One Utah

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

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Via Talking Points Memo and other sources, today we got to read the infamous torture memo that sought to justify the horrifying abuses of detainees at the hands of the U.S. government at Guanatanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and CIA secret “black site” prisons. It was written on March 14, 2003 by John Yoo, then [...]

This post is part three in my series on good and evil.
In The Lucifer Effect Philip Zimbardo explores the way in which situational factors play a role in individual behaviors. 
Zimbardo sums up his argument:
“Bad systems” create “bad situations” create “bad apples” create “bad behaviors” even in good people.
The point of course is simple - I [...]

The Stanford Prison Experiment strongly suggests that moral and immoral behavior are hugley influenced by environment. It’s not so much that we change our morals from setting to setting but that the setting in which we function has the power to put our morality into neutral.
The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo, suggested that in [...]

The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the more famous pscyhology experiments (another is the Milgram experiment) - it revealed an alarming ability of people previously deemed “normal” to engage in shocking, abusive, cruel behavior but also that similar persons would submit to that abusive behavior.
The SPE was planned and conducted at Standford University in [...]

I hate the way the so-called War On Terror has been twisted to make morally repugnant acts like torture acceptable.
Rather than argue that torture is a moral good, supporters of torture have argued it is a regrettable moral necessity.
The argument goes like this:
Terrorists do bad things. Doing bad things proves they are bad men. [...]

Because we also hire mercenaries and hundreds of others like Blackwater to help us kill more, better, faster - because we are no longer the beacon of liberty and human rights in the world - because we have become a nation of evil and stupid people…the world did something.
They are The Elders. (I’m pretty sure [...]

NBC News reporter Richard Engel discovers that the occupation of Iraq created a breeding ground for “terrorists.” You could also simply say that people are angry because the United States invaded their homeland and tore it apart, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. Tens of thousands have been arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and [...]

From today’s Washington Post:
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a “catastrophically flawed” plan and said the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”… “The best we can [...]

At the heart of the Democratic congress’ disappointing failure on war funding is the lie about supporting the troops.
I saw an ad or a news clip over the weekend about a girl who started a movement to send soldiers in Iraq “Thank You” notes.
The most common lines heard about soldiers is “They’re fighting for our [...]

Rocky laid out a bullet-proof prima-facie case for the impeachment of George W. Bush.
Hannity retreated into his hallmark pandering strategy refusing to address the facts in the case for impeachment of Bush. Not one word about Bush, the Constitution, illegal rendition, torture, wiretapping US citizens illegally, or the suspension of Habeas Corpus. Just personal attacks [...]