Rhinocrisy

I have burrowed to Boulder, Colo., where the front page of the Camera screams that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is threatened again. As I wrote last month, when ANWR shows up in a bill, it is wise to look at the rest of the document. It will likely be filled with horrors unthinkable, yet the liberals will predictably chase the ANWR flare, will most likely succeed, and will then crow over their accomplishment.

In this case, the proposal to drill for oil in that precious spot is included in a $363 billion defense appropriations bill. Some of the key items elsewhere in the document, as described in the House committee report:

• $3.5 billion for Iraq, of which “not less than $2,500,000,000 is available only for classified programs.” This line includes $13 million for 8.1 million rounds (at retail prices) of .50-caliber cartridges, each one of which can rip the organs out of a human at 5,000 feet.
• A $45,254,619,000 slush fund for the war on terror — an amount intended to cover only the first six months of the fiscal year, ending March 31.
• Not a cent for peacekeeping in Darfur, despite support from Condi Rice for $50 million toward a mission.
• The defunding of one of the more ecology-minded programs in the budget, Demanufacturing of Electronic Equipment for Reuse and Recycling (DEER2)
• Another $7,631,531,000 for the Missile Defense Agency (actually a cutback from last year)
• The continued erosion of the notion of “defense” in “Department of Defense,” most obviously in the Navy’s continued elimination of coastal defense vessels — from 13 in 2004 to 9 in 2005 to 8 in 2006.
• A cut of some $2 billion in military payroll, spread among all forces. (Note that Alaska Natives have among the highest enlistment rates among ethnic groups in the USA.)

Now remind me, what is the biggest threat faced by Alaska’s caribou and the Gwich’in people?

Everyone should read Khaled el-Masri’s account of his wrongful imprisonment and torture.

I won’t say that the United States has turned a corner and come to a place of unadulterated evil; that would be rather naive. What’s clear is that this behavior cannot, must not, continue. Clear as daylight. And the people who perpetrate these sorts of outrageous acts should be utterly reviled, remembered in history on the same pages as Pol Pot and Robespierre. That much, at least, is in our power to effect: we can blacken the names of these people and make them wear the ugly brand of “torturer”.