Bill Keller of the NYT says it best:

"This ruling has to send a shiver up the spine of anyone who hopes for a genuinely democratic Iraq. What the court calls libel is, in most countries, called journalism.

"Indeed, if a respected journalist like Ghaith Abdul-Ahad can be punished for reporting on concerns about a trend toward authoritarian government, the verdict would seem to lend credence to those very concerns."

Nobody wants to think that all those lives were lost just so Iraq could slide back into authoritarianism... but what if it does? Will the coalition of the willing United States keep invading until it gets the government it wants?

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.

It is thought to be the first such incident since Muslim separatists took up arms against Indian rule in 1989.

From the Washington Post:

"Sound at a certain level creates sensory overload and breaks down subjectivity and can [bring about] a regression to infantile behavior," said Suzanne G. Cusick, a music professor at New York University who has studied, lectured about and written extensively on the use of music as torture in the current wars. "Its effectiveness depends on the constancy of the sound, not the qualities of the music."

Played at a certain volume, she said, "it simply prevents people from thinking."

Cusick, the NYU music professor, has interviewed a number of former detainees about their experiences and says the music they most often described hearing was heavy metal, rap and country. Specific songs mentioned include Queen's "We Are the Champions" and "March of the Pigs" by industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails.

Another former prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, told Human Rights Watch that he had been forced to listen to the rapper Eminem's song "The Real Slim Shady" for 20 days.

It seems sort of surreal to watch it now.

h/t: Tyler Soverns

People talk about MacArthur Genius grants as though they were lightning strikes: sudden, glorious, life-changing. I'm not so sure the scope or ambition of Seattle filmmaker James Longley's work could possibly expand—he's already made films in Russia, Palestine, and Iraq, and has spent over a year in Iran and a bit of time in India working on more—but I hope this fellowship makes the significant logistical hurdles of making a James Longley film a little easier. And I really can't think of an American filmmaker working right now who is more deserving, or less likely to freak out and become unproductive under the crushing mantle of genius-dom. In winning this fellowship, Longley joins such previous MacArthur film winners as Frederick Wiseman and Erroll Morris. May he be so productive.

The Stranger's previous coverage of Longley includes: a 2003 review of Gaza Strip by Sean Nelson ("a portrait of a brutalized collective psyche, and a convincing argument that death is more appealing than some versions of life"), blindsided admiration in a 2006 Sundance FIlm Festival Slog post by Andy Spletzer (search for it—the permalink looks rotten), my interview with Longley when the film opened the Arab and Iranian FIlm Festival here, my effusive review of Iraq in Fragments when it opened theatrically ("The Stranger gave local filmmaker Longley the 2006 Genius Award largely on the merits of this truly astonishing film [...] It's hard to count the ways this movie departs from the standard photojournalistic techniques for documenting a war"), and of course, my profile of Longley for The Stranger's small-potatoes prescient Genius Awards. After that Iraq in Fragments was nominated for an Academy Award (but lost to the Al Gore vehicle An Inconvenient Truth), Longley was briefly detained by police in Iran, and now, the MacArthur grant. Longley is currently making a film in India.

Never seen a James Longley documentary? I recommend you get your hands on the DVD of Iraq in Fragments, which includes voiceover commentary and the devastating Academy Award-nominated short film Sari's Mother. You can also read Longley's blog posts from Iran in the aftermath of the disputed election here.

Congratulations, James.

When his best friend died in combat, he showed up in a dress to the military funeral. Because both had promised each other that if one of them died the other would wear a dress to the funeral. True friendship.

Heartbreaking photos here and here. Pvt. Kevin Elliott was lucky to have such a good friend.

It was mentioned in the Morning News, but the heart of the story is at the bottom, from a Times blog post Munadi wrote earlier this month:

"... being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate."

"And if I leave this country, if other people like me leave this country, who will come to Afghanistan?" he wrote. "Will it be the Taliban who come to govern this country? That is why I want to come back, even if it means cleaning the streets of Kabul. That would be a better job for me, rather than working, for example, in a restaurant in Germany."

For the first time since he left for Iraq, my brother Mike and I were just on Facebook at the same time, and we got to chat for a sec. He says, "It's like 120 here and windy. Feels like a blow dryer on your face all the time." Later in the conversation he said, "I would like to go home. I'm over this place." I asked him what he missed most about home. "Girls, alcohol, and the ocean."

If I ever write a book about my brother, I'm gonna call it Girls, Alcohol, and the Ocean.

Photo above is from the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division's Facebook page.

Two young children have been shot by their siblings in the space of 24 hours in the United States.

In Las Vegas, a two-year-old girl was in a critical condition after being shot by her four-year-old brother at their home, police said.

In South Carolina, a four-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by his three-year-old brother after the little boy found a gun.

The injured boy was expected to make a full recovery, police said.

The incident in Las Vegas happened on Thursday night after the girl's brother found a loaded 9mm handgun inside their home.

It went off while he was holding it, hitting his sister in her torso.

According to police, the father was home at the time and the gun appears to have been improperly secured.

Iraqis have held a giant party in a Baghdad park as US troops approach their deadline for withdrawing from cities and towns to their bases.

Thousands flocked to the capital's Zawra Park to be entertained by musicians and poets, as police patrol cars were festooned with flowers.

"Since 2003 [the year of the US-led invasion], I have never been to a party."

Ahmed Ali, Baghdad reveller, 20

A car bomb blew up Wednesday in a packed outdoor food market in one of the most peaceful areas of Iraq's Shiite south, killing about 30 people and wounding dozens more. The blast raised fears that militants may be planning more strikes in remote, poorly secured areas, seeking to stretch Iraq's security services as they take on a bigger role in Baghdad and other flashpoint cities... It was the deadliest bombing in the Nasiriyah area since Nov. 12, 2003.

Just sent him a message on Facebook to see if he's OK. Haven't heard back yet, but none of the news stories mention any American casualties. To fill the silence, I've been digging around Facebook, and the more you dig around on Facebook for information about someone you know fighting overseas, the more you find. Facebook has completely changed what war feels like for families. There's someone in the army whose job includes maintaining his brigade's Facebook page. And everyone in the brigade has a Facebook page too, and they post pictures of one another. On a day when Iraqis are blowing up Iraqis in regions thought to be peaceful, when you're desperate for a peaceful mental image of your brother, it's quite nice to stumble across a photo of your brother sleeping peacefully in an air-conditioned tent on the other side of the planet:

The caption: "Waiting to go to Iraq.........sorry, not waiting. Taking a tactical pause." This was in Kuwait, weeks ago. What has he done since then? According to Facebook, he's been thinking about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, getting sweet messages from college friends ("Are we allowed to send you alcohol? I bet some Arbor Mist Peach Chardonnay would hit the spot. Hope you're taking care of yourself"), getting shit from college friends ("A little birdie flew into my window and told me that somebody's been sneaking off post....."), and getting messages from his girlfriend back home ("Baby I'm so so so so sorry... I bitch about you not calling then I don't answer I promise it won't happen again:(..."), and sweating ("It's very hot"). It's weird how far away he is, and yet how close he feels. It's weird, I tell ya. I used to hate Facebook. I don't hate Facebook anymore.

Laguerre Payen, 27
- Payen was unemployed and took medication for schizophrenia. A law enforcement source said that on Wednesday night, Payen "was off his meds - needing to be particularly crazy to do the deed." He was hospitalized after the arrest.
- His lawyer said he is "intellectually challenged" and has "a very low borderline" IQ.
- A cousin said his mother is also mentally ill, and his father is dead. She said doesn't think Payen knows how to read.
- A recent visitor to his apartment said it contained bottles of urine, and raw chicken on the stovetop. Elsewhere it was described as a "filthy crack den."
- He had previously served 15 months for assault, after driving around the Orthodox-Jew-heavy town Monsey, firing a BB gun out of the window. He struck two teens, and also snatched two purses.
- He was supposed to be deported back to Haiti, but an immigration judge stayed the sentence, because he was judged insane.

On the modern battlefield, Iraqi insurgents have adapted by targeting EOD robots and capturing robots for their own use...

When the smartest, most virtuous of your three brothers goes off to war, you do a lot more talking to family members than usual, you do a lot more staring into the middle distance at nothing, and you make a couple Google alerts. A Facebook page devoted to the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division—which he's in—keeps posting new photos of guys standing around in the desert in Kuwait, training, acclimating, getting used to the terrain, and when you know one of the guys in those photos is your brother you spend a long time staring at all those heads, trying to find him. Still haven't found him in any of the photos, and he still hasn't updated his Facebook status since he left, but the other day he sent an email to Dad:

Hey Dad it's Mike,

I guess this Email works out here too. Thank god cause the internet is slow and it takes forever to login to my Army Online Account. Anyway, I arrived safe and I should be here in Kuwait for another week or two. They are slowing moving guys from our company up to Iraq and I'm not quite sure when I'm going.

Well....it's really hot out here. Hot enough where you don't even want to leave your tent to go to the bath room, let alone for to the dining facility. Meals have been missed on account of weather. It also doesn't help that everything seems to be about a mile walk from the sleeping tents. There's a lot of sand that gets picked up in the wind so the sky looks polluted all the time. I haven't seen blue sky since I've been here. I have seen camels and desert with absolutely no vegetation whatsoever.

Well, my time is almost up for the internet so I'll tell you more later. I'm keeping a journal too. Anyway, I love you and if you could forward the love to the rest of the family...especially mom. Love you guys!

Love Mike

Strange to imagine a soldier out in a tent in sandy Kuwait on his laptop, but that is the scene. Here's another picture from the Facebook page. None of them is my brother. Except possibly the guy in the very back on the right. Pretty hard to tell.

Setting
Interior of a car that's southbound on 12th Avenue, between Madison and Yesler. It's 4 pm on May 6th, 2009.

Radio Announcer— The Justice Department's inspector general has found that the FBI has been so slow to update its terrorist watch list that it may have compromised national security. The concern: At least 12 terrorism suspects who were either not on the list or weren't added quickly may have traveled in and out of the United States while the database was being updated.

Father— Ahh, I remember this list. They had one just like it in the days of the war for independence. The list was used to get rid of people you didn't like.

Son— What do you mean?

Father— Back when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, while the war was happening, people would put other people on the list—calling them a terrorist or helpers of terrorists—not because it was true but because they did not like them for some reason or another. They'd go to the officials and say: "Such and such is a terrorist. You must get him." And sure enough, that person would disappear. Killed. Gone. The end. Problem solved.

Son— Was this something you heard about or something you witnessed?

Father— My uncle was the victim of this sort of practice. He wound up on a list in 1978, was soon after killed, and his body was not found until 1992. His grave was in the government records: "Buried here is a terrorist." Someone did not like him.

Son— Your own uncle?

Father— Yes.

Son— Who put him on the list?

Father— His wife did.

Son— What did she do that for?

Father— Because he was infertile. He could not make her pregnant.

Son— She got him killed because he was impotent?

Father— What happened was this. When my aunt discovered that her husband's sperm could do nothing but swim around, it was decided that she should have sex with another man, a good friend of theirs. Both agreed to do this—so did the friend. And sure enough, she had kids. Four. Everything was going fine, but then my uncle started drinking too much, and telling people at the bar that the kids in his house were not his but a friend who had done the deed. When my aunt learned that her husband was saying such things, humiliating her at the bar like that, she put him on the list.

Son— Wow!

Father— Those lists are dangerous. You have to watch whose feet you're stepping on.

Son— Is the aunt still around?

Father— Yes, she still lives in Highfields. A very nice woman. Owns a shop or something.

THE END

There are about 136,000 American troops in Iraq right now, including, as of three days ago, my little brother Mike. He's been training on an Army base in El Paso, Texas, for months, bored out of his mind, bored with movies, bored with the books he had, bored with the crummy little town, bored with the boring brown hills in Mexico he could see in the boring distance. A couple weeks ago my mom was asking him how he thinks he's going to like being in Iraq and he said, "It beats El Paso, Texas."

He called me last Saturday afternoon to say that he'd be leaving in the morning. It was one of those phone calls you know is coming but then surprises you when it comes, and I had no idea what to say, what older-brotherly advice to give, could barely think what to ask. I felt so blank and full of love and terrified and inarticulate—out of all my brothers, Mike is the one I aspire to be more like—that I only thought to ask the basics. Was he nervous? "I feel fine," he said, in his typically quiet, strong way. "I was nervous two days ago but now I'm fine." Where in Iraq was he being sent? A fairly remote area of southern Iraq. "We're going to be training Iraqis. The Iraqi brigade or something," he said. What was he doing right now? "Sitting in an empty apartment with a computer and a pillow." What was he going to do on his last night in the states? "Steak dinner. Just take it easy," he said.

Then he heard his older brother try to explain how proud he was of him and how brave he was, and talk about how meaningful it was to go off and be part of history, and he said he was going to try to keep a journal, and before I knew it we were done talking and I was wandering around the apartment trying not to cry. He and I have always said a lot to each other without many words, and I was so lost in my inarticulate vortex—weird, blank, free-falling feeling in the chest—that I hadn't been able to figure out an excuse to keep him on the phone longer.

"I think Mike's chances of coming back in one piece are pretty good," my dad said when I called him that night. Dad was in the Air Force in the '70s. "He signed up for it. And he'll be able to talk about what happens over there for the rest of his life."

Then I called my great aunt Betty. "I hope he doesn't get killed, but mostly I hope he doesn't get hurt," she said. Aunt Betty was an Army nurse for 21 years, beginning in 1952, and now lives in a retirement community in Davis, California. "I think he'll be in jeopardy, of course, but it'll be a random sort of thing, Iraqis blowing up Iraqis—getting in the middle of that. That would be the danger. But probably not as much danger as being a policeman in Oakland or driving on the freeways." I asked her what she meant about getting hurt being worse then being killed, and she started talking about the things she'd seen as a nurse in Korea—how much worse it is to lose a limb or come home with a brain injury than not to come home at all.

When I called my youngest brother Steven, who dropped out of school and is actively doing nothing, except going to movies and eating out a lot at Outback Steakhouse, he said, "I told him, 'Don't be a hero. If you hear a gun, don't think of your guys—run!' That's what I would do." I told him what Aunt Betty said about getting injured being worse than not making it back, about missing limbs and injured brains, and Steven said, "More things to worry about! Thanks! I didn't even think about that. Jesus." And then we talked about how mom is doing, since she is the sweetest, hardest-working, most worried mom in the world (she has three jobs, works seven days a week). Steven said, "I told Mom, 'He's nervous, but he's keeping it together. Try not to freak him out and start crying and telling him how Jesus loves him.'"

Finally got ahold of Mom on Monday. She'd asked him all the questions I never thought to ask, like whether they'd been trained to deal with watching people die (yes), how many hours it takes to get from Texas to Iraq (17 or 18), how they get over there (not in a cargo plane, but in a commercial airliner the Army leases), and where he will spend his first week acclimating to the new environment (Kuwait). She'd seen Mike recently; he came home for a few days. "I offered to hide him in the closet but he wouldn't let me," she said. He'd told her how lucky he was to be going to southern Iraq—on a mission that doesn't sound very combat-heavy—and not central/northern Iraq (where troops are still battling it out in dangerous cities) or Afghanistan (where the coming dangers are impossible to imagine). She mentioned she'd gotten something in the mail recently about a VA hospital. "It was all about this hospital and all the things they do, particularly partial brain injuries. I was like, 'OK, this is making me sick.' I can't read that stuff." I asked her how she was doing and told her I love her. "I'm okay. I'm okay," she said. "I'm a little scared."

For the past two days I've been checking Mike's Facebook page a lot, waiting for a new status, knowing it's going to be a while. (The photos at the top of this post are from his Facebook page—that's our cousin Alicia with him on the left.) I'm hoping he stays in southern Iraq his whole yearlong tour, and that it's really boring for him. Really, really, really boring. Worse than El Paso.

A real grasp of this fact would certainly make if more difficult to go into war. Why? Because if you think war can be contained and managed, you are likely to go into it in much the same way you would go into a sporting event (an event that is contained, has borders, refs, and penalties for foul acts). But if you know it is not about rules of engagement and disengagement, if you see it as it actually is, as an absolute chaos that consumes everything because everything in it is possible, you will use any diplomatic means to avoid what is the great (if not the greatest) void.

We must not say that torture is bad but that torture, in a state of war, has its home. Torture outside of war? Here it is a complete stranger.

So, our government declared a war on terrorists, the war opened its gates and we entered hell: torture, murder, sexual abuse, and so on and so on—the obscene freedoms. So far, so good. However, this was not the case. There was no real war on terror. All of this torturing did not happen in a state of war (a state of lawlessness) but of peace (a state of law). The state authorized torture of "enemy combatants" (soldiers without a state) was cruel for the very reasons that Frank Rich pointed out in NYT today:

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of... [the real] White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections.

We are now finding out that the torture was not about war with stateless terrorists but starting a war with a state that had nothing to do with international terrorism. As you can see, this is a major ethical problem. In fact, this is criminal. In war, there is no such thing as crime—which is why the expression "war crimes" is redundant. There can only be crimes during peace times. A disturbance is not a disturbance if it happens in a great disturbance. It is nothing at all—fire in fire, smoke in smoke, ashes in ashes, destruction all around. For a disturbance to exist there must be a situation in which its opposite dominates—stability, a state of peace. And that is precisely why torture, in this context, the context of trying to justify a war in a situation of peace, is criminal. Indeed, the fact that the enemy combatants did not create or confirm a phony link between themselves and Iraq, even under tremendous pain, makes them more honest and honorable than their torturers.

BOSTON — State police and security officials say a U.S. Marine was arrested Sunday morning at Boston's Logan International Airport after screeners found bomb-making materials, a gun and ammunition in his checked baggage.

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Ann Davis says 22-year-old Cpl. Justin Reed, of Jacksonville, N.C., was booked on US Airways Flight 877 to Charlotte, N.C. Davis says Reed arrived in Boston on a flight from Las Vegas earlier Sunday morning.

Davis says the TSA is trying to determine why the items were not detected during a screening in Las Vegas.

State police at Logan were notified about the items by the TSA screeners.

Reed was charged with possession of an infernal machine and possession of a concealed weapon in a secure area of an airport. Bail was set at $50,000.

Thanks to Nick for the tip.

The Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks as the nation's economic downturn helped its recruiting, allowing it to reverse a decline in recruiting standards that had alarmed some officers.

While shunning those with criminal backgrounds, the Army is also attracting better-educated recruits. It is on track this year to meet, for the first time since 2004, the Pentagon's goal of ensuring that 90 percent of recruits have high school diplomas.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a major reshaping of the Pentagon budget on Monday, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The shift from billions being poured into expensive and often ineffective military wizardry to increasing troop numbers and agility must be examined. What it shows is the end of the kind of military that Rummy wanted to realize: small, rapid, and hi-tech. But a small but stronger army ultimately meant a weaker democracy. And this contradiction is at the heart of all democracies since the Greeks: an increase in voting rights is consistently tied to an increase in army size. You can not separate, for example, the Reform Acts (1832, 1867, and 1884) in Victorian England with the nation's expanding colonial military commitments. In short, Rummy's ideal army was one that would need little public support: politically or physically. Robots and private companies would do all of the fighting. This is why the success of The Surge was in actual fact not a success for Rummy/Bush, whose ideal military moment turned out to be a failure—Shock and Awe. The dark secret of a democracy is a large army.

At least 25 people have been killed by a suicide bomber in the north-eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, police say.

The bomber targeted a crowd of mourners at a Kurdish funeral in the town of Jalawla, 115km (70 miles) north-east of the capital, Baghdad.

Dozens of people are reported to have been wounded in the explosion.

Since taking office in January, Obama has announced plans to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to halt the military trials of suspected terrorists there, and to make CIA officers follow the Army field manual's rules on interrogations. Cheney said the administration appears to be returning to the pre-2001 model of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue, rather than a military problem.

Why go back to the "pre-2001" model? Because it is the correct model. Terrorism, as The Oklahoma City bombing made clear, is a law enforcement issue and not a military one. Terrorists are terrorists precisely because they do not have control or access to state power, and only an enemy state properly constitutes a problem that requires for its solution the massive resources of the military. The confusion about what type of issue terrorism is—a confusion Bush's administration deliberately doubled by, one, the term "enemy combatant" (the confusing of a nonstate actor with a state actor), and, two, the attempt to officially equate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards with Al-Qaeda (confusing a state institution with a terrorist gang)—resulted in this mess:

About $700 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, has been appropriated from the 2003-09 fiscal years. Taking into account operations for fiscal year 2010, the price tag is about $800 billion.