The Guild 10-25-2003 Iraqi's have long memories.....

cnn ^ | 10-23-2003

[BigWaveBetty]

... And so do we.

Germany, France won't pledge funds at Iraqi conference
Iraqi leader warns of possible backlash

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The level of Germany and France's participation in an international conference aimed at raising more funds to rebuild Iraq prompted reaction Thursday from a top Iraqi official, who warned of a possible backlash.

Ayad Allawi, the current head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed governing council, said he hoped German and French officials would reconsider their decision not to boost their contributions beyond funds already pledged through the European Union.

"As far as Germany and France are concerned, really, this was a regrettable position they had," Allawi said. "I don't think the Iraqis are going to forget easily that in the hour of need, those countries wanted to neglect Iraq."

[lodwick]

Riflescopes - every brand known to mankind here

[pubmom]

From the discussion, it appears there is quite a bit of deerburger being made. :)

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

you left out Dennis K. His ears look so disproportionately large to me...how do they look up close....

Dennis K has huge ears like the handles on a teapot. He is super-goofy.

[lodwick]

SSG William C. Ball (right) and SSG Kevin Q. Griffin set NC state record at qualifying match for the W.P. Wilson National Sniper Championship Match. Using Leatherwood A.R.T.-II scopes SSG Bell won first place overall in the individual match shooting 326/13x out of 375. SSG Griffin placed 2nd overall shooting 309/9x out of 375. Together they won first in the team competition with a combined score of 638/22x out of 750.

Nice shooting, troop.

[lodwick]

LOL - good observation.

If they don't stop screwing with the Magnolia tree, drastic measures may be brought to bear on their horny little heads.

[mountaineer]

Mmmm, deer burger! I like to make chili out of mine.

[Iowa Granny]

I used mix my deer burger with hamburger, because the deer is so lean. In recent years we only use the loins. Everything else is made into deer sticks or summer sausage.

[Iowa Granny]

Should have said: "I used to mix my deer burger w/hanburger"

Proofreading is a skill I need to improve. Why is it the errors don't show up until I hit that tiny button.

[lodwick]

WTH are you guys doing up there?

DEFIANCE, Iowa -- Townspeople knew about Scott Shanahan's temper, that he was often moody and was anti-social. Some people said they saw the bruises that his wife, Dixie, tried to hide.

But authorities say Dixie Shanahan, 36, kept her biggest secret for the 14 months that followed her husband's August 2002 disappearance. This past week, Scott Shanahan's skeletal remains were found in a spare bedroom in their house. An autopsy showed he had been shot in the head.

Dixie Shanahan has since been ordered held on a charge of first-degree murder, and her children - ages 7, 5 and 8 months - have been placed in state custody.

Her lawyer, public defender Greg Steensland, did not return a message left Saturday seeking comment on the case.

In July, nearly a year after Dixie Shanahan had reported her husband missing, she told sheriff's Deputy John Kelly that he had left her and moved to the nearby town of Atlantic.

Neighbors had already noticed a change in her.

"She was free - like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders," said Mary Schmitz.

Schmitz and her son, Doug, said that they never saw Dixie Shanahan with bruises but that there were rumors that abuse was common in the household.

"I can see what she went through, and he got what he deserved if what they say is true," Mary Schmitz said.

Court records show that on several occasions Scott Shanahan beat his wife, leaving her bloody and bruised.

In October 2000, a friend of Dixie Shanahan's told deputies that he had dragged her to the basement, tied her hands with a coat hanger and told her he could leave her there for weeks and "no one would know the difference," court records show. She went to a women's shelter in Texas, near relatives, but soon returned.

Resident Mickey Kloewer said people knew of the abuse. "But you didn't want to intrude in their business," Kloewer said.

Dixie Shanahan had moved in with Scott Shanahan and his mother, Bev, in this western Iowa town of 350 people when she was a foster child about 14 years old. They married about eight or nine years ago and stayed in the same house, which his mother had left to him when she died.

Doug Schmitz and other neighbors described Scott Shanahan as moody and anti-social.

No one thought much about his disappearance until several months had passed and they noticed he had left his pickup truck and dog behind, Doug Schmitz said.

"People joked about it, that he was buried in the back yard, or buried in concrete in the basement," Doug Schmitz said.

Karen Kloewer said the case has shaken the town.

"It's heartbreaking to think she didn't think she could turn anywhere for help," she said. "I think the whole town stands behind her and is feeling for her and her children. I just wish she would have turned to the community for help."

[mountaineer]

I came up with a little appetizer thing I call "deer pinwheels" that my friends seem to like, where I brown ground venison with onion and garlic, mix it with some softened cream cheese, finely diced red bell pepper, various herbs (e.g., sage, parsley, etc.) and whatever else comes to mind, then spread it on some canned crescent rolls left in rectangles and rolled out with the rolling pin. Roll up like a jelly roll, slice and bake.

[lodwick]

Yummy stuff...use soft tortillas, with picante sauce, and you'll have another winner there.

Man - your pinwheels are making my mouth water.

[mountaineer]

Of course, spicy also is good!

Sad bit of news for me today, my former boss - the county executive for St. Louis County and former prosecuting attorney - has died. A Democrat, but not a blatantly, obnoxious partisan one, he was a decent guy and a good prosecutor.

[lodwick]

Mr. Westfall went on to say that what the public wants in politicians is results, not rhetoric. "I stand for honest and effective government," he said. "That's why I get re-elected."

He sounds like one of the good guys - regardless of party affiliation. RIP, friend.

I wonder if the back pains, staph infection, could have been undiagnosed pancreatic cancer? The unexplained back pain was what sent my bil to the doc initially...he would have been 58 tomorrow. RIP

[mountaineer]

My brother had a staph infection a few years ago that nearly killed him. Thankfully, a few tons of antibiotics knocked it out. A nurse I knew who was in charge of infection control at her hospital once told me horror stories about the various germs floating around the premises. Scary!

[Iowa Granny]

Conventional Wisdom says if Dixie had gone to the police right away, instead of harboring the body for a year, she would have gotten an extremely light sentence, due to his abusive personality.

Scott became the victim when she didn't report the incident.

(All this gleaned from a DM talk show)

[lodwick]

WTF is going on with our health these days?

People are dropping like flies from one malady or another...everything from spouseicide to pesticides - we are dying!

How many folks do we know that have contracted cancer of late?

What is going on in our country?

[Iowa Granny]

Good Morning. I have no answers to your questions posed above.

[Iowa Granny]

Dixies case: Ball was dropped again and again
By REKHA BASU
Register Columnist
10/29/2003

---

Dixie Shanahan is charged with a shocking crime, made more so by over a year of elaborate cover-ups: Shocking that a mother of three may have put a gun to her husband's head. Shocking that his remains were left in a bedroom of their house to quietly decompose. And shocking that Scott Shanahan's life apparently meant so little to anyone that his disappearance triggered only disinterested speculation around their hometown of Defiance.

But most shocking is that for all of Dixie Shanahan's known suffering and desperate pleas for help, nothing and no one could put a stop to it until she allegedly did so herself.

The system failed Dixie Shanahan. Now it will put her on trial for perhaps taking matters into her own hands.

There's little question that Scott Shanahan brutally abused and controlled his wife. Police had ample evidence that he beat her with objects, even when she was pregnant, threatened her life, held her captive in the basement, her hands bound with hanger wire, and locked her in a closet with the children, once even in sheriff's deputies' presence.

Yet the worst thing that ever happened to Scott was four days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

He was actually convicted twice. He had two restraining orders issued against him, and two other criminal charges filed but dropped. There was also probation, and mandatory batterers' education. None of which stopped Scott the way hard time in prison might have.

That could have been ordered, but wasn't, thanks to sentences being suspended. Instead of doing a month in jail for his first conviction, he did two days. Instead of two years for the second, he did four days.

After police went to the Shanahan house in October 2000 and saw Scott had locked Dixie and the children in a bedroom closet, he could have been prosecuted for false imprison- ment and domestic abuse. At that point, because of the pileup of offenses, both the category of crime and penalties would have been elevated. An offender is allowed two deferred judgments.

But charges were dropped after Dixie wrote the judge asking that they be.

The justice system did follow policy in the first two cases, and got convictions. Then, it dropped the ball at just the point where it should have gotten tough.

Deferred judgments are common practice. But some advocates for battered women, including Kelley Rice, program supervisor of the Des Moines Family Violence Center, say they should never be allowed in domestic-abuse assaults.

Prosecutors ought to proceed with charges even after a victim - often threatened by the abuser - asks that they be dropped, says Rice. After all, it's the state that brings charges, not victims. With the deputies' eyewitness, there was enough evidence to go to trial on the closet incident.

And the ball was dropped here, too. Anytime a victim wants charges dropped, the county attorney is supposed to contact the Family Crisis Support Network in Atlantic, which serves Shelby County victims. Its counselors can then work with the victim. That didn't happen, says Wendy Richter, who runs the network.

Battered-women's advocates say it's rare that a woman fights back with lethal force. One study says in 75 percent of the cases where a man was killed by an intimate female partner, she had been battered by him first.

In this case, there were all the red flags. Dixie was pregnant with her third child when Scott died. He reportedly had been enraged about the pregnancy and demanded she get an abortion. Police reports indicate he had beaten her during an earlier pregnancy. She made three attempts to flee with her children, including once getting all the way to Texas, but at that time Scott brought them back.

It's not right that Scott had to end up dead. No one should endorse vigilante justice. But Dixie probably looked at the previous cycles of assaults, calls to police, arrests, slaps on the wrist and further assaults, speculates Richter, and figured, "It was either "He dies or I die," and he was going to be the one to raise her kids."

Rice sees this much right about Dixie's case. She's alive, and getting community support.

This is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, yet for all the awareness that's been raised, and laws and policies that have been strengthened, offenders still manage to sail through the justice system while victims continue to be brutalized. When dealing with a habitual offender with a demonstrated propensity for violence, the system needs to use every legal tool at its disposal.

Shelby County Attorney Marcus Gross intends to prosecute Dixie for murder, suggesting the shooting was premeditated. But Rice and Richter say even if she wasn't fending off an immediate assault, it could still be viewed as an ultimate act of self-defense.

It would take courage and independence, but Gross could opt for the path of compassion by deciding Dixie Shanahan has been punished enough, dropping the charges and returning her to her children.

http://www.dmregister.com/opinion/stories/c5917686/22612041.html

[mountaineer]

Just incredible - his cruelty and her having endured it as long as she did, for whatever reason.

Today's oddities:

YOKO Ono still knows how to get a man to take his clothes off. Peter Jennings was interviewing Ono at last week's ArtWalk event for the Coalition for the Homeless when she somehow talked the news anchor into getting inside a giant black bag with her in front of 500 people at Cooper Union's Great Hall. A few moments later, both emerged with Jennings struggling to put his shirt back on and Ono's own garb disheveled. While no one's quite sure what happened in the bag, everyone was craning their necks to get a glimpse of Jennings bare-chested - including his wife, Kayce Freed, seated in the front row with her mother. (PageSix)

It's been said one cannot be too rich or too thin, but sometimes the very, very rich can be just too darn tacky:

Bare-chested Adonises wearing Speedos, flexing their well-oiled muscles. Toga-clad women dancing around an octagonal pool. An ice sculpture of the statue of David, his rear visible but his vodka-spewing penis not quite in view. Jurors got a private showing yesterday of rich people gone wild - otherwise known as a video of a $2.1 million birthday bash ex-Tyco titan Dennis Kozlowski threw for his wife on Sardinia, an island off the west coast of Italy. full story

[mountaineer]

Clinton's on his way to Norway next, after his disgusting display in Memphis Tuesday evening:

Former US president Bill Clinton will visit Oslo next week for talks with Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. Among other things, Clinton wants to discuss his HIV/AIDS project with Bondevik, the Prime Minister's information officer, Oivind Oestang says. -The visit takes place at Cinton's own initiative, Oestang says.

Clinton arrives in Oslo late Monday evening, and will meet the Norwegian Prime Minister on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Clinton will discuss his project with Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson, and he will also give a lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, before returning to the US that same afternoon. This is Clinton's third visit to Norway in recent years. Norway Post