Downer Friday
First, the good part:

Military Drops Cowardice Case Against Soldier Who Sought Help for Panic Attacks

A five-year veteran, Pogany said his problems surfaced after he saw the mangled body of an Iraqi man cut in half by American gunfire.

Pogany said he has physical and psychological problems that stem from brain damage caused by a reaction to the anti-malaria drug Lariam. He is part of a military study looking into complaints from U.S. troops exposed to drugs and chemicals.

Pogany, assigned to a Green Beret interrogation team with the 10th Special Forces Group, began vomiting after seeing the Iraqi civilian's body three days after being sent to Iraq.

Pogany said he hopes to retire from the Army soon.

Sounds like a healthy reaction to me... but what's this about "troops exposed to drugs and chemicals"?

Now for the truly awful part:

Sorry to be such a buzz-kill on this pleasant Friday (though it seems to be clouding up a bit around here).  (Sudden UPDATE: now raining).  Boing Boing pulls together this link-filled post on Seymour Hersh's ACLU speech. Hersh is (other than the cartoons and Peter Schjeldahl's occasional art review) the reason why I read and continue to subscribe to the actual physical snail-mail delivered version of The New Yorker.

But back to the torture:

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos

"Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

When? December?

This story has been circulating for months, but I see no sign of it coming out in more detail except through postings like the above chez numerous other bloggers (see links to the side, and follow their links, and so on, and so on...)

I don't think this is the kind of "October Surprise" the Rovians are looking for, somehow. So what are they waiting for?


- posted by Cynthia @ 12:06 PM | | | Link |