Opinion

"The Chinese used poles in an attempt to snag the Impeccable's towed acoustic array sonars," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, reporting on the standoff between the USNS Impeccable and five Chinese military and fishing vessels on Sunday. The event ended with seamen on the USNS Impeccable turning their firehoses on the crews of the Chinese vessels, and the Chinese stripping down to their underwear. So… Other than needing a bath, what's irking China? Maybe it's the fact that the USNS Impeccable was 75 miles off the coast of the Island of Hainan, where the Chinese have a major submarine base (and the Impeccable has the latest generation of sub-hunting sonar). Oh, and the Chinese practically own America (our debt at least) and were probably using those poles to secure some collateral. One other note: China's newly announced 15% increase in military spending this year pegs its total budget at $124 billion – which is hardly one-sixth of America's last year (including Iraq and Afghanistan). Don't worry one bit: Take the entire world and total their spending on defense, and America still outspends everyone – combined. In fact, we spend so much money on sonar and guns and bombs and drones that we have obviously run out of names for our Navy ships; thus the "Impeccable."

Tapes? Oh, Those Tapes!
Hearkening back to the good old days
of Nixon, the Bush Administration is quickly learning that tapes cannot
simply disappear. What the CIA and Bush/Cheney Junta once declared as a
total of only two videotapes and one audiotape of interrogation (=
torture) sessions of suspected terrorists, new (court-ordered)
disclosures by the CIA put the number of recordings at much higher: At
least 92 tapes. Don't expect these to hit YouTube anytime soon; the CIA
destroyed all of these tapes, and any accounts of their contents may be
classified to protect the names of the CIA personnel that viewed them.
Interesting… This is like the time you found dad's porn collection and
called all your buddies - But you somehow can't get busted because you
and all your buddies are in a special club - Which always works,
especially when dad walks in and finds you and your buddies watching
his porn. Anyway, the ACLU sued to obtain information on torture and
any possible evidence, and an official said that this disclosure
"confirms that the CIA engaged in a systemic attempt to hide evidence
of their own illegal conduct." Meanwhile, a CIA spokesman (unnamed, of
course) said, "The CIA intends to produce all of the information
requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible
on the public record to the plaintiffs." Wow! I feel a whole lot
better, don't you? We can totally trust those clandestine boys and
their club now.