2/02/2011

the circle jerk

betty and stan and i were on the phone earlier tonight and i wanted to wait to post until their posts went up:



make a point to read them both.

the amount of lying and covering the circle jerk does for its own members is astounding. whether it's evo morales or bill moyers, homophobia is a-okay if it comes from their own.


that's the way the circle jerk rolls.

and since we all know bill moyers is a sexist, why is his being a homophobe also a surprise?

it shouldn't be.

but the circle jerk always protects itself, always lies for and covers for itself.


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Wednesday, February 3, 2011. Chaos and violence continue, a dodgy Jack Straw testifies before the Iraq Inquiry, Iraq's Speaker of Parliament publicly denounces a threat to Iraq's democracy, some Iraqi women talk mobilization and protest, and more.
Today in London, the Iraq Inquiry concluded public testimony as they heard from Jack Straw for the third time. It was a dodgy and nervous Straw appearing today when contrasted with his January and February 2010 appearances, one who took to quibbling over even basic defintions of "containment" ("it depends what you mean exactly by containment") such as when, at the start of the hearing, he declared, "If you mean by containment as I set out in my latest statement, containing and removing the problem of Saddam's failure to comply with United Nations' obligations, then containment remained the overall strategy of the government right up to the time when we took the decision to use military action, because in a sense [UN Security Council Resolution] 1441 was a continuation of a series of policies by the United Nations Security Council to secure the compliance of Saddam Hussein and to ensure that all his WMD had been removed,his programmes and capabilities had been broken up. As I said repeatedly, and it was absolutely explicit at the time, if Saddam had done that, then he would have stayed in post."
And with that Straw made clear that he just can't stop lying. If the issue was compliance, you don't run the UN inspectors out of the country before they have completed their work. But that is what happened. It was nearly eight years ago and so much has happened in the Iraq War that we need to drop back to shortly before it began. Tuesday, March 18, 2003, CNN reported, "Saying the United States 'will not be intimated by thugs and killers,' President Bush gave Iraqi President Sadam Hussein and his sons a 48-hour ultimatum Monday: Leave the country or face military action. The ultimatum was delivered in a 13-minute televised speech from the White House." UN inspections were ongoing when Bush made that statement. Dan Stober reported for Knight Ridder Newspapers on March 18, 2003:
As United Nations nuclear inspectors flee Iraq, some of them are angry at the Bush administration for cutting short their work, bad mouthing their efforts and making false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Some inspectors are "scandalized" at the way President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, have "politicized" the inspection process, according to a source close to the inspectors.
None of the nuclear-related intelligence trumpeted by the administration has held up to scrutiny, inspectors say. From suspect aluminum tubes to aerial photographs to documents -- revealed to be forgeries -- that claimed to link Iraq to uranium from Niger, inspectors say they chased U.S. leads that went nowhere and wasted valuable time in their efforts to determine the extent of Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons banned after the 1991 Gulf War.
Inspections were ongoing and the UN inspectors were forced to flee as a result of Bush and Blair. And the Iraq War began. It's a reality missing from Straw's spin. Committee member Roderic Lyne quoted from a letter Straw's office had written to Tony Blair (December 3, 2001) which declared, "Military intervention for the purpose of regime change would be illegal." Which is was. Which is why the Iraq War had to be dressed up by both the British and US government with lies. A paper to Straw followed the letter and Lyne said it "discussed, and I quote: 'How we could combine an objective of regime change in Baghdad with the need to protect important regional interest'. That second paper put a much broader case for regime change than dealing with the threat of WMD. Now your office received these papers and they the wrote to Number 10 to say that you thought the two papers were very perceptive, and that you hoped the Prime Minister would read them."
Straw got defensive and finally declared he was having similar conversations with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Committee member Roderic Lyne: But the second paper set out what has been described in an earlier evidence session as setting out a route map for regime change. Now you just commended the papers, said you hoped the Prime Minister would read them and they were very perceptive. Why did you commend a paper setting out a route map for regime change?
Jack Straw: You will have to forgive me. I was given no notice you were going to raise this.
Apparently Straw feels he must get the questions in advance if he's expected to answer them. And it was a huge dilemma for him because the paper and his praise of it to Blair was very revealing. Lyne told Straw, "I am very curious you didn't react to the second paper by saying regime change cannot be an objective of the UK foreign policy. Warn the Prime Minister."
We can go through Straw's lies bit by bit but there's really no point in that. Let's get to what the Inquiry may have come across. My opinion on what follows, feel free to disagree with my conclusions. Committee Member Roderic Lyne observed early on, as Straw was saying Blair wanted to be on Bush's side, "Get on side of President Bush but presumably not get ahead of President Bush on this issue or encourage President Bush to push it ahead at high speed?" To which Straw replied "certainly not" and more yada-yada.
But that is what the record shows. This is not to say that Bush is an innocent but this is to note that Tony Blair was not the poodle he was thought to be. (And poodle's don't generally end up with Blair's current post, how do you think that happened?) Of all the documents released by the Inquiry, the most interesting one is on the eve of the 2000 US election. The British find Al Gore (Democratic Party presidential nominee) and George W. Bush (Republican Party presidential nominee) to be similar in their stance on Iraq. Of then-current President Bill Clinton, the British lament his "line in the sand" that must be crossed before war would be declared on Iraq. They fear the same resolve in both candidates (Gore and Bush). Put that with the Chicago 1999 speech Blair gave (known as the Blair Doctrine). Blair wanted regime change and was willing to break the law to get it. You can tie it into the 'ultimate good' his religion preaches. Nick Cohen (Guardian of London) on Blair's religious ceremonies:



During their stay at the Maroma Hotel, a pricey retreat on Mexico's Caribbean coast, Cherie Booth/Blair took her husband by the hand and led him along the beach to a 'Temazcal', a steam bath enclosed in a brick pyramid. It was dusk and they had stripped down to their swimming costumes. Inside, they met Nancy Aguilar, a new-age therapist. She told them that the pyramid was a womb in which they would be reborn. The Blairs became one with 'Mother Earth'. They saw the shapes of phantom animals in the steam and experienced 'inner-feelings and visions'. As they smeared each other with melon, papaya and mud from the jungle, they confronted their fears and screamed. The joyous agonies of 'rebirth' were upon them. The ceremony over, the Prime Minister and First Lady waded into the sea and cleaned themselves up as best they could.

And maybe it would be blood and bones that Iraq was semared with, not melon and papaya, but it could be 'reborn' as well.
As Blair's inner circle repeatedly demonstrated to the Inquiry (Straw did so today), they knew what was legal and they knew what was illegal. And the reason for the split in the Cabinet is that some were trusted and some weren't. The inner circle has repeatedly insisted that somethings had to be kept (from the full Cabinet) because it might be leaked to the press but the reality is that Blair and his inner circle leaked to the press more than anyone and what was being protected was a portion of the Cabinet (including Blair) wanting illegal war and concealing that from the rest of the Cabinet. You can see the lines drawn in Richard Norton-Taylor's report for the Guardian last week of Adm Michael Boyce's testimony was a "striking contrast to previous evidence about the former prime minister's war aims" with Boyce testifying he was told regime change could not be the policy while, Richard Norton-Taylor notes, "Blair's closet advisers, including Sir David Manning have told the inquiry that the former prime minister assured President George Bush he was willing to undertake regime change. Lord Turnbull, cabinet secretary at the time, described Blair as a 'regime changer'." Or, another example of who was let in and who was kept out, take Richard Wilson, Cabinet Secretary and Head of Home Civil Service, telling the Inquiry January 25th:
Committee member Lawrence Freedman: I mean the July, 23rd meeting. A version of this is in the public domain -- recommended the establishment of an ad hoc group of officials under the Cabinet Office chairmanship to consider the development of an information campaign to be agreed with the US. Tom McKane told us in his evidence that this was not connected to the dossier and that work had not really started when he handed -- you left the Cabinet Office. Do you have any understanding of this ad hoc group?
Richard Wilson: I think Tom McKane would be right. If you remember -- you don't remember, because I have not told you -- after the -- this is memory -- after the Crawford meeting David Manning -- my memory is that David Manning sent me a minute, which has not been found on the file, so it is perfectly possible it is a figment, but I can see page 2 in my mind, and it had -- it simply said -- my understanding of Crawford, which you have very kindly not asked me about -- my understanding of Crawford, which is another twist in the story, was that we came back realising -- because the purpose of Crawford was to find out what the Americans were thinking, what Bush himself was thinking, because there were all sorts of people around him thinking all sorts of things -- where was Bush on this -- was that he was more serious about regime change and about the possibility, if necessary, of military action than we had grasped. The Prime Minister had asked for further work to be done on three areas, and this is relevant to in answer to your question. One of those areas was building up opinion both in this country and overseas for United Nations action on Iraq. My understanding of the group that was being set up on 23rd July was that was about this process of building up a campaign of public understanding in this country and overseas. I think Tom McKane's evidence is right.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about Crawford?
Richard Wilson: No, other than I would quite like to know what happened to Crawford.
Blair did not twist Bush's arm on illegal war. (It's doubtful Bush cared much whether the war was legal or illegal as evidenced by his repeated comments that history would decide long after everyone was dead -- to which one can add, and after the criminals have escaped punishment.) But he did get him over the line in the sand Bill Clinton had drawn, the one Tony Blair's inner circle lamented.
Called for the third time to testify -- and supposedly spending six weeks preparing for today's appearance, Jack Straw couldn't answer a basic question and wanted to whine that no one told him that would be brought up. The inner circle (including Straw) papered over reality with various correspondence. That's why Lyne may have been getting at when noting Straw's finding that war for regime change would be illegal. There was no real reason to send that document. As documents the Inquiry released prior to 9-11 demonstrate, Tony Blair's Cabinet was already aware that war for regime change was illegal. But the papering over of what was really planned (such as finding a fake reason for war and piggy backing regime change on that) was part of concealing their real actions and motives. That's what the documents released by the Inquiry indicate and it's what the testimony indicates to me.
Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) observes of today's testimony, "The inquiry made clearer than ever that Blair had gone much further in private letters to President Bush than he admitted in public about the prospect of war to topple Saddam Hussein -- an aim of military action that Straw said repeatedly in written and oral evidence would be 'palpably illegal'." Rosa Prince (Telegraph of London) has a report on Straw's testimony which needs to be read in full but we'll excerpt the opening:
On the final day of hearings at the Iraq Inquiry, Mr Straw admitted he advised the Cabinet that invasion would be legal without a fresh United Nations mandate days after Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general, had said privately that the opposite was true.
In the end, Lord Goldsmith changed his mind about the legality of the war on the eve of the invasion and gave the green light to conflict without ministers ever being made aware of his earlier reservations.
Explaining the decision not to share important documents with the Cabinet, Mr Straw said that he and Mr Blair had been "depressed" after a Cabinet discussion on Iraq a year before the 2003 invasion had become public.
Richard Perle, John Bolton, George W. Bush and Colin Powell. These are only some of the names Jack Straw brought up in his testimony to the Iraq Inquiry today. For Bush, Straw had kind words; for Colin The Blot Powell, Straw stated Powell insisted that 'you couldn't delay action too long' (starting the illegal war). After returning from a brief break at 6:12 EST, Straw appeared even more agitated and frustrated and, at one point, lashed out at a previous witness (Steven Wall), labeling the testimony that had been offered "incredulous." One of his most important contributions this go round may be his explanation that "serious consequences" equals "military action."

One impression that's hard to escape is the death of Saddam Hussein and that Straw is obsessed with it. Guilt-ridden? He keeps bringing it up, without prompting. And sounds a bit like he's referring to the 'final solution.' Certainly, when you consider all the world leaders the US and British governments have protected from their people, prevented from going on trial, it is surprising on some level that they executed Saddam Hussein (Iraq was occupied and staffed with exiles, do not pretend that Iraqis executed him whether they wanted to or not, the occupiers were in charge). Is it guilt over the death or fear over later charges to come if the world gets behind calling out the illegal war? He insisted that Hussein was given the chance to disarm but, of course, that's really not what happened. And as he continued to harp on that and other details, it was hard not to notice his obsession with the death of Hussein.

In Iraq, Alsumaria TV is breaking news (where are the US outlets)? Despite Nouri and a so-called legal expert insisting that the power-grab (Nouri got the Supreme Court to put independent bodies under his control) was Constitutional, "Alsumaria News got a copy of a document released by Iraq's Supreme Court in 2006 in clarification to the inquiries of the former Parliament's Integrity Commission over the exact meaning of independence mentioned in Constitution Article 102 and the difference in content between Articles 102 and 103. The court's clarification came contradictory with its last ruling on January 18 stipulating to have independent institutions supervised by the Cabinet and not the Parliament." It should be noted that the Electoral Commission has specifically asked the United Nations to step in (and, no, they didn't mean the embarrassing nonsense Ad Melkert offered already). Salam Faraj (AFP) reports Osama al-Nujafi, Speaker of Parliament, commented today on the controversy declaring, "We think that there is now a real threat to the constitution and democracy as a result of the court's decision. The parliament will present in the coming days a draft law to reform the composition of the supreme court and the Higher Judicial Council." Where is the US media? Various people have called Nouri's move a "coup." Today the Speaker of Parliament calls it a threat to democracy. As the US media rushes around pretending to report on Egypt and pretending to give a damn about democracy, how do they reconcile their silence on this issue? Maybe the same way they've reconciled their silence on the plight of Iraqi women? (Denial.) Nizar Latif (The National) reports:
Madia al Rawai, a member of the Iraqi Women's Association, a group that campaigns for women's rights, said: "There can still be a revolution here, as there has been in Tunisia and Egypt.
"The Iraqi government should pay attention. There is an army of women, with no jobs and no money, and they are ready to take to the streets unless something is done to improve their situation."
Ms al Rawai said that while Iraq has democracy, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, its government was still failing its people.
"The Americans came and wanted to change Iraq, but there have been no changes for the better in the lives of many women. Yes, we have democracy and elections, but that has not brought benefits for many of us."

NCCI: As the former Regional Coordinator for Women for Women International in Iraq, what do you feel are some of the greatest obstacles facing NGOs which operate in the sector of women's rights?

Manal Omar: The biggest challenge is when women become the negotiating chip. One of the titles of my chapters in my book is "Negotiating Chip," because I witnessed too often how women's rights were used during political or social bargaining. For example, you may have high-level Kurdish representatives that believe 100% in women's rights. However, during political debates, or when it's time to vote on a resolution, they will not vote pro-women. When I would challenge them, they often would say that their primary issue is federalization, and as a result, they would strike a deal on a resolution for women if more conservative parties would vote on the resolution of federalization. The second challenge is what I call the "not now" argument. This argument usually states that because of overall violence and instability, it is not an appropriate time to discuss women's issues. I have witnessed how the "not now" easily becomes the "not ever." Women must maximize the window of opportunity to push their rights forward.


Today PBS' Frontline features a report (link has text and video) from Anna Badkhen on Iraqi women:

No one knows exactly how many Iraqi women have been raped since the U.S-led invasion in 2003, but activists in Iraq and abroad put the numbers in the thousands. Human rights groups began to see an increase in rapes in Iraq immediately after the fall of Hussein's regime, and evidence that different factions were targeting women. In 2008, Amnesty International reported that "crimes specifically aimed at women and girls, including rape, have been committed by members of Islamist armed groups, militias, Iraqi government forces, foreign soldiers within the U.S.-led Multinational Force, and staff of foreign private military security contractors."

The report went on to say that such crimes are rarely prosecuted or even recorded by Iraqi officials.

Under Saddam's Baath Party rule, security forces used torture and rape against political prisoners; and the dictator's eldest son, Uday, reportedly ordered any woman who caught his eye to be delivered to his palace. But rape was otherwise not widespread.

"There was law," said Yanar Mohammed, an Iraqi women's rights advocate and feminist. "Nobody would go around raping."


In news of violence, Reuters reports a Baghdad roadside bombing injured three police officers, 1 police officer was shot dead inside his car in Rabea with his passenger left injured, 2 Iraqi soldiers were shot dead at an Abu Ghraib military checkpoint, and, dropping back to Tuesday for the rest, 1 official with the National Intelligence Service was shot dead in his car in Taji (two passengers were left injured), a Baghdad sticky bombing claimed the life of 1 man and left his wife and their child injured, a police officer was injured in a Mosul attack and another person was injured in a shooting which took place in front of his home

Yesterday's snapshot covered some of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing which took testimony from US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey and the top US commander in Iraq Lloyd Austin. The following sentence requires a correction:

Senator Ben Cardin asked about the refugee returns and Jeffrey noted that "the overaching reason why people don't return is concerns about security."

That should be "overarching". I speak quickly when I dictate these and people do a wonderful job keeping up and I thank them for that but Jeffrey used the term "overarching." Kat covered the hearing with "Senate Foreign Relations Committee," Ava with "The forgotten covert wars on Latin America (Ava)" (at Trina's site) and Wally with "It's a boom economy!" (at Rebecca's site). Someone e-mailed the public account stating Austin was ignored the snapshot. I believe I made it clear that early on he made his own testimony worthless; however, if you need more of his 'worthy' testimony, "Opportunity." That was his one word reply to a question in the second round about the bombings of the last two weeks. He elaborated that it was due to the vast number of people (pilgrims) taking part in the holiday. That would be the holiday which takes place every year. No, last year didn't see that level of attacks. No, Austin doesn't know anything he's talking about but he manages to string together words in something which resembles a sentence, if not quite a response.

In this morning's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports on the hearing noting:

James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that his staff of 8,000 will grow in the coming year to about 17,000 people, the vast majority of whom will be contractors.
And while the State Department is spending about $2 billion annually on Iraq operations now, it plans to spend an additional $1 billion on the construction of facilities in each of the next several years.
"We face a critical moment now in Iraq, where we will either step up to the plate, finish the job and build on the sacrifices made," Jeffrey said, "or we will risk core U.S. national security interests, be penny-wise and pound-foolish and cede the field to al-Qaeda and other dangerous regional influences."

Hearing that, it sailed over me. Reading it in Pincus' report, I wonder if veterans and diplomats (as well as US tax payers) might argue, "When didn't we step up to the plate?" That's really an insulting remark from someone whose job it is to be diplomatic. The illegal war's been going on for eight years next month but, apparently, thank goodness, we've got James Jeffrey at last who is going to see to it that the US 'finally' steps up to the plate. What an idiot. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) adds, "The fact that, some eight years after having removed Saddam Hussein, the US is still talking about a 'transitional' period points to just how poorly the regime change plan has gone, and Ambassador Jeffrey's exhortations to 'finish the job' by keeping diplomats in a palatial estate in Baghdad on an open-ended mission to prop up the Maliki regime are unlikely to be met well."

As the US State Dept tries to demand more tax payers money in the midst of the Great Recession, the Pentagon and the President are doing their own little dance. David Swanson (War Is A Crime) tackles the defense budget:
Did you know that the U.S. public wants military spending cut? Did you know that President Barack Obama wants to increase it for his third year in a row? Actually I already know that most of you didn't know either of these things.

A poll released on Tuesday and in line with other polling over the years asked: "To ensure its safety, should the United States always spend at least three times as much on defense as any other nation?" This question mislabels the military "defense," which most of it isn't, and claims the interest of "safety," albeit in the context of other questions about spending money, and yet only 25% of voters said yes, while 40% said no and 35% were not sure.

In reality, the United States could cut its military budget (just the Department of so-called Defense, not counting the hundreds of billions spent through other departments) by 85% and still easily be the most expensive military on the planet. Taking the DOD down to merely three times the expense of China's military (the world's next largest) would mean cutting it by 55%. Taking it down to twice China's military would mean cutting it by 70%.

The same poll asked "Does the United States spend too much on the military and national security, not enough, or about the right amount?" If respondents had been informed of what the United States spends, then something smaller than 25% of them should have answered "not enough" and "just right" combined. Instead, 27% said "not enough" and 37% said "just right" while only 32% said too much. Despite 35% saying they were not sure on the other question, and nearly everyone not knowing what they were talking about, respondents all had an opinion on this one, and most of them were wrong by their own measure.

When a pollster tells Americans the facts and then asks for opinions, the results are predictably different. When told how much money goes where in the federal budget, 65% of Americans want the military cut. But only a small minority of Americans is aware of that.

And anyone paying attention at all almost certainly believes that President Obama is cutting the military. When he has increased it in the past, the media has made so much noise about particular weapons being cut, that nobody's noticed the overall increase.
There are two upcoming actions in the US that will be here before you know it and I'm not noting them often enough (and haven't noted them at all since January 21st), my apologies. First, this is the upcoming Iraq Veterans Against the War event:

February 25, 2011 9:30 - 10:30 am
Busboys & Poets, Langston room
14th & V st NW Washington DC
This report back will be to answer questions from media and the peace movement about the recent trip back to Iraq by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. The war is not over but it is not the same as it was in years past. What is the humanitarian situation in Iraq?
How can we do reparations and reconciliation work?
Speakers are all returning from this delegation and include:
Geoff Millard (IVAW) Hart Viges (IVAW) Haider Al-Saedy (Iraqi Health Now)
Richard Rowely (Big Noise Films)
The following month, A.N.S.W.E.R. and March Forward! and others will be taking part in this action:

March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.

The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.

While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.

Actions of civil resistance are spreading.

On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.

Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.

Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.

Click this link to endorse the March 19, 2011, Call to Action.

Posted by at

2/01/2011

It's a boom economy!

Wally filling in for Rebecca to cover today's Senate Foreign Relations hearing. First off, how cold is it at home? (I mean Florida but will even accept C.I.'s place in California.) When we got back here (C.I.'s DC home), I turned on the TV to catch the weather to find out if it was going to be this bad and cold tomorrow and they said freezing rain overnight and 31 degrees. (That's overnight temp. They seem convinced that the temp will rise tomorrow with the sun. I hope they're right.)

Now for the hearing and first off the good news: The recession has ended and America is experiencing a boom economy.

Now I know that the unemployment rate doesn't back that up; however, when a Senate Committee and two government employees are so willing to spend billions of US tax payer dollars, the economy must be a boom one, right?

Wrong.

Under questioning from New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey defended the *billions* being asked for this year (and billions over the next year) with, "First of all, our assistance will drop. It's already quite low. [. . .] We're looking at 3 to 3 and 1/2 *billion* dollars in assistance ..." Oh, that's low.

[Wally note added 2-5-2011 "*billions*" signals I've changed it from "millions." It was "billions." My apologies for getting that wrong.]

We have a record number of US citizens on food stamps, if the ambassador doesn't kow, and we can't even seem to keep unemployment payments going without repeatedly voting for extensions in Congress, but James Jeffrey is comfortable spending your money and mine in Iraq.

He's as fake as his faux JFK accent.

We don't have the money. Not when we can't spend it on our needs here. And no one really seemed to grasp that fact but Menendez.

And even after Menendez raised that issue in the first round, we still got John Kerry asking about if they needed helicopters that they weren't asking for.

We still had John Kerry asking if the Congress could not only spend the US tax payer money on what the ambassador was requesting but also spend more money on things that weren't being requested.

I don't think DC gets how bad things are for people around the country. Maybe that's why they've done not a damn thing in two years to help Main Street while repeatedly gifting Wall Street.

This hearing was illuminating only in illustrating just how out of touch the Senate is. Rebecca asked me to remind everyone that John Kerry is up for re-election in 2014.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, February 1, 2011. Chaos and violence continue, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee gets played (and few members are even awake), withdrawal or 'withdrawal' gets attention at the hearing and in the press, Nouri's secret prisons continue (despite denials) as does his power grab, Steven Lee Myers responds to New York Times readers and more.
Starting with withdrawal. In reply to "When does the United States military leave?," Steven Lee Myers writes at the New York Times' At War blog:
This will be one of the most important and potentially divisive issues of the coming months. I wouldn't blame anyone for being confounded by the statements of various officials and observers, many of them contradictory. The fact is that neither the Obama administration nor Mr. Malik's government has so far decided, at least publicly, what role the American military will have in Iraq in the future, if any. The leaders' own advisers seem divided on the matter.
The security agreement President George W. Bush negotiated with Mr. Maliki over 2008 set a deadline to withdraw all American troops from Iraq's cities by June 30, 2009, and from the country entirely by Dec. 31, 2011. The withdrawal from the cities happened on schedule -- with a little fudging on municipal boundaries to allow bases in Mosul, Kirkuk and Baghdad, for example -- and American officials and commanders say the final withdrawal will also happen on schedule.
President Obama added only his own withdrawal timetable within the broad terms of the agreement, delayed a bit from his campaign promises, though not radically. He reduced the number of American troops to just below 50,000 last August and declared an official end to the American combat mission (also with a little fudging on what constitutes combat, as we've noted in several articles).
The schedule for withdrawing the remaining troops has not yet been made public, but it is expected to begin in the spring and be in full swing by August, with as few as 25,000 troops left by August, as I heard recently. In the State of the Union address, Mr. Obama again stated that the remainder of the troops would withdraw as planned, which would seem to rule out a future role for the American military, but not entirely.
My colleagues and I recently outlined some possibilities and the political difficulties both he and Mr. Maliki face as they grapple with the 2011 deadline. Iraq's security forces, while larger and increasingly confident, still require significant training and equipping, as many officials have noted. Keeping any significant number of American troops in Iraq to do that -- even in a purely advisory capacity -- will require an extension of the current security agreement, the negotiation a new agreement of some sort, or some more fudging. How that unfolds will be a major story this year.
Last week, we quoted from Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin's analysis of the State of the Union address and noted Myers would be answering questions left at that analysis. Today, his responses are online. We'll go out, at the end of the snapshot, with another section from his replies but the issue of withdrawal or not withdrawal is where we start. Steven Lee Myers also reports on a US military release that the military quickly retracted today:
"This was an internal staff action in the eventuality of the Iraqi government approving the sale," a spokesman here, Col. Barry A. Johnson, said in a statement. "It was not intended for distribution. Approval of the sale has NOT/NOT occurred and notification of any approval will first be made by the government of Iraq."
Mistakes happen in the fog of war, but what was telling was the specificity of the news release, dated Jan. 31.
It included the number of aircraft, the date of delivery in 2013, the fact that 10 Iraqi pilots were already training in the United States and the implication that Americans would continue to train the Iraqi security forces well after a deadline for a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.
The US Ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, and the top US commander in Iraq, Gen Lloyd James Austin, appeared in DC this morning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The hearing came, Salam Faraj (AFP), "[. ..] two days after a US watchdog said shortfalls in the capabilities of Iraq's security forces could undo security gains after American troops leave at the end of the year. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) noted that while Baghdad's forces had made major improvements, they suffered from poor logistics capabilities, and that corruption within the police and army had hampered their development." And as Mark Landler (New York Times) reports this morning on a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report to be released later today which states that US diplomats will be left unprotected in Iraq if the US announced plan for withdrawal or 'withdrawal' is followed: "Without thousands of additional soldiers -- a prospect that seems untenable, given political pressures in both countries -- the report recommends rethinking the American civilian presence, which is projected to number 17,000 diplomats, contractors and others in 15 sites in Iraq."
This was the Foreign Relations Committee's "first hearing of the new Congress," as Chair John Kerry noted at the start. He welcomed "five new members" to the Committee, Senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Tom Udall and Dick Durbin While that was Committee business and may be excused as such, his many, many words about Egypt? Including plugging his own guest column in the New York Times? As he went on and on -- still in his opening statement -- about Egypt and its importance to the US, you saw people looking around and appearing to wonder, "Is this hearing about Iraq or not?" Finally, he hailed the "success" and, with that lie, everyone knew he had found his way back to the topic of the hearing. (FYI, his office passed on this from Kerry on Egypt. He had no news release on Iraq -- no news release on the subject of the hearing he chaired this morning.) A woman next to me leaned in and asked, "Did he just say 'We are also here today?'" Yes, he did. He said "we are also here today" to discuss Iraq. Also? Iraq, he declared, "because of successes has moved off of the front burner, so to speak." Really? Seems it moved off the front burner of the hearing Kerry chaired because John Kerry was more interested in being a dog chasing a Hot Topic Ambulance down the street than in addressing the topic the hearing was called for. "In accordance with the 2008 bilateral agreements that were signed and negotiated by the Bush administration, American troops must leave the country by the end of the year," Kerry declared before adding "but these agreements also acknowledge -- and it's important for people to focus on this -- they also acknowledge the need for continued military cooperation." If that seems strange, strange was the hallmark of the hearing.
It was a very strange John Kerry, one who badly needed a hair cut (unless he's trying to ape Ben Nelson's look) and he was hunched over and, most importantly, shifty-eyed in a way that brought to mind his one-time nemesis Richard Nixon. Did anyone ever think he would end the Iraq War if elected? (I actually did. I can be wrong and often am. I was certainly wrong about John.) Whatever happened to the young man who publicly wondered,, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" The current War Hark John Kerry obviously killed him and, judging from the excess pounds Kerry is packing, ate him as well.
Kerry, still yammering away in his never-ending opening statement, declared, "In the coming weeks I will explore the possibility of a multi-year authorization package for Iraq that would include the operational costs of the mission as well as the security and the economic assistance programs. This package could serve as a road map for the American public so that our effort in Iraq will end better than it began." Politicians can get into a trap -- not just them, Naomi Wolf's there currently -- where they paint themselves into a corner and instead of owning up to a mistake, risk a lot of money and a lot of lives. It's past time that the United States government got as honest as the American people: The Iraq War is a failure. Billions of tax payer dollars have been thrown at the 'problem' and it never made it right and it never will because when you start an illegal war, you can never rewrite the beginning. At the very root, this war that has cost countless Iraqi, US, British, etc lives, this war was corrupt. In England, they've had several inquiries into the Iraq War. Not in the US. In the US, our leaders will not admit the war was a mistake.
You might say, "Wait, Kerry's made remarks about it being one and so has Barack Obam and so has . . ." Those remarks were made when a Republican was in the White House. These days we get lies from John Kerry and Barack Obama about what a "success" Iraq is. If Barack had a brain, he would have, immediately upon being sworn in, withdrawan all of the troops from Iraq and stated the war was wrong. Then it wouldn't have been his war and anyone pointing to post-Iraq problems would have to deal with the fact that George W. Bush started it. (And for those who whine that Barack would have been breaking the SOFA, no, he wouldn't have been. The SOFA was never signed off on by the US Senate. Check the Constitution. And Barack and Joe Biden realized that when they were running for office and actively called out the SOFA and stated they would oppose it . . . until they got elected.)
Not only have billions been wasted on the illegal war, John Kerry now wants to waste more tax payer dollars when the US does not have them to waste. This was always the problem with setting up an illegitimate puppet government. When you do that, you can't leave. You have to stay in there in some form or another or accept the risk that the puppet government will topple as the people demand self-rule (as they should). John Kerry today is as scary as John McCain talking about a US presence in Iraq for a hundred years in 2008.
Ranking Member Richard Lugar, in his opening statements, knew what hearing he was at. No talk of Egypt and what the US 'must do.' Lugar noted, "As our military presence in Iraq diminishes, our civilian presence is being enhanced by thousands of personnel engaged in diplomacy, development and security cooperation of nearly one thousand Defense Dept personnel is planned to mentor the Iraqi military. Despite progress in Iraq, violence continues. The most recent erport on the security of Iraq by the Depts of State and Defense cites improved conditions but labels the situation in the country as 'still fragile.' Although the United States should continue preparations for winding down the military mission, withdrawal from Iraq cannot be the sole driver of our policy there. We have significant interests in Iraq and it is important that our government is exploring ways to further those interests in the absence of significant US military power in the country."
No, it doesn't sound like the US is leaving Iraq and that's what happens when an alleged peace movement turns itself into a 527 for a Corporatist War Hawk. Thank you, Leslie Cagan for whoring the movement. You are far from alone but no one sought the limelight more than you when Iraq was the media hot topic. And certainly, you surrendered on behalf of the peace movement with the idiotic message you posted the day after the 2008 election hailing Caeser, er, Barack, and folding up tent and going home.
At some point, a real reporter needs to press these 'strategic interests in Iraq' types like John Kerry on what those interests are because as they blather on endlessly about 'strategic interests' all they really telegraph is that this was a war about oil. If a reporter would press for that answer, they might get the truth or hear the ridiculous response Jeffrey offered the Committee:
US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey: Iraq's strategic importance is based on a number of factors. Iraq plays a central role in the Arab and Muslim worlds and hosts Shi'a Islam's holiest sites. Iraq has a diverse, multi-sectarian and multi-ethnic population. Geographically, Iraq is strategically positioned between major regional players, including Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Iraq represents the frontier between the Arab and Persian worlds. And because it is endowed with a significant portion of the world's oil reserves, Iraq will play an increasingly influential role in the global economy.
So for those not stupid enough to believe the US government is really concerned about the the "Shi'a Islam's holiest sites," we're left with the issue of oil. And, oh, but Jeffrey didn't offer that to the Committee verbally. It was in his written statement, one he referred to and credited to himself and the general. (And the State Dept foolishly posted the written statement here.) For his spoken statements, he wanted to warn everyone that "a Charlie Wilson's War" could take place in Iraq. And as domestic box office demonstrated, no one wants that bomb stinking up the cineplexes again.
If there's ever been a more dishonest hearing on Iraq that we've attended in the last five years, I'm failing to remember it.
For example, "Today, Iraq has the most inclusive government in their nation's history." That lie was via Gen Austin. That statement is appalling. If you're not getting why, let's drop back to last week. Manal Omar is the author Barefoot in Baghdad: A Story of Identity -- My Own and What it Means to be a Woman in Chaos. Starting in the 1990s, she has done humanitarian work in Iraq. NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq interviewed her last week.

NCCI: When was the last time that you were in Iraq? Did you notice any changes in women's status in the country at that time?

Manal Omar: The last time I was in Iraq was December 2010. Unfortunately, during my trip there was the announcement of the new government ministries. It was very sad to see that Iraqi women were not part of the list of ministries at all. Many of the women's organizations I have worked with for the last seven years called me and were in shock to see how Iraqi women continue to lose rights rather than gain them! After the previous elections, there were 6 female ministers; now there are none. Even the Ministry for Women's Affairs has an interim male Minister. This highlights that the challenge facing women is stronger than ever.

Even the Ministry for Women's Affairs has a man as Minister. And Austin wants to brag about how inclusive the government is? That's a shameful lie. And a sign of just how much people will spin to continue the Iraq War. When someone reveals either that much stupidity or that much duplicity, we're done with them and their opening one-liners.
Senator Ben Cardin asked about the refugee returns and Jeffrey noted that "the overaching reason why people don't return is concerns about security." But, happy talk time, he was convinced that people will return after they have seen that the security is there. Really? After two weeks of massive bombings, Jeffrey wants to appear before the Committee and happy talk security?
Senator Ben Cardin: On that same side, the chairman's talked about a long term committment to Iraq, I think we all understand we're going to be there from the point of view of helping to rebuild the country. What can you tell us is being put in place to make sure that the US funds are being used in the most cost-effective way, that we have protections against US funds being used to help finance corruption -- local corruption -- in the country, how do we avoid that and what are we doing for promoting US values including gender equity issues, making sure that we continue to make progress? Do we have -- Do you have an accountability system in place that gives confidence that we should be considering a more permanent, longterm, committment to Iraq?
US Ambassador James Jeffrey: Yes, sir, on all of those accounts,Senator. First of all, this is an important priority for us and it's an important priority for this administration and the last administration. In fact, a unique institution, uh, the Special uh Inspector General for Iraq, SIGIR, has been set up and they have a very active uh program, they have dozens of uh people stationed or with us TDI either out in the field in Iraq. We also have the State Dept and other IGs but SIGR in particular has been very active in looking into assistance programs and how effective and how efficient they are and, uh, to what extent there is corruption. Uh, I, uh, meet with the head of it, with [Stuart] Bowen, with his deputy and with other members frequently. In addtition, uh, uh, since the time of [former US Ambassador to Iraq] Ryan Crocker, we've organized the embassy in a unique way: where normally we have the ambassador and then a deputy chief of mission But for the economic and assistance elements of it -- we've created essentially a second, uh, deputy chief of mission -- the assistant chief of mission, currently Ambassador Peter Bodde who looks into that and focuses directly on the issues of "Are we getting our bang for the buck?," uh, "Are we looking into corruption?," uh, and these kind of issues. Uh, a good deal of our assistance goes -- and a good deal of our political relationships with Iraqis and our engagement with them goes to issues such as gender equality, minorities, the refugee issue. We have a very, very broad dialogue with them. We played a role behind the scenes on some of the decisions taken in the Iraqi Constitution on -- under equality -- for example, 25% of the Parliament has to be uh, uh female. Uh, now there are problems with this at times. For example, uh Iraqis -- both men and women -- were unhappy with the makeup of the Cabinet. Uh, the prime minister then decided that he would have to hold off on completion of the Cabinet until he could find more female candidates and that process is ongoing.
That is so blatantly false. It was only after Nouri named his (incomplete) Cabinet that women -- including Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's niece -- voiced their outrage over the lack of women in the Cabinet. But remember that because, according to the lie, we're going to see Nouri filling the remainder of his Cabinet with women. There are ten positions left. In terms of SIGR, they do strong work. It's also after-the-fact work. Meaning, they are auditing programs that are often completed or the money is all spent. In other words, after the money (or the bulk of it) has been mispent. In addition, how dare an employee of the US State Dept claim responsibility for SIGIR which was created, in 2004, by an act of Congress. 'What are you doing' was the question Jeffrey was asked. The answer is: Not real damn much. It would have been great if at some point -- maybe during Austin's non-stop praise for Iraqi security forces -- the targeting of Iraq's LGBT population -- by security forces -- had been raised. But that never happened.
For a scheduled hearing, there was surprisingly very little awareness of the issues effecting Iraq. It was equally surprising how little concern there was about money. At a time when Barack keeps saying everyone will have to cut back, Jeffrey estimated that they will need between $3 billion and $3 and a half-billion just for 2011. Only Senator Robert Menendez appeared concerned about the costs (as evidenced by his citing all the money the US has already spent on training and reconstruction).
Senator Robert Menendez: We will be watching it closely as well because after 58 billion dollars when we were told that Iraqi oil would fund the full cost of our invasion in Iraq and the cost of it, obviously, it's tough to see, here in America, the challenges that we have, the lack of investment that we have on critical issues and spending 58 billion dollars in Iraq and a continuum of anywhere from three and three-and-a-half billion dollars a year is -- is something that I think is going to be increasingly under a microscope.
After Menendez spoke, the Committee suddenly appeared to be interested in money. (An issue they'd mentioned prior only in terms of 'how much can we give you' and 'do you need helicopters' and other spending sprees). Jeffrey declared that it will cost over a billion dollars in the next fiscal years and hundreds of millions of operating costs. Chair John Kerry asked why the US was laying out two billion to maintain its presence and Jeffrey never had an answer.
While the ambassador and the general were spinning to the Committee (which largely accepted the spin gladly), Human Rights Watch was noting more abuse in Iraq. Last week, Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) reported that Nouri's Baghdad Brigade "is holding detainees in miserable conditions for months at a time" at Camp Honor. Khalid Walid (Iraqhurr.org) reported that the Deupty Minister of Justice, Busho Ibrahim, continues to deny the charges of abuse and mistreatment including during an interview with Radio Free Iraq. He insists they are being dealt with a timely and fair manner and that their families and attorneys can visit them in the prison within the Green Zone but Walid noted that just to get into the Green Zone you have to have special identification and this can prevent many from entering which has led human rights activists such as Hassan Shaaban to argue that the prison needs to be moved outside the Green Zone. Today Human Rights Watch notes:
Elite security forces controlled by the military office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said today. The elite forces are also torturing detainees with impunity at a different facility in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said.
Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site. The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism.
"Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished."
The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said.
Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) explains, "The international rights group says it obtained classified documents that describe a secret site within a military camp called Camp Justice, in Baghdad's Kathamiya neighborhood. It's run by the Iraqi Army's 56th Brigade and the counterterrorism service. Both outfits are under the authority of the prime minister." Liz Sly (Washington Post) adds, "One of the sites is at a military base where U.S. forces maintain an advisory team, the U.S. military confirmed. Former prisoners at another of the facilities, a military base in the Green Zone that was vacated by U.S. troops last summer, have told Human Rights Watch researchers that detainees there were regularly abused, by being hung upside down, beaten and given electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals," Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times) notes, "Mr. Maliki created the brigades in 2008 and they have been a longstanding issue with Sunnis and others who have accused Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, of using the security forces as his personal militia. Those fears have been stoked by the fact that many detainees who have been held by the forces he commanded appear to be Sunnis." Geraldine Baum (Los Angeles Times) provides this context:
Under pressure from government ministers, Maliki had ordered that facility closed and had promised prison reform and a crackdown on those responsible. But in an article last month, The Times again revealed allegations of abuse by members of the Baghdad Brigade, this time at Camp Honor. The Times reported that families and lawyers had been barred access to detainees, including some who had been held for two years.
Maliki also had said last year, at the time of the prison scandal, that Camp Honor was being handed over to Iraq's Justice Ministry, which is in charge of prisons, but Human Rights Watch obtained documents indicating that this facility and others remain under control of units that report directly to the military office under Maliki.
Officials from both Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries complained to Human Rights Watch that soldiers in these elite units and members of the Counter-Terrorism bureau routinely make mass arrests and detentions without notifying proper authorities in the security ministries.
The US government installed Nouri al-Maliki and he'snow in the midst of a power-grab. Background, as November wound down, an arrangement was reached that allowed Nouri al-Maliki to be named prime minister-designate and have 30 days to put together a Cabinet. (Actually, that was in the middle of November but Jalal Talabani waited on 'officially' declaring Nouri prime minister-designate in order to give Nouri a lot more time to put together a Cabinet. Not that it helped any. Even now, he still doesn't have a full Cabinet.) So knowing that he was prime minister-designate and, most likely, prime minister, Nouri filed (December 18th) with the Supreme Court in order to have independent bodies the central bank, the electoral commission, the human rights commmission and the anti-corruption body placed under his control. He did this without notifying anyone in Parliament. When news leaked out last week, outrage was expressed with many referring to it as a "coup." From yesterday's snapshot:


Saif Tawfeeq (Reuters) reports that Nouri insisted today that the bodies would continue to be autonomous ones despite his control of them. Alsumaria TV adds, "Iraq's Parliament is due to host on Tuesday heads of the independent commissions to discuss the ruling of placing certain institutions under ministerial control. The Parliament is expected to receive head of the Integrity Commission Rahim Al Ukaili, the High Electoral Commission Chairman Faraj Al Haidair and Central Bank Chief Sanan Al Shabibi, a source from the Parliament speaking on condition of anonymity told Alsumaria News."

Nouri has been insisting that the Parliament has no say and shouldn't even attempt to address the issue. Hisham Rikabi (Al Mada) reminds that Nouri went on state television Saturday night to insist that the court decision is binding and cannot be appealed before adding that any attempt to do so would "destroy the country." This is the thug the US installed -- twice. The US government installed him twice.

The idiot pontificator Tareq Harb is trotted out (as usual) to provide cover for Nouri as he's done for years now. Harb is not a legal expert, he's a legal idiot. And his refusal to stay with the law (the law doesn't predict, for example, why Biden visits Iraq though 'legal expert' Harb has used his 'legal expertise' to 'tell' why Biden has visited) should have long ago exposed him as the useless gasbag he is. But today he gets Al Sabaah treating him as though he knows something. He declares today that the Parliament cannot overturn the decision. Actually, per the Constitution they can and if Harb's brain wasn't up Nouri's ass, he might know that. Parliament is over the funding of those bodies. Parliament can kill the bodies tomorrow and vote to recreate new ones. Parliament can do any number of things and a real "legal expert" would not only know the Constitution of Iraq, he or she would know what it meant in practice. As for the United Nations? Al Mada reports that the United Nation's top official in Iraq, Ad Melkert, can't do a damn thing or won't. He weighs in to sa that the court's decision must be respected but so must Parliament. Way to choose a side, United Nations. It gets worse. Ad Melkert doesn't feel the issue is at all important (this is how Saddam Hussein's happen, pay attention). What is important? "The next stage requires a focus on the recovery of the Iraqi economy," he is quoted stating.

As noted in yesterday's snapshot, the death toll for January was twice that of December.
Xiong Tong (Xinhua) reports, "The death toll from violence in January climbed to highest level since September late year as several massive terrorist attacks killed and wounded hundreds of people, including security members and Shiite pilgrims, Iraqi authorities said on Tuesday." Lara Jakes and Donna Cassata (AP) report, "At least 159 Iraqi citizens and 100 police and soldiers were killed in insurgent attacks in January -- the deadliest month for Iraq since September, according to data released Tuesday by security and health ministry officials in Baghdad. An Associated Press count of Iraqis killed in attacks over two weeks alone puts the death toll at more than 200."
Alberto B. Martinez got away with murder. Not the Alberto Martinez who -- along with Jacob Burgoyne and Douglas Woodcoff -- murdered Richard Davids July 14, 2003. This Alberto Martinez walked free after murdering Lou Allen and Phillip Esposito while the three were serving in Iraq on June 7, 2005. He used a Claymore mine to kill Phillip Esposito and wound Lou Allen and then tossed three grenades in an attempt to cover his actions. When he walked, after being aquitted December 4, 2008, Lou Allen's widow Barbara Allen exclaimed, as the verdict was announced, "He slaughtered our husbands, and that's it? You murdered my husband!"

February 21, 2009, the New York Times ran Paul von Zielbauer's "G.I. Offered to Plead Guilty, Then Went Free in Iraq Deaths" on the front page, detailing that Martinez plea agreement that got tossed aside: "This offer to plea originated with me. No person has made any attempt to force or coerce me into making this offer." The agreement was also signed by the same two attorneys who represented Martinez. Barbara Allen was quoted by von Zielbauer stating, "They had a conviction handed to them and chose not to take it." The plea would have meant life in prison. Georgetown law professor and former Marine judge Gary D. Solis told von Zielbauer, "The only reason you should turn this down is if you have an absolutely bulletproof case. I can't imagine why they didn't take it. You've got life in prison in hand."

Drew Brooks (Fayetteville Observer) reports that Siobhan Esposito is suing to obtain a full transcript of the court martial of Martinez -- a court martial that was open to the public and at which reporters were present but a court martial that the military refuses to provide a full transcript for. From Brooks' report:

According to Siobhan Esposito, that transcript was redacted to exclude information that was stated in open court, such as the names of lawyers, the military judge and witnesses and the names of some bases in Iraq.
"I was outraged. It was a shock," she said of the redacted transcript. "I believe the law gives me the right to those records."
Siobhan Esposito's lawyer, Eugene Fidell, said the redactions were baffling. He teaches military law at Yale Law School.
"The notion that someone would take the time to do this . there's a serious problem in the way the Army views the records related to a court-martial," he said.

How petty is the US military brass? Not only has the woman lost her husband but she saw his killer walk free because the military prosecution set aside a plea agreement because they just knew they could win it in court. And after all of that, they want to deny her a full transcript to what was an open hearing?
Thanks to everyone who wrote, especially Jimmy from Dallas who asked if those of us working here "realize you are read." We do, even if Iraq has receded so far from the center of public attention in the United States -- as I noted about President Obama's State of the Union address -- that it can sometimes feel as if it has been forgotten, overshadowed by economic troubles at home, the renewed focus on Afghanistan and all the turmoil elsewhere in the world.
I have been struck more than once when I am home -- in Washington -- by how little Iraq comes up in day-to-day conversations anymore, when it once devoured so much. So it's nice to know there are many who care deeply about Iraq's fate and pay attention -- whatever the rationale for the war, which continues to be contentious, as several questions/comments made very clear.
Posted by at

1/31/2011

the death of the net

so yesterday we were doing the kid stuff - fly boy, our daughter and myself. and when we finally got home we were all tired. so i didn't bother to turn on abc to catch brother & sisters.

did it air?

i'm writing about hulu tonight.

if i miss brothers & sisters, that's where i go to watch it. i can't stand watching at the abc website because you have to install their player and that player has a huge chance of freezing in the middle of an episode.

so i go to hulu when i want to catch something. i'm looking at sunday's posted programs and there's nothing. did barack deliver a state of the union address repeat?

no simpsons or any of the fox line up. i don't know what nbc airs but there are no nbc programs. abc's brothers & sisters and desperate housewives aren't there.

and maybe we had some big news or something and that prevented it from airing. i know it wasn't the superbowl. but whatever the case, content isn't up at hulu.

(c.i. just returned my call. that home improvement show was 2 hours and abc didn't air brothers & sisters, and fox had some sort of football programming on.)

if you haven't noticed, abc is pulling content from hulu.

you can't watch v, the middle or that new show with kitty foreman from 'that 70s show' which is actually a very funny show.

and you'll probably see more of that happening because abc, for example, has signed a streaming deal with netflix.

they think they can make more money off that (netflix has paid subscribers) than via hulu (where you watch a series of ads during the program just like you would on your tv).

i think it's a big mistake and part of the move away from the public airwaves and the public in the airwaves.

i wonder in 10 years what the internet will look like?

clearly barack does not support net neutrality. that was just campaign hogwash to get the blogger boyz on his side - as he and his friend he put to head the f.c.c. have demonstrated.

so most likely what we know the net for, what we enjoy about it, will soon be gone for good. and maybe it won't even be 10 years, maybe it will 5. or less.

but what is happening is that more and more they are trying to find a way to force you to pay.

not trying to make a buck off you - they've always done that which is why you see so many ads on the net. but now they want to force you to pay.

maybe the result will be a lot less time spent on the net?

i'd love to believe that was possible. instead, we'll just create three tiers in america.

1) those that can't afford
2) those that can afford some
3) those that can afford all.

and that's the death of the net in my opinion.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Monday, January 31, 2011. Chaos and violence continue, the death toll in Iraq for January is double what it was in December, Nouri al-Maliki attempts to defend his power grab, some rush to again defend Julian Assange while ignoring attacks on Bradley Manning, a new US report finds things are very shaky in Iraq, and more.

We'll start with Julian Assange just because I'm sick of the nonsense. We've said for sometime that Assange is not a journalist and he's not. He might, many months back, have been comparable to a book publisher and qualified as a journalist by that route. But he's not and has never been a journalist. Apologies to Jim because we toyed with writing about this subject at Third but couldn't pull it together. I'm grabbing it now. David Swanson (War Is A Crime) is outraged by a CBS profile on Julian Assange which aired Sunday. Among David's many complaints, "The CBS program 60 Minutes has just published video of an interview with Wikileaks' Julian Assange -- with the video focused, of course, on Assange himself, with almost no substantive content related to the massive crimes and abuses that have made news around the globe." For the record, 60 Minutes is a TV show; therefore, it "airs" reports, it does not "publish" them. The report aired Sunday night. First off, the profile on Julian Assange was billed as just that. Drop back to Friday's snapshot where we noted the upcoming broadcast and included their description of the segment: "Julian Assange, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks, speaks to Steve Kroft about the U.S. attempt to indict him on criminal charges and the torrent of criticism aimed at him for publishing classified documents. (This is a double-length segment.)" Expressing shock today over what aired *Sunday* is a bit like going to one of Bruce Willis' shoot-em-up-bang-bang movies and leaving the theater complaining that you had no idea there would be violence in the film.



The segment was as advertised. David's also unhappy with Steve Kroft's style. That's fine, call it out. But to read David's long piece is to get that it's not really about Kroft. Take the criticism about Kroft not providing "substantive coverage" of WikiLeaks' 'exposures.' David never wrote the same about Amy Goodman. But Goody spent an hour (she called it an hour -- more like 45 minutes) with Assange on July 28th and she dealt far less with WikiLeaks' exposures. She wasted time, for example, asking Assange about the damage that might come from the Congress passing a law -- she asked Australian citizen Julian Assange about the US Congress passing a law. A topic he was clearly not qualified to speak on and no one should be surprised by that fact. It takes a real idiot (or maybe a xenophobe who assumes the whole world knows and follows the US Congress and how it makes a law and how . . .). She provided a lot of gossip. Steve Kroft -- we can cover this at Third where we can lay it out all side by side -- covered more of the exposures than did Goodman and where was David's angry article about Amy Goodman putting the BS in Panhandle Media? No where to be found.



The problem isn't 60 Minutes and it's not Steve Kroft. That's not to say either is above criticism. That is to say, Julian Assange agreed to a celebrity profile and that's what he got. It can be argued that at any point with Kroft (or with Goodman), Assange could have been raising exposures but didn't do that.



The problem is Julian Assange is emerging and he's not conforming with his fan base. Here, we called out the CNN 'reporter' who blew an interview with Assange. We called it out because the segment was supposed to be about the exposures but she made it instead about Assange. I have never had as much pressure from CNN friends to correct something. We haven't corrected it, that entry's still up. But as they argued for their reporter, they repeatedly told stories about Assange. He is not the man his fan boy base thinks he is. That's why we began to note immediately after that Julian Assange is the public face of WikiLeaks but he is not WikiLeaks. At this point, that may no longer be true due to the fact that so many have now jumped ship.



CNN refused to go into business with Assange for a reason. Other outlets were happy to go along with the source. Those include Der Spiegel, the Guardian and the New York Times. And fan boys like David Swanson never called that out. That went against WikiLeaks entire reason for being. WikiLeaks was where the people would find information, information that others tried to hide. Suddenly, the information was being filtered. A filter was completely against WikiLeak's reason for being. (Some have attacked WikiLeaks over not censoring names in an early document release. We didn't attack them for that and I defended them here over that noting that they are not supposed to be altering the documents in any way, they are supposed to be providing sunlight.) As the releases continued to be coordinated with the press, WikiLeaks stopped putting it online. Oh, they'd do so in a week or a few weeks or maybe a month . . .



No, that's not the mission statement or purpose of WikiLeaks. That's when people start leaving. Not because they're jealous of Julian Assange but because WikiLeaks is not living it up to its stated purpose. Julian Assange doesn't believe in the power of the internet. That's why he went to old media. He could have cut in a website -- The Huffington Post, for example. He didn't. He spat on new media and it's so amazing to watch as those spat upon rush to defend repeatedly.



Julian Assange is not a journalist. What he has done is be a source. And outlets have been far too kind to his whims. And maybe if John F. Burns (and his co-writer, but to the world, it is now John F. Burns' article) had been honest enough about what was going on, he could have written an honest article instead of one that read like an attack because it was an attack. Julian Assange isn't a journalist. He chases celebrity.



That's why he agreed to the CBS interview to begin with. Assange has no plans to come to the US. So why is he granting an interview to CBS? To promote WikiLeaks? If so, look at his own answers because Kroft's bringing up more specifics on revelations that Julian Assange does.



In Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark's "An Inside Look at Difficult Negotiaions with Julian Assange," Der Spiegel portrays the source's ego mania in a lengthy article and the most disturbing paragraph for Assange (and his groupies) would probably be this one where, having decided the New York Times is no longer 'in the loop,' Assange is confronting the Guardian and Der Spiegel in a meeting to find out if the Times has copies of the latest cables and how they got hold of them:


The mood was tense. "Does the New York Times have a copy?" Assange wanted to know. He repeated the question, and it sliced through the room, which by now was very still. "And if so, where did it get a copy?" Assange mentioned the written agreement he had signed with the Guardian in the summer, which stipulated that WikiLeaks was merely providing the Guardian with the embassy cables for its review, and that publication or duplication was only permissible with the consent of WikiLeaks. Assange felt that a breach of contract had taken place, which is why he had brought along his attorneys.


Check out the ego mania of Assange and how ridiculous he sounds insisting that the US government cables (which deserved to see the light of day, no question) must not be shared witout his consent and if they were shared with another paper this would be a violation of the written agreement? There's not a big difference between Assange's attacks and postures and those of the US State Dept. And, as the paragraph demonstrates, WikiLeaks was no longer WikiLeaks. It was about making Julian Assange a celebrity. That's what's destroyed the organization and why a number of people have left it and are setting up a new version which will adhere to the beliefs WikiLeaks once espoused. Note this paragraph and, Mascolo is Georg Mascolo, editor-in-chief of the Guardian.


Assange was using terms like "theft" and "criminal activities," against which he said he would take legal action, because the copy was, as he claimed, "illegal." At that moment, he was apparently unaware of the dual meaning of what he had just said. Mascolo replied: "There are nothing but illegal copies of this material."



Assange sounds like an idiot, granted. But grasp that someone risked their job (at the very least) to provide WikiLeaks with the material and instead of releasing it -- the WikiLeaks motto be damned, apparently -- Assange is having a freak-fest over the fact that it may get released.



None of these documents should have ever gone through the MSM to begin with. The Collateral Murder video got substantial attention and coverage after WikiLeaks published it online. And that's not just my argument, that's also the argument that took place inside WikiLeaks. The question was why, with no announcement (let alone discussion), WikiLeaks was transforming from a conduit of information directly to the people to one now using a filter (the MSM) and refusing to post the documents online?



Bill Keller had a lengthy article (like the Der Spiegel article, Keller's is actually part of a new book) in the New York Times' Sunday Magazine recounting the paper's interactions with Julian Assange:



Three months later, with the French daily Le Monde added to the group, we published Round 2, the Iraq War Logs, including articles on how the United States turned a blind eye to the torture of prisoners by Iraqi forces working with the U.S., how Iraq spawned an extraordinary American military reliance on private contractors and how extensively Iran had meddled in the conflict.
By this time, The Times's relationship with our source had gone from wary to hostile. I talked to Assange by phone a few times and heard out his complaints. He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared -- rightly, as it turned out -- that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. "Where's the respect?" he demanded. "Where's the respect?" Another time he called to tell me how much he disliked our profile of Bradley Manning, the Army private suspected of being the source of WikiLeaks's most startling revelations. The article traced Manning's childhood as an outsider and his distress as a gay man in the military. Assange complained that we "psychologicalized" Manning and gave short shrift to his "political awakening."
The final straw was a front-page profile of Assange by John Burns and Ravi Somaiya, published Oct. 24, that revealed fractures within WikiLeaks, attributed by Assange's critics to his imperious management style. Assange denounced the article to me, and in various public forums, as "a smear."
Assange was transformed by his outlaw celebrity. The derelict with the backpack and the sagging socks now wore his hair dyed and styled, and he favored fashionably skinny suits and ties. He became a kind of cult figure for the European young and leftish and was evidently a magnet for women. Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden's strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape, and a prosecutor issued a warrant to question Assange, who initially described it as a plot concocted to silence or discredit WikiLeaks.
I came to think of Julian Assange as a character from a Stieg Larsson thriller -- a man who could figure either as hero or villain in one of the megaselling Swedish novels that mix hacker counterculture, high-level conspiracy and sex as both recreation and violation.



Bill Keller has not attacked Assange. But complexities escape the fan boys. (Doyle McManus has a commentary I haven't read yet but a friend at the Los Angeles Times asked for a link to it. Doyle's generally making several astute points and I'm sure someone in the community will end up quoting from it at their site tonight.) At the end of the day, has Assange been good or bad for WikiLeaks? They have had revelations make big splashes in MSM and that's a plus. Would they have had big splashes if they'd continued to follow the model they preached? No one knows but the fact that they morphed into something in complete opposition to what they preached is a minus. Assange became the story because Assange wanted to be the story. That's why he agreed to the celebrity profile. He is not and never has been Daniel Ellsberg. He is not a whistle blower. That would be the people who supplied WikiLeaks with information. Information which Julian Assange now sits on -- grasp that -- and claims he will release if there are any deaths.



Uhm, I kind of think people who risked (at the very least) their jobs to provide WikiLeaks with information did so because they wanted the information to be out there in the public, not because they wanted to provide Julian Assange with a bargaining chip he could use to whip up even more press attention.



Greg Palast has warned about Julian Assange but the fan boy base wanted to ignore Palast. That's very strange considering I can't think of another time when the fan boy base has shut Palast out. But what Palast saw was an ever increasing gulf between what WikiLeaks stated it was doing and what it actually did. And by that measure, the current WikiLeaks is a failure. Hopefully, those who have left the organization to start OpenLeaks will fair better with the failure of WikiLeaks as an example. Jim, Dona, Ava and I came up with an outline a few weeks back on what we'd cover if we wrote a piece on WikiLeaks. I have deliberately ignored some of the points Jim and Dona raised so those aspects can be picked up at Third if they want.



But David Swanson has written a lengthy piece about Julian Assange today and about how poor Julian has been mistreated and yet again we're not focusing on real issues as a result. It's really past time that the fan boys stop rushing to defend their hero. He has clay feet, he's far from perfect and they need to let go of the illusions they hold of him and grow up. They have confused the best of WikiLeaks with Julian Assange and have taken to attacking facts because facts don't fit into their scheme. Here's a fact for you, the late and great Jaqueline Susann did more interviews than Julian Assange could ever dream of and, once she became a novelist, in every one of them, she ensured her books would be mentioned by mentioning her books. She plugged her books relentlessly. If she couldn't get on the program -- Johnny Carson had banned her from NBC's Tonight Show, for example -- she'd find another way to get her book mentioned (guest Bette Davis in Johnny's case). If Julian Assange wanted the revelations talked about in the interview with CBS, he would have ensured that they were talked about. Or are his fan boys admitting that Jacqueline Susann was far smarter than he is?



David Swanson picked Steve Kroft to go after and the real question there is why he's yet to defend Bradley Manning from the hatchet job Nancy A. Youssef did on him -- excuse me, the most recent hatchet job she's done on him. Who is Bradley Manning? Monday April 5th, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7th, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." Manning has been convicted in the public square despite the fact that he's been convicted in no state and has made no public statements -- despite any claims otherwise, he has made no public statements. Manning is now at Quantico in Virginia, under military lock and key and still not allowed to speak to the press. Paul Courson (CNN) notes Bradley is a suspect and, "He has not admitted guilt in either incident, his supporters say." If the accusations are true, he's the hero everyone should be worrying about (not Julian Assange). If the accusations ar false (and they're false until proven in court), then an innocent person is being railroaded. In either case, Nancy A. Youssef did a hatchet job in print last week. Maybe people can be forgiven for missing all of her attacks on Bradley when she's been a guest on The Diane Rehm Show. However, when she attacks in print and many other outlets pick up on her smears and attacks, maybe David Swanson should set Julian Assange aside long enough to try defending Bradley? For those late to the party, we spent four paragraphs in Friday's snapshot calling out Youssef's attack on Bradley:




It means we don't link to Nancy A. Youssef's article for McClatchy Newspapers. Why not? Go through our archives, do a search of this site with "The Diane Rehm Show" and "Nancy A. Youssef" and "Bradley Manning" as key terms. Nancy has been on a one-woman witch hunt with regards to Bradley. She has repeatedly convicted him on air on The Diane Rehm Show -- not just once, not just twice, not just three times. She has done this over and over and over. (Though a guest on today's show, she didn't discuss Bradley -- they were obsessed with Egypt -- which had already been an hour long topic on Thursday's Diane Rehm Show but still became the thrust of today's international hour.) Nancy is also very close to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

A number of outlets are putting the claims in Nancy's bad article out there and treating them as fact. Let's review it. (If you must read it, the title is "Probe: Army ignored warnings over soldier" and you can Google that.) Nancy knows about an Army report -- how? Her friends she leaves unnamed. (But I can name them.) This report is the result of an investigation, she says, and it found unflattering things about Bradley. She says. And she can say so, she says, because she has "two military officials familiar with investigation" (but not the report?) who talked to her. Once upon a time, you had to have three sources. Always wonder about unsourced claims with two sources. Though she hasn't seen the report, Nancy yacks on and on about the report -- when not -- FOR NO NATURAL REASON -- bringing in Major Nidal Hasan. That's your clue that Nancy's gone skinny dipping in a cesspool she wants to pass off as journalism. Hasan shot dead many at Fort Hood. So Nance just wants to bring him into the article for . . . local color? Extra seasoning? She knows what she's doing and she knows it's not journalism.

You've been repeatedly warned about McClatchy of late and about Nancy in particular who is sending off alarms at McClatchy. What she's done is write a smear-job, she has not reported. For her friends in the Defense Dept, she has attacked Bradley in an unsourced article that doesn't pass the smell test. There is a term for it, "yellow journalism." She should be ashamed of herself and everyone running with the claims she's making in this article needs to ask how they think they're helping Bradley?

They also should note that Nancy made no effort to get a comment from Bradley's attorney. While painting Bradley in an unflattering light throughout her article, she never tries for a quote, she only repeats what her Defense 'chums' and . . . tell her. She's becoming the new Judith Miller and that's her fault but also the fault of a lot of people who should have been calling her out months ago but let her slide and slide.




Innocent or guilty of leaking, Bradley needs defenders. He's not traipsing around an English manor.



Today the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction issued a 156-page [PDF format warning] "Quarterly Reports To Congress." Walter Pincus (Washington Post) notes, "In recent months, the Interior Ministry has reported the assassinations of 'nearly 240' Iraqi Security Forces and intelligence personnel and about 120 civilian government employees, according to the report." It's these attacks as well as economic issues that lead to conclusions that the government set up in Iraq is not very sturdy. AP's lede on this story is: "Without more help -- and quickly -- Iraqi security forces may not be able to protect the fragile nation from insurgents and invaders after American troops leave at the end of the year, according to a U.S. report released Sunday." And that's offering the sunny side of a report -- ignoring the institutions that are so lacking in Iraq. The UK's Morning Star is much more upfront about the report than AP, "US fears that a popular uprising will overwhelm Iraq's shaky security forces were exposed today in a report by the occupation's special inspector general for reconstruction. It warned that legal systems were still unstable and access to basic services such as water, sewage disposal and electricity could be flashpoints for mass unrest among ordinary people - "more so than political or sectarian disagreements." The people. The Iraqi people who have had this government imposed upon them by outsiders.



Basic services result in protests all the time in Iraq, the vast majority of them go unreported -- even when they take place in Baghdad. Yesterday, Ayas Hossam Acommock (Al Mada) reported on a Sunday demonstration held in Firdous Square with "intellectuals and the media" participating to show their solidarity with Arab people in Egypt. In addition, the participants called for the elimination of restrictions on freedoms in Iraq and called for basic services to be provided. Speakers spoke of "the long revolution" as Arabs have fought against dictatorships. Again, these protests are nothing new. And the lack of reliable public services are among the reasons that Kirkuk's brief decision to cut off electricity to Baghdad was so popular throughout the country.




Staying with the issue of the press, Josh Halliday (Guardian) reported in the middle of this month that the Guardian had, on appeal, won in the libel case brought against them by Nouri al-Maliki's Iraqi National Intelligence Service over this article. Meanwhile al Furat reports that Kata Rikabi, secretary to Nouri al-Maliki, is suing the Euphrates newspaper and the paper's editor Hussein Khoshnaw over articles al Furat published. Established a month after the start of the Iraq War, Al-Furat was previously (2007) targeted with a bomb threat at their Sydney offices.


Meanwhile Ayad Allawi appears to have lost any remaining bits of trust in Nouri al-Maliki. Al Rafidayn reports that he has requested Massoud Barzani, President of the KRG, be present for a mediation between Allawi and al-Maliki. Despite promising Allawi he would head the National [Security] Council, it has still not been created. Earlier this month, a meeting was held with Ibrahim al-Jaafari attending and that moved no mountain. Al Mada reports that Iraqiya is accusing Nouri of working against the agreements formed to allow him to continue as prime minister and they accuse him of preventing the formation of the National Council. An unnamed source with the Iraqi National Alliance tells Al Mada that no National Council issues will be resolved until Nouri has named the security posts that remain empty in his Cabinet and the source expects that will take at least two weeks. Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya slate was the winner in the March 7th elections. After nearly nine months of no progress, he entered into an arrangement with Nouri al-Maliki to allow al-Maliki to be prime minister. The trade-off for Nouri being prime minister included clearing the names of several Sunni politicians and making Allawi head of the National Council -- a new body that would be created. Allawi objected in the first meeting of Parliament after the arrangment had been made because the aspects of the deal involving Iraqiya were being set aside for a later date. He walked out of the session. He was right to worry because it's over a month later and there's still no creation of the National Council. Nouri got what he wanted and may or may not live up to the bargain he made.


In the past, Nouri has rarely lived up to the deals he brokered. Had the Parliament and political parties known, when the arrangement was made, that Nouri had gone to the Supreme Court (December 18th) to have powers pulled from independent outsiders and placed under the prime minister, it is doubtful he would have become Prime Minister December 25th (the thirty days prior to that he was prime minister-designate). The power-grab only became known last week. AFP reports that Nouri al-Maliki defended his power-grab Sunday insisting that his appeal to the Supreme Court to have the central bank, the electoral commission, the human rights commmission and the anti-corruption body placed under his control was forthe good of Iraq. AFP notes:

Several of the agencies affected have themselves criticised the supreme court ruling, saying it harmed their non-partisan reputation, while opponents of the decision have called it a move by Maliki to consolidate power.
Maliki, who formed his cabinet last December after political bickering that left Iraq without a government for more than nine months, also said there was still was no agreement on the four key defence, intelligence, security and interior ministry portfolios, which remain vacant.

Fadi al-Issa (Zawya) reports Nouri was not the only one addressing his power-grab yesterday:

The adviser of the Iraqi Central BankIraqi Central Bank (ICB) warned on Sunday of the repercussions of the Federal Court's recent ruling that links the bank directly to the council of ministers in exposing Iraqi funds to risks.
Muzher Mohammed Saleh told AKnews today that the international financial environment is risky and instead of referring the Central Bank to a judicial power, there is need to make diversity in the management of foreign financial reserves in the countries to escape any legal proceedings affecting the debt of the Iraqi government that are protected under resolution 1483 of the international security council.

Saif Tawfeeq (Reuters) reports that Nouri insisted today that the bodies would continue to be autonomous ones despite his control of them. Alsumaria TV adds, "Iraq's Parliament is due to host on Tuesday heads of the independent commissions to discuss the ruling of placing certain institutions under ministerial control. The Parliament is expected to receive head of the Integrity Commission Rahim Al Ukaili, the High Electoral Commission Chairman Faraj Al Haidair and Central Bank Chief Sanan Al Shabibi, a source from the Parliament speaking on condition of anonymity told Alsumaria News."




In news of violence, Saad Abdul-Kadir (AP) reports four Baghdad bombings have left seven people wounded and that 1 employee of the Ministry of Electricity was shot dead. Reuters reports eight were wounded including police Brig Gen Adday Mahmoud and they note 1 security contractor was shot dead in Baghdad yesterday and a Baghdad sticky bombing yesterday injured a cleric. That's 2 people dead and nine wounded and there was no violence reporting on Sunday (even Reuters was obsessed with other stories in other countries). Excuse me, today IBC reports that 4 security forces were killed in Baghdad and 1 PUK in Kirkuk on Sunday. That's 7 dead and nine wounded. So let's add the numbers. From The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Editorial: The silences on Iraq:"



Let's review. January 1st, 1 person was reported dead and nine injured. January 2nd, 9 people were reported dead and six wounded. January 3rd, 5 were reported dead and twenty-eight wounded. January 4th, 3 were reported dead and five wounded. January 5th, 2 were reported dead and eleven injured. January 6th, one person was reported injured. January 7th, 5 were reported dead. January 8th, 9 were reported dead and eight injured. January 9th, 1 person was reported dead and another reported wounded. January 10th, 4 were reported dead and sixteen injured. January 11th, 4 were reported dead and nineteen injured. January 12th, 4 were reported dead and four were injured. January 13th, 3 were reported dead and fourteen injured. January 14th, 2 people were reported dead. January 15th, six people were reported injured. January 16th, six people were reported wounded. January 17th, 1 person was reported dead and nine injured. January 18th, 60 people were reported dead and one hundred and sixty four injured. January 19th, 25 people were reported dead and forty-two injured. January 20th, 68 were reported dead and one hundred and sixty injured. January 21st, no reports of deaths or injured. January 22nd, no reports of deaths or wounded. January 23rd, 8 people were reported dead and thirty-seven wounded. January 24th, 34 people were reported dead and one hundred and fifty-six people were reported wounded. January 25th, seven people were reported wounded. January 26th, 6 were reported dead and one injured. January 27th, sixty-three people were reported dead and one hundred and four injured. January 28th, 2 were reported dead and eight injured. January 29th, five were reported dead. Through Saturday, at least 320 people have been reported dead and eight hundred and three injured. In addition, 6 US service members have died in Iraq so far this month.


Today reports of 7 dead and nine wounded. At least 327 people were reported dead in January with at least 805 reported wounded. (As always, check that math.) The always laughable Iraq Coalition Casualty Count lists 210 dead (that's 11 ISF with 199 "Civ" -- deaths are deaths and I believe after the SIGR report people should pay a lot more attention to 'security' deaths than they have been). Last week, Ammar Karim (AFP) noted December's death toll was 151. It's a dramatic increase. Especially when you consider that just last week, US President Barack Obama stood before the American people, delivering his State of the Union address, and claiming 'progress' in Iraq. Historians Against the War offer this reply to the State of the Union Address:


The peace movement is critical of Mr. Obama's desire to maintain a significant military presence in Iraq, despite his earlier advocacy of complete withdrawal of our fighting forces from that country. We need to bring a complete end to our unjust intervention in Iraq. Although 60 percent of the U.S. public now believes that the war in Afghanistan is "not worth fighting," the administration's December 2010 review of Afghanistan policy led to dubious claims of successes, which the president repeated in his State of the Union address, and to a decision to continue the war for four more years. The choice to continue a policy which the government's own National Intelligence Estimate makes clear is failing is a grave error. How many more people must die before the forces in conflict sit around a table to negotiate an end to an unwinnable war? With the government making use of private corporations to carry out its military enterprise and warfare, military expenditures have continued to grow under Mr. Obama, reaching over one trillion dollars in 2010 alone. How can the government meet the needs of the people of the United States when military expenditures are at such a level?
Peace forces are also troubled by the administration's human rights record, by its failure to close the Guantánamo prison as promised, by the opening of military trials of detainees in defiance of international human rights standards, by the many deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan in attacks that amount to war crimes, by continuing interventions against left-wing governments in Latin America, by the recent FBI raids against peace activists, and by the U.S.'s failure to pressure Israel to end its denial of Palestinian rights. Although peace and justice activists support the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," we do not agree that democratic reform should be used to promote further militarization of our society as Mr. Obama did with his call to universities to open their doors to the ROTC and military recruiters. Our university graduates are needed in fields that meet people's needs and that develop the country's infrastructure rather than in staffing an overextended empire.
The human cost to the civilians in societies where we are intervening and to our own and other combatants is tragic and unsustainable. Continuing down the path of spending almost as much on the military as all other countries put together is bankrupting the country, failing to achieve the control our government seeks, and making us less safe.






iraq
david swanson
the associated press
the washington post
walter pincus
60 minutes
cbs news
al mada
ayas hossam acommok
the guardian
josh halliday
al furat
al rafidayn
historians against the war
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