The names of twenty five hundred young men and women have been erased from the chalkboard of life by the merchants of pain and death in our government.

They were erased from the list of the living by the hands of arrogant men wielding erasers soaked in the blood of tens of thousands of others who were maimed and wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths they will not dignify by counting or even mentioning.

It's a number, another irritating milestone that they hope falls on Friday so that the press flap will dissipate over the weekend.

After attending a Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice, a Bay Area interfaith peace organization. steering committee meeting, where one of the major topics was our endorsement of an anti-torture campaign, I was flipping through the channels when I came across Bill O'Reilly interviewing Rev. Jim Wallis (editor of Sojourners). They were discussing an advertisement run in the New York Times by an organization called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) that called for America to put an end to torture. O'Reilly asked Rev. Wallis a simple question, which I was surprised to see Rev. Wallis fumble. Granted, an armchair quarterback always feels better prepared than the person truly in the hot seat, but, Rev. Wallis is acting as a spokesperson for this campaign and I wish he had a more accurate response to O'Reilly's question.

The question from O'Reilly was "What torture?" He wanted to know what examples of torture could be cited to justify a campaign against it, specifically a campaign that accused the United States of torturing people. Instead of citing specific examples, Rev. Wallis gave the impression that the campaign was more philosophical, and that investigations were necessary to show whether the United States was, or was not, conducting or condoning torture.

It is important to remember that soldiers operate in an environment beyond our comprehension. Our current mission in Iraq is ill defined and the enemy unseen. Daily existence under such circumstances can't help but grind away at one's humanity. Furthermore, immoral leadership from the top condoning torture (Bush's so-called "regrets" notwithstanding) has filtered down to the ranks.

The recent allegations of cold-blooded murder perpetrated upon Iraqi civilians by American soldiers are the direct result of the Bush Administration's moral bankruptcy. Atrocities happen in all wars on all sides but this may be the tip of the iceberg and only what has been exposed to date. Yet while their actions should not be excused the real blame for their crimes truly resides with the political leadership that launched an illegitimate war. Both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers are victims of George Bush's foolish imperialism.

Not long ago I wrote about the Bush Administration's renaming the War on Terrorism as the "Long War"...or, as I prefer to dub it, the "Forever War" after Joseph Haldeman's science fiction classic. The fact is that Bush has done practically NOTHING to actually fight al-Qaeda since he abandoned the fight in Tora Bora so he could invade Iraq. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda regroups worldwide, reasserting itself in Pakistan and Afghanistan, spreading to Iraq, and further establishing itself in Somalia.

The Iraqis finally settle down and select new leaders and as America's Secretaries of State and Defense lounge comfortably in the Green Zone, the new vice president of Iraq's sister and her one bodyguard are mowed down on a Baghdad street by a shower of bullets. This only a few weeks after his brother was slain.

Young men and women attending Baghdad University, who remember a time when students could hang out together at the cinema or a café, now must look over their shoulders in fear of self-appointed and armed "Morality Police" who will imprison, beat, and maybe even kill them for fraternizing in public.

Is this what freedom looks like?

Washington, DC (APE) - Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman, currently facing possible execution for his conversion from Islam, significantly upped the ante today by threatening to reveal what he called "highly placed" Christian converts within the fledgling Afghan government. Prosecutors in the case have stated that they now have begun to doubt the claims of Rahman's insanity and are promising a full investigation.

This is frightening on many fronts:

KABUL, Afghanistan Mar 19, 2006 (AP)-- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday.

The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

First, I'm concerned that the religious right in this country will try to match this hysteria by implementing a like sensibility in their newly aquired court system.

Secondly, is this the kind of democracy that BushCo. has spent three years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars exporting to the middle east?

Finally, today, we hear this from the Screw-up-In-Chief:

CLEVELAND - President Bush on Monday cited progress in stabilizing an insurgent stronghold in northern Iraq, saying he has "confidence in our strategy" and critics should look beyond the images of violence to see clear signs of progress.

Worst. President. Ever.

[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally]

the stories about the u.s. treatment of detainees worsen by the day...

   While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

NB: "expanded," "less visible," "more primitive," and "indefinitely" - quite a damning list for a single paragraph.

On December 31, 2003, a German national with Lebanese lineage by the name of Khaled el-Masri was allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents and shipped off to a prison in Afghanistan where he has was held for five months, tortured, then released without charges being brought against him because this was a case of mistaken identity.

If his story sounds familiar, it's because the usage of torture flights has been practiced repeatedly in George Bush's Global War on Terror™.

continued below the fold...

The best that the American people might hope for is that this President was lying about weapons of mass destruction.   Because if he believed he was telling the truth why did the military plan make no attempt to contain those weapons?  If the President was telling the truth and fought two wars in two years that failed to contain either one of his objectives, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq would surely be two of the greatest military defeats in history.

For those of you who want a lot more information on the Akha, there is http://www.akha.org

Many articles in both news and contents on that site. Plus there are many downloads, more being added, both books and video.

Akha Chronicles is a book of Journals of 15 years. About 45 chapters. The first six chapters are now on line at http://www.akha.org/...

Will be doing a lot more with them, but just trying to get them all up and on line now as they are.