Alecia Phonesavanh is the mother of Bounkham Phonesavanh, nicknamed "Baby Bou Bou." She and her family live in Atlanta. This is an excerpt from her horrific piece published Tuesday in Salon called
A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son:
After our house burned down in Wisconsin a few months ago, my husband and I packed our four young kids and all our belongings into a gold minivan and drove to my sister-in-law’s place, just outside of Atlanta. On the back windshield, we pasted six stick figures: a dad, a mom, three young girls, and one baby boy.
That minivan was sitting in the front driveway of my sister-in-law’s place the night a SWAT team broke in, looking for a small amount of drugs they thought my husband’s nephew had. Some of my kids’ toys were in the front yard, but the officers claimed they had no way of knowing children might be present. Our whole family was sleeping in the same room, one bed for us, one for the girls, and a crib.
After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.
Flashbang grenades were created for soldiers to use during battle. When they explode, the noise is so loud and the flash is so bright that anyone close by is temporarily blinded and deafened. It’s been three weeks since the flashbang exploded next to my sleeping baby, and he’s still covered in burns.
There’s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs. At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’m afraid to look.
My husband’s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn’t there. He doesn’t even live in that house. After breaking down the door, throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers—armed with M16s—filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any. […]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—The Cheney Coup:
After the 9-11 attacks, Cheney sent Bush away and took control of the US response to the attacks. He essentially staged a coup, taking over as "commander in chief." This information was contained in a draft report from the 9-11 Commission. [...]
Combat air patrols were aloft, and a military aide was asking for shoot-down authority, telling Cheney that a fourth plane was "80 miles out" from Washington. Cheney didn't flinch, the report said. "In about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing," he gave the order to shoot it down, telling others the president had "signed off on the concept" during a brief phone chat. When the plane was 60 miles out, Cheney was again informed and again he ordered: take it out.
Then Joshua Bolten, after what he described in testimony as "a quiet moment," spoke up. Bolten, the White House deputy chief of staff, asked the veep to get back in touch with the president to "confirm the engage order." Bolten was clearly subordinate to Cheney, but "he had not heard any prior conversation on the subject with the president," the 9/11 report notes. Nor did the real-time notes taken by two others in the room, Cheney's chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby—who is known for his meticulous record-keeping—or Cheney's wife, Lynne, reflect that such a phone call between Bush and Cheney occurred or that such a major decision as shooting down a U.S. airliner was discussed. Bush and Cheney later testified the president gave the order. And national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice and a military aide said they remembered a call, but gave few specifics. The report concluded "there is no documentary evidence for this call."
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Republicans are tired of Barack Obama's executive overreach and long for Dick Cheney's modest vision of the presidency.
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On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, today's the MS Gop Sen. run-off, and the McDaniel/Tea Party camp will be turning out "poll watchers"... in predominantly black precincts. So will they be open carriers, as we saw in AL? GA Gop House candidate is the latest to write Islam out of constitutional protections. One way gimmetarians leverage the power of the state to rig outcomes & undermine reasonableness as a matter of policy. No one could have predicted a SYG shooting of a cop during a no-knock warrant. Is this how Open Carry TX does safety checks? PA woman pulls a real gun (and fires!) on kids with water guns. And a fascinating look at the "adjunctification" of higher education.
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