The Hollywood Liberal

The German magazine Stern did an interview with Lynndie England. The woman from Abu Gharib in the picture with the prisoner on the leash, here are a couple of excerpts:

Why did you join the army at the age of 17 and against the express wishes of your mother?
I always wanted to be in the military. My whole life. I just didn’t know what branch – Navy, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force. I just wanted to serve my country and be a patriot, I guess. As a child I mainly grew up on military gung-ho movies so that’s where I got the idea. Old Chuck Norris movies, “Delta Force”, “Rambo”, “Missing in Action”, “Platoon”…..

The former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, called you and your colleagues the “rotten apples” of the military. Bush claimed to be ashamed of what you did.
Well, back then I thought: How can they say that when it was happening all over Iraq. The same thing is happening in Guantanamo now and other places. We knew that our officers knew about it and our sergeants. We thought if they know then somebody else knows. And I really do still think that Rumsfeld knew what was going on. I mean he had been there while I was there at that prison. And if he was there I know he knew what was going on. How could he have not known? And Bush? He’s the headman.

There is talk about new pictures that are even harsher than the ones we know.
I know there were some harsher pictures they had at the time of the trial that the media decided not to expose.

What was on those pictures?
You see the dogs biting the prisoners. Or you see bite marks from the dogs. You can see MPs holding down a prisoner so a medic can give him a shot. If those had been made public at the time, then the whole world would have looked at those and not at mine.

H.L.s Take
Of course Rumsfeld knew, probably Bush too. They will never be punished for it though, only the low level grunts that were ordered to carry it out. What she did was wrong but I don’t blame her as much as I do the people higher up on the chain of command. When you take a uneducated kid from the sticks, who was brought up to believe “my country right or wrong” and put them in a place where they think they must obey any order, of course you are going to have things like this happen. It’s not like Ms. England spent time studying the ramifications of the Nuremberg defense. You can read the whole interview Here

Barack Obama gave a speech today which may be the final key to his nomination.

Republicans See Storm Clouds Gathering

Week of Bad News Highlights Difficult Challenges for GOP in Fall Elections
Excerpt
The latest blow came with the revelation that the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had allegedly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars — and possibly as much as $1 million — from the organization’s depleted coffers to his own bank accounts.

If Republicans needed any more evidence of how difficult this fall may be, the past week had it all, analysts said. The Illinois race demonstrated new levels of disaffection, the party’s efforts to go on offense elsewhere were thwarted by recruiting failures, and the NRCC scandal will divert campaign resources and could frighten off badly needed contributors, they said.

"It’s no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He’s just killed the Republican brand."

Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst of congressional politics, said: "The math is against them. The environment is against them. The money is against them. This is one of those cycles that if you’re a Republican strategist, you just want to go into the bomb shelter."

H.L.s Take
Mr. Rothenberg is forgetting one thing; The Democrats are also against them, and as long as the democrats are against them The Republicans have at least a 50-50 chance at winning. The pathetic Democrats will do everything in their power to make sure that the Bush/McCain reign of terror goes on forever.
The Gun is out, it is pointed at their feet, all they have to do is pull the trigger. So how will they blow it this time. Guess we will have to wait and see.