August 6: 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima

MoonHowler

“Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb. We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

— President Harry S. Truman

America did what it thought it had to do.  It took a tremendous risk.  The devastation to a mostly civilian population was unthinkable and unspeakable.

I have often said, I have very mixed feelings about the use of the atomic bomb 70 years ago.  I expect if it hadn’t existed, I would not be here.  My father was on the west coast, probably waiting to be shipped out to mainland Japan.   On the other hand, I believe we should never use nuclear weapons on human beings again.

The Manhattan Project and all its secrets remain a fascination, even 70 years later.  How much do we not know?

The Japanese town of Nagasaki was bombed 3 days later on August 9, 1945.  Total surrender took place  about a week later.  WWII was finally over, or was it?

More reading:

An illustrated history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings

Leesburg: another courthouse controversy?

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

Slaves were once sold on the steps of the old Loudoun County courthouse in downtown Leesburg, which bore stocks and whipping posts. Although 150 years have passed, the courthouse retains a symbol of its Civil War days: a statue of a Confederate soldier, rifle at the ready, facing west.

As the national debate over Confederate symbols on public property continues to gain steam since the June 17 slayings at a historic African American church in Charleston, S.C., dozens of people gathered at the courthouse Saturday morning calling for a change locally: They want a memorial that would also honor the lives of slaves and Union soldiers.
Read More

D-Day: June 6, 1944

MoonHowler

Every D-Day I am humbled by the accomplishments of those who served our great nation and their allies.  They performed what many thought was the impossible.  I am humbled by the bravery of our troops, many who lost their lives that day.   I am humbled by those who served on the home front by sacrificing those daily comforts that we who came after them accept as routine necessities.

How could the Allied Forces get that many men, that many vehicles, that many supplies and support services across the English channel to begin the nearly year-long trek towards victory?   The risk involved seems almost insurmountable.

Read More

Captain George Harris: Memorial Day 2015

MoonHowler

Our own poet laureate of Moonhowlings, Captain George Harris, has once again agreed to  shared his thoughts with us for this Memorial Day.

NatCem05250801

MEMORIAL DAY 2015

This year marks the 147th anniversary of the first Memorial Day, known to many as Decoration Day and it is just six weeks past the 150th anniversary of the assassination of the president who led this nation through this great war to knit our nation back together again.  This day was originally set aside to decorate the graves of those valiant men who gave their lives in the greatest and most divisive war our nation has ever experienced-our Civil War or as it was known in the Confederate states, the War of Northern Aggression.  We have fought many wars since but none as divisive or as malevolent as this war.

soldier
Read More

70th anniversary of V-E Day May 8, 2015

MoonHowler

stearman

Washingtonpost.com:

Meet the 19 WWII planes of the D.C. flyover – Washington Post

During the Arsenal of Democracy Flyover on Friday, a wide array of legendary World War II aircraft will be seen over the Mall. Here’s a guide to recognizing them. The aircraft will depart from Culpeper and Manassas regional airports around 11:30 a.m. and will fly in fifteen flyover formations. The first formation is estimated to be over the Lincoln Memorial at 12:10 p.m.

This absolutely should be an impressive flyover.  I would love to be on the Mall but other obligations prevent me from going.

It’s hard to believe that war has been over 70 years.  I grew up in its shadow.  Every other sentence out of the mouths of the adults around me included “during the war.”  It was omnipresent.

Have we moved past WWII?   I am going to suggest that many of the world events we are dealing with today are a direct result of actions taken during or after WWII.  Most of the middle east issues date back to that time.  (some even go back to WWI)  Asian issues also still exist.  Look no further than North Korea.

Do wars ever really end or do we just have a lull in the fighting, only to have entanglements and conflict crop up in another form?

Happy V-E Day.  My father came home 2 days after V-E Day.  He landed in New York.  It was another time.  I always felt like I had been deprived of great excitement.  My mother thought I was nuts and told me I had no idea how much that war had impacted their lives.

Check out the neat planes in the Washington Post.

Petraeus sentenced to probation and fined

MoonHowler

New York Times:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced David H. Petraeus, a former C.I.A. director and the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to two years’ probation for providing classified information to a woman with whom he was having an affair.

Mr. Petraeus was also fined $100,000, more than double the amount the Justice Department had requested.

The sentencing was a disappointing one for F.B.I. officials, who believed that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had given Mr. Petraeus preferential treatment by allowing him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and recommending that he receive probation instead of prison time. Federal judges are not bound by such recommendations, but they almost always follow them.

Although the judge overseeing the case, David C. Keesler of United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, agreed to the probation sentence, he added $60,000 to the government’s suggested fine of $40,000. Judge Keesler did not give an extensive explanation for why he raised the fine, saying it was necessary because of “the seriousness of the offense.”

This case brings about many questions.  Had he not been the rising star, would he have even been prosecuted?  He breached security with those emails he carelessly let his lady friend have access to.  Should he have been tried for more serious crimes involving national security?

Read More

Colonel Morris Davis: Guantánamo’s Charade of Justice

MoonHowler

Colonel Davis’s op-ed piece appeared Friday in the New York Times.

Guantánamo’s Charade of Justice

LAST week, we learned that, only months into the job, the official in charge of the military courts system at Guantánamo Bay was stepping down, after judges ruled he had interfered in proceedings. The appointment of an interim replacement was the sixth change of leadership for the tribunals since 2003.

This is yet another setback for the military commissions, as they tackle two of their highest-profile cases: the joint trial of the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and four alleged co-conspirators, and the trial of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole.

That’s not all. Besides the revolving door at the convening authority’s office, six military attorneys have served as chief prosecutor for these courts over the same period. (I was the third.)

Read More

What are the Republican Senators thinking??!!

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

An already heated battle between the White House and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program grew more tense Monday when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran designed to kill any potential deal.

The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of conspiring with Iranian hard-liners, who oppose the delicate negotiations, and suggesting that their goal was to push the United States into a military conflict.

“I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran,” President Obama said a few hours after the letter was made public. “It’s an unusual coalition.”

Read More

Rob Richards: Villian or Hero, Devil or Angel?

MoonHowler

rob richards

Wasingtonpost.com:

His three combat tours in Afghanistan had been boiled down to a 38-second video clip, played and replayed on YouTube more than a million times. In it, Rob Richards and three other Marine Corps snipers are seen urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters they had just killed.

“Total dismay” were the words then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used to describe the video when it surfaced on the Internet in January 2012. “Utterly deplorable,” agreed then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Richards’s career in the military was finished.

More than two years later — long after the rest of the country had moved on to other scandals — Richards, 28, died at home and alone from an accidental painkiller overdose.

Read More

Citizens of Charlottesville and beyond clash over Lee / Jackson Day

MoonHowler

confederate

Dailyprogress.com:

A debate over whether to pan Charlottesville’s annual observance of a holiday honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson plunged the Charlottesville City Council Chambers into chaos at times Monday.

On Feb. 17, the council is scheduled to decide whether Charlottesville will continue to mark the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day — the third Monday of January — as a local government holiday.

“There is a sentiment in our community that the holiday is outdated and offensive to many, and should be retired here in the City,” City Manager Maurice Jones wrote in a Jan. 28 email to city employees.

Charlottesville does not give employees a paid day off on Veterans Day, he noted, at the meeting.

The debate Monday drew speakers from Petersburg and Richmond and letter writers from Oregon, Maryland and Ohio, some of whom signed their notes “In Honor of Old Virginia” or “Respectfully … a daughter of the South.”

Read More

NCSI investigation: another affair, another reassignment, an unexplained death?

MoonHowler

NCSI investigates an unexplained death at Gitmo. The naval commander at Gitmo has been exposed for an affair with the dead man’s wife and has been reassigned to a base in Florida. Commander Nettleton has not been charged with anything specific but adultery is a crime under  the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Does Gitmo need any more negative attention than it has already received?

Read More

Morris Davis: Where is justice for the men still abandoned in Guantánamo Bay

MoonHowler

gitmo

Colonel Morris Davis:

 

Where is justice for the men still abandoned in Guantánamo Bay

 

“I will be back soon,” I said, as we stood up and shook hands. Then I turned and walked a few steps to the gate, and waited for the guard to unlock it so I could leave. Those were the last words I said to Mohamedou Ould Slahi after I met him in the tiny compound he shared with Tariq al-Sawah in the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. That was seven and a half years ago. I have never been inside the camp again. Slahi has never been out.

I didn’t know, that afternoon in the summer of 2007, that in a few weeks I would send an email to the US deputy secretary of defence, Gordon England, saying I could no longer in good conscience serve as chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo military commissions. I reached that decision after receiving a written order placing Brigadier-General Tom Hartmann over me and the Pentagon general counsel, Jim Haynes, over Hartmann.

Hartmann had chastised me for refusing to use evidence obtained by “enhanced” interrogation techniques, saying: “President Bush said we don’t torture, so who are you to say we do?” Haynes authored the “torture memo” that the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, signed in April 2003 approving interrogation techniques that were not authorised by military regulations – the memo where Rumsfeld scribbled in the margin: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [for detainees during interrogations] limited to 4 hours?” Rather than face a Hobson’s choice when they directed me to go into court with torture-derived evidence, I chose to quit before they had the chance.

Read More

Military commissions for terrorism suspects are a proven failure

MoonHowler

by Morris Davis @ColMorrisDavis

On Veterans Day, 2009, I published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that said President Barack Obama was making a mistake prosecuting some terrorism suspects in federal courts in the United States and others in military commissions at Guantánamo Bay. I got fired from my federal government job for criticizing the president, and I have spent the past five years in court in a protracted First Amendment battle with the Justice Department that is likely to go on for several more years.

It is five Veterans Days later, and Obama’s mistake continues. It has not gotten better with age.

Fourteen high-value detainees arrived at Guantánamo from Central Intelligence Agency black sites in September 2006. Since then, only one has been convicted and sentenced: Ahmed Ghailani got life without parole for his part in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani, the only Guantánamo detainee ever transferred to the United States, was convicted in November 2010 in federal court in New York City. He is serving his sentence in the Supermax prison in Colorado.
Read More

Veterans: Do we really think these things through?

MoonHowler

veteran

Veterans are really a big deal.  We proudly wear our “Support our Troops” T-shirts and pay lip service like all get out to our service people.  We give to veterans organizations and we express great concern and outrage over the homeless vets.  These vets are often veterans of foreign wars.

Our latest round of outrage has been over the Veterans Administration and the alleged abuses our servicemen have suffered because of delayed appointments, denied benefits and over-all shoddy treatment. The former head of the VA, General Shinseki,  was recently fired and a new Secretary was appointed to fix that which has been considered a systemic failure.  Apparently Robert A. McDonald, former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, has really started shaking things up.  Many  thousands of doctors and nurses are expected to be hired and there are all kinds of internal changes in the process.

The most vets today are from the Vietnam War era.  There are fewer than 2 million vets left over from WWII.   The Vietnam War was the last war where our troops were conscripted.  There are also many lingering illnesses from that war, many stemming from Agent Orange exposure and PTSD.  Benefits for both these war issues were denied for many years.  Only recently have veterans gotten significant benefits for the various ailments, many of which are life-threatening, associated with these two   disorders.
Read More