Quotes of the Morning: Skippy Rants

"People are dead because of what this son of a b*tch said. How could he be credible now?"
-Lawrence DiRita, Pentagon Spokesman, as quoted in the May 23 Newsweek

“Remember that one from last week? Remember how Mr. DiRita was so offended that Newsweek could have reported that American troops had desecrated the Koran because we would never, ever, do anything like that? Remember the White House demanding that Newsweek publicly retract the story and say that it never happened? Well, guess what..”
-Skippy

"’I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Quran down a toilet,’ Hood said. ‘We did identify 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Quran by Joint Task Force personnel. Ten of those were by a guard and three by interrogators.’
Of the 13 alleged incidents, five were substantiated, he said. Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator. Hood said the five cases ‘could be broadly defined as mishandling’ of the holy book, but he refused to discuss details.
In three of the five cases, the mishandling appears to have been deliberate. In the other two, it apparently was accidental.
‘None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred,’ Hood said.”
-Associated Press, May 26, 2005

“You see, despite the fact that the Pentagon says that the violence in Afghanistan wasn’t caused by the Newsweek story, and despite the fact that the Newsweek story was in a broad sense accurate (there were substantiated cases of desecration of the Koran, just not in a toilet according to the Pentagon, and there was a case of a Koran being flushed reported in an FBI memo), the White House demanded that our ‘free’ press retract a story and apologize. Does that make anyone else nervous? I’m sure that Nixon would have appreciated this much power over the press during Watergate. Oh.. and the Pentagon did find the prisoner who reported to the FBI the Koran flushing incident. They ‘questioned’ him at Guantanamo (I’m sure they were gentle), and now he claims that he didn’t see it. Yep, they interrogated him to see if they had done anything wrong when they interrogated him before.”
-Skippy

“A former Wall Street trader who rejoined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks will not be tried on murder charges for killing two suspected Iraqi insurgents, a Marine general decided Thursday.
'The best interests of 2nd Lt. Pantano and the government have been served by this process,' the Marine Corps said in a statement.
[…]
Prosecutors alleged Pantano intended to make an example of the men by shooting them 60 times and hanging a sign over their bodies — “No better friend, no worse enemy,” a Marine slogan. While citing self-defense as his motive, Pantano did not deny hanging the sign or shooting the men repeatedly.
[…]
More than a half-dozen Marines who served with Pantano in Iraq praised him in testimony, saying he was an able leader who remained cool in combat and was amiable with Iraqis.
Pantano, 33, is now helping to train troops at Camp Lejeune, but his attorney said he hopes the decision will clear the way for the Marine to return to a combat unit.
'I think (the decision) demonstrates that Ilario acted honorably in combat and the suggestion that he didn’t that tarnished his reputation was unjustified,' Gittins said. 'I’m pleased for Ilario and his family because the nightmare is over.'”
-Associated Press, May 26, 2005

"I'm all for supporting the troops, but this guy had to reload in order to continue shooting the corpses. 'Cool in combat'? 'Amiable to Iraqis'? I'm sure that the best interests of Pantano and the government were served, but I thought that the point of the legal system was justice. I’m not really glad to hear that desecrating corpses is ‘honorable’ now, and Mr. Pantano is training our next generation of American soldiers.. You know, with so many young men and women actually bravely serving with real honor, it is disgusting to me that our government sees the need to justify actions like this.”
-Skippy

“An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to ‘non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.’
The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.
Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.”
-Indianapolis Star, May 26, 2005

“Now this is a judge working on a divorce decree in which both parents are Wiccan, and neither desires this provision. Seems like some ‘legislating from the bench’ to me. I’m sure that Pat Robertson and James Dobson will soon be making their public statements decrying this blatant interference in American freedom of religion by an activist judge..”
-Skippy