Trying to find prisoner abuse...

Here's a story by the Prensa Latina that states that "108 people have died, most of them violently as a result of abuse, under US military custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a government report provided to the Associated Press."

The very next sentence states, "roughly a quarter of those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S. personnel." So the first line tells us that out of all of the prisoners dying while under US custody, most are a result of abuse. Then right after that we find out that only a quarter of the 108 deaths are even being investigated by the military for possible abuse. One quarter is obviously not most.

The ACLU then comes out to say it is appalled that the high ranking military, and the Bush Administration continue to affirm that it is only a few rogue soldiers abusing prisoners. Well, let's do the math. The story states that 65,000 prisoners have been held. 108 have died under US custody, so that's 0.17% of the prisoners. One quarter of those that have died are possibly the result of abuse. So that puts the percentage of abuses resulting in death at a whopping 0.04% of the total number of prisoners. Does that look like a systemic problem?

What is even more outrageous is that if the higher ups were trying to hide all of this and cover themselves, why would they be doing all of this investigating? The U.S. is one of the few military organizations that will investigate itself, and admit when mistakes are made, and hold people accountable.

We've moved in!!

We've finally got a few pictures of our new house up on the site. You can check them out here. Thanks to everyone who helped us out during the move, we love our new home!

Moving Delays

We were very disappointed to find out that escrow did not close in time for us to move this weekend. It looks like we'll be moving during the middle of next week. We'll still get into the house, but it will take a little longer than anticipated. We're having a lot of trouble getting hold of the seller's agent, who seems to have difficulty getting the forms to us that we need. Everything is lined up for the house to close on Monday, so here's to hoping!

Finally Moving!!!

We're scheduled to close on the purchase of our new home this week! Hopefully the timing will be able to work out so that we can move in this weekend. We did our finaly walk through last night, and everything appears to be in good shape. The previous occupants still have many items laying around, but that should all be cleared out shortly.
It's going to be a very busy weekend. We plan on painting and patching the walls on Friday evening, while nailing down the upstairs floor since it's kind of squeaky. Saturday morning the new carpet is scheduled to be installed at the same time we will be moving everything from our condo. It'll be a tight schedule, but it will work. Pictures will be up soon!