If you don’t have a blog, you can skip this, or read it because you’re as bored as me.
This is a terrific free tool that encodes your blog email address with a javascript tool, hopefully keeping your email address from becoming spam central (too late for me, I’m just mitigating damage now). I don’t know about you, but I’m getting about 15 – 30 spams a day, and that doesn’t count those scrubbed at the server level.
I only steal from the best, and this one was lifted from InstaPundit, so you know it’s good.
Update: edited for grammar.
I enjoy reading your blog. But lately I find your silence on the abuses being perpetrated by your former comrades in Iraq quite deafening.
As a doctor, how do you feel about injuries such as this:
According to the military autopsy report … Hatab’s death was ruled a homicide, caused by strangulation, the result of a fracture of a bone in his throat. The medical examiner testified it took him hours to die.
“He was ? covered in sweat and feces. It was a little hard to get a grip on him so he was moved by essentially hauling him backward by his jaw, kind of holding him onto his lower jar and upper part of his head,” said Jane Siegel, attorney for the former officer in charge at Camp White Horse, against whom charges have been dismissed.
Marine Reserve Cpl. William Scott Roy, a deputy sheriff in Rensselaer County, N.Y., has admitted his involvement and agreed to testify against fellow reservist Sgt. Gary Pittman, also from New York.
Pittman is accused of karate-kicking Hatab in the chest when the prisoner allegedly refused to follow orders.
Lawyers say none of the Marines spoke Arabic, nor were there any translators assigned to the camp.
I have had nothing to say about this like I have had nothing to say about abortion, the war on drugs, the presedential race, or about 10,000 other topics.
Why? Because a) I have nothing to add that hasn’t been said already, and b) this is a (mostly) family-rated blog. Oddly enough, mistreatment of prisoners in a war zone isn’t something I have ever been inclined to blog about.
I’d also like a little parity: where’s your outrage about my non-outrage at the murder of the 4 Blackwell contractors, which was gruesome and calculated murder, and much worse than any of the alleged acts in military prison?? The double standard here is obvious. And depressing.
And, there, I proved my original point. I have nothing to add that hasn’t already been said, better, elsewhere.
For some strange reason when I read Mike’s comments this cartoon came to mind.
Oppps….your comments don’t allow HTML. Here is the cartoon link that I wanted to post.
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000333.html
That cartoon linked in the previous comment sums it up very eloquently. Deafening silence, indeed.
This is a very disturbing trend among those who support the war in Iraq! What points are GruntDoc, Medicmom, and George making by pointing out that the public outrage over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is much more than that regarding the killings of American hostages? It appears to me that this is an effective way to avoid any discussion of such abuses of POWs by the American military by complaining about the double standard in outcry. However, these are two very separate issues. Yes, there is a double standard but this should not at all be used to justify nor try and decrease the seriousness of abuses of Iraqi POWs. Such an argument is more suitable for a 5 year old who complains that his older brother did something far worse then he did and didn’t get punished as severely. As adults and as Americans I would expect a much more intellegent discussion of this issue (either in defence or not).
GruntDoc says that there should be “parity” and that a double standard exists. Yes, but do you know why? It’s because the world holds Americans to a higher standard than most anyone else! That should mean something. It means to me that as a civilization, society, and a nation we are BETTER than most others in the world. We are certainly better than the Iraqis and far superior to terrorists who are little more than fanatic, outclassed, punks with no power other than to kill hostages. “Parity”? I certainly hope not. That would mean that we lower ourselves and our expectations down to those of common criminals and scum who try and kill Americans in Iraq every day. Personally I expect much more out of our military as far as morally superior, intellegent, and humanitarian actions than I would ever expect out of a terrorist – even in my wildest dreams.
For a thread that was about email address encoding, it’s certainly taken a bizarre twist. Seems if your outrage isn’t shared by everyone equally and commented about all the time by everyone, then you’re just insufficiently outraged, insufficiently sensitive, etc.
Yes, I want parity. I want the NYT, the WP, the LATimes, CBS, etc, who give non-stop coverage about the criminal behavior of 7/150,000 troops to hold the murderers of the Blackwell contractors and this latest individual (name not inserted because I choose not to be googled on his name, not out of disrespect for him). “We’re held to a higher standard” = separate and unequal, and that’s crap. It’s ‘the subtle racism of low expectations’, as has been said recently, and it applies to every single one of these situations. Funny no reporters are in Syria, demanding Assad apologise, nobody is in Egypt asking why the government there hasn’t condemned radical islam, etc. We’re a self-absorbed bunch, and if we’re not perfect for some reason a noisy few will use that as a bat to beat everyone with, especially when it conveniently fits their preconceptions.
I know about high standards, and about double standards for the US and everybody else. I want the standards to be just that, standards, and a little less focus on the few who fall below, and a lot more focus on those who don’t even aspire to get on par.
I am now turning off the comments for this post. I wanted to talk about email encoding, and got hijacked by the outrage of the month club. If you want to rant about this, there are any number of blogs that specialize in that sort of thing. This isn’t one of them.