Fresh Loaf

The two alleged top leaders of the weekend’s military coup in Honduras are graduates of the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a.k.a. the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus.

General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, head of Honduras’ armed forces, attended the school in 1976 and again in 1986. General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, head of the country’s air force, attended the school for a month in 1996.

WHINSEC/School of the Americas was founded in 1963, ostensibly to help professionalize the militaries of U.S.-allied countries in Latin America. A September 21, 1996 article by the Washington Post’s Dana Priest revealed the school taught students how to torture, kidnap, extort and execute prisoners. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize ten years later for uncovering the Bush Administration’s gulag archipelago chain of secret CIA prisons.

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In an ideal world, John McCain’s marital life would be of no concern to the public. Then again, in an ideal world, he wouldn’t stick idiotic, hypocritical crap like this on the “issues” page of his campaign website:

Protecting Marriage

The family represents the foundation of Western Civilization and civil society and John McCain believes the institution of marriage is a union between one man and one woman. It is only this definition that sufficiently recognizes the vital and unique role played by mothers and fathers in the raising of children, and the role of the family in shaping, stabilizing, and strengthening communities and our nation.

The fact that such language is part of his campaign platform makes his private life fair game for nitpickers. You can’t be a protector of marriage and a lobbyist-schtupper at the same time.

Add in the fact that McCain wrote letters to government regulators on behalf of his alleged paramour’s clients, plus his recent pander to the Republican Party’s pro-torture wing, and my longstanding respect for him as a person of integrity has all but vanished in recent days.

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I’m celebrating Sen. John McCain’s victory in Florida last night.

With the win, McCain seemingly has a lock on the Republican presidential nomination. This means that, of the three remaining candidates (McCain, Clinton, Obama) with a realistic shot at the White House, not one supports the Bush policy of torturing prisoners or detaining them in perpetuity without access to courts.

Two of the Bush administration’s most shameful, profoundly un-American policies will end in January 2009.

It’s not everything, but it’s something.

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