Reward for proficient and well-decorated fighter pilot: Kick him out because he’s gay

Lieutenant Colonel Victor J. Fehrenbach is a fighter pilot and weapons systems for the Air Force. Aubrey Sarvis writes that Fehrenbach has excelled at everything he has done for the Air Force. His reward? They are kicking him out of the Air Force because he is gay.

The Air Force is about to discharge this guy, a virtual poster boy for Air Force recruiting, because he is gay? Someone has to be kidding. This is sheer madness.

Let me check my calendar . . . yep, it's 2009. Obama is in office. This is insane. And it's been done many times before, for instance, when the military kicked out dozens of gay Arabic language specialists during the Iraq invasion because they were also gay. Sarvis advises that we need far more than an executive order to stop this madness to protect the remaining 65,000 gays and lesbians in the military. We need to change DADT immediately. We must rip it apart and choose our military personnel on one criterion: whether they can do the job.

A law is a law, even a bad law. Our country and service members are suffering the consequences as we watch this theater of the absurd play out. We need this new 111th Congress and this new President to engage each other immediately and with a sense of urgency to stop this obvious madness.

To compound this tragedy, Fehrenbach was two years shy of retiring with a full pension. See Fehrenbach's interview by Rachel Maddow at the top link.

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Jesse Ventura on torture

Jesse Ventura appeared on The View and spoke plain truth about torture, i.e., waterboarding is torture. If you can bear it, listen to Elisabeth Hasselbeck chattering away in support of torture (even though she claims that she is against torture). Ventura won't put up with Hasselbeck's inanity, and puts the blame squarely where it belongs, given that U.S. torture hasn't exactly been a recent revelation to anyone who gave a crap about it.

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More details about torture conducted by the U.S.

Details of the senseless torture committed by Americans continue to come out, but many details have been easily available for several years. Consider this 2006 article by Esquire, which I found at the Daily Dish. It is incredibly disturbing not only because of the behavior of the personnel, but because the information inexorably points to complicity by high-ranking officers and members of the Bush Administration.

[W]hen Church issued his report in March 2005, it found "no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse" and blamed all the trouble with torture on rogue soldiers.

That's when Fishback contacted Garlasco.

Bottom Line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody. This behavior violates the professional military ethic of "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do" and it violates the constitutional principle of a government accountable to the people.

MARC GARLASCO PUSHES the tape recorder across the table, a little closer to Jeff . . .

This is where one of the stories begins. It's one of many disturbing stories, they are increasingly coming out, and they are all pointing to systematic torture, not just a rogue soldier here or there. It's time for Congressional hearings and war crimes prosecutions. Shouldn't we move forward, though? Yes, we should. We should move forward through this unseemly American conduct, not around it. We need to understand how this could have happened, or else it will occur again at the whim of the military. If it isn't prosecuted, it will occur at the whim of state and local police. We need to look at this conduct up close, as difficult as it is. We need those who were responsible, especially high-ranking officials, to feel intense shame.

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A long-time admirer of Israel is disillusioned

In a U.K. Guardian article entitled, "The Paradox of Israel's Pursuit of Might," long-time admirer of Israel Max Hastings writes of his disillusionment regarding Israel's ambitions:

I was a correspondent there in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur war. It was an extraordinarily moving spectacle, to behold the people of Israel rallying to meet what they perceived as a threat to their national survival. One morning I stood on the Golan Heights and watched Israeli tanks duelling with the Syrians, amid pillars of smoke and flame . . . For someone like me, who enjoyed a love affair with Israel 40 years ago, it is heart-breaking to see the story come to such a pass. It is because so many of us so much want to see Israel prosper in security and peace that we share a sense of tragedy that 61 years after the state was born amid such lofty ideals, it should be led by such a man as Bibi Netanyahu, committed to policies which can yield nothing honourable or lasting.

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Air Force Cheesecake

A few weeks ago, I visited the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. I didn't expect that I'd like the exhibition that much- my eyes tend to glaze over at the discussion of military specs. However, some of the museum, which is on a functioning Air Force Base, really surprised and impressed me. I liked that the museum had seven different Air Force Ones available, four of which could be explored inside and out. I also really liked looking at the ways in which different air force jets and planes of different eras were decorated. I took many pictures of the cheesecake-style pinup gals, critters and skeletons that adorned these big flying weapons. The gals are not surprising I suppose- they echo the centuries-old tradition of masthead mermaids on ships. What really struck me was the use of contemporary cartoon characters as happy icons of war. I decided to string together my photos of airplane cheesecake and cartoon characters in another simplistic Youtube slideshow. Check it out, and look out for the Seven Dwarves, Donald Duck, Goofy, The Jolly Green Giant, Dennis the Menace and Dumbo, all emblazoned proudly on the face of military jets.

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