[Cross-posted at the Democracy Cell Project]
Truth
As I was sitting in the Dirksen Hearing Room a few weeks ago, listening to the testimony of the folks from the GAO, I had one of those moments: you know...when you feel your head explode, or search for a nearby wall upon which to bang it??
Sen. Norm Coleman was asking the GAO guy why the numbers in his report about the success of the SURGE were different from what he had been seeing.
Oh, said Mr. Walker from the GAO. You saw the OFFICIAL numbers, My report is based on the UNofficial numbers.
OOHHHH, I thought to myself. There are TWO sets of numbers! At least! Holy Orwell! I wonder which ones are the ACTUAL numbers, as opposed to the FANTASY numbers?
No one else in the room, which was crowded, even blinked.
This past week, we were informed, by the New York Times, no less, that there were dueling memos about torture. Larry Craig said he was no longer guilty, while Marion Jones said she was no longer innocent.
I have tried to believe in at least two impossible things before breakfast, but it seems that even the impossible things I believe are, somehow, possible by the time the toast is burned...
But the most impossible thing that has become possible came with the death and story about Ciara Durkin, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military.
Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries "suffered from a non-combat related incident" at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.
Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.
The reason my head went a-spinnin' at the news is that it sounded horribly familiar. Juan Torres' son John was also shot in the head, at Bagram, and John was...part of a finance unit. Doing payroll.
Canavan told the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: "She was in the finance unit and she said, 'I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.'"
Canavan revealed that Durkin said if anything happened to her, to make sure it was investigated.
Rest of the story here
John told his father the same thing, several hours before he was killed.
MichiganGirl had a story up speculating about the link.
OK, so we already know that we are dealing with a bunch of liars and that the core of our government is rotten, rotten. And we know about Pat Tillman, and Abu Ghraib, and torture at Guantanamo and secret prisons in faraway lands, and the cooking of the surge numbers, and the Downing Street minutes, and Colin Powell lying at the United Nations, and oh so many head-banging moments.
What is it going to take?? I am reminded of what our reporter says at the end of the play I co-authored FEAR UP: Stories from Baghdad and Guantanamo:
**Reporter:** We all have the potential for the behavior we’ve seen in the war on terror and we’re all capable of more altruistic or cooperative behavior. And I believe that confronting these extreme situations is itself an act of hope because in doing that, we are saying that there's an alternative. We can do better. I believe we’ve let them have their way without fierce enough protest. I only wish my pen was sharper and my words tougher.
People, we must get tougher. Our protests must be fiercer. Our future depends upon it.