soldiers killing families by accident, or executing disarmed insurgents. Can't say I care too much about the latter. (I would if I thought that taking the moral high ground in those situations would have any effect. But I doubt it. And the insurgents should all go fuck themselves over a cliff, anyway. Ah well.)
Re: withdrawal. First, I don't think full pull-out is an even on the table at the moment, not with current leadership. Permanent bases, remember? I'm not even sure a Democratic leadership would change the official US position vis-a-vis those.
Second, is there any point to keeping our troops there? There have been a few out-of-hand dismissals of this possibility in this thread. I'm guessing these opinions are inferrences based upon past performance. But that reasoning is too loose to satisfy me. Reports indicate that sectarian violence in Iraq is on the rise and getting nastier. If we pull out, it seems that we'll watch a huminitarian crisis worse than Rwanda. That's real hard to stomach. If we let that happen, we can kiss whatever shreds of national credibility we have goodbye. And I know that the muslim world is ticked at us now, but won't the converting of Iraq into a killing fields multiply their antipathy towards us?
These are high prices to pay, and they're why I can't support withdrawal. I don't know if we can stop an all-out civil war, but we should try. I know there's not a lot to be done when sectarian hatred is so broadly spread among the populace. Honestly, to me, the best option seems to split the country into three parts. Sure, some people would get mad about that, but considerably less mad than if a horrible civil war was let loose.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:03 AM
Re: 130. Geez, Gary. I saw that in the NYT like hours before your comment.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:06 AM
Honestly, to me, the best option seems to split the country into three parts.
Seems like a good idea until you get into the specifics of it, at which point it becomes very obviously unworkable.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:17 AM
Dunno, you've got the blue states on the West Coast, the Northeast and Great Lakes states, and then everything else. Seems pretty workable. (I'll go back and read the thread now.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 6:43 AM
but we've had reliable reports practically since the beginning of this adventure of soldiers killing families by accident, or executing disarmed insurgents. Can't say I care too much about the latter.
At least one reason we care about the latter is because we worry that not caring will lead to things like Haditha.
Dunno, you've got the blue states on the West Coast, the Northeast and Great Lakes states, and then everything else. Seems pretty workable.
Basically, we need a Union party, if only to create a mythos that claims a set of shared values that need to protected, and that compels people to vote for Dems as a means of protecting those values.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:34 AM
Seems like a good idea until you get into the specifics of it, at which point it becomes very obviously unworkable.
Absolutely? I'm imagining a logistical and authoritative nightmare, but a nightmare that's preferable to the nightmare of unleashed civil war. Of course, does it need to be said that I'm out of depth here?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:34 AM
At least one reason we care about the latter is because we worry that not caring will lead to things like Haditha.
I'm being lazy, but it was upthread here or somewhere else where someone reacted to the news that the marines were now to undergo ethics training with a "now they're doing ethics training??" I don't sympathize with that snark because the position has been taken, as law, as common sense, that most people possess basic agreed-upon values, such as "don't shoot unarmed civilians, particularly women and kids." It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents. Ergo, I don't see a slippery slope between executing the former on the battlefield and Haditha.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:39 AM
But as to the practices of shooting unidentified cars at and shooting civilians that come to close - I can see the slippery slope there.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:40 AM
This morning, I railed against socialism.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:55 AM
It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents.
I think there is a strong agreed-upon opinion that this is against the normal laws of war. And deciding that those laws don't apply because the combatants are illegal or some such is a big stride down the slippery slope -- we've already seen this with the suspension of the Geneva Conventions for a bunch of prisoners who then mysteriously got tortured, sometimes to death, even when everyone knew they were innocent.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:01 AM
It was for a long time a custom, at least in europe and japan, that if you took up arms against another person, and lost, your life was forfeit. Mercy, or quarter, was a nice gesture, but it wasn't immoral not to give it. I'm bringing this up because I think it resonates a bit with our intuitions. I agree that many people are aware that executing a disarmed combatent is against the laws of war. But would people do it anyway? Especially the type of people who go to war - what is their moral intuition about this? That's what I meant about it being a bit of a grey area. (To further complicate things, there's possibly also the worry that the surrendering combatant might have a bomb.) I'm not 100% on this, but I still think there's a difference in moral intuition between responding to a combatent and unarmed noncombatents.
re: killing innocent prisoners. How good is our information here that they were innocent? The killing by itself is very, very bad, for all sorts of reasons I don't need to deliniate. But, as to actually saying that they were innocent, AFAIK we have only circumstancial evidence and the prisoners' testimony - not the most reliable thing. I'm not even going to say it's even unlikely that we've drowned/beat to death innocent people to death, but I'm really holding out hope that such is not the case.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:16 AM
136: The problem is that the ethnic groups in question aren't neatly divided among their 'areas'. Once you split up the country, the minorities in each area get ethnically cleansed or massacred, and we're not talking about insignificant numbers here. (Oh, and the Turks invade Kurdistan.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:18 AM
It's not my observation that there's a strong agreed-upon opinion concerning disarmed fuckhead combatents.
Just to be clear, if we had only guilty prisoners in Abu Gharib, you think it accords with the intuitions of most people that it would have been OK if we'd just walked the cells and shot them all? I don't think that's at all true. I certainly wouldn't want other armies to treat US soldiers that way.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:21 AM
How good is our information here that they were innocent?
Quite good in some cases -- for instance, that cab driver who got beaten to death in Afghanistan. It's my understanding that there's no positive evidence to show that he ever performed an agressive act against the US (I haven't rechecked -- I could be wrong. But that's how I remember the coverage.)
And the European law of war has forbidden the killing of surrendered prisoners for getting up to a millenium now. If you google "Henry V", "law of war" and "Prisoners" (I haven't, but it should work) you should find some discussions of the medieval law of war in this regard).
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:22 AM
141: One point is that, in order to start down a slippery slope to something everyone (but the LGFosphere) agrees is wrong, like massacring innocent civilians, you don't need to start with little things that everyone agrees is wrong. You can start with big things on which there is some dissent, but that are in important ways like massacring unarmed civilians -- in this case, they involve killing people who are just lying there and aren't now any threat to you.
Another is what LB said in 144 part 2. You can go back less far and find lots of people whose intuition was that slavery was OK; this doesn't mean anything for our moral reasoning now.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 8:29 AM
"Seems like a good idea until you get into the specifics of it, at which point it becomes very obviously unworkable."
No more or less unworkable than the Pakistan/India split. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people died in that. Similarly the population shifts in Europe in the post-WWII period. Or Stalin moving people around.
All immensely horrible on an almost unimaginable scale. But not uncommon events in history, which is far more bloody than we like to think about.
I'm not advocating this in the slightest. I'm just saying that "unworkable" in this context doesn't mean "can't happen."
142: "Once you split up the country, the minorities in each area get ethnically cleansed or massacred, and we're not talking about insignificant numbers here."
Yup.
" (Oh, and the Turks invade Kurdistan.)"
What worries me more and most about this scenario is not just that, but that potentially Saudi Arabia and maybe even Jordan and Syria and other Sunni states come in to aid and maybe fight besides the Iraqi Sunnis, and Iran on the side of Iraqi Shiites, and the whole region melts down, at least for a while. That would be yet far worse, obviously, than Iraqi-internal ethnic cleansing, massacres, and population transfers.
"Quite good in some cases -- for instance, that cab driver who got beaten to death in Afghanistan."
Dilawar, the guy the soldiers found entertaining to give a peroneal strike to to hear him scream "Allah!" Until he died. Read about him.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 9:17 AM
There are more than three groups in Iraq, they are intermixed throughout, and about a quarter of the population lives in Baghdad. Giving the Sunnis just the areas where they are the majority leaves them with no natural resources to speak of, consigning them to abject poverty compared to the two other regions. They will never in a million years accept that.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:09 AM
Saturday morning round-up. Heard about The Man With The Shovel?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:28 AM
"There are more than three groups in Iraq"
Certainly; Turkmen, for starters.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:35 AM
This is quite late on the thread, but an election law professor in Ohio has posted a
persuasive analysis of Kennedy's article in Rolling Stone. The gist is that while Ohio's 2004 election was fraught with error including partisan manipulation, the credible evidence doesn't show that Kerry would have won absent the errors & fraud.
Posted by DougW | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:52 AM
From the link -- "To believe that the exit polls prove election fraud, you have to believe that a group of people somehow managed to orchestrate the manipulation of results in not just one but in many counties, all of which run their own elections."
Yup. I'm tired of this argument. I do not find it persuasive.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 1:23 PM
143: No, b/c then you're off the battlefield, and you've accepted the combatents' surrender. It seems inarguable that we have a "no backsies" moral intuition here.
Matt, I'm thinking about the slippery slope argument...
Apo, you've convinced me that the partitioning is probably impossible. (with the resources argument. I was prepared to accept moving populations around. What else can you do with peoples that want to end each other?)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 1:47 PM
Although that does answer one of my questions -- the downticket race cited in the RFK article. If the race in question was non-partisan, so that the voters didn't necessarily know the political affiliation of the candidates, then that fact doesn't necessarily need much explanation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 1:49 PM
If the race in question was non-partisan, so that the voters didn't necessarily know the political affiliation of the candidates, then that fact doesn't necessarily need much explanation
I'm not entirely sure of what you are getting at here, but the downticket issue is discussed in the article linked to in 150, and the points made there make sense to me.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:00 PM
Yeah, that was what I meant to say. Kerry being wildly outpolled by a judge running on the Democratic line struck me as completely inexplicable. After reading the article linked in 150, Kerry being wildly outpolled by a judge not running on the Democratic line is less weird. (Still might be weird based on the facts on the ground, but it's not wildly implausible on its face.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:04 PM
No, b/c then you're off the battlefield, and you've accepted the combatents' surrender.
What? So the crucial issue here is being on the battlefield? Presumably, disarmed combatants have surrendered. If all you're saying is that we should be allowed to shoot a combatant who throws down his gun and runs away, I agree. But that seems trivially true. If you're saying that the important issue is that the combatant has surrendered, but is on the battlefield...so what?
The crucial issue, it seems to me, is that the combatant either does or does not continue to be a threat, now or in the future. Whether this is true on the battlefield or jail. If that's not the issue, I really don't see why we can't shoot them in jail. And if it's OK to shoot them, it's OK (at least at the levels we know about) to torture them.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:17 PM
I really don't see why we can't shoot them in jail. And if it's OK to shoot them, it's OK (at least at the levels we know about) to torture them.
?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:20 PM
Tim, I'm not actually trying to advocate a position, here. I was arguing in support of a)I don't care that much if they kill these guys because b) I don't see a slippery slope. My (b) was too simple, and I'm rethinking it.
The moral choice I was considering was that, at the time of the throwing down of the gun, the winner of the situation has a choice of whether or not the accept the surrender. You argue that there is no choice - the surrender must be accepted.
But, sidestepping for now, I don't see why recognizing a choice at the moment of surrender would negate POW rights once a surrender is accepted.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:35 PM
157: I just meant that you're either in (what amounts to) custody or you aren't, battlefield or not. If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail. I don't see what waiting for transportation has to do with it.
I don't see why recognizing a choice at the moment of surrender would negate POW rights once a surrender is accepted.
At a minimum, if you make unclear whether unambigous surrender will be accepted, you make surrender less likely.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:45 PM
If all you're saying is that we should be allowed to shoot a combatant who throws down his gun and runs away, I agree.
Presumably while running.
Michael, I'd like to pose 3 questions to you: (a) what's a battlefield; (b) what's a combatant; and (c) what's 'armed'? As you use the terms.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:48 PM
[T]he winner of the situation has a choice of whether or not the accept the surrender.
Legally? Morally? What are you talking about?
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 2:50 PM
If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail.
If you refuse mercy, you haven't taken them into your custody. If you accept the surrender, you have.
At a minimum, if you make unclear whether unambigous surrender will be accepted, you make surrender less likely.
Certainly. A good point. But doing things like this:
In the battle for Fallujah the insurgents feigned surrender, waving white flags to approach within killing range of U.S. Marines and Iraqi government forces...They booby-trapped their fallen comrades' corpses and shot at crews trying to collect the Muslim dead.
Does make it hard to play fair and accept all surrenderings.
Charley, I don't understand the point of your questions, but, okay:
a) Where two sides face off in combat
b) a person willing to kill another person with violence
c) possessing a weapon solely used to facilitate killing.
and, the answer to the other question is that it's a descriptive claim. You can think of it in legal, moral, and pragmatic terms.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:06 PM
I'll leave you, Michael, from this bit of Article 3 of the First Geneva Convention:
1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:07 PM
X-posted.
Michael, I take it, then , that an insurgent's house isn't a 'battlefield' unless he uses it to engage in hostilities. Other then while he is so using it. And a bus that a member of AQ is riding from his hiding place to visit his sick mother isn't a battlefield either.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:15 PM
Charley,
Right. Killing in those instances, house, bus, would be assassination.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:20 PM
Does make it hard to play fair and accept all surrenderings.
Michael, I'm not sure I have followed exactly where this argument is going, so forgive me if I have missed your point, but if I understand it correctly, this is nothing new. No enemy the US has fought since World War II has made much of an effort to follow the Law of War with respect to their treatment of our soldiers. Our soldiers have been routinely tortured, killed after surrendering, etc. Even so, we have consistently (and correctly, IMHO) taken the view that we will, nonetheless follow the Law of War. We do so for pragmatic reasons (international opinion, winning hearts and minds, etc.) and for reasons of principle. There is nothing new about what is going on in Irag that should change that position.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:27 PM
Descriptive? Really? So when you said, "the winner of the situation has a choice of whether or not the accept the surrender," you were using choice the same way I use it when I say "I have the choice to take the letter-opener out of my desk and go on a rampage through my office, because summer associates aren't supposed to work weekends"?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:29 PM
summer associates aren't supposed to work weekends
Why don't they want you to see what the practice of law in New York is like?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:30 PM
My understanding was that they spend 10 or so weeks trying to seduce us, so that they can "[show us] what the practice of law in New York is like" after we've committed a greater amount of our time to them.
Also, I don't really care, as I volunteered for an assignment yesterday after being explicitly told it would require working at least part of this weekend. But I wasn't told prior to excepting that the assignment was to compare two 175 page documents and mark the ways in which one differs from the other.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:35 PM
Our soldiers have been routinely tortured, killed after surrendering, etc.
Well, this isn't the point, although it is still entirely possible that my real point is nothing new. The point was that, and my knowledge is imperfect on this, that it seems that the insurgents feign-surrender. So, you see weapons dropped and white flags and people cowering on the ground...have they really surrendered or do they have hidden arms/bombs? Do you risk your life and your buddies' lives on the bet that they're really surrendering?
167. Yes, that's more or less right.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:47 PM
W/D, doesn't that just require the use of good ole' deltaview?
Posted by DougW | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:57 PM
to compare two 175 page documents and mark the ways in which one differs from the other.
Excellent. How far along are you?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 3:58 PM
Yes, Deltaview can do this. From the conversation I had when I took the assignment, I'm fairly sure the assinger wants me to do it manually, lord knows why.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:11 PM
"If all you're saying is that we should be allowed to shoot a combatant who throws down his gun and runs away, I agree. But that seems trivially true."
Um, not according to the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war, last I looked. It's execution and a war crime, and we convicted many Germans and Japanese of this crime.
This is not a small point. It's murder, rather than a legitimate act of war.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:37 PM
159: "If you can kill people in your custody who aren't a threat to you on the battlefield you ought to be able to kill them in jail."
Yeah, but if you do, you should wind up in jail for the rest of your life, absent extenuating circumstance. Again, this is a war crime, and a major reason so many Germans were tried.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:39 PM
"But I wasn't told prior to excepting that the assignment was to compare two 175 page documents and mark the ways in which one differs from the other."
Whether proofreading or copyediting a novel or other book, I must have done this to twice or thrice sized documents hundreds of times; I'm unclear -- are you indicating this is unreasonable, or extra effort, or what?
175 pages is light -- a half-day job, maybe a full-day job, depending. If unusual, maybe a two-day job. Conceivably more, but tackling a 700-page job is more of an effort, but not unusual. Perhaps there's something unusual about the job? (I generally got ~$14/hr.)
I'm thinking maybe you also meant "accepting," since I can't make sense of "prior to excepting."
"Deltaview"
Must look into this.
Interesting. Unlikely to catch homonyms.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:48 PM
"...I'm fairly sure the assinger wants me to do it manually, lord knows why."
I'm guessing that it would do a horrible job. Like spell-checkers, and people who use them.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:50 PM
I certainly meant accepting, stupid mistake on my part. I was simply hoping the work would be more interesting, not suggesting that it's an unreasonable thing to ask me to do. Neither do I think 175 pages is unduly lengthy and nowhere suggested that it would take me more than one day.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 4:55 PM
I must have done this to twice or thrice sized documents hundreds of times
I'm unclear, do you want us to acknowledge your heady proofreading experience, or do you want us to sympathize with the hard work you've done?
175 pages is light -- a half-day job, maybe a full-day job, depending.
I'm unclear. Is this meant to brag that you're really fast, or is it meant to say that w/d shouldn't fret about it taking too much time, or to say that w/d is making a big deal out of nothing?
I generally got ~$14/hr.
I'm unclear. Is this bragging about how you did great work with little pay, or with what you considered a lot of pay?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:06 PM
"I'm unclear. Is this bragging about how you did great work with little pay, or with what you considered a lot of pay? "
I probably made more of a big deal than I intended by commenting. Didn't have any intent at all, was just thinking out loud. Times change.
No other point intended.
Probably backing away now. Probably shouldn't have commented.
Alienation as usual now sets in. Worlds change.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:19 PM
176: but a legal document? 175 pages of legal document is like 17,500 pages of anything else. Back when I was doing legal proofreading, it was always a two person job: one to read, one to mark discrepancies, and both to kick each other awake.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:20 PM
179: I responded in what I thought was a reasonable manner, though I was a little annoyed by your comment (I'm not sure what about it annoyed me) and now you read one comment questioning your tone and feel alienated? That seems like an over-reaction, though I understand that different people read things different ways.
181: That's how we do it on my journal, and it works really well, but not how I'm doing it at this job.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:26 PM
I'm just ribbing you, Gary.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:27 PM
'176: but a legal document? 175 pages of legal document is like 17,500 pages of anything else. Back when I was doing legal proofreading, it was always a two person job: one to read, one to mark discrepancies, and both to kick each other awake."
Man, I wish it worked that way back when I was being paid for legal proofreading on my own in the Eighties. I could have made twice as much.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:39 PM
Can't we all just get along?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 5:42 PM
You mean because you read for two? We were poor in-house wretches, so you probably did make twice as much.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 6:10 PM
Yes, Deltaview can do this. From the conversation I had when I took the assignment, I'm fairly sure the assinger wants me to do it manually, lord knows why.
That is fucked up for so many reasons I'm not sure where to begin. Really, the practice of law--even in a big New York law firm--is not supposed to be this astonishingly stupid.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 7:52 PM
"lord knows why"
ah, the billable hour.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:48 PM
But my time is, according to what we were told in summer associate orientation, billed at a discounted number of hours based on how long it should take someone to do things. Also, how's the new job and city treating you?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 10:58 PM
right, as a summer associate you should really just be writing research memos. Infrequently. My other thought was that some first or second year associate had stuck you with this, without bothering to think up the most effecient means of completing the project. You should know, if that's the case, that the first or second year associate will have absolutely no say as to your offer.
the new job and city are both quite good.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 3-06 11:29 PM
WD -- Maybe he/she wants to see how good an eye you've got. Because there are going to be times in your career when you'll have to compare documents manually.
There are a few of us old farts who have the temerity to demand that junior lawyers learn to do basic research by hand -- using actual books -- and do it often enough to stay proficient. Why, why, they cry. Because you never know when you'll have to do it.
Two months ago, I got a 5 minute break so I could send an associate to the courthouse library to find and fetch a case on an unforseen point of law raised by the other guys. I didn't think the other guy was right, and it turned out he wasn't -- but I wouldn't have been able to show it without a couple of cases, and I wouldn't have had them if my associate didn't know how to use books.
Obviously I have no idea what your assignment is about. Maybe the assignor is an idiot or a sadist. No matter -- it's good practice using your own abilities. My advice is to embrace it.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 7:00 AM
Typo: 15 minute. My associates are good, but they can't make the elevators run fast.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 7:03 AM
CharleyCarp, I will grant you that it is good to know, for example, how to look things up in books as well as on the computer. However, comparing documents by hand when you can do it electronically is bad for a number of reasons. First, it is a gross waste of time, time for which a client may be billed. Summer associates need to learn that they have a duty to the client to do things in the most efficient manner, rather than to churn work on the theory that the client will never notice. Of course, if the partner responsible for the bills knows about the wasted time, the partner can write the time off, but what are the chances that the relationship partner knows? Second, this is not preparation for practice. If I were in a situation where I needed two documents compared and it was not possible to do it electonically (unlikely, given the availability of OCR software to make hard-copy documents into electronic files), I would have a paralegal do the time-consuming work of finding the changes, not a lawyer--the paralegal should be just as able to find wording changes as a lawyer, and costs the client half as much. Indeed, when I was at a big firm, in the few instances when we needed things hand-compared, we gave the task to proofreaders, who cost the client even less and who did the job even better. IMHO, whoever gave washerdreyer this task is teaching him a bunch of things wrong about the practice of law.
Sorry for the rant. This is a pet peeve--there is enough necessary tedium in legal practice without adding stupid, inefficient, wastes the client's money tedium to the mix.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 7:47 AM
I'll grant you that thoughtlessness is the more likely explanation. And that an effective course of action for WD would have been to offer to do it electronically, and if that's refused, do it manually, and then check it electronically.
I certainly agree that one need not be a lawyer for this task. And that someone with other training (Mr. Farber, for example) is a better choice.
I wouldn't prefer a paralegal over a summer associate for a number of tasks, especially the more tedious and more transient. First, they're not always cheaper. (Mine aren't). Second, I want to use my paralegals, who after all are going to be here as the matter develops over the next several months, not get rotated over somewhere else next week, for tasks that build intellectual capital. Finally, and frankly, a good paralegal is worth more to me, over the next 3 or 4 years, than some new associate. Even if I'm not paying them as much. Great ones are not easy to find, and they're highly sought after.
I presume that the client won't see much, if any, of a bill for this.
If I might venture off the deep end in terms of speculation, I'll wonder aloud if in the political configuration of WD's firm, a summer associate is about the only person the assigning person can order around, inasmuch as he/she must share secretaries, paralegals, document clerks, etc. with people with greater pull and higher priority. I don't think a lesson in powerlessness -- if this is what it is -- is that far out of place in a big city law firm.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 9:03 AM
At least at the firm I'm working at, I'm pretty sure that clients aren't getting billed for anything we do. That's because they are, in my opinion, giving us way too much time to do stuff on the theory that we know basically nothing. For example, I was given an assignment last week; the estimated time on it was eight hours, and it ended up taking me about an hour and fifteen of actual work.
Despite the fact that clients clearly aren't being billed, we're supposed to bill eight hours a day anyway.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 9:56 AM
"Finally, and frankly, a good paralegal is worth more to me, over the next 3 or 4 years, than some new associate."
As a long-ago, self-created, sorta-auto-didact semi-paralegal (who managed to get paid for the faking of it a few times, decades ago), I'm glad to hear it.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 10:15 AM
I'll wonder aloud if in the political configuration of WD's firm, a summer associate is about the only person the assigning person can order around, inasmuch as he/she must share secretaries, paralegals, document clerks, etc. with people with greater pull and higher priority.
Likely true. And it also is true that managing summer associates is an important learning experience for junior associates, and that mistakes will be made as they learn. But still, the task washerdryer describes is like something out of Anonymous Lawyer. It's far from the worst I've ever heard, but it's not good.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 10:20 AM
Not long after writing 194, I went to lunch, and as I was walking along the street, came upon three young folks discussing, with some animation, a footnote in a brief I'd filed last night, to which the response is due tomorrow.
They seemed too excited to be real associates, and young enough to be summers.
Note to summer associates: don't discuss strategy on street corners. Especially not within a block of the offices of opposing counsel whom you would not recognize.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 1:31 PM
CC: Just so I better estimate how worried I should be about occassions on which I fail to follow that advice, how many firms are still all the way downtown? Fried Frank is across the street from me, I'm not typing the name of the firm I'm working at, who else?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 1:41 PM
re: 199
Notwithstanding that the center of gravity of big New York law forms is in mid-town, there still are a number of big firms downtown. And, of course, a lot more small firms like the one I'm in. As in mid-town, you can't swing a dead cat down here without hitting a lawyer.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 2:34 PM
you filed a brief on a Saturday night?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 2:48 PM
Yeah. It's a preliminary matter in a fast moving case. We argued the issue, prior to anything being filed by anyone, on Friday, and got a scheduling order later that day. I filed Saturday, the other guy files Monday, and the judge says he'll rule Tuesday.
ECF makes these things a whole lot easier.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 3:25 PM
electronic filing is a godsend, except when you are stuck implementing changes until midnight because it no longer matters that the courthouse closes at 5.
still, in my very limited experience, it's a rare case where the judge sets a saturday deadline for a brief.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 3:31 PM
it's also a rare case where a partner would file his own brief, or where three summer associates from the opposing firm would have read the brief the day after it was filed, on a Sunday, in order to discuss a footnote in the streets.
But then again I've only been out of law school two years. At any rate, W/D, take heed not to discuss any footnotes in the streets--not animatedly, at least.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 10:47 PM
What about re-animatedly?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 4-06 11:10 PM
Does anyone else read Fried Frank as a kind of junky fast food?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 6:08 AM
Text: it's a TRO case, but the TRO has been mooted by the other side's agreement to maintain the status quo for 6 weeks, and the court's committment to dispose of the case, on the merits, in that time.
As for doing my own filing, obviously I don't do it when my secretary is here, or one of my crack associates. (And I made the Saturday filing from home, after watching a movie). I'll be doing more of it for a while, as explained in the Rage post on my blog-let.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 6:38 AM
Does anyone else read Fried Frank as a kind of junky fast food?
Yes. I also, inexcusably, mix them up with LeBoeuf Lamb, another big firm. I apparently have a mental category for "law firms named after meat."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 7:58 AM
Having followed that link and read a couple of posts, I'm trying to figure out what comment in this thread made me think CC was commenting from New York.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:11 AM
Too bad IANAL. We could start a great firm.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:12 AM
"That link" being the one in CC's name.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:13 AM
I've mentioned my husband's unfortunate last name: replacing it with a reasonable equivalent, he once worked at a small company with three employees: Weiner, Woody, and Cox.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 5-06 8:14 AM