Candide's Notebook reports on the letter retired Florida Public Defender Joseph DuRocher, now a law professor, sent President Bush on Monday. The letter was accompanied by his shoulder bars and navy wings.

....to remain silent is to let you think I approve or support your actions. I do not. So, I am saddened to give up my wings and bars. They were hard won and my parents and wife were as proud as I was when I earned them over forty years ago. But I hate the torture and death you have caused more than I value their symbolism. Giving them up makes me cry for my beloved country.

The death penalty is back in force in Iraq.

The Iraqi authorities have hanged 13 people accused of taking part in the insurgency, the first execution of militants since the US-led invasion....The US-led coalition abolished the death penalty in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but it was re-instated during the handover to Iraqi control in June 2004.

It was reinstated so they could kill Saddam, but they've found other uses for it.

The BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says that, with more than 14,000 people currently in US coalition detention, it raises the possibility that there could be many more executions.

Background here and here.

I thought this was a joke, but it's not. Apparently in an effort to send a message to those thinking about deserting from their service in Iraq, a Marine unit is on the prowl, hunting down and jailing Vietnam war deserters.

Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

One would have thought this issue was put to rest years ago:

The Inspector General of the Pentagon has asked the army to open a criminal investigation into Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan.

The request, which came out of the inspector general's review of four previous investigations of the April 22, 2004, shooting, will likely lead investigators from the Army Criminal Investigation Command to return to Afghanistan and conduct a monthslong investigation into whether Tillman's death may have been a homicide, the result of criminal negligence or an accident, said an Army official who asked to remain anonymous.

Tillman's mother says:

"The Army used him. They knew right away he was killed by fratricide and used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks."

Why would the military do that? All one has to do is go back in time to April, 2004 when Tillman was killed and look at the headlines coming out of Iraq. Here are a few:

Murray Waas breaks yet another story today. President Bush has not been truthful with Americans about the information he received about Iraq and WMDs.

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate report [that]....stated that the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that the [aluminum] tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb.

This is pretty ground-breaking stuff, read the whole thing. Reddhedd analyzes Waas' article here.

Raw Story reports on a new Zogby poll finding that 72% of the troops in Iraq think we should get out within a year. One in four think we should leave now:

Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay "as long as they are needed"

• While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
• Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
• Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11, most don't blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
• Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
• Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
• An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

A Sunni Mosque was bombed today in Eastern Baghdad.

Four people were killed and 15 wounded in the attack outside a Sunni mosque in eastern Baghdad as the faithful were leaving evening prayers, security officials said. The attack was the latest strike against Iraq's ousted Sunni elite since Shiite mobs unleashed a wave of vengeance against the embittered minority after a revered Shiite shrine was blown up north of Baghdad last Wednesday.

The Independent today has an article titled Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war :

Most of the corpses in Baghdad's mortuary show signs of torture and execution. ....Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed.

Here are today's incidents of violence in Iraq. Among them:

BAQUBA - Three gunmen opened fire on a crowd of teenage boys playing soccer in a drive-by shooting in the Iraqi town of Baquba on Sunday, killing two youngsters and wounding five in what a police official said was a sectarian attack.

BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 38 wounded in a mortar attack on the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora on Sunday, police and hospital sources said. It was not clear who fired the mortars.

BAGHDAD - Two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military said, bringing the number of U.S. personnel killed since the invasion in March 2003 to at least 2,290.

The current violence in Iraq was anticipated before Bush decided to take down Saddam. As these articles suggest, Bush and his confederates knew what would happen and they went ahead with their invasion plans anyway. They are responsible for this mess.

Gates of Hell Will Open If US Attacks Iraq, Say Arab States
Published on Friday, September 6, 2002 in the Times/UK

THE United States was told last night that a war to oust President Saddam Hussein would "open the gates of Hell" in the Middle East. The chief of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, issued the warning after a meeting in Cairo of the foreign ministers from 20 Arab states. He urged Iraq, however, to readmit weapons inspectors in co- ordination with the United Nations.

The ministers issued a resolution calling for a "complete rejection of threats of aggression against some Arab countries, in particular Iraq". Their statement did not specifically refer to weapons inspectors, but Mr Moussa said that the ministers had agreed that they must be allowed back as part of an overall solution.

by TChris

The president had it right before he became president, when (in a debate with Al Gore) he criticized the use of troops "for what's called nation building." Here's what the president's exercise in nation building has wrought (choose your headline):

• Civil War Imminent in Iraq
• Iraq: On the Brink of Civil War?
• Iraq slips towards civil war after attack on Shia shrine
• Shrine Attack Brings Civil War Warning
• Iraq spirals toward civil conflict after Shiite shrine is destroyed

etc.

Juan Cole (not a headline, just a fact): "The threat of terrorism and attacks on Americans just went way up."

[Update: The permalink and comments to this post are off for some reason. Just so you know if you get a blank screen.]

by TChris

When Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon had stopped paying to plant favorable news stories in the Iraqi press, he meant to say that the Pentagon was thinking about stopping. His earlier statement was a lie mistaken and has been withdrawn.

by TChris

Allegations that Iraq's Interior Ministry is operating death squads that target Sunni Arabs have prompted the Ministry to "open an investigation." How comforting.

There have been previous investigations of alleged abuses by the Interior Ministry. But none led to significant changes, prompting accusations that the ministry is shielding killers within its ranks and fueling distrust in a public already reeling from the rise in sectarian killings.