1115.org

This, apparently, is what happens if enough generations of economics professors hold forth in class enough times about “guns and butter”.

The phrase enters the national consciousness. And there it festers. Sometimes, it mutates randomly. In the time of George Bush, that valiant guardian of morality (especially in the military) and of family values, “guns and butter” seems to have first mutated to “guard dogs and peanut butter”. And then, apparently, it lurched into life (Note: paragraph re-written slightly at 11:30 a.m.):

The U.S. military’s highest court is scheduled to hear the appeal of a former Army dog handler convicted in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The case of former Sgt. Michael J. Smith is the first one in the scandal to go before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington. Military jurors previously found that Smith let his unmuzzled Belgian shepherd threaten three detainees at the prison. They also found the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., man conspired with another dog handler to try to frighten prisoners into soiling themselves and directed his dog to lick peanut butter off other soldiers’ bodies.

What does not seem to be known at the time of going to press is whether Michael J. Smith was charging soldiers to have his dog lick peanut butter off their bodies, and if so, how much. Or whether he charged people to watch said lewd and lascivious acts. Or what he did with the videotape of the acts (which doesn’t seem to have even shown up on YouTube, for example).

No doubt, all will be revealed soon (as the actress said to the bishop).

Seriously, though, the salacious peanut butter angle was first aired in public more than three years ago, when Sgt. Smith was convicted and sentenced. Here’s AP on March 15, 2006:

The indecency allegation is that Smith had his dog lick peanut butter off the genitals of a male Soldier and the breasts of a female Soldier while another sergeant videotaped the act.

This seems to have received very little attention at the time, or since. How on earth did it manage to slip through the cracks?