Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him … Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion–a pious soul–a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.
Tag: Donald Rumsfeld
Apr 05 2008
From the Irony File: Mount Misery
Mar 01 2008
Bush: Buy Our Weapons or Iran will hit Paris with Nukes
Think the Bush Administration is done trying open new fronts in using scare tactics in the service of war profiteering? Think again.
In yet another display of mindboggling display of fearmongering coupled with greed, the Bush Administration is now now telling Europe that it needs to buy American missile defense systems–or else. From the Los Angeles Times:
With American officials working to close a deal on a missile defense system in Europe, the head of the U.S. program warned Thursday that Iran was within two or three years of producing a missile that could reach most European capitals.
“They’re already flying missiles that exceed what they would need in a fight with Israel. Why? Why do they continue this progression in terms of range of missiles? It’s something we need to think about,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told a conference here on missile defense… [snip]
“Our short-range defenses could protect Rome and Athens,” Obering said, but he warned that London, Paris and Brussels would remain vulnerable “against an Iranian [intermediate-range missile] threat.”
That’s right, mes amis, meine Damen und Herren. Unless you buy our preposterously expensive and utterly ineffectual Star Wars “defense” technology, dangerous terrorist Ahmadinejad and his merry band of clerics will unilaterally start a war with Israel, create a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, and use the expanded conflict to send your beloved Arc de Triomphe and Reichstag into the stratosphere.
Feb 19 2008
An Interview With Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist and Author Fred Kaplan
The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Wild Wild Left, the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.
Most Americans are eager to turn the page on the Bush years. Yet even as we elect a new president we’re still coming to terms with an era that has both tarnished America’s reputation and diminished its influence.
Fred Kaplan chronicles the folly of the Bush years in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (John Wiley & Sons).
Kaplan writes that,
“Nearly all of America’s blunders in war and peace these past few years stem from a single grand misconception: that the world changed after 9/11, when in fact it didn’t.
Certainly, things about the world changed, not least Americans’ sudden awareness that they were vulnerable. But the way the world works – the nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations – remained essentially the same.”
Jan 01 2008
The Army’s Other Crisis
cross-posted from Daily Kos
is the title of an important piece in Washington Monthly, subtitled “Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving”. Written by Andrew Tilghman, it provides the statistics that let us understand that the leadership of the Army is effectively broken, now and for the future.
Consider the following: of the West Point Class of 2002, 58% left the Army upon completion of their minimum 5 year commitment. Or on a larger scale, consider this:
In the last four years, the exodus of junior officers from the Army has accelerated. In 2003, around 8 percent of junior officers with between four and nine years of experience left for other careers. Last year, the attrition rate leapt to 13 percent. “A five percent change could potentially be a serious problem,” said James Hosek, an expert in military retention at the RAND Corporation. Over the long term, this rate of attrition would halve the number of officers who reach their tenth year in uniform and intend to take senior leadership roles.
(more)
Nov 15 2007
Democrats on Torture: Feckless is as Feckless Does
The latest demonstration of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s feckless leadership was the 53-40 kabuki vote late on November 8th to confirm Michael B. Mukasey as Attorney General. Mukasey had refused to regard the abusive technique called waterboarding to be torture and therefore a prosecutable criminal act. Mukasey understands whom he is supposed to shield.
Democrats quickly announced the intention to introduce legislation outlawing waterboarding. But why? As Evan Wallach pointed out in The Washington Post on November 4th, numerous legal precedents prove that waterboarding already is illegal and prosecutable.
Are Democrats, having caved on Mukasey’s confirmation, now about to make yet another strategic blunder by proceeeding with this legislation?
WARNING NOTICE: Reflecting on this question and exploring the links below may lead to severe loss of equanimity and cause political activism or emigration to a still-civilized country.
Nov 01 2007
Inside the diseased mind of Donald Rumsfeld
Retired Secretary of Death and Destruction Donald Rumsfeld used to hand write some twenty to sixty notes, called “snowflakes,” each day. Robin Wright, of the Washington Post, has obtained some of them. They were not classified, but were deemed “for official use only.”
In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.
Oct 21 2007
“Rumsfeld’s Revenge” led State Dept. to hire Blackwater
According to State Dept. officals, Donald Rumsfeld’s anger at losing control of funds to build the new embassy in Baghdad left State with no choice but to turn to Blackwater for its security.
In 2004 the State Department began planning for its new U.S. embassy in Baghdad and Rumsfeld lost a turf war for control of the billions in construction funds. As a result, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowits decided protecting State was no longer their concern:
A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security…
Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.
Oct 20 2007
Don’t let the obvious — and deadly — failures become triumphs.
I just frontpaged a short piece over on ePluribus Media called “About that weapons cache…” — Good News and Bad News, but it’s important enough to repeat in full here…
Great news, folks! This just in from Reuters:
19 tons of explosives found in Iraq
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. forces in Iraq discovered nearly 19 tons of explosives in a weapons cache north of Baghdad this week, one of the biggest finds of its kind, the U.S. military said on Saturday.
[…snip…] More at link in title
Isn’t that wonderful? 19 tons!
Of course, if the Bush Administration hadn’t lost 380 tons of explosives just over three years ago, we might have something more significant to crow over. (Make the jump…)