Skippy reports on the hypocrisy in Ari Fleischer's statement that President Bush welcomes the war protests as a part of our democracy. Skippy gives lots of examples, and we'd like to bring back one from the past. But not before we recount the details of a successful war protest--to date, the nation's largest:

Hundreds of Pakistanis are fleeing to Canada to avoid the new INS registration requirements in the U.S.

Rather than wait for the inevitable, many Pakistanis have chosen to run, often with families in tow. They hope to obtain asylum in Canada.

New York City has a vast Pakistani community, and everyone knows the route north.... Each night, Pakistanis board the midnight Greyhound bus at Manhattan's Port Authority and six hours later they arrive at a deserted strip mall on the western edge of Plattsburgh, N.Y. Taxi drivers charge $50 for the ride up through frozen northern farmlands to the border turnaround. They walk the final 300 yards through the snow to the Canadian immigration center.

...without visas in these nervous times since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, deportation is almost a certainty. Hundreds of registrants have been arrested since the program began on Dec. 16. The detentions have sparked protests and demonstrations and this week the INS extended deadlines, but also added five nations to the registration program.

The Director of the Canadian Immigrations center says his staff runs criminal background checks on all of the Pakistanis, and very few of them flunk.

If applicants pass that hurdle, they can continue on to Montreal or Toronto and begin a year-long series of asylum hearings. Canada grants asylum to 54 percent of the applicants. Those who are rejected are returned to the United States and turned over to the American border station.

The stories are sad, because of the uncertainty facing these refugees.

Everyone here is "without status," meaning that they overstayed American visas, or lost papers or have applications pending. The complications are endless and exhausting. They only know they don't want go back to Pakistan, because it's poor and dangerous, and because their lives would be without prospects.

Their families are like seeds tossed to the wind. Brothers work the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, sisters as domestics in Manila or Kuwait. In their telling, the United States was a golden place. Malik, 28, who has a good command of English, landed at JFK airport eight years ago. He traveled to Manhattan on his second day and fell in love. Within a month, he had an apartment in Brooklyn, near Kings Highway. He was a limousine dispatcher, he belonged to a gym, and he says he paid taxes for the past seven years....

The application process stretches late into the afternoon. Bags are searched and they are asked many questions. They are stateless and expect no less. By mid-afternoon, Malik from Brooklyn allows himself an optimistic accounting. He has no criminal record, he was a good Pakistani and a good New Yorker. He will be a good Canadian.

The INS foreigner registration progam is as harsh as any we can recall. Surely there must be a better way.

Is Charlie Rangel correct that a disproportionate number of our soldiers are black and poor? Not according to UPI, which crunches the numbers and finds it isn't so.

Contrary to popular belief, blacks have not died in combat in disproportionate numbers, even in Vietnam. Two leading military sociologists, Charles Moskos of Northwestern and John Sibley Butler of the University of Texas, researched this carefully for their 1996 book "All We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way."

They reported, "Black fatalities amounted to 12.1 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia -- a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

In recent decades, blacks have tended to gravitate away from combat jobs. In arguing against Rangel's bill, the Department of Defense noted, "Blacks today account for 21 percent of the enlisted force, but make up only 15 percent of combat arms (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery)."

African-Americans make up about 13 percent of young adults, so they are still somewhat over-represented in combat positions....

Interestingly, the military today seems to attract pugnacious whites and pragmatic blacks. Analysts have suggested that more young white men see the infantry as a way, in the words of one, to "play Rambo" from age 18 to 22, then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, blacks often view the military as either a long-term career in itself, or as a way to get practical training for a civilian white-collar career.

Are soldiers the products of particularly poor families? In general, the enlisted ranks come from neither the top nor the bottom of society, but from working and middle class backgrounds. Very few enlistees appear to be the scions of the wealthy. (Some officers are from rich families, however; but a larger proportion of officers are the sons and daughters of officers.) ....

In fact, on a number of measures, African-American enlistees tend to stand well above the black average and very close to, or above, the mean for white enlistees. The celebrated high degree of racial equality and amity found in the military, especially in the Army, would appear to benefit from the similar backgrounds that black and white soldiers bring to the Army.

Not only do black and white soldiers come from households of almost equal income, but their educational attainments are virtually identical. In 1994, 99 percent of black and 97 percent of white Army enlisted personnel were high school graduates, figures above the national average.

We suspect that the racial disparities came into play when there was a draft, because the affluent and connected got deferments or went into the National Guard. For the past 30 years, we've had a volunteer army, and "90 percent of black Army enlistees had their degrees, versus only about 40 percent of whites. After the large pay raises of the early 1980s, the Army was able to recruit a better-educated group of youth, so the black advantage narrowed as both groups' graduations rates approached 100 percent."

The article has lots more data, so go read the whole thing, and then come back and tell us what you think.

Check out this full page ad in the Wall Street Journal by Republicans opposing a War in Iraq and calling on people to actively express their oppostion to it--with friends, at work, at places of religious worship--and to their elected officials:

War with Iraq is not inevitable. Now is the time to stop it. Speak out at your place of worship, at your business, among your friends and relatives. Make your convictions known to your Mayor and Governor and–above all–to your elected leaders in Washington.

The Group is BUSINESS LEADERS FOR SENSIBLE PRIORITIES
P.O. Box 1976 Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113

Author John Le Carre in the Times of London on Bush and the war:

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

....The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

.... I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

There's lots more, go read the whole thing.

From the RANT:

When asked about his feelings regarding the draft proposal by Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) last Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recalled the experience of the draft during Vietnam.

Rumsfeld said troops from Vietnam War conscription added "no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services . . . because the churning that took place, it took an enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

I wonder how Vietnam era draftees feel about this. Thank god bill Clinton didn't say this, it would have knocked Bush's war plans right off the front page. Bush was drafted wasn't he? And he was fairly useless. Everyone who has a family member who was drafted and also has their name on a black wall in washington should call for rummys crucifixion."

We wanted to read Rumsfeld's remarks in context.

From the UPI on 1/10/02:

He spoke of the fact that many of those who were drafted were trained, served for a short time and then left the service. Rumsfeld first referred to the many exemptions issued to certain men in the draft and then said, "what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

Reaction from veterans was swift:

Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation said in a statement issued Friday. "As Vietnam veterans who served with conscripted soldiers, we find Secretary Rumsfeld's egregious slur a grave insult to the memory, sacrifice and valor of those who lost their lives, and, further, dismissive of the hundreds and thousands of lives, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, who were devastatingly shattered by the Vietnam War."

And from a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post by reader Bob Woodruff:

Thousands of Vietnam-era draftees came home for burial in wooden boxes, and many more still suffer the effects of napalm exposure or were otherwise disabled in combat. It is comforting, I'm sure, to their families that they were of "no value, no advantage, really."

Ok, we read and we decided. We agree with the Rant and the Vets, that was a dumb and crummy thing for Rumsfeld to say.

A hearing is scheduled to begin today for the two U.S. Pilots who took "go pills" containing amphetamines and mistakenly killed Canadian troops last year in Afganistan.

The hearing is to decide whether the pilots should face a court martial. "At issue is whether Air National Guard pilots Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach are criminals or military men who made a tragic error while on duty in the Afghan war. The two face charges of manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty -- which could bring up to 64 years prison time -- for dropping a 500-pound bomb on a Canadian military unit."

Lawyers for the pilots have said the mens' judgment may have been impaired by their usage of the amphetamine "go pills" given to them by the Air Force to combat fatigue on their missions. We wrote about this aspect of the case here.

Update: The lawyers rapped the Government hard at the hearing.

Kevin Drumm over at Calpundit had a great post the other day opposing the use of torture in the terror war, based upon a recent new lead article in The Economist.

Our views are set out here.

At what point do U.S. officials holding foreign detainees and prisoners cross the line between acceptable interrogation techniques and torture? It seems to us that the U.S. is operating under an "end justifies the means" philosophy--trying to justify tactics that anyone with an ounce of humanity would know amount to torture--under the rubric that the terrorist threat to Americans is so potentially catastrophic that such treatment is necessary. We're not buying into the argument. We find these tactics to be a gross violation of human rights. They are also dangerous to our own servicemen and women: If we treat the citizens of other countries this way, why won't these other countries retaliate with similar or harsher treatment when they capture members of our military?

As Kevin notes, this Washington Post article is also a must read on the issue.

A new Knights Ridder News Service poll shows that the majority of Americans oppose a unilateral war with Iraq:

With U.S. troops mustering in the Persian Gulf and the nation on the cusp of war with Iraq, Americans in overwhelming numbers oppose unilateral U.S. military action, a national poll conducted last week for Knight Ridder newspapers found.

Many survey respondents said President Bush has not effectively explained why military action might be required. Nearly one in five said they still do not believe that Iraq poses a serious threat to the United States.

A robust majority of Americans -- 83 percent -- would support going to war if the United Nations backed the action. But support for war dwindles rapidly without U.N. approval.

Fewer than half of the respondents said they would support an attack on Iraq if the United States were joined by only one or two key allies. And 59 percent said they would be opposed to an attack if the United States decided to go it alone -- a switch that presents the Bush administration with a political and diplomatic quandary.

Perhaps this accounts for the huge numbers of anti-war activists planning to descend on Washington next weekend to protest the war. At least 100,000 are expected to participate. As one of the movement's leaders said, "The most important thing politically for us is to shatter the false myth of consensus . . ."

Politics in the Zeros attended the war protests in LA today and has some great pictures up. We especially like this one.

Update: Skippy has more on the protests.

Atrios is a tad angry about the FBI Canadian Alert Hoax.

Seriously, there are times when little partisan me just doesn't get it. I really really can't comprehend why at least a couple of people other than some idiots with websites like me aren't just a wee bit pissed off at this latest fake terror alert. Some guy in custody in Canada says some obvious nonsense about 5, or was it 19, guys sneaking across the border. The Canadian authorities, just to be prudent, hand it off to the FBI. We get a full media press - including a statement from the president - about these guys. We get word that the president has mobilized law enforcement to look for them, presumably diverting them away from other more productive terror-fighting activities. The media can't keep straight if these guys are Arabs or Pakistanis, or who the hell cares what's the difference anyway... Some members of our fine citizenry start calling the cops on randon brown people they spot on the bus. The FBI posts up pictures of who the hell knows who which are still up on their web site. Then, to top it all off they throw in a bit of Indian bashing just for good measure. This one can't even charitably be called a bungle. This is an outrage.

A mainstream media account is here.

The CIA's use of "proxy torture" undermines the law and our humanity, says Roberto J. Gonzales in an op-ed piece in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle:

Attempting to rid the world of terrorism should never justify its use [torture]. As citizens, we should insist that Congress investigate reports of torture and physical abuse by U.S. officials and allies, and we should demand that such practices end immediately. The rule of international law is all that we have to prevent the world from slipping into absolute lawlessness. Without it, brute force and militarism reign supreme. It will indeed be a bitter tragedy if the "war on terrorism" obliterates what remains of the American commitment to the rule of law.

Mr. Gonzales is an assistant professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and editor of the forthcoming book, "Anthropology Goes Public: Cultural Critique of American Empire" (University of Texas Press, 2003).