hell’s handmaiden

I found this article, “Afghan boy dancers sexually abused by former warlords“, about the bacha bereesh in Afghanistan by following a link from the quite obviously anti-Islam site, TheReligionofPeace– Islam: The Religion of Peace (and a big stack of dead bodies). One would think then that the link would direct to a condemnation of Islam– “Islam supports raping young boys”, that kind of thing. After all, the bacha bereesh are young boys dressed up as girls, fake breasts and all, who dance for rich men, then have sex with them. In fact the link at TheReligionofPeace is dressed up with “An article on the truly disgusting practice of exploiting young boys for sex. This happens to be in Afghanistan, where journaists are focused these days, but it is also common in other parts of the Islamic world where the sexes are segregated.” Oh… common in parts of the Islamic world. Oh, ok. Clearly Islam is too blame. Except…

There is a post up at Wired about a charity, Soldier’s Angels, pushing a project, Project Valour-IT, to provide laptops operated by ‘microphone or using other adaptive technologies’ so that ‘our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the ‘Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field’.

Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss woke up in a military hospital in the summer of ‘05, unable to use his hands after being hit by an IED — and feeling humiliated, broken. ” Being fed, bathed, taken care of like an infant” not exactly a fitting role for a tank company commander (and blogger) who’s used to being the one who helps others. It sure as hell wasn’t a role that I wanted,” he noted.

… US dollars into it and we got there because of lies. (Counter courtesy of CostofWar.com.)

Anyone who has been paying attention has heard of ‘Curve Ball’. ‘Curve Ball’ was the Bush Team man of the hour back when we were ramping up for invasion. He was our super secret spy guy, our inside source, our Hussein buster. He was the man that trumped every other god-damned piece– well, probably not quite– of intelligence the world super spy organizations were able to collect about WMDs in Iraq.

Just ask the diplomats who’ve been– or who may be– ordered to work there.

Several hundred foreign service officers participated in the gathering at which several diplomats, backed by the vocal support of their colleagues there, vehemently complained about the prospect of so-called “directed assignments” to Iraq to make up for a lack of volunteers.

“Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service office, referring to the highly fortified area of Baghdad where the embassy is located.

I got the same “Saddam is beating his wife” junk email now published at The Uncooperative Blogger. The analogy employed in this father/son morality myth is so flawed I wanted to rip my hair out when I read it.

The set-up: A man’s son asked why we went to war in Iraq. The man responds by telling a little ad hoc parable. He tells his kid to imagine that “our house and our yard is the United States of America and you are President Bush” and that “every house and yard on this block is a different country.” The little boy, by the way, giggles at pretending to be President Bush. How damned cute.