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Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Vicksburg Post
THE VICKSBURG POST
EDITORIAL
Founded by John G. Cashman in 1883 Louis P. Cashman III, Editor & Publisher • Issued by Vicksburg Printing & Publishing Inc., Louis P. Cashman III, President Karen Gamble, managing editor | E-mail: kgamble@vicksburgpost.com | Tel: 601.636.4545 ext 123 | Letters to the editor: letters@vicksburgpost.com or The Vicksburg Post, P.O. Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182
JACK VIX SAYS: Could the market news be, what do they call it, “a correction?”
OLD POST FILES 120 YEARS AGO: 1891 Mr. and Mrs. Albert Kountz announce the birth of a daughter. • Fay Arnold goes to Houston to accept a position.
110 YEARS AGO: 1901 Fred Frisby and Sallie Beel are married at the office of Circuit Clerk W.A. Collier.
100 YEARS AGO: 1911 Bernard Cashman and Robert Middleton leave to visit Chicago. • C.J. Miller has a wire announcing the death of Commodore A.D. Pugh in Yazoo City.
90 YEARS AGO: 1921 Mrs. George W. Crock is visiting in Atlantic City, N.J. • The four Billett sisters take a trip to Colorado.
80 YEARS AGO: 1931 Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Fried are injured in an automobile accident at Silver City. • Rainbow Girls and DeMolay Boys enjoy an outing at Long Lake.
70 YEARS AGO: 1941 Charles Harris, member of the clerk staff at the Hotel Vicksburg, plans a vacation trip to Arkansas and Oklahoma. • Warren County rural schools will open Sept. 19.
60 YEARS AGO: 1951 Hot days in Vicksburg are scarcely news anymore, but this morning it warmed up a little faster and was 90 degrees by 10 a.m. • Brig. Gen. Peter A. Feringa, president of the Mississippi River Commission, returns to work following minor surgery in Hot Springs, Ark.
50 YEARS AGO: 1961 Screw worms are found in Warren County livestock, the first infection in Mississippi this year, so far as known. • Mrs. T.J. Lawrence dies. • Elizabeth Taylor stars in “Giant” at the Rivoli Drive-In Theatre.
OUR OPINION
Debt
40 YEARS AGO: 1971 Dave Bridgers is appointed to the board of Mercy HospitalStreet Memorial. • Mr. and Mrs. Landman Teller are attending the meeting of the American Bar Association in London. • Warren Asher Jr. is here visiting his parents.
Sinking faster than we can bail Tea Party conservatives are being told to accept their victory and go home. It has become a favorite refrain of the ruling class in Washington and its scribes in the media. “The winner is the Tea Party,” said conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer on Fox News. “They have changed the debate in the country. I think they ought to do what (former Vermont governor and senator) George Aiken advocated in the worst days of the Vietnam War: Declare victory and go home. There will be another fight a year from now. (President Barack) Obama is losing it, and I think that’s where the big payoff will be, and that’s when the country will decide what it wants to do about debt and also about the size of government.” That, unfortunately, may not be the case. If it is not, we’re in big trouble. The deal to reduce federal spending is a shallow win at best, and the country is in for
more big spending as usual. According to a recent front-page article in the New York Times: “(The debt-limit deal) does not actually reduce federal spending. By the end of the 10-year deal, the federal debt would be much larger than it is today.” The article goes on to explain that government and its debts will continue to grow faster than the economy, pinning most of the blame on federal spending for health care. That’s The New York Times, stating as a fact that our economy cannot keep up with federal spending even after Tea Party freshmen in Congress supposedly terrorized the country until they got their way. The story said that an obvious solution might be the tax increases Tea Party members of Congress held at bay — much to the annoyance of Obama. It did not just say that we are sinking into debt too fast. According to the story, “Debts will grow faster
30 YEARS AGO: 1981
than the economy.” That means the economy may not be able to afford these debts, even with tax increases. We cannot tax an economy out of that which it does not produce, and taxes curb production. No sane individual wants the country to default on its obligations, but there is no easy escape from this financial crisis. Something has to give. As Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said, we have jumped off a cliff. “At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 mph to going over it at 60 mph,” Paul wrote in an open letter explaining his opposition to the debt-limit deal. Eventually, we will get serious one way or another. We will finally get this under control by the will of Congress and the president, or we will do so by the unavoidable forces that stop governments big and small from living grossly beyond the means of the people who support them.
The Rev. Henry Adams is pictured as he waters the Municipal Rose Garden on Monroe Street, which he has tended for 33 years. • Mr. and Mrs. Charles Meekins celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
20 YEARS AGO: 1991 The landmark restaurant Glass Kitchen, ordered destroyed by the City of Vicksburg, is purchased by Merchants National Bank. • Government officials say the regional airport and Vicksburg’s river park projects may receive up to $370,000.
10 YEARS AGO: 2001 Stephen Kirkpatrick, wildlife photographer, is guest speaker at the Soil and Water Conservation District annual dinner. • Ernest J. Volk Jr. dies. • Members of the Culkin Academy Class of 1941 gather for a 60-year reunion.
VOICE YOUR OPINION Letters to the editor are published under the following guidelines: Expressions from readers on topics of current or general interest are welcomed. • Letters must be original, not copies or letters sent to others, and must include the name, address and signature of the writer. • Letters must avoid defamatory or abusive statements. • Preference will be given to typed letters of 300 or fewer words. • The Vicksburg Post does not print anonymous letters and reserves the right to edit all letters submitted. • Letters in the column do not represent the views of The Vicksburg Post.
MODERATELY CONFUSED by Jeff Stahler
The only ‘murder’ committed in Iraq was of justice They are the forgotten warriors of the Iraq War, the men whose lives and families and careers blew up in “murder” charges on a vicious battlefield, the pieces coming down in Fort Leavenworth’s military prison where the men now serve long sentences. Together, they make up the Leavenworth 10, not always at Leavenworth and not always 10, a group of cold-luck cases still working their way up the ladder of appeals and the clemency process, their families hoping to free them before many more years go by. They all got bad news recently when word came that the Army Court of Appeals denied Army Ranger 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, 28, a new trial despite the introduction of exculpatory evidence originally withheld by the prosecution. Behenna faces 13 more years of a 15-year sentence for the unpremeditated 2008 “murder” of an insurgent who killed two of his men in post-surge Iraq, an al-Qaida terrorist for whom the Army would issue a kill/capture order before realizing he was already dead. Why no new trial? At almost the same time, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Juan Garcia overruled recommenda-
We should use this week’s one-two punch of “military justice” for some national soul-searching. DIANA
WEST
tions from the Naval Clemency and Parole Board and from brig officials at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station that Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins, 27, be granted early release. Hutchins has served more than five years on a 15-year sentence that was reduced to 11 years. The sentence was once recommended to be cut to five years, and once thrown out (he spent nine months free starting June 2010). He faces the balance of the 11-yearsentence for conspiracy and unpremeditated “murder” of a man he believed was the killer of Marines and civilians in pre-surge Iraq. Why no parole? I put quotation marks of incredulousness around “murder” because this was a war zone — a chaotic,
urban war zone in which counterinsurgency theory, winning hearts and minds, just didn’t go according to the book. Those restrictive rules of engagement failed to impress jihadists or their clans with America’s good intentions, and the schizoid mishmash of firepower, nation-building, harsh interrogations, bribery, police work and social work made our forces pawns of an untenable policy. These young men shouldn’t be the ones to pay for that policy. We should use this week’s one-two punch of “military justice” for some national soulsearching. It’s the least we can do for men who risked everything for our country. The two cases are quite different, but they share more than miscarriages of justice. Read-
ing back before the judicial nightmares began is to follow two warriors contending with a basic COIN flaw: the notorious practice known as catch-and-release, the opaque, bureaucratic process by which U.S. forces risked their lives to “arrest” insurgents on the back-alley battlefield only to see them released to kill again for “lack of evidence.” In both Behenna’s and Hutchins’ cases (and others), catch-andrelease was the ultimate manifestation of chaotic command and no control, and served as a common trigger of events. Behenna himself had to drive home the very insurgent known to be responsible for the improvised explosive device that recently killed two of his men. He decided to perform one more interrogation himself during which the insurgent rushed him, at which point Behenna fired. This is the self-defense scenario supported by the prosecution’s own forensics expert. It was suppressed at Behenna’s trial and ignored on appeal. Hutchins’ case is more complex, involving an eight-man plot to “snatch” and kill a “prince” of the insurgency, someone responsible for everything from IEDs to recruiting suicide bombers. Again, it was
catch-and-release, and not for the first time, that lit the fuse for this Marine squad. They caught the terrorist and then, on release, had to drive him home. They later decided to fake an incident in which the “prince’s” killing would be ROElawful. While Hutchins waited in ambush, the wrong man was seized, they all shot at him and then covered up the incident. No Marine was confined for more than 525 days except Hutchins (11 years). Hutchins also drew a rebuke from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor who, while Hutchins appealed and sought clemency, slandered him as a premeditated and indiscriminate murderer. Hutchins’ lawyer, Maj. Babu Kaza, points out that Hutchins was found guilty of neither allegation and that Mabus’ unprecedented public comments constitute “unlawful command influence” on the workings of justice. At least that’s what the military calls these nightmares. Do you? •
Diana West can be contacted at dianawest@ verizon.net