damn trina and her kitchen!
i'm joking. i'm in her physical kitchen as we both blog and she was reading back the directions to some dip (which we had in the iraq study group last night). i said, 'oh that sounds so good.' she ended up fixing some and now i'm munching down and trying to post at the same time. we're eating the dip with blue corn chips because they're the only 1s left. each week, there's always at least 1 (sometimes 2) bags of blue corn chips left.
some people don't like tortilla chips, and that's fine, but i wonder if some people are frightened off by the color?
okay, let's get down to business. the 'friends' at fair ('fair'?) have a new action alert they e-mailed yesterday. it's on something wally, cedric and c.i. noted in real time beginning tuesday.
c.i. didn't take credit but wally and cedric want c.i. credited. (isn't it cute how fair's happy to hog credit they didn't earn and c.i. pushes away credit? again, it has to do with being raised with good manners.) tuesday night, mike's 'Wally, Cedric; David Bacon; Walter C. Uhler' addressed the issue of credit. wally and cedric explained that they saw a new york times article about obama slamming the peace movement and they ripped him apart in their post. as always, wally phoned c.i. (wally always runs pieces by c.i. to see if they're funny and/or make sense). c.i. asked, 'did any 1 else mention this?' and wally said no. c.i. said, 'let me call a friend with obama's campaign because i don't believe he said that.' so wally calls cedric and tells him c.i. thinks the new york times is wrong. they get to work rewriting their post (which hasn't gone up yet). c.i. beeps in and wally takes the call. c.i. explains obama did not say that, that the campaign says the speech stuck to the way it was originally prepared, that they'd be posting the speech in full shortly and gave c.i. a link for the speech online before it was delivered.
so then the post was written and quickly posted. c.i. cross-posted it tuesday evening at the common ills ('NYT Slimes the peace movement (Cedric & Wally)') right after cedric's 'New York Times lies again!' and wally's 'THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!' went up at their site.
that was all done tuesday (as was mike's post i linked to earlier). wednesday morning, c.i.'s
'Other Items' went up:
So the good news is that the New York Times leaves out the error/lie in the print version of their story "Obama Sees a 'Complete Failure' in Iraq" which runs on A11. The bad news? The version that went online yesterday evening still contains the error/lie "Obama Tells Veterans Iraq Plan Is Failing:"
One of the biggest applause lines of his speech came when he pledged that during an Obama administration, veterans would not have to wait months -- or years -- for services at veterans hospitals. He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: "It needs to stop."
What needs to stop is reporters working in their attacks on the peace movement and editors not knowing the basics. What needs to stop is the paper, that is referenced in student papers and by other news organizations, refusing to correct their mistakes.As Cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" noted yesterday (cross-posted here), Obama didn't say "anti-war activists" in his speech. The speech is available online. Obama would have killed his campaign had he because it is the Fred Phelps' homophobic crew that shows up at those funerals. They are not "anti-war activists" or peace activists. If Obama made the mistake, he'd be having Dan Quayle press all week and probably be announcing he was dropping out because it is such a HUGE mistake -- confusing right wingers protesting against gays and lesbians with peace activists -- but what happens to Jeff Zeleny (credited for both the print and online story) and the editor? Anything?
They are WRONG. They are hugely WRONG. And there's no correction to the story. We honestly expected the online version would be 'disappeared.' That didn't happen. It's still up online with no correction.
and in wednesday's 'Iraq snapshot' included:
And finally, in media news, Jeff Zeleny and the New York Times have smeared the peace movement with a big-old-fat lie. Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama (and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful) delivered a speech to the VFW where he declared, "The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. When men and women who die in service to this country are laid to rest, there must be no protests near the funerals. Its' wrong and it needs to stop." Obama was referring to the 'vangical fringe that is the gay hating Fred Phelps crowd. The extreme right wing set. As Cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" noted yesterday, somehow New York Times' Jeff Zeleny heard that and decided Obama was talking about the peace movement: "He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: 'It needs to stop'." The print version of the story ran in this morning's paper on A11 and does not contain the error/lie; however, the story is still up online at the paper's website and has not been corrected. How many times is the Times going to smear the peace movement during this illegal war?
so on friday, fair shows up (as the party's winding down, probably desperate for a beer or two) to declare 'nyt smears peace movement again.' yeah, 'smears'. now they generally don't use 'smears' in their action alert but after c.i. hit hard on that term during the week, i guess they had to use it or look even weaker. now if you complain, you'll get a long winded explanation that it's something that just happened and surely there was no theft involved.
we heard that lie back in may. and were willing to let by-gones be by-gones. not only is this the 2nd smear but it turns out they want their e-mails to be private but they are very happy to pass on the e-mails you reply to them with.
so how fair is fair? the question i posted here in may that led to the running to c.i. and saying 'i didn't rip off! i know i'm writing about something you wrote about over a month ago and making the same exact points you did, but it's not a rip off, i swear.'
c.i. doesn't care about credit. but this time may be different because wally and cedric got ripped off as well. it's not a smart idea to do that. c.i. could care less until it involves others getting ripped off.
on the 1st 1, not only did c.i. never make a public comment, there was never a private 1 either. and i prodded like hell. i was all, 'doesn't it piss you off? you do the work and weeks later, they show up using your work and not giving you credit, just ripping you off.'
c.i. didn't talk about it. although i did learn that martha (and i confirmed this with martha) blames herself for the common ills not getting cited at fair anymore. it used to. this is back in late 2004 and early 2005. then 1 time, after martha and shirley started helping c.i. with the e-mails, martha was doing that and at the fair page. she saw they didn't have something (no surprise) that c.i. had called out. so she e-mailed it in.
then she realized she was still in the public account for the common ills and not her own account. she wrote to explain that because she didn't want any 1 saying, 'c.i. promotes the common ills.' she never heard from them and to this day blames herself.
i think that's silly. if c.i. had sent it, it should have been noted. but martha sent in (and signed her name to her e-mail) via the common ills public account.
i don't think that really had much to do with fair stopping.
i think fair likes to be a player.
so at 1 point they read the common ills and, apparently, they still do since they regularly rip off c.i.
and don't send me a drippy e-mail claiming anything until you get yourself right with jess because i'm not in the mood for fair or 'fair'.
how do you call yourself 'fair' when you refuse to credit the work of others?
and don't even bother throwing up editor & publisher. they did call out the error. 3 hours after c.i., wally and cedric had posted tuesday. they were the 1st out of the gate (and c.i. spoke to obama's campaign) and the 1s who knew it was a lie.
fair's action alert fails to tell you that it was an online story (as c.i. pointed out wednesday morning, it didn't make it into print). there's more they miss in their hastily written friday 'alert' to something that happened tuesday.
but the third estate sunday review will probably be addressing it tomorrow. so i'll leave it at that.
building on (and crediting) the work of others, elaine ('Sunsara Taylor, Cat Radio Cafe') and i ('white house ignores congress again') also noted the error tuesday night.
now bully boy lied about history the other day to try to scare up some support for his illegal war. this is from william schroder's 'Bush, Vietnam and Iraq:'
The facts, however, are at variance with Mr. Bush's statements concerning the suffering of Southeast Asians. Millions of Cambodians died on the "killing fields" because secret American carpet bombing destroyed their nation and created an environment in which armed thugs led by Pol Pot took over unchallenged. In 1969, President Nixon ordered every available American plane into Cambodia to "crack the hell out of them." He wanted them to "hit everything." Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, subsequently transmitted the order to his top aide, Alexander Haig, this way: "Anything that flies on anything that moves." When Cambodia collapsed under the weight of the American Air Force, Prince Sihanouk fled to China, and the bad guys took over. Cambodian life under the bloody rule of the Khmer Rouge is well documented.
But what of the Vietnamese people and their other neighbors? In his speech, Mr. Bush spoke of "boat people" and "re-education camps," certainly a chaotic, frightful time for millions of innocent peasants, but Mr. Bush failed to mention that was not the extent of their suffering. The tragic aftermath of the American invasion of Southeast Asia kills and cripples to this day. More than thirty years after the Vietnam War, the misery index rises even though the shooting has long stopped. Historians, scholars, political scientists and high-level government officials have written volumes about America's experience in Vietnam, and careful examination of a representative sample of this material reveals a wealth of understanding. Estimates range as high as 3,000,000 Vietnamese men, women and children and an additional 1,000,000 Cambodian/Lao were killed or wounded during the fighting, but that's only the beginning.
Today, vast expanses of once productive Southeast Asian land threaten the native population. Death, disease and disfigurement are embedded in the very soil under their feet. Records show between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed approximately 76,000,000 liters of herbicide (Agents Orange, Green, Pink, Purple and White), 8,800 tons over an area of 6,000,000 square acres, 14% of Vietnam's land mass. Dioxins, the active family of chemicals in Agent Orange, are known health risks to humans. Sampling studies undertaken in the 1990's revealed dangerously high levels of contaminant in Vietnamese forests, soil, fishpond sediment, fish and fowl tissue and human blood. Agent Orange Dioxin in human blood samples taken from Vietnamese men and women ranging from twelve to twenty-five years old clearly show the contaminant chemicals have moved up through the food chain into humans.
for those wondering, fair issued no action alert on bully boy's lies. they were among the many of the left playing cowardly lion while bully boy tried to rewrite history. vietnam's too 'controversial' for little cowards to speak up about historical realties.
this community did. amy goodman and juan gonzales did. matthew rothschild did. counterpunch hit hard repeatedly. as you'll see in the snapshot rosa brooks did. robert parry did. but think of all the others who played scared bunnies and couldn't call the nonsense out.
they were scared in the 80s as well. scared silent while the right-wing rewrote reality for those not old enough to remember.
elaine's 'Grace Paley and other items' is about back when we (elaine, c.i. and myself) were all in college together. she says some very sweet things about me (too sweet!). so be sure to check that out. and it was great having kat as an overnight guest on thursday. the baby loves her and flyboy and i love her of course. kat's back on the west coast (probably waking up now or in a few hours) so shout out to kat.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, August 24, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military reports another death, a US helicopter attack leaves many Iraqis dead, war resistance gets covered on PBS, activist, author, feminist, peace advocate Grace Paley passed away Wednesday, and more.
Starting with war resistance. This week's NOW with David Brancaccio (PBS, begins airing in most markets Friday nights) takes a look at war resistance:Choosing to go to war is both a government's decision and one made by individual enlistees. But changing your mind once you're in the army is a risky decision with serious consequences. On Friday, August 24 (checkyour local listings), we talk to two soldiers who went AWOL and eventually left the Army, but who took very different paths. NOW captures the moment when one man turns himself in, and when another applies for refugee status in Canada, becoming one of the 20,000 soldiers who have deserted the army since the War in Iraq began. Each describes what drove him to follow his conscience over his call to duty, and what penalties and criticism were endured as a result. "I see things differently having lived through the experience," former army medic Agustin Aguayo tells NOW. "When I returned from Iraq, after much reflection I knew deep within me I could never go back."The NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will offer more insight into the case made by conscientious objectors, as well as more stories of desertion in the ranks.In addition to the broadcast, a preview of the show is posted at YouTube. And the show will be available in various forms (audio, video, text -- though maybe not in full) at the NOW with David Brancaccio site.
Camilo Mejia is the new chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War. The decision of the new board members of IVAW were made last weekend. Tony Pecinovsky (People's Weekly World) reports on the Veterans for Peace conference and quotes Mejia explaining, "There is no greater argument against war than the experience of war itself. In the military you're not free to decide for yourself what is right and wrong. The fog of war is very real. Your main concern is staying alive" and explaining his decision to self-checkout, "I couldn't return knowing that we are committing war crimes. This war is criminal. But I'm no longer a prisoner of fear. I have hope that we can end this war." IVAW is gearing up for their big Truth in Recruting campaign. Adam Kokesh, who is co-chair of IVAW, is currently doing workshops (tonight at St. Bede's at the corner of St. Francis and San Mateo 7-9 pm PST). And Camilo Mejia tells his story in his own story of resistance in his new book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to the jibber-jabber. The NIE was released yesterday. It is a much kinder and less explicit version of Peter W. Galbraith's "Iraq: The Way to Go" (The New York Review of Books, August 16, 2007). In the essay, Galbraith writes, "The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat." If that stance is still not clear, Alex Spillius (Telegraph of London) reports: "Frontline generals in Iraq spoke openly yesterday of the need to have a government that could function and guarantee security above all else, including democratic legitimacy. Brig Gen John Bednarek, who commands forces in Diyala province, told CNN that 'democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future'." As all the lies are dropped, the reality of the crimes being committed may be grasped. Maybe not.
Michael Ware and Thomas Evans (CNN) report that "officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security." Yesterday, White House flack Gordon Johndroe declared (in Crawford, TX) that "we know that there are significant challenges ahead, especially in the political area. I would say that the strategy laid out by the President on January 10th was a strategy that provided for security first, so that there would be space for political reconciliation. The surge did not get fully operational until mid-summer. It is not surprising -- it is frustrating, but it's not surprising that the political reconciliation is lagging behind the security improvements. I think that is the way the strategy was laid out." The 'improved' security is a lie. Repeating, Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reporting earlier this month that the US military claims of 'progress' were based on numbers they would not release and that McClatchy Newspapers' figures do not track with the findings the US military has trumpeted: "U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim." But clearly the generals, the officials and the White House are all on the same page regarding the 'problems' with democracy -- pure chance, of course.
Greg Miller (Los Angeles Times) summarizes the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): "Despite some military progress, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is unable to govern his country effecitvely and the political situation is likely to become even more precarious in the next six to 12 months, the nation's intelligence agencies concluded in a new assessment released Thursday. The document, an update of a National Intelligence Estimate delivered in January, represents the view of all 16 U.S. spy agencies."
'Democracy' on hold or out the window . . . what to do, what to do? Bring in a 'strong man' dictator? Reuters reports that 3 "secularist ministers . . . will formally quit" the cabinet of Nour al-Maliki today and that three are from Iyad Allawi's party. Yesterday Democracy Now! noted Allawyi is working with "Republican lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers" in an effort to become the new prime minister of Iraq (Allawi was previously interim prime minister). CIA asset Allawi was still working with the CIA in 2003, as Jim Lobe (Foreign Policy in Focus) noted, in attempted "Iraqification" which was a popular thing in late 2003 as the White House and hand maidens of the press attempted to treat "Iraqification" as a process which would put Iraqis in control. The policy was at odds with much of the White House's aims and never got off the ground. Had it, it still wouldn't have allowed for Iraqi control. Allawi was interim Prime Minister following the start of the illegal war and, during that time, he made his 'mark' early on. Paul McGeough (Sydney Morning Herald via Common Dreams, July 2004) reported in July 2004: "Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings. They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security center, in the city's south-western suburbs."
Never having been handed democracy, Iraqis now face the very likely prospect that the puppet (al-Maliki) will be replaced with a dictator/strong man. It's not about what the Iraqis want or desire on the US government's end, it's just more of the same. A point driven home by the announcement that Abdel-Salam Aref has died in Jordan. In 2004, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) explained, "The US-installed regime in Iraq said last night it would pay a monthly pension to a former president overthrown more than 35 years ago in a coup that brought Saddam Hussein's Baath party to power. The Iraqi Governing Council says it will pay Abdel-Rahman Aref $1,000 a month and allocate $5,000 to cover his medical bills in Jordan. Aref rose to prominence in 1963 when he was appointed army chief of staff by his elder brother, then President Abdel-Salam Aref. He was overthrown in July of 1968 in a coup that was aided by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA also gave the Baath Party the names of some 5,000 Iraqi Communists who were then hunted down and killed or imprisoned. Following the coup, Baath party leader Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr became president, with Saddam as his right hand man."
As Peter W. Galbraith explains, there was no democracy following the start of the illegal war, not in what was imposed by the US (and the US shut out the UN). What exists is a system where the Shi'ites and Sunnis are two major groups (Sunnis the smaller of the two) and the system imposed has left one group shut out (elections would change that only to a small degree -- but they aren't happening) and the third most populous segment, the Kurds, are ready for their own country (Kurdistan). The system imposed on Iraq by the US was fatally flawed from the beginning so, it can be argued, ignorance wasn't the issue. Considering past history, a failed system that could be tossed aside quickly. Warren P. Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers) observes the the NIE's "best-case scenario" would be "Iraq's security will improve modestly over the next six to 12 months, but violence across the country will remain high. The U.S.-backed central government will grow more fragile and remain unable to govern. Shiite and Sunni Muslims will continue their bitter feuding. All sides will position themselves for an eventual American departure. In Iraq, best-case scenarios have rarely, if ever, come to pass."
Andrew Stephen (New Statesman) wonders if the Bully Boy is imploding and notes, "The conundrum, of course, is that it was precisely that dark art which got Bush into the White House in the first place. The poisonous divisiveness that gradually festered around him as a result now allows the state department, to take just one example reported in the Washington Post, to think nothing of simply ignoring an order from the president. Yet I suspect that the extent to which the Bush administration has become so shambolic will not come home to many Americans until the country returns to work on 4 September. Bush is now a truly rudderless president, with no realistic agenda left for the next 513 or so days, other than to tread water and hope for the best."
Is Bully Boy imploding? His laughable attempting to rewrite history this week indicates something strange. Robert Parry (Consortium News) evaluates the latest lunacy, "It is often said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But a much worse fate may await countries whose leaders distort and falsify history. Such countries are doomed to experience even bloodier miscalculations. That was the case with Germany after World War I when Adolf Hitler's Nazis built a political movement based in part on the myth that weak politicians in Berlin had stabbed brave German troops in the back when they were on the verge of victory. And it appears to be the case again today as President George W. Bush presents the history of the Vietnam War as a Rambo movie with the heroic narrative that if only the U.S. military had stuck it out, the war would have been won. Or, more likely, the black wall of the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial would stretch most of the way to the U.S. Capitol." And Rosa Brooks (Los Angeles Times), who has gotten nothing but hisses in these snapshots, tackles the Bully Boy's nonsense, "Some might quibble with Bush's understanding of historical causation. Yes, many innocent civilians suffered in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam -- but it's more accurate to attribute their suffering to the prolongation of the war itself, rather than to the U.S. withdrawal as such. It's hard to be precise (as is the case in Iraq today, no one kept careful count of Vietnamese civilian casualties, and all sides in the conflict had an incentive to fudge the true figures), but somewhere between 1 million and 4 million civilians died as the war needlessly dragged on, many killed by U.S. weapons. Millions more were displaced. But those are details.
Bush went on to assert that 'another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam' was the rise of 'the enemy we face in today's struggle, those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens' on 9/11. Yup -- it's so obvious! The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam caused the rise of Al Qaeda -- and, by extension, 'our withdrawal from Vietnam' ultimately turned Iraq into 'the central front' in 'the war on terror'." At a time when many left voices played dumb, stayed silent, Rosa Brooks addressed Bully Boy's nonsense, challenged it and put into perspective.
More willing to do that would go along way towards ending the illegal war.
The NIE is not the only report making the news. Another report, this time from an aid agency, also gives a grim picture. James Glanz and Stephen Farrell (New York Times) report that the Bully Boy's escalation has led to an escalation in the amount of Iraqi refugees. Citing figures by the Iraqi Red Crescent, the reporters declare "the total number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000, since the buildup [of troops -- the escalation] started in February."
Turning to some of today's violence, Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reports a US helicopter attack on Iraqis in western Baghdad that resulted in the deaths of "at least 18" Iraqis, that the US is claiming the helicopter attack was prompted by an attack from 'insurgents' but eye witnesses note it's the same thing as usual -- due to the heat some people sleep on their roofs and that's what was going on during the "predawn" attack by the US -- and that between 2 and 4 women were killed in the attack. Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "The U.S. military said in a press release that after ground troops came under attack helicopters were brought and 18 'enemy combatants were killed'. The military later amended the release putting the death toll at only 8. The military said armed men on rooftops were spotted. A military spokesman said no civilians were killed."
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing that claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier (two more injured).
Shootings?
Reuters reports "two construction workers" were shot dead in Diwaniya, a barber was shot dead in in Hawija and 1 police officer was shot dead in Numaniya. CBS and AP report, "Sixty suspected al Qaeda in Iraq fighters hit national police facilities in a coordinated attack in Samarra, sparking two hours of fighting that saw three people killed and more than a dozen insurgents captured, Iraqi police said Friday. One policeman, a woman and an 11-year-old girl were killed in the fighting in the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, and nine others were injured. There were no details on insurgent casualties, but police arrested 14 suspects, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity."
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 9 corpses discovered in Baghdad and 1 corpse discovered in Hawija. Reuters notes a corpse discovered in Diwaniya..
Today the US military announced: "One Task Force Lightning Soldier died Aug. 24 as a result of injuries sustained from an explosion earlier in the day while conducting operations in Salah ad Din Province. Four Soldiers were also wounded and transported to a Coalition medical facility for treatment." The current numbers at ICCC are 3725 US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war with 67 for the month thus far. Reuters' count is also 3725 and they note "Britain 168 [and] Other nations 129".
Finally, author and activist Grace Paley died Wednesday. In Sisterhood is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium (ed. Robin Morgan, 2003), Paley contributed "Why Peace is (More Than Ever) A Feminist Issue":
Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now -- solar, wind -- for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.
So men lead us to war for enough oil to continue to go to war for oil.
I'm now sure that these men can't stop themselves anymore -- even those who say they want to. There are too many interesting weapons. Besides, theirs is a habit of centuries, eons. They will not break that habit themselves.
For ourselves, for our girl and boy children, women will have to organize as we have done before -- and also as we have never done before -- to break that habit for them, once and for all.
Peace is a feminist issue, still and always, even if one women's group chose to walk away from that reality in order to justify an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. As Juan Gonzales (Democracy Now!) noted today, "Since the 1960s, Paley was very active in the antiwar, feminist, and anti-nuclear movements. She helped found the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961. Eight years later she went on a peace mission to Hanoi. In 1974, she attended the World Peace Conference in Moscow. In 1980, she helped organize the Women's Pentagon Action. And in 1985, Paley visited Nicaragua and El Salvador, after having campaigned against the US government's policies towards those countries. She was also one of the 'White House Eleven,' who were arrested in 1978 for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner on the White House lawn." Feminist Wire Daily writes that "Paley was known as much for her political activism on behalf of peace and women's rights as her literary accomplishments. Paley was jailed several times for her opposition to the Vietnam War, and traveled to Hanoi on a peace mission to negotiate for the release of American prisoners in 1969. She helped found the Women's Pentagon Action and the Greenwich Village Peace Center. . . . Most recently, she actively opposed the war in Iraq." When Paley went to NYC for the "Women on War" event in April 2003, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) interviewed her and the program aired some of that interview today:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you were recently named the poet laureate of Vermont. It's very interesting. You're named by the governor, who is a Republican governor. Can you talk about how you relate to him in your meeting with him?
GRACE PALEY: Well, first of all, he really -- he didn't -- well, he had to sign the paper, but I was chosen by a group of other poets, a couple of whom had been laureates, like Galway Kinnell and Ellen Voigt, and a couple of other people who had to make a choice. I don't even think I was the best one, but that's beside the point. Still, there -- you know, there's time for others. And then I had to meet with him. He wanted to meet with me and talk to me, but before he really signed on. And I -- he knew a lot about me, and I said, well, I wasn't going to change very much, you know? I'd probably be the same person I was, no matter what. And we talked awhile about this fact. And he really -- and then he signed it. That's all.
AMY GOODMAN: Governor James Douglas?
GRACE PALEY: Yes. He's a Republican. He has a very mild manner, and I don't know whether that's the part of the Republicans of Vermont or what, but he's a Republican. I mean, there's no question about it.
AMY GOODMAN: But in terms of your poetry, more significantly, here he is naming you poet laureate, whether he chose you or not --
GRACE PALEY: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: -- he is for the war, and you're opposed.
GRACE PALEY: Yeah, right. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have been using your poetry a lot in the last few months to express that view.
GRACE PALEY: Well, I would do that, no matter what. I mean, this is what I'm about, and this is how I live my life. It's -- I don't even -- I wouldn't understand how to do otherwise.
Interviewed by Phyllis Exkhaus and Judith Mahoney Pasternak (War Resister League) at the start of this century, Paley reflected on what the peace movement accomplished: "Well, I think it did two things. It acted as an education in resistance and nonviolence. And probably the education in nonviolent direct action couldn't have been learned without a war. It had to take a war for people to learn that things could be defied and resisted. I think that was an important legacy of the peace movement."
Elaine Woo (Los Angeles Times) reports on Paley's work on the issue of draft resistance and notes "she also was an inveterate street-corner leafleteer and protest marcher who supported or helped found the Greenwich Village Peace Center, the War Resisters League, Women's Pentagon Action and the Feminist Press." The Feminist Press published Here And Somewhere Else (Two By Two) in March of this year which paired Paley's work with Robert Nichols (her second and surviving husband).
In the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Anne-Marie Cusac noted a passage by Paely that stood out: "One of the things that art is about, for me, is justice. Now, that isn't a matter of opinion, really. That isn't to say, 'I'm going to show these people right or wrong' or whatever. But what art is about -- and this is what justice is about, although you'll have your own interpretations -- is the illumination of what isn't known, the lighting up of what is under a rock, of what has been hidden."
In 2002, she was among those signing "Not In Our Name: A Statement Of Conscience Against War And Repression." Meredith Tax remembers Paley at Women's WORLD: "Grace and I became close during the PEN Congress of 1986, during which we organized a meeting to protest the inadequate number of women speakers, which took over the ballroom of the Essex House Hotel and led to the formation of a Women's Committee in PEN American Center. Grace and I were co chairs of that committee until she moved to Vermont, and she became founding Chair of Women's World in 1994. Grace was the kindest and most generous person I have ever known. This is unusual in a writer, especially one of her quality, because writers tend to husband their inner resources for their work, but Grace had so many inner resources that she could afford to be generous. She gave unstining love to her family and friends, took speaking engagements at any whistlestop, often without pay, organized antiwar and antinuclear and women's demonstrations, worked endlessly against nuclear armaments, did draft counseling, protested on behalf of the environment, free expression, and a just peace betwen Israel and Palestine."
In addition, Matthew Rothschild interviewed Paley for Progressive Radio and Neda Ulaby (NPR) provides an audio overview of Paley's life and work. In terms of writing, "My Father Addresses Me On The Facts Of Old Age" (June 17, 2002) is available online at The New Yorker.
8/25/2007
8/23/2007
robert parry, a.a.r.
And it appears to be the case again today as President George W. Bush presents the history of the Vietnam War as a Rambo movie with the heroic narrative that if only the U.S. military had stuck it out, the war would have been won.
Or, more likely, the black wall of the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial would stretch most of the way to the U.S. Capitol.
After hearing his selective historical rendition of the Vietnam experience in his Aug. 22 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, one is tempted to ask Bush what he would have done as President in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Presumably, Bush would have prolonged or escalated the Vietnam War, although it’s doubtful he would have called up the Texas Air National Guard where he was safely ensconced, while skipping his flight physical and seeking an early discharge.
In his speech, Bush justified an open-ended Vietnam War by citing the carnage that followed the U.S. military withdrawal.
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,'" Bush said.
In Bush's version of history, condemnation should fall on Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford for making the painful decisions that eventually extricated the United States from the Vietnam quagmire -- rather than on Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon for inserting or keeping U.S. troops in the middle of the Indochinese civil war.
Bush also ignores the carnage that was inflicted by U.S. aerial bombings and massive firepower. Historians estimate that some two million Indochinese were killed during the war, along with about 57,000 American soldiers.
Also, by invading Cambodia and authorizing secret carpet-bombing of the countryside, President Nixon spread the chaos into that politically fragile country, opening the door first to a military dictatorship and then to the rise of the fanatical Khmer Rouge.
the above is from robert parry's 'Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills' (consortium news) and i'm opening with that both because it's strong and because t asked, 'what was yesterday all about?' if she was confused, others probably were too. i liked the other piece and wouldn't have linked to it if i hadn't.
however, i do not believe that air america radio has been independent or alternative overall (with the exceptions i noted yesterday). it's not led on the illegal war. it's not led on a whole lot. and i knew my mother-in-law would call if she used the link and found that in parry's piece. i also know the community washed their hands of aar some time ago. (i know some members listen to randi and laura but that's really it. and there's not a member who's happy that laura's been reduced to an hour.) but it's also true that i'm left and i hear about it from flyboy's friends who are pretty disgusted with being asked to give to independent media and never seeing much from it.
i also know that a lot of my former p.r. clients who are left aren't going to give money to that nonsense. air america radio has been a huge disappointment. there was this thought that it was going to be left or liberal radio and, by being that, it would help move the mainstream back to the center. instead it's been about as left as the leaders in the democratic party. right-wing radio, they use their bully pulpit and they scream for action on issues that matter to the right. they worship bully boy, true (although that's faded a little) but they're more independent of their party than air america radio is.
the 2 biggest issues to the left have been (1) the illegal war and (2) impeachment. not only has air america radio not led on that, they've offered excuses for democratic leadership that won't lead.
even randi, who i like to listen to and believe she's for impeachment, i stopped listening the day she was justifying the inaction on impeachment.
i don't have the time for that.
what we've got is a bunch of david broders behind a radio mike.
and people aren't going to pay for that and rescue it.
to hire bob kerrey is a huge slap in the face to the left. he was and is for the illegal war. he's a fomer senator who is a democrat so that matters more than leading on the illegal war?
that's not alternative and it's not independent.
or take the patriot act renewal. that was what's his name's big issue. danny goldberg. i almost forgot his name. air america could have led on that issue and hit hard and they didn't.
now congress ended up renewing that hideous legislation.
and what i see with air america radio over and over is a real effort to push what democratic leaders in congress want and to ignore the grass roots or talk down to them with 'the realistic position is ...' i don't need that crap.
and it has pretty much dried up their former pool. the big money is not coming in for people providing cover for democrats in charge. the party is a mess.
but people aren't going to pay for that crap that cheerleads it.
they're not going to open their wallets or write a big check to those who give cover. they're tired of the dems who play repbue-lite. and they know the only thing that will force them to return to being the democratic party is an outcry. it is a huge problem and any media that refuses to recognize that is not independent media.
we do not need a return to bill clinton and any 1 selling that crap is useless.
a large number of democrats with high hopes in 1993 saw them crushed.
his scandals and the attacks on him were actually good for him because it meant the left often had to come to his rescue and otherwise many would have washed their hands of the man who gave them nafta and destroyed the safety net, the man who promised universal health care and that he'd overturn the ban on gays in the military but failed on both.
bill clinton's presidency was a failure in many ways.
as a republican, he'd be a great president.
as a democrat he was a failure.
hillary, if she gets in, will be as well.
i love all the lies about the wonderful 90s that weren't wonderful for a lot of americans. it's only with a psycho like bully boy in the white house that clinton even looks half-way decent.
i don't think history will rank him high. he'll be remembered for his scandals and if it weren't for those, he'd be forgotten like a lot of presidents. he wasn't an fdr or really much of anything.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, August 23, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, women and children taken in a mass kidnapping in Iraq, the US military announces another death, Bully Boy lies (again) and largely gets a pass (again), Bill Richardson speaks frankly, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Today Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) spoke with Camilo Mejia:
AMY GOODMAN: Talk first about this decision of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group of, what, more than 500 people to actively encourage war resistance?
CAMILO MEJIA: Last count was 525 members, with new members joining every day, Amy. And the decision was made to, as an organization, support war resistance within the military as a way to undermine the war effort.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the growth of that resistance movement over the last couple of years -- obviously since you were one of the first -- how do you see that developing?
CAMILO MEJIA: I think we've come a long way from the time when I resisted the war. Like Amy said, I was the first public combat veteran to refuse to redeploy to Iraq. Back then, when I went public with my refusal to go back to the war, we had approximately twenty-two cases of desertion in the military. And then, by the time I got out of jail, that number was 5,500. Today, it's over 10,000 people within the military who are refusing to go to the war in Iraq since the war started. And just to put it in perspective, that's almost like saying like the 101st Airborne Division was wiped out by desertion or AWOL, basically people not wanting to fight the war.
AMY GOODMAN: How many?
CAMILO MEJIA: Over 10,000 people. So that's the equivalent to an Army division.
Over the weekend, Iraq Veterans Against the War held their board elections and Mejia was elected as the new chair. On the issue of those who self-check out, Mejia noted that despite claims that the military isn't going after them, it is happening and cited Suzanne Swift as one specific example noting she is among the "cases of people who have not yet gone public and yet have been seized in their home" and that Swift was "apprehended by police without even a search warrant at her mother's house, and she had not gone public at that time. And she had refused to go back to the war, because she had been subject to military sexual assault and command rape from her leadership and being forced to go back to the war with the same unit and with the same people who had attacked her." Swift received no justice. A military white wash investigation did find 'some' validity in her recount of the ordeal she endured but instead of doing the right thing and immediately discharge with full benefits and a honorable discharge, instead of stating publicly, "This never should have happened and we apologize to Suzanne Swift and promise we are addressing this systemic issue," they refused to discharge her, they punished her and there's been no Congressional oversight despite the fact that Swift's case is not an isolated one. In September 2006, US House Rep Peter DeFazio declared that Congress would investigate the case and that he would be the one leading that. Of course, September 2006 was before the 2006 elections and the Democratically controlled Congress hasn't shown much spine since they were swept into office claiming they would end the illegal war. As Sara Rich, Swift's mother, explained of DeFazio to Jennifer Zahn Spieler (Women's eNews) in December 2006, "His office gave us a lot of red tape. And he basically laughed at our petition. I walked away feeling rather humiliated by him."
AMY GOODMAN: Now you have become chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and you are launching the organization Truth in Recruiting campaign in September. Can you explain what that is?
CAMILO MEJIA: Sure. Well, we are launching a number of actions that we had, and Truth in Recruiting is one of them. What we're basically going to do is we are going to continue doing what we have been doing, but we're going to up the tempo. We are going to increase the number of members who are going to go into high schools to inform young people about the reality of the military and about the reality of war. Far from telling them not to join the military, we are going to tell them, "You want to join the military, this is what could happen to you. This is what's happened to our members. This is what the contract means. This is what stop-loss is. This is what conscientious objection is," so to basically inform them and thus empower them to make an informed decision.
We are going to go into recruiters' offices, and we're going to talk to the recruiters. And this, in time, is going to -- in turn, is going to take up their time, so they're not, you know, out there basically lying to young people about, you know, the many wonderful benefits of the military, without talking about the realities of war.
And we're going to continue doing, you know, what we're doing. We're going to continue going out into recruiting events. And we just had one action, actually, at the St. Louis conference. Across the street, there was a convention, an African American expo, where they had the America's Army game, and they were basically targeting like, you know, kids as young as twelve years of age, you know, teaching them that the military is cool and the military is good for you. And, you know, about ninety of us went in there, and, you know, we had this very military-style formation. And, you know, we all sounded off, saying, you know, "War is not a game. War is not a game. War is not a game." And then we leafleted the families and the youth with our fliers, you know, that talk about the reality of being in the military, which talk about our position as veterans against the war. And this is basically what's behind this campaign and this effort, you know, to basically inform young people about the realities of the military.
In Aimme Allison and David Solnit's new book Army of None -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist -- one of the stories they recount is a high school counselor who was happy to invite the US military on campus and thrilled to steer students to them (especially to the Coast Guard) until he was given some information that included the military contract service members sign:
Reading the language of the military enlistment contract changed Brian's mind about promoting the military option to his students. Section 9b reads, "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may change my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document." section 10d2 reads, "I may be ordered to active duty for 24 months, and my enlistment may be extended." In other words, the military enlistment contract isn't a real contract. The military does not legally have to honor its promises to the enlistee. That was enough to change this counselor's opinion of the service" (pages 10 - 12).
It should be noted that Camilo Mejia's contract was 'extended' -- he was one of the many whom the military decided to 'stop loss' aka backdoor draft. The US military couldn't do that and US Senator Bill Nelson and elements within the military knew that (Mejia was a non-citizen, non-citizen's cannot be extended). Mejia tells his story in Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia but we should note again that he had completed his service and should have been sent home. Those who attempt to argue "You signed a contract!" have no concerns over the fact that it's a one-sided document. In Allison and Solnit's book they explore the contracts and how to convey the actual realities.
Truth in Recruting is an attempt to get those and other realities out. Adam Kokesh (Sgt. Kokesh Goes to Washington) reports on last week's Truth in Recruitng workshop in Berkeley "a sort of trial run for the format that I have created. . . . The next one for me is this Friday in Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans For Peace (especially Ken Murray) has been a great help in setting this up and promoting it." Kokesh also notes the new board members of IVAW including Mejia as chair, Kokesh as co-chiar, Phil Aliff as secretary and Margaret Stevens as treasurer and encourages everyone to check out Meeting Resistance an "incredibly powerful" documentary.
Aimee Allison and David Solnit remind, in Army Of None, that if you're handing out information about the realities of recruitment, it's a good idea to have the information in more than one language based on the diversity of the community. Juan Gonzales addressed with Mejia (on Democracy Now! today) the fact that enrollment for African-Americans in the military is declining while Latinos are now being heavily targeted. Meija noted, "Some people may have heard about the DREAM Act, through which the military hopes to recruit undocumented youth who are graduating from high school. The proposal is to serve two years in the military or go to college for two years and then get your green card, which 65,000 people who are undocumented and graduate from high school and are not eligible for financial aid from the federal government are not going to be able to go to college for two years. So, you know, this is one of the ways in which, you know, the military is targeting young immigratns, mostly Latinos, to join the military."
Tonight, Camilo Mejia had a reading from his book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia at Different Drummer at 6:30 pm. Friday he has events in Syracuse (click here and check out the sidebar).
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to the Bully Boy. Yesterday he made ridiculous claims regarding Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and did so in an attempt to resell his tired but ongoing illegal war. As Jane Fonda notes in the incredible documentary Sir! No Sir!, "You know, people say, 'Well you keep going back, why are you going back to Vietnam?' We keep going back to Vietnam because I'll tell you what, the other side does. They're always going back. And they have to go back -- the Hawks, you know, the patriarchs. They have to go back because, and they have to revise the going back, because they can't allow us to know what the back there really was." Jim Rutenberg, Sheryl Gay Stolber, Mark Mazzetti, Damien Cave and Erich Schmitt (New York Times) observe: "With his comments Mr. Bush was doing something few major politicians of either party have done in a generation: rearguing a conflict that ended more than three decades ago but has remained an emotional touch point." As Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes, "Beware, this is only the beginning of a new effort to sell these wars. The next salvo will take place on September 11, 2007, when General Petraeus, the latest general to run the war in Iraq, presents his commercial for an extended surge and an increased commitment to the ongoing occupation of that country. Of course, the date has 'absolutely nothing' to do with the anniversary of the attacks in New York and Virginia six years ago."
Bully Boy made ridiculous comments about how US withdrawl from Vietnam led to a host of things when the realities are that the illegal war itself led to that. Bully Boy felt the need to speak of new vocabulary the withdrawal created (it didn't create it) and while it's nice to know he is attempting to increase his Word Power, let's explore some of the actual vocabulary that illegal war did create. "Double veteran" was someone who killed a woman after he'd had sex with her. "Expactants" was a 'cute' term for those who were 'expected' to die. "Glad bags" were body bags and "litters" were what the dead and wounded were carried on. "Willie Peter" which was white phosphorus added to napalm to prevent water from stopping the burning of skin. "Fragging" which was when those serving under an officer elected to kill him often with a grenade. "Dust offs" were when service members were medicially evacuated by helicopter. Those are only some of the words that illegal war added to the vocabularly.
Historian Douglas Brinkley tells Michael Tackett (Chicago Tribune), "If we get into a Vietnam argument, the country is divided, but if you are going to try to sell this concept that the blood is on the American people's hands because we left and were weak-kneed in Asia, that is a very tenuous and inane historical argument." Political analyst Bruce Cain tells Carolyn Tyler (KGO News) that what Bully Boy is "trying to do is use a conservative argument to rally the conservative base because what he fears is not that Nancy Pelosi and the democrats are going to vote for withdrawal. What he fears is members of his own party are going to join in." On the rollout attempt to resell the illegal war, Massimo Calabresi (Time magazine) explains, "The speech marks the start of a weeks-long campaign in the run-up to the politically charged September report card to be delivered to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Bush will give a second speech next week at the American Legion in Reno, Nevada, and another a week later on a trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place this year in Sydney, Australia. The speeches will coincide with the launch of a $15 million ad campaign by a group called 'Freedom's Watch' -- which counts former Bush press secretary Air Fleischer as one of its founders -- aimed at bolstering flagging support for the war."
This is an atttempt massive rollout and that's why it needs to be called out in real time. Not a week later, not a few weeks later. Today, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) spoke with Inter Press Service (IPS) journalist and historian Garth Porter who said of Bully Boy's ridiculous speech:
Well, you know, it reminds me very much of the way in which, of course, Richard Nixon used the threat of a bloodbath in Vietnam as the primary argument for continuing that war for four more years after he came to power in 1969. And really, it seems to me, the lesson of the Vietnam War that should be now debated and discussed is really the way in which Nixon could have ended that war when he came to power, negotiated a settlement and avoided the extension of that war into Cambodia, which happened because Nixon did not do that.
Had Nixon listened to the antiwar movement and the American people by 1969 and ended that war, there would not have been the overthrow of Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. There would not have been the extension of the war into Cambodia. There would not have been the rise of the Khmer Rouge. When Sihanouk was overthrown, we tend to forget that the Khmer Rouge was really an insignificant movement. They were about 2,500 or 3,000 very poorly armed soldiers or guerillas. And it was really the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia which made the Khmer Rouge the powerful movement that they were.
So really, you know, the lesson of Vietnam that we should be hearing, which we should have heard for the last three decades, but we haven't, is that government officials in the White House simply do not pay attention to the real consequences of the wars that they wage. They seem to be totally unable to take account of the destabilizing ways that the wars that they wage affect not only the country in which the war is being waged, but then the neighboring countries, as well.
Meanwhile, CBS and AP report the Bully Boy "touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech . . . People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict. 'Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?' said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. 'Nobody regreats that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush. . . Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way'."
Anne Zook (Peevish . . . I'm Just Saying) notes Bully Boy was "saying that we can't leave Iraq because then it would be like Vietnam. It's not like Vietnam now, you understand. We didn't charge in there uninvited and start slaughtering people right and left with no clear idea of what we were dealing with and no rational plan for how wholesale killing was going to make things better." Rebecca addressed the topic of Vietnam in "robert parry, vietnam," Mike in "Ron Fullwood, William S. Lind," Elaine in "Matthew Rothschild, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt," and Kat in "Glen Ford, Iraq, Vietnam" yesterday. Today Ira Chernus (Common Dreams) notes that the Dems are caving on Iraq and buying the myth of 'progress' so he suggests, "The alternative is to refuse to take the administration's new bait. The antiwar movement could refuse to use Iraq as a backdrop and Iraqis as extras in a drama about the trials and tribulations of America. Instead, we could insist that the issue is not about how well our soldiers are doing or what is happening here at home. It's about what is happening in Iraq, where ordinary people like us have been dying and suffering in horrifying numbers ever since we occupied their country. We have no magic button that we can push to end the tragedy now. But we can do our best to refocus the debate on the real terror: the terror endured by the Iraqi people who live under military occupation every day."
Turning to the violence in Iraq, yesterday Damien Cave and James Glanz (New York Times) noted that the death toll from last week's bombings in northern Iraq (Tuesday) had passed 500 with over 1,500 injured. On yesterday's US helicopter crash in Iraq, Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) notes that US military flack Michael Donnelly maintains, "The helicopter was not shot down". Remember that if and when the investigation concludes differently. The Honolulu Advertiser notes: "Ten Hawai'i soldiers were among those killed when a Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed today in northern Iraq". Heather L. VanDyke (Muskegon Chronicle) notes 30-year-old Matthew Tallman was among the dead and AP notes that some of the dead "were based in Hawaii; others in Washington state" and that the 14's home states included California, Texas, Washington, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio.
Today in Iraq . . .
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing claimed 1 life (five wounded). Reuters notes a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 2 lives (four injured), a mortar attack in Kut that claimed 2 lives (six wounded)
Shootings?
Reuters notes one person dead in Mosul from a drive-by shooting and "At least 25 people were killed in a battle between Sunni Arab militants and al Qaeda in villages near Baquba" in a battle involving mortars and gun fire.
Kidnappings?
Mariam Karouny (Reuters) reports that "15 women and children" were kidnapped following the battle outside Baquba.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes 2 corpses discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed and four others wounded during combat operations in an area west of the Iraqi capital Aug. 22." Currently ICCC shows 3723 as the number of US service members killed in the illegal war since it started with 65 for the month thus far.
In political news, Reuters reports US Senator John Warner has stated Bully Boy needs to use September 15th to make an announcements that he will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. On Warner's request for a phased withdrawal to begin, AP quotes him stating, "We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action." Warner's statements come as the spin flies around the supposed 'progress' that's not happening. We'll again note Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reporting earlier this month that the US military claims of 'progress' were based on numbers they would not release and that McClatchy Newspapers' figures do not track with the findings the US military has trumpeted (and many, most recently the Los Angeles Times have swallowed and spat back at readers): "U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim."
Staying on the topic of politics and the lack of progress, US Democratic presidental hopeful
Bill Richardson released a statement noting the absurdity of Bully Boy's speech ("The correct conclusion to draw from our experience in Vietnam is that dragging out the process of withdrawal will be tragically worse in the terms of U.S. lives lost and worse for the Iraqi's themselves in terms of the ultimate instability we will create by staying longer") and addressed Hillary Clinton's some days 'up' attitude on the escalation, sometimes 'down':
I am pleased that Senator Clinton, today, recognizes that the surge has produced no progress of any long term significance to the Iraq debacle. That is different from what she said yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But, it is that audience, who has sacrificed more than any of us, who deserves to hear a clear statement that our sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are not going to be sacrificed because of an irrational commitment to a failed strategy.The President is asking the country to wait for next month's progress report from General Petraeus. The chances are that report will be just another White House spin job and attempt to justify this war. This has been the bloodiest summer yet -- our troops have done an admirable job at trying to make a bad idea work, but the surge has failed, the war has failed, Bush has failed. It is time to end this war and bring all of our troops home as soon as possible. I'm glad Hillary Clinton has retracted her comments yesterday and has declared the surge a failure today -- but I still haven't gotten an answer to my question -- a peace in Iraq will fail as long as we leave troops behind -- how many would you leave behind? Every other major candidate would leave thousands of US troops in Iraq for an indefinite. I will leave no U.S. forces there. Zero.The only way out of the Iraq mess is to remove all U.S. troops, and to use that leverage to get the warring parties to resolve their differences, and surrounding Muslim nations to help stabilize the country. Any residual U.S. force reduces the chances for success, and exposes our troops as targets. Our brave troops, and the American people, deserve better.
John Walcott (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that that US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finds that "to date, Iraq's political leaders remain unable to govern effectively." The NIE was released today [PDF format of the report can be read here]. CBS and AP quote from the report: "The strains of the security situation and absence of key leaders have stalled internal political debates, slowed national decision-making, and increased Maliki's vulnerability to alternative coalitions" and "CBS News correspondent Tara Mergener reports tension is growing between President Bush and the prime minister after Mr. Bush appeared to back away from al-Maliki earlier this week when he said: 'Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more'."
Finally, Ali al-Fadhily (IPS) reports on the victims of those 'prescision' US airstrikes bringing 'liberation' to Iraqis and quotes Kassim Hussein, "This is not the first time that we have heard nice words about military operations that they say aim for our security and prosperity. Yet every time it was more killing, sieges and poverty. It is a war that we did not have to fight, but we are the biggest losers every time it is ignited by the Americans."
Or, more likely, the black wall of the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial would stretch most of the way to the U.S. Capitol.
After hearing his selective historical rendition of the Vietnam experience in his Aug. 22 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, one is tempted to ask Bush what he would have done as President in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Presumably, Bush would have prolonged or escalated the Vietnam War, although it’s doubtful he would have called up the Texas Air National Guard where he was safely ensconced, while skipping his flight physical and seeking an early discharge.
In his speech, Bush justified an open-ended Vietnam War by citing the carnage that followed the U.S. military withdrawal.
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,'" Bush said.
In Bush's version of history, condemnation should fall on Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford for making the painful decisions that eventually extricated the United States from the Vietnam quagmire -- rather than on Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon for inserting or keeping U.S. troops in the middle of the Indochinese civil war.
Bush also ignores the carnage that was inflicted by U.S. aerial bombings and massive firepower. Historians estimate that some two million Indochinese were killed during the war, along with about 57,000 American soldiers.
Also, by invading Cambodia and authorizing secret carpet-bombing of the countryside, President Nixon spread the chaos into that politically fragile country, opening the door first to a military dictatorship and then to the rise of the fanatical Khmer Rouge.
the above is from robert parry's 'Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills' (consortium news) and i'm opening with that both because it's strong and because t asked, 'what was yesterday all about?' if she was confused, others probably were too. i liked the other piece and wouldn't have linked to it if i hadn't.
however, i do not believe that air america radio has been independent or alternative overall (with the exceptions i noted yesterday). it's not led on the illegal war. it's not led on a whole lot. and i knew my mother-in-law would call if she used the link and found that in parry's piece. i also know the community washed their hands of aar some time ago. (i know some members listen to randi and laura but that's really it. and there's not a member who's happy that laura's been reduced to an hour.) but it's also true that i'm left and i hear about it from flyboy's friends who are pretty disgusted with being asked to give to independent media and never seeing much from it.
i also know that a lot of my former p.r. clients who are left aren't going to give money to that nonsense. air america radio has been a huge disappointment. there was this thought that it was going to be left or liberal radio and, by being that, it would help move the mainstream back to the center. instead it's been about as left as the leaders in the democratic party. right-wing radio, they use their bully pulpit and they scream for action on issues that matter to the right. they worship bully boy, true (although that's faded a little) but they're more independent of their party than air america radio is.
the 2 biggest issues to the left have been (1) the illegal war and (2) impeachment. not only has air america radio not led on that, they've offered excuses for democratic leadership that won't lead.
even randi, who i like to listen to and believe she's for impeachment, i stopped listening the day she was justifying the inaction on impeachment.
i don't have the time for that.
what we've got is a bunch of david broders behind a radio mike.
and people aren't going to pay for that and rescue it.
to hire bob kerrey is a huge slap in the face to the left. he was and is for the illegal war. he's a fomer senator who is a democrat so that matters more than leading on the illegal war?
that's not alternative and it's not independent.
or take the patriot act renewal. that was what's his name's big issue. danny goldberg. i almost forgot his name. air america could have led on that issue and hit hard and they didn't.
now congress ended up renewing that hideous legislation.
and what i see with air america radio over and over is a real effort to push what democratic leaders in congress want and to ignore the grass roots or talk down to them with 'the realistic position is ...' i don't need that crap.
and it has pretty much dried up their former pool. the big money is not coming in for people providing cover for democrats in charge. the party is a mess.
but people aren't going to pay for that crap that cheerleads it.
they're not going to open their wallets or write a big check to those who give cover. they're tired of the dems who play repbue-lite. and they know the only thing that will force them to return to being the democratic party is an outcry. it is a huge problem and any media that refuses to recognize that is not independent media.
we do not need a return to bill clinton and any 1 selling that crap is useless.
a large number of democrats with high hopes in 1993 saw them crushed.
his scandals and the attacks on him were actually good for him because it meant the left often had to come to his rescue and otherwise many would have washed their hands of the man who gave them nafta and destroyed the safety net, the man who promised universal health care and that he'd overturn the ban on gays in the military but failed on both.
bill clinton's presidency was a failure in many ways.
as a republican, he'd be a great president.
as a democrat he was a failure.
hillary, if she gets in, will be as well.
i love all the lies about the wonderful 90s that weren't wonderful for a lot of americans. it's only with a psycho like bully boy in the white house that clinton even looks half-way decent.
i don't think history will rank him high. he'll be remembered for his scandals and if it weren't for those, he'd be forgotten like a lot of presidents. he wasn't an fdr or really much of anything.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, August 23, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, women and children taken in a mass kidnapping in Iraq, the US military announces another death, Bully Boy lies (again) and largely gets a pass (again), Bill Richardson speaks frankly, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Today Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) spoke with Camilo Mejia:
AMY GOODMAN: Talk first about this decision of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group of, what, more than 500 people to actively encourage war resistance?
CAMILO MEJIA: Last count was 525 members, with new members joining every day, Amy. And the decision was made to, as an organization, support war resistance within the military as a way to undermine the war effort.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the growth of that resistance movement over the last couple of years -- obviously since you were one of the first -- how do you see that developing?
CAMILO MEJIA: I think we've come a long way from the time when I resisted the war. Like Amy said, I was the first public combat veteran to refuse to redeploy to Iraq. Back then, when I went public with my refusal to go back to the war, we had approximately twenty-two cases of desertion in the military. And then, by the time I got out of jail, that number was 5,500. Today, it's over 10,000 people within the military who are refusing to go to the war in Iraq since the war started. And just to put it in perspective, that's almost like saying like the 101st Airborne Division was wiped out by desertion or AWOL, basically people not wanting to fight the war.
AMY GOODMAN: How many?
CAMILO MEJIA: Over 10,000 people. So that's the equivalent to an Army division.
Over the weekend, Iraq Veterans Against the War held their board elections and Mejia was elected as the new chair. On the issue of those who self-check out, Mejia noted that despite claims that the military isn't going after them, it is happening and cited Suzanne Swift as one specific example noting she is among the "cases of people who have not yet gone public and yet have been seized in their home" and that Swift was "apprehended by police without even a search warrant at her mother's house, and she had not gone public at that time. And she had refused to go back to the war, because she had been subject to military sexual assault and command rape from her leadership and being forced to go back to the war with the same unit and with the same people who had attacked her." Swift received no justice. A military white wash investigation did find 'some' validity in her recount of the ordeal she endured but instead of doing the right thing and immediately discharge with full benefits and a honorable discharge, instead of stating publicly, "This never should have happened and we apologize to Suzanne Swift and promise we are addressing this systemic issue," they refused to discharge her, they punished her and there's been no Congressional oversight despite the fact that Swift's case is not an isolated one. In September 2006, US House Rep Peter DeFazio declared that Congress would investigate the case and that he would be the one leading that. Of course, September 2006 was before the 2006 elections and the Democratically controlled Congress hasn't shown much spine since they were swept into office claiming they would end the illegal war. As Sara Rich, Swift's mother, explained of DeFazio to Jennifer Zahn Spieler (Women's eNews) in December 2006, "His office gave us a lot of red tape. And he basically laughed at our petition. I walked away feeling rather humiliated by him."
AMY GOODMAN: Now you have become chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and you are launching the organization Truth in Recruiting campaign in September. Can you explain what that is?
CAMILO MEJIA: Sure. Well, we are launching a number of actions that we had, and Truth in Recruiting is one of them. What we're basically going to do is we are going to continue doing what we have been doing, but we're going to up the tempo. We are going to increase the number of members who are going to go into high schools to inform young people about the reality of the military and about the reality of war. Far from telling them not to join the military, we are going to tell them, "You want to join the military, this is what could happen to you. This is what's happened to our members. This is what the contract means. This is what stop-loss is. This is what conscientious objection is," so to basically inform them and thus empower them to make an informed decision.
We are going to go into recruiters' offices, and we're going to talk to the recruiters. And this, in time, is going to -- in turn, is going to take up their time, so they're not, you know, out there basically lying to young people about, you know, the many wonderful benefits of the military, without talking about the realities of war.
And we're going to continue doing, you know, what we're doing. We're going to continue going out into recruiting events. And we just had one action, actually, at the St. Louis conference. Across the street, there was a convention, an African American expo, where they had the America's Army game, and they were basically targeting like, you know, kids as young as twelve years of age, you know, teaching them that the military is cool and the military is good for you. And, you know, about ninety of us went in there, and, you know, we had this very military-style formation. And, you know, we all sounded off, saying, you know, "War is not a game. War is not a game. War is not a game." And then we leafleted the families and the youth with our fliers, you know, that talk about the reality of being in the military, which talk about our position as veterans against the war. And this is basically what's behind this campaign and this effort, you know, to basically inform young people about the realities of the military.
In Aimme Allison and David Solnit's new book Army of None -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist -- one of the stories they recount is a high school counselor who was happy to invite the US military on campus and thrilled to steer students to them (especially to the Coast Guard) until he was given some information that included the military contract service members sign:
Reading the language of the military enlistment contract changed Brian's mind about promoting the military option to his students. Section 9b reads, "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may change my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document." section 10d2 reads, "I may be ordered to active duty for 24 months, and my enlistment may be extended." In other words, the military enlistment contract isn't a real contract. The military does not legally have to honor its promises to the enlistee. That was enough to change this counselor's opinion of the service" (pages 10 - 12).
It should be noted that Camilo Mejia's contract was 'extended' -- he was one of the many whom the military decided to 'stop loss' aka backdoor draft. The US military couldn't do that and US Senator Bill Nelson and elements within the military knew that (Mejia was a non-citizen, non-citizen's cannot be extended). Mejia tells his story in Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia but we should note again that he had completed his service and should have been sent home. Those who attempt to argue "You signed a contract!" have no concerns over the fact that it's a one-sided document. In Allison and Solnit's book they explore the contracts and how to convey the actual realities.
Truth in Recruting is an attempt to get those and other realities out. Adam Kokesh (Sgt. Kokesh Goes to Washington) reports on last week's Truth in Recruitng workshop in Berkeley "a sort of trial run for the format that I have created. . . . The next one for me is this Friday in Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans For Peace (especially Ken Murray) has been a great help in setting this up and promoting it." Kokesh also notes the new board members of IVAW including Mejia as chair, Kokesh as co-chiar, Phil Aliff as secretary and Margaret Stevens as treasurer and encourages everyone to check out Meeting Resistance an "incredibly powerful" documentary.
Aimee Allison and David Solnit remind, in Army Of None, that if you're handing out information about the realities of recruitment, it's a good idea to have the information in more than one language based on the diversity of the community. Juan Gonzales addressed with Mejia (on Democracy Now! today) the fact that enrollment for African-Americans in the military is declining while Latinos are now being heavily targeted. Meija noted, "Some people may have heard about the DREAM Act, through which the military hopes to recruit undocumented youth who are graduating from high school. The proposal is to serve two years in the military or go to college for two years and then get your green card, which 65,000 people who are undocumented and graduate from high school and are not eligible for financial aid from the federal government are not going to be able to go to college for two years. So, you know, this is one of the ways in which, you know, the military is targeting young immigratns, mostly Latinos, to join the military."
Tonight, Camilo Mejia had a reading from his book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia at Different Drummer at 6:30 pm. Friday he has events in Syracuse (click here and check out the sidebar).
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to the Bully Boy. Yesterday he made ridiculous claims regarding Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and did so in an attempt to resell his tired but ongoing illegal war. As Jane Fonda notes in the incredible documentary Sir! No Sir!, "You know, people say, 'Well you keep going back, why are you going back to Vietnam?' We keep going back to Vietnam because I'll tell you what, the other side does. They're always going back. And they have to go back -- the Hawks, you know, the patriarchs. They have to go back because, and they have to revise the going back, because they can't allow us to know what the back there really was." Jim Rutenberg, Sheryl Gay Stolber, Mark Mazzetti, Damien Cave and Erich Schmitt (New York Times) observe: "With his comments Mr. Bush was doing something few major politicians of either party have done in a generation: rearguing a conflict that ended more than three decades ago but has remained an emotional touch point." As Ron Jacobs (CounterPunch) observes, "Beware, this is only the beginning of a new effort to sell these wars. The next salvo will take place on September 11, 2007, when General Petraeus, the latest general to run the war in Iraq, presents his commercial for an extended surge and an increased commitment to the ongoing occupation of that country. Of course, the date has 'absolutely nothing' to do with the anniversary of the attacks in New York and Virginia six years ago."
Bully Boy made ridiculous comments about how US withdrawl from Vietnam led to a host of things when the realities are that the illegal war itself led to that. Bully Boy felt the need to speak of new vocabulary the withdrawal created (it didn't create it) and while it's nice to know he is attempting to increase his Word Power, let's explore some of the actual vocabulary that illegal war did create. "Double veteran" was someone who killed a woman after he'd had sex with her. "Expactants" was a 'cute' term for those who were 'expected' to die. "Glad bags" were body bags and "litters" were what the dead and wounded were carried on. "Willie Peter" which was white phosphorus added to napalm to prevent water from stopping the burning of skin. "Fragging" which was when those serving under an officer elected to kill him often with a grenade. "Dust offs" were when service members were medicially evacuated by helicopter. Those are only some of the words that illegal war added to the vocabularly.
Historian Douglas Brinkley tells Michael Tackett (Chicago Tribune), "If we get into a Vietnam argument, the country is divided, but if you are going to try to sell this concept that the blood is on the American people's hands because we left and were weak-kneed in Asia, that is a very tenuous and inane historical argument." Political analyst Bruce Cain tells Carolyn Tyler (KGO News) that what Bully Boy is "trying to do is use a conservative argument to rally the conservative base because what he fears is not that Nancy Pelosi and the democrats are going to vote for withdrawal. What he fears is members of his own party are going to join in." On the rollout attempt to resell the illegal war, Massimo Calabresi (Time magazine) explains, "The speech marks the start of a weeks-long campaign in the run-up to the politically charged September report card to be delivered to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Bush will give a second speech next week at the American Legion in Reno, Nevada, and another a week later on a trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place this year in Sydney, Australia. The speeches will coincide with the launch of a $15 million ad campaign by a group called 'Freedom's Watch' -- which counts former Bush press secretary Air Fleischer as one of its founders -- aimed at bolstering flagging support for the war."
This is an atttempt massive rollout and that's why it needs to be called out in real time. Not a week later, not a few weeks later. Today, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) spoke with Inter Press Service (IPS) journalist and historian Garth Porter who said of Bully Boy's ridiculous speech:
Well, you know, it reminds me very much of the way in which, of course, Richard Nixon used the threat of a bloodbath in Vietnam as the primary argument for continuing that war for four more years after he came to power in 1969. And really, it seems to me, the lesson of the Vietnam War that should be now debated and discussed is really the way in which Nixon could have ended that war when he came to power, negotiated a settlement and avoided the extension of that war into Cambodia, which happened because Nixon did not do that.
Had Nixon listened to the antiwar movement and the American people by 1969 and ended that war, there would not have been the overthrow of Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. There would not have been the extension of the war into Cambodia. There would not have been the rise of the Khmer Rouge. When Sihanouk was overthrown, we tend to forget that the Khmer Rouge was really an insignificant movement. They were about 2,500 or 3,000 very poorly armed soldiers or guerillas. And it was really the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia which made the Khmer Rouge the powerful movement that they were.
So really, you know, the lesson of Vietnam that we should be hearing, which we should have heard for the last three decades, but we haven't, is that government officials in the White House simply do not pay attention to the real consequences of the wars that they wage. They seem to be totally unable to take account of the destabilizing ways that the wars that they wage affect not only the country in which the war is being waged, but then the neighboring countries, as well.
Meanwhile, CBS and AP report the Bully Boy "touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech . . . People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict. 'Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?' said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. 'Nobody regreats that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush. . . Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way'."
Anne Zook (Peevish . . . I'm Just Saying) notes Bully Boy was "saying that we can't leave Iraq because then it would be like Vietnam. It's not like Vietnam now, you understand. We didn't charge in there uninvited and start slaughtering people right and left with no clear idea of what we were dealing with and no rational plan for how wholesale killing was going to make things better." Rebecca addressed the topic of Vietnam in "robert parry, vietnam," Mike in "Ron Fullwood, William S. Lind," Elaine in "Matthew Rothschild, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt," and Kat in "Glen Ford, Iraq, Vietnam" yesterday. Today Ira Chernus (Common Dreams) notes that the Dems are caving on Iraq and buying the myth of 'progress' so he suggests, "The alternative is to refuse to take the administration's new bait. The antiwar movement could refuse to use Iraq as a backdrop and Iraqis as extras in a drama about the trials and tribulations of America. Instead, we could insist that the issue is not about how well our soldiers are doing or what is happening here at home. It's about what is happening in Iraq, where ordinary people like us have been dying and suffering in horrifying numbers ever since we occupied their country. We have no magic button that we can push to end the tragedy now. But we can do our best to refocus the debate on the real terror: the terror endured by the Iraqi people who live under military occupation every day."
Turning to the violence in Iraq, yesterday Damien Cave and James Glanz (New York Times) noted that the death toll from last week's bombings in northern Iraq (Tuesday) had passed 500 with over 1,500 injured. On yesterday's US helicopter crash in Iraq, Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) notes that US military flack Michael Donnelly maintains, "The helicopter was not shot down". Remember that if and when the investigation concludes differently. The Honolulu Advertiser notes: "Ten Hawai'i soldiers were among those killed when a Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed today in northern Iraq". Heather L. VanDyke (Muskegon Chronicle) notes 30-year-old Matthew Tallman was among the dead and AP notes that some of the dead "were based in Hawaii; others in Washington state" and that the 14's home states included California, Texas, Washington, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio.
Today in Iraq . . .
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing claimed 1 life (five wounded). Reuters notes a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 2 lives (four injured), a mortar attack in Kut that claimed 2 lives (six wounded)
Shootings?
Reuters notes one person dead in Mosul from a drive-by shooting and "At least 25 people were killed in a battle between Sunni Arab militants and al Qaeda in villages near Baquba" in a battle involving mortars and gun fire.
Kidnappings?
Mariam Karouny (Reuters) reports that "15 women and children" were kidnapped following the battle outside Baquba.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters notes 2 corpses discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed and four others wounded during combat operations in an area west of the Iraqi capital Aug. 22." Currently ICCC shows 3723 as the number of US service members killed in the illegal war since it started with 65 for the month thus far.
In political news, Reuters reports US Senator John Warner has stated Bully Boy needs to use September 15th to make an announcements that he will begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. On Warner's request for a phased withdrawal to begin, AP quotes him stating, "We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action." Warner's statements come as the spin flies around the supposed 'progress' that's not happening. We'll again note Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reporting earlier this month that the US military claims of 'progress' were based on numbers they would not release and that McClatchy Newspapers' figures do not track with the findings the US military has trumpeted (and many, most recently the Los Angeles Times have swallowed and spat back at readers): "U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim."
Staying on the topic of politics and the lack of progress, US Democratic presidental hopeful
Bill Richardson released a statement noting the absurdity of Bully Boy's speech ("The correct conclusion to draw from our experience in Vietnam is that dragging out the process of withdrawal will be tragically worse in the terms of U.S. lives lost and worse for the Iraqi's themselves in terms of the ultimate instability we will create by staying longer") and addressed Hillary Clinton's some days 'up' attitude on the escalation, sometimes 'down':
I am pleased that Senator Clinton, today, recognizes that the surge has produced no progress of any long term significance to the Iraq debacle. That is different from what she said yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But, it is that audience, who has sacrificed more than any of us, who deserves to hear a clear statement that our sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are not going to be sacrificed because of an irrational commitment to a failed strategy.The President is asking the country to wait for next month's progress report from General Petraeus. The chances are that report will be just another White House spin job and attempt to justify this war. This has been the bloodiest summer yet -- our troops have done an admirable job at trying to make a bad idea work, but the surge has failed, the war has failed, Bush has failed. It is time to end this war and bring all of our troops home as soon as possible. I'm glad Hillary Clinton has retracted her comments yesterday and has declared the surge a failure today -- but I still haven't gotten an answer to my question -- a peace in Iraq will fail as long as we leave troops behind -- how many would you leave behind? Every other major candidate would leave thousands of US troops in Iraq for an indefinite. I will leave no U.S. forces there. Zero.The only way out of the Iraq mess is to remove all U.S. troops, and to use that leverage to get the warring parties to resolve their differences, and surrounding Muslim nations to help stabilize the country. Any residual U.S. force reduces the chances for success, and exposes our troops as targets. Our brave troops, and the American people, deserve better.
John Walcott (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that that US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finds that "to date, Iraq's political leaders remain unable to govern effectively." The NIE was released today [PDF format of the report can be read here]. CBS and AP quote from the report: "The strains of the security situation and absence of key leaders have stalled internal political debates, slowed national decision-making, and increased Maliki's vulnerability to alternative coalitions" and "CBS News correspondent Tara Mergener reports tension is growing between President Bush and the prime minister after Mr. Bush appeared to back away from al-Maliki earlier this week when he said: 'Clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more'."
Finally, Ali al-Fadhily (IPS) reports on the victims of those 'prescision' US airstrikes bringing 'liberation' to Iraqis and quotes Kassim Hussein, "This is not the first time that we have heard nice words about military operations that they say aim for our security and prosperity. Yet every time it was more killing, sieges and poverty. It is a war that we did not have to fight, but we are the biggest losers every time it is ignited by the Americans."
8/22/2007
robert parry, vietnam
okay, the thing below is from robert parry's latest piece:
After Election 2006, liberals and progressives also turned away from a sustained commitment to build media outlets that would resist right-wing pressure and make sure an alternative viewpoint reached the American public.
Air America Radio went in and out of bankruptcy but remains today an under-funded operation, while progressive and independent Web sites continue to struggle with negligible financial support.
Instead, since November 2006, liberal/progressive money has poured into the political campaigns of Democratic presidential hopefuls or into "organizing." The goal of a new media infrastructure has been neglected again.
i don't consider air america radio independent. i'm not sure that robert parry's saying he does or not. but i wanted to note that before i recommended his piece (which i love) because i didn't want any 1 e-mailing me about it and saying, 'you agree with that?'
air america radio has been (hopefully it will change) the worst example for 'give money'.
it has not been independent.
sam seder refused to challenge simon rosenberg on anything. looking back, that was the wake up call for me. he's 'unbought and unbossed' he says over and over in his ads (still a dead woman's line without credit) but when he was interviewing the supposed sure-thing dnc chair candidate simon rosenberg in early 2005, he caved.
he refused to hammer on the illegal war. he refused to do anything.
people called in outraged. they blogged outraged on the show's website.
what the hell was going on?
that was the question over and over.
and what was going on was that the true side of air america was coming out. when push came to shove, sam seder played coward. can't rock the boat.
now that's just 1 example and i could make it over and over with various names.
i'm really not trying to pick on sam seder tonight, i'm just trying to make the point that some 1 who thinks of himself as strong and independent (and may be) crumpled when confronted with a war hawk that looked to be sure to be the new dnc chair.
there were no hard questions. and sam probably spent the last hour of the show (janeane garofalo wasn't on that night) explaining the interview to outraged listeners. but there was no excuse for it. and his mealy mouthed comment that if you didn't like what you heard, you got your answers about simon rosenberg. no, what listeners wanted was some 1 to represent them.
they wanted their voices heard.
air america radio has failed and failed at that over all. there are exceptions. laura flanders would be 1. randi rhodes is often another.
but, come on, they've given a job to the ultimate war hawk bob kerrey.
they aren't serving listeners.
they aren't standing against the illegal war.
baby cries a lot is gone now, running for the senate, but if he was on the air still he'd be doing the same thing he always did, arguing that the illegal war needs to continue.
that 'brave' rachel maddow refused to put on war resisters.
she was gung-ho for that nonsense of 'ask a vet' as long as the vet was pro-war. the vet could slam the bully boy for not doing this or that, but a vet who was against the war wasn't welcome. because rachel maddow spent her entire time on unfiltered arguing that the u.s. needed to stay in iraq.
these are brave voices? these are independent voices?
no.
they're voices that cower and hide. (to give credit, rachel maddow and liz winstead did not throw soft balls at simon rosenberg when they interviewed him. they actually hit hard. i can't stand rachel maddow but she did hit hard with simon rosenberg especially when he made comments that could be read as gay & lesbian issues were 'special interest' issues that the party didn't need to focus on. unless you were latino, rosenberg wasn't interested in you. he wasn't interested in latinos before the election, but after, all the sudden, he was interested.)
now simon rosenberg was dlc-junior division.
that he couldn't be called out really told you a lot.
so air america has done a lot of damage. it's not the only 1.
but no 1 i know is into donating money these days to echo chambers.
and i'd actually hear from my mother-in-law if i didn't note this.
she'd call and say, 'rebecca, i read that piece. air america?'
giving money to air america is no different from giving money to the democratic party. either way, your money gets out the talking points the democratic party wants.
now maybe that will change under the new management?
maybe, like me, sam seder looks back on that interview and kicks himself for it? or at least feels it was a huge mistake? it cost him a lot of credibility and it's something that people listening to aar back then still bring up today.
it was a defining moment.
he can have other 1s. hopefully he will.
but people who want the illegal war to end aren't going to give to air america.
it threw its all behind john kerry (with few exceptions) and buried the war except in terms of 'we have to stay' and 'look what bully boy screwed up today.' the war is illegal and you couldn't hear that argument on most hours of air america radio.
with another presidential election due next year, people are not interested in 'rescuing' media that is not independent.
now robert parry's piece is called 'If Democrats Want to Lose...' (consortium news) and it's really worth reading.
vietnam? c.i. hit hard today (snapshot below), matthew rothschild did (linked to in the snapshot) and elaine did with 'Matthew Rothschild, John Nicholds, Katha Pollitt.' i'm not sure what to say that's not already been said so well by them.
but i will note that a lot of people ... scratch that. a lot of men who could be using their forums are playing dumb or being silent.
the illegal war was a tragedy for vietnam, it was also a tragedy for the u.s. the vietnamese really suffered and i'm not trying to act like that's not the case. but i am saying that the long term effects of vietnam have been felt in this country.
sadly, not by people coming to terms with the fact that an illegal war slaughtered millions of vietnamese. how it effected this country was that a lot of right-wingers couldn't face reality and a lot of others shut their damn mouths because the war was over and it wasn't 'nice' to point out reality.
the u.s. lost to vietnam. that is reality.
not because of the domestic press but because the vietanmese were not about to become a u.s. colony. they were prepared to fight and fight for years and years.
the right-wing tries to argue that this is an indictment of america's lack of will.
but that's not reality. the u.s. could still be in vietnam today and still be losing.
it was an illegal war and it was never going to be 'won'.
the u.s. suffered fatalities and i'm not trying to minimize that. but the long term fatality was in spine. on the left where voices silenced themselves instead of calling out the revisions when they happened.
until people are willing to fight and not shut up because it might 'hurt some 1's feelings,' we're going to continue this pattern. the reality is the u.s. lost and the u.s. was always going to lose.
the u.s. had no right to invade vietnam.
the u.s. had no right to invade iraq.
illegal wars built on lies will not be 'won'.
but we'll all forget that lesson when cowards don't call out the revisitionst's lies.
let's close with c.i.'s 'iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, August 22, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, over 80 Iraqis are reported today, the US military announces deaths as well including those dead from a helicopter crash, Bully Boy demonstrates -- even before Karl Rove departs on Aug. 31st. -- that he doesn't need a brain and wouldn't use it if he had one, while Nouri al-Maliki hears voices and sees enemies and conspiracies all around him . . .
Starting with war resistance. Camilo Mejia does a reading from his book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia at Different Drummer tomorrow (Thursday) at 6:30 pm. Friday he has events in Syracuse (click here and check out the sidebar). Today, Deepa Fernades interviewed him on WBAI's Wakeupcall Radio.
Deepa Fernades: Can you just talk us through that . . . Those moments of deciding? Of realizing "Okay, I really don't have any other option but the military?" What was going through your mind? Did you actually think, "This is crazy. And what am I signing up for"?
Camilo Mejia: Not really because -- Well, first of all, I would disagree now days that there are no options. I think there are some options. I think we need to fight for more options. But young people really don't need to join the military to get themselves, you know, out of poverty and to get themselves educated. But that was my mentality, certainly that was my mentality when I joined the military.
An important point and one that Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which Mejia was just elected to the board (as chair), will be making with a new campaign: September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. It's also a point driven home in Army of None, a new book by Aimee Allison and David Solnit -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist where you can support both the book and a strong organization. In their book, Allison and Solnit offer an easy to comprehend and inspiring look at counter-recruiting including hands on details. Mejia was mentioning how important it is for students to know there are other opportunities besides the military and the authors Allison and Solnit stress that in their book, the need to provide more "information on job-training programs, college financial aid, and youth service projects." There are other opportunities -- however, the US government doesn't spend millions and billions of dollars a year promoting that. The authors also note the opt-out portion of No Child Left Behind and since fall semesters are starting -- parents have exactly six weeks after the fall semester starts to put in writing that the US military is not to be provided with information about their children. This must be done at the start of each school year.
On A12 of today's New York Times, Sarah Arbuzzese reports on the huge drop in the number of African-Americans enlisting in the US military noting "the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001" and that the Army has seen the most dramatic decline (from 23% of the 2006 Army population to 13%), then the Marines (from 12% to 8%) and then the Navy and Air Forces. African-Americans have been opposed to the illegal war from the start in large numbers and Abruzzese notes that the most recent polling showed 83% of Afican-Americans say "the United States should have stayed out of Iraq." So counter-recruiting efforts are important and do have effects. Many veterans assist and lead those efforts and IVAW, again, will be launching a campaign next month.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, having already made clear (via the Sunni shut out of the alleged 'alliance') that the White House defined 'benchmarks' two and sixteen were out the window, Nouri al-Maliki made it even more clear that the Sunnis are not welcome in 'liberated' Iraq. KUNA reports that a list has been issued "of wanted people" which includes the names of those "currently involved in financing attacks against the MNF" according to the Interior Ministry's Abdel-Karim Khalaf who has the title "Lieutenant General". The Interior Ministry has long been accused of being run by thugs who are set upon driving Sunnis out but apparently they now have the means and capabilities to track down those "financing attacks" or, at least, to pretend they do in order to continue targeting Sunnis.
On the heels of US Senators Carl Levin and John Warner's announcement that the Iraqi prime minister's "last chance" had arrived, Bully Boy attempted a show stopping performance today by dusting off his Dark Lady lp, popped it on the turntable and sang along with Cher about just being "a Dixie girl who prays/ Some day she'll be a Delta queen/ Find a good man . . . " Possibly that was his way of entertaining the VFW? Speaking of the puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, Bully Boy pronounced him "a good guy, a good man". But it wasn't all spangles and head tosses, Bully Boy also wanted to give a history lesson and, suffice to say, he's no Howard Zinn. Mangling every known fact to humanity, Bully Boy came off like a college student dependent upon the "gentleman's C" which, for the record, was how he got through college. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted today, Bully Boy's declaring withdrawal from Iraq will cause the violence that followed when the US withdrew from Vietnam -- violence in Camobia and Laos as well as Vietnam. On the issue of Cambodia, in a speech in June, John Pilger addressed Cambodia, "I've made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first was Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia. It describes the American bombing that provided the catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot. What Nixon and Kissinger had started, Pol Pot completed -- CIA files alone leave no doubt of that. . . . The [US] troops were withdrawn from Vietnam after four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq." There's Bully Boy's actual historical comparison -- the one he won't make. To read Pilger's speech click here for Dissident Voice, click here for Democracy Now! which offers it in audio, video and text. As Saul Landau (CounterPunch) has noted of the US and Cambodia, "Between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger ordered some 3,600 B 52 raids on Cambodia. Kissinger later lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he had selected only 'unpopulated' areas of Cambodia for bombing. Somehow, between 600,000 to 800,000 civilians died in these 'unpopulated' areas. This carnage occurred before Pol Pot won power. . . . Kissinger's undeclared war against Cambodia also included overthrowing the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. A pro U.S. military coup produced an ineffective regime and subsequently led to the seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge." "Bush is rewriting history -- never his best subject," notes Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) who also notes, "he's counting the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who came to power only after the U.S. ruined Cambodia. And he's not counting the three million people the U.S. killed in Southeast Asia during the war. Just as he's not counting the 70,000 to 700,000 civilian Iraqis his war has killed, or the one in ten who have been forced to leave their homes."
David Jackson and Matt Kelley (USA Today) cite Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow saying the "historical analogies . . . don't track" because "Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other. . . . Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?" "We" would not, of course, include Bully Boy who joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam and couldn't even complete his duties there. (Note, in the 90s, Bully Boy would make comments indicating he was against the US involvement in Vietnam. That may have been the closest he ever came to making sense.) Joe Allen (ISR) noted Stanley Karnow referring to the invasion of Laos as Tricky Dick and Crooked Hank (Kissinger)'s "drastic new initiative" to distract from losing to the North Vietnamese with Allen noting: "In February 1971, 150,000 South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos in an operation called Lam Son 719. The U.S. Air Force flew 8,000 ariel sorties in support of the invasion. They advanced about a dozen miles into Laos without much opposition, then they were hit with a major counteroffensive by five divisions of the North Vietnamese Army. It immediately became a major rout, with the South Vietnamese Army fleeing back to South Vietnam . . . The Laos debacle proved that even with U.S. air and logistical support, the South Vietnamese Army was a useless fighting force. There was a rapid disintegration of the U.S. position in Vietnam during the remaining two years of the war." (That's from part three of Joe Allen's Vietnam series, click here for part one and here for part two.) Matthew Davis (BBC) analyzes the false comparison and quotes "Iraq analyst at King's College, London" James Denselow: "This smacks of spin, a last throw of the dice designed to pre-empt the anti-war lobby and justify the US's continued presence. This is an issue of how America goes to war, and how it gets out of it. It is rare for a leader in a democracy to take a country into war, and to take the country out." Click here for Thom Shanker's laughable 'Bully Boy is right and look Council on Foreign Relations and a host of War Hawks say so!" And no link to The Nation because John Nichols is apparently representing the entire magazine and most of the timid left who refuse to call out the Vietnam nonsense (Nichols zooms in Korea. Way to go, we'll all go home and watch M*A*S*H!). This is how the Vietnam revisionary history took hold to begin with, people smart enough to know it needed calling out refusing to do so. (In fairness, Nichols is apparently the only working at the magazine today.) Check instead the piece by Ron Fullwoood (OpEdNews). Or The UnCapitalist Journal which notes, "Incapable of admitting utter catastrophe in waging a 21st Century war of aggression that has left the U.S. armed forces debilitated and incapable of effectively fighting even a single theater war against a real enemy, and unable to face up to the wreck visited upon the fiscal house of the nation by irresponsible tax cuts for the rich coupled with unending, uncontrolled costs of vaporous war against a stateless band of criminal maniacs, the President of the United States of America is about to go all the way back and blame Richard Milhouse Nixon for this miserable failure of a Presidency."
Though the puppet has made no known comment on Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia, Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reports he's spitting mad over talk that he needs to go declaring, "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people." Setting the issue of the election aside, al-Maliki wasn't elected by the people and should have been tossed out in May of 2006 by the Iraq Constitution since he failed to meet the deadline to put together his cabinet (after missing it, for those who've forgotten, al-Maliki tossed out the Constitutional deadline and created his own deadline -- which he also missed). Paul Tait and Mohammad Zargham (Reuters) report that al-Maliki declared of US criticism (the reporters note it wasn't "clear if he was referring to Bush or [US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker"), "These statements do not concern us a lot. We will find many around the world who will support us in our endeavour." Really? Because the puppet was whining (when the US Congress was speaking of withdrawal at the end of spring) that the US forces couldn't leave (though poll after poll demonstrates the Iraqi people want them to). The puppet who never met a conspiracy he couldn't latch on to also began seeing a plot caused by the trip he's currently on, "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere." "Our"? It's his trip. Is the "we" also al-Maliki speaking of himself in the plural form? While al-Maliki gives a performance to rival Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert H. Reid (AP) reports that members of Iraq's Parliament "lack the votes to replace him" (maybe not) and that the White House fears no one else "could do a better job". So Iraq's stuck with al-Maliki the way the Democratically controlled US Congress tries to stick the American people with Bully Boy? Further calling Reid's reporting skills into question, he cites War Hawk Kenny Pollack -- who's been so 'right' about everything from the start (that was sarcasm). Jonathan Steele (Guardian of London via ICH) observes of al-Maliki's outburst, "In one sense, the crisis only confirms what has been clear for months. Whoever sits in the Green Zone in nominal charge of Iraq's government has little power or authority beyond its walls. Bush's political project for Iraq looks more fragile than ever."
Fragile? In some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad car bombing claimed 1 life (five wounded), a Baghdad mortar attack that wounded two, a truck bombing in the Salahuddin Province that killed 12 (twenty-five wounded), a car bombing in Tikrit that claimed 1 life (police officer, three more wounded), a Kirkuk car bombing that wounded one police officer and a roadside bombing near Flaifel left four members wounded. Reuters reports 6 killed (thrity-five wounded) in a motorcycle bombing in Muqdadiya, 20 dead (fifty wounded) in a tanker bombing in Baiji. The Baiji truck bombing death toll rose to 45 dead (eighty wounded), CBS and AP report. Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) notes the death toll has climbed to 51 and that it "leveled" Baiji's "main police station" as well as causing "neighboring buildings" to collapse while noting the toll contains "such high casualties because most residents do their shopping in late morning and the station was located on a main commerical street."
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Ahmed Hassan was shot dead in Al Riath.
Stabbings?
Reuters reports, "Armed men stabbed a female professor to death in the Shi'ite city of Kufa".
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 15 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Counting corpses that is 88 deaths and that's not all of the deaths today.
The US military announced: "Fourteen Task Force Lightning Soldiers died when the aircraft they were riding went down in northern Iraq Wednesday. Two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were on a night operation when one of the aircraft crashed. That helicopter had been carrying four crewmembers and 10 passengers. Initial indications are that the aircraft experienced a mechanical malfunction." Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) notes at least 63 helicopters have crashed (my term) in the illegal war with at least 36 being "struck by enemy fire". CBS and AP note that the deadliest helicopter crash in the illegal war took place on January 26, 2005 "when a CH-53 Sea Stallion transport helicopter went down in a sandstorm in western Iraq, killing 31 U.S. troops." Like that helicopter crash, this one too "is under investigation." The January 26th helicopter crashed outside Ar Rutbah.
The US military wasn't done -- they announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed and three others were wounded during combat operations in an area west of the Iraqi capital Aug. 22." Today's deaths brought the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war to 3722 with 64 of those from the month of August thus far (ICCC).
And finally, in media news, Jeff Zeleny and the New York Times have smeared the peace movement with a big-old-fat lie. Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama (and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful) delivered a speech to the VFW where he declared, "The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. When men and women who die in service to this country are laid to rest, there must be no protests near the funerals. Its' wrong and it needs to stop." Obama was referring to the 'vangical fringe that is the gay hating Fred Phelps crowd. The extreme right wing set. As Cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" noted yesterday, somehow New York Times' Jeff Zeleny heard that and decided Obama was talking about the peace movement: "He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: 'It needs to stop'." The print version of the story ran in this morning's paper on A11 and does not contain the error/lie; however, the story is still up online at the paper's website and has not been corrected. How many times is the Times going to smear the peace movement during this illegal war?
After Election 2006, liberals and progressives also turned away from a sustained commitment to build media outlets that would resist right-wing pressure and make sure an alternative viewpoint reached the American public.
Air America Radio went in and out of bankruptcy but remains today an under-funded operation, while progressive and independent Web sites continue to struggle with negligible financial support.
Instead, since November 2006, liberal/progressive money has poured into the political campaigns of Democratic presidential hopefuls or into "organizing." The goal of a new media infrastructure has been neglected again.
i don't consider air america radio independent. i'm not sure that robert parry's saying he does or not. but i wanted to note that before i recommended his piece (which i love) because i didn't want any 1 e-mailing me about it and saying, 'you agree with that?'
air america radio has been (hopefully it will change) the worst example for 'give money'.
it has not been independent.
sam seder refused to challenge simon rosenberg on anything. looking back, that was the wake up call for me. he's 'unbought and unbossed' he says over and over in his ads (still a dead woman's line without credit) but when he was interviewing the supposed sure-thing dnc chair candidate simon rosenberg in early 2005, he caved.
he refused to hammer on the illegal war. he refused to do anything.
people called in outraged. they blogged outraged on the show's website.
what the hell was going on?
that was the question over and over.
and what was going on was that the true side of air america was coming out. when push came to shove, sam seder played coward. can't rock the boat.
now that's just 1 example and i could make it over and over with various names.
i'm really not trying to pick on sam seder tonight, i'm just trying to make the point that some 1 who thinks of himself as strong and independent (and may be) crumpled when confronted with a war hawk that looked to be sure to be the new dnc chair.
there were no hard questions. and sam probably spent the last hour of the show (janeane garofalo wasn't on that night) explaining the interview to outraged listeners. but there was no excuse for it. and his mealy mouthed comment that if you didn't like what you heard, you got your answers about simon rosenberg. no, what listeners wanted was some 1 to represent them.
they wanted their voices heard.
air america radio has failed and failed at that over all. there are exceptions. laura flanders would be 1. randi rhodes is often another.
but, come on, they've given a job to the ultimate war hawk bob kerrey.
they aren't serving listeners.
they aren't standing against the illegal war.
baby cries a lot is gone now, running for the senate, but if he was on the air still he'd be doing the same thing he always did, arguing that the illegal war needs to continue.
that 'brave' rachel maddow refused to put on war resisters.
she was gung-ho for that nonsense of 'ask a vet' as long as the vet was pro-war. the vet could slam the bully boy for not doing this or that, but a vet who was against the war wasn't welcome. because rachel maddow spent her entire time on unfiltered arguing that the u.s. needed to stay in iraq.
these are brave voices? these are independent voices?
no.
they're voices that cower and hide. (to give credit, rachel maddow and liz winstead did not throw soft balls at simon rosenberg when they interviewed him. they actually hit hard. i can't stand rachel maddow but she did hit hard with simon rosenberg especially when he made comments that could be read as gay & lesbian issues were 'special interest' issues that the party didn't need to focus on. unless you were latino, rosenberg wasn't interested in you. he wasn't interested in latinos before the election, but after, all the sudden, he was interested.)
now simon rosenberg was dlc-junior division.
that he couldn't be called out really told you a lot.
so air america has done a lot of damage. it's not the only 1.
but no 1 i know is into donating money these days to echo chambers.
and i'd actually hear from my mother-in-law if i didn't note this.
she'd call and say, 'rebecca, i read that piece. air america?'
giving money to air america is no different from giving money to the democratic party. either way, your money gets out the talking points the democratic party wants.
now maybe that will change under the new management?
maybe, like me, sam seder looks back on that interview and kicks himself for it? or at least feels it was a huge mistake? it cost him a lot of credibility and it's something that people listening to aar back then still bring up today.
it was a defining moment.
he can have other 1s. hopefully he will.
but people who want the illegal war to end aren't going to give to air america.
it threw its all behind john kerry (with few exceptions) and buried the war except in terms of 'we have to stay' and 'look what bully boy screwed up today.' the war is illegal and you couldn't hear that argument on most hours of air america radio.
with another presidential election due next year, people are not interested in 'rescuing' media that is not independent.
now robert parry's piece is called 'If Democrats Want to Lose...' (consortium news) and it's really worth reading.
vietnam? c.i. hit hard today (snapshot below), matthew rothschild did (linked to in the snapshot) and elaine did with 'Matthew Rothschild, John Nicholds, Katha Pollitt.' i'm not sure what to say that's not already been said so well by them.
but i will note that a lot of people ... scratch that. a lot of men who could be using their forums are playing dumb or being silent.
the illegal war was a tragedy for vietnam, it was also a tragedy for the u.s. the vietnamese really suffered and i'm not trying to act like that's not the case. but i am saying that the long term effects of vietnam have been felt in this country.
sadly, not by people coming to terms with the fact that an illegal war slaughtered millions of vietnamese. how it effected this country was that a lot of right-wingers couldn't face reality and a lot of others shut their damn mouths because the war was over and it wasn't 'nice' to point out reality.
the u.s. lost to vietnam. that is reality.
not because of the domestic press but because the vietanmese were not about to become a u.s. colony. they were prepared to fight and fight for years and years.
the right-wing tries to argue that this is an indictment of america's lack of will.
but that's not reality. the u.s. could still be in vietnam today and still be losing.
it was an illegal war and it was never going to be 'won'.
the u.s. suffered fatalities and i'm not trying to minimize that. but the long term fatality was in spine. on the left where voices silenced themselves instead of calling out the revisions when they happened.
until people are willing to fight and not shut up because it might 'hurt some 1's feelings,' we're going to continue this pattern. the reality is the u.s. lost and the u.s. was always going to lose.
the u.s. had no right to invade vietnam.
the u.s. had no right to invade iraq.
illegal wars built on lies will not be 'won'.
but we'll all forget that lesson when cowards don't call out the revisitionst's lies.
let's close with c.i.'s 'iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, August 22, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, over 80 Iraqis are reported today, the US military announces deaths as well including those dead from a helicopter crash, Bully Boy demonstrates -- even before Karl Rove departs on Aug. 31st. -- that he doesn't need a brain and wouldn't use it if he had one, while Nouri al-Maliki hears voices and sees enemies and conspiracies all around him . . .
Starting with war resistance. Camilo Mejia does a reading from his book Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia at Different Drummer tomorrow (Thursday) at 6:30 pm. Friday he has events in Syracuse (click here and check out the sidebar). Today, Deepa Fernades interviewed him on WBAI's Wakeupcall Radio.
Deepa Fernades: Can you just talk us through that . . . Those moments of deciding? Of realizing "Okay, I really don't have any other option but the military?" What was going through your mind? Did you actually think, "This is crazy. And what am I signing up for"?
Camilo Mejia: Not really because -- Well, first of all, I would disagree now days that there are no options. I think there are some options. I think we need to fight for more options. But young people really don't need to join the military to get themselves, you know, out of poverty and to get themselves educated. But that was my mentality, certainly that was my mentality when I joined the military.
An important point and one that Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which Mejia was just elected to the board (as chair), will be making with a new campaign: September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. It's also a point driven home in Army of None, a new book by Aimee Allison and David Solnit -- from Seven Stories press, available at book stores, online, and via Courage to Resist where you can support both the book and a strong organization. In their book, Allison and Solnit offer an easy to comprehend and inspiring look at counter-recruiting including hands on details. Mejia was mentioning how important it is for students to know there are other opportunities besides the military and the authors Allison and Solnit stress that in their book, the need to provide more "information on job-training programs, college financial aid, and youth service projects." There are other opportunities -- however, the US government doesn't spend millions and billions of dollars a year promoting that. The authors also note the opt-out portion of No Child Left Behind and since fall semesters are starting -- parents have exactly six weeks after the fall semester starts to put in writing that the US military is not to be provided with information about their children. This must be done at the start of each school year.
On A12 of today's New York Times, Sarah Arbuzzese reports on the huge drop in the number of African-Americans enlisting in the US military noting "the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001" and that the Army has seen the most dramatic decline (from 23% of the 2006 Army population to 13%), then the Marines (from 12% to 8%) and then the Navy and Air Forces. African-Americans have been opposed to the illegal war from the start in large numbers and Abruzzese notes that the most recent polling showed 83% of Afican-Americans say "the United States should have stayed out of Iraq." So counter-recruiting efforts are important and do have effects. Many veterans assist and lead those efforts and IVAW, again, will be launching a campaign next month.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Zamesha Dominique, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Carla Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty-one US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters.
Turning to Iraq, having already made clear (via the Sunni shut out of the alleged 'alliance') that the White House defined 'benchmarks' two and sixteen were out the window, Nouri al-Maliki made it even more clear that the Sunnis are not welcome in 'liberated' Iraq. KUNA reports that a list has been issued "of wanted people" which includes the names of those "currently involved in financing attacks against the MNF" according to the Interior Ministry's Abdel-Karim Khalaf who has the title "Lieutenant General". The Interior Ministry has long been accused of being run by thugs who are set upon driving Sunnis out but apparently they now have the means and capabilities to track down those "financing attacks" or, at least, to pretend they do in order to continue targeting Sunnis.
On the heels of US Senators Carl Levin and John Warner's announcement that the Iraqi prime minister's "last chance" had arrived, Bully Boy attempted a show stopping performance today by dusting off his Dark Lady lp, popped it on the turntable and sang along with Cher about just being "a Dixie girl who prays/ Some day she'll be a Delta queen/ Find a good man . . . " Possibly that was his way of entertaining the VFW? Speaking of the puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, Bully Boy pronounced him "a good guy, a good man". But it wasn't all spangles and head tosses, Bully Boy also wanted to give a history lesson and, suffice to say, he's no Howard Zinn. Mangling every known fact to humanity, Bully Boy came off like a college student dependent upon the "gentleman's C" which, for the record, was how he got through college. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted today, Bully Boy's declaring withdrawal from Iraq will cause the violence that followed when the US withdrew from Vietnam -- violence in Camobia and Laos as well as Vietnam. On the issue of Cambodia, in a speech in June, John Pilger addressed Cambodia, "I've made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first was Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia. It describes the American bombing that provided the catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot. What Nixon and Kissinger had started, Pol Pot completed -- CIA files alone leave no doubt of that. . . . The [US] troops were withdrawn from Vietnam after four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq." There's Bully Boy's actual historical comparison -- the one he won't make. To read Pilger's speech click here for Dissident Voice, click here for Democracy Now! which offers it in audio, video and text. As Saul Landau (CounterPunch) has noted of the US and Cambodia, "Between March 1969 and May 1970, Kissinger ordered some 3,600 B 52 raids on Cambodia. Kissinger later lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he had selected only 'unpopulated' areas of Cambodia for bombing. Somehow, between 600,000 to 800,000 civilians died in these 'unpopulated' areas. This carnage occurred before Pol Pot won power. . . . Kissinger's undeclared war against Cambodia also included overthrowing the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. A pro U.S. military coup produced an ineffective regime and subsequently led to the seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge." "Bush is rewriting history -- never his best subject," notes Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) who also notes, "he's counting the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who came to power only after the U.S. ruined Cambodia. And he's not counting the three million people the U.S. killed in Southeast Asia during the war. Just as he's not counting the 70,000 to 700,000 civilian Iraqis his war has killed, or the one in ten who have been forced to leave their homes."
David Jackson and Matt Kelley (USA Today) cite Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow saying the "historical analogies . . . don't track" because "Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other. . . . Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?" "We" would not, of course, include Bully Boy who joined the National Guard to stay out of Vietnam and couldn't even complete his duties there. (Note, in the 90s, Bully Boy would make comments indicating he was against the US involvement in Vietnam. That may have been the closest he ever came to making sense.) Joe Allen (ISR) noted Stanley Karnow referring to the invasion of Laos as Tricky Dick and Crooked Hank (Kissinger)'s "drastic new initiative" to distract from losing to the North Vietnamese with Allen noting: "In February 1971, 150,000 South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos in an operation called Lam Son 719. The U.S. Air Force flew 8,000 ariel sorties in support of the invasion. They advanced about a dozen miles into Laos without much opposition, then they were hit with a major counteroffensive by five divisions of the North Vietnamese Army. It immediately became a major rout, with the South Vietnamese Army fleeing back to South Vietnam . . . The Laos debacle proved that even with U.S. air and logistical support, the South Vietnamese Army was a useless fighting force. There was a rapid disintegration of the U.S. position in Vietnam during the remaining two years of the war." (That's from part three of Joe Allen's Vietnam series, click here for part one and here for part two.) Matthew Davis (BBC) analyzes the false comparison and quotes "Iraq analyst at King's College, London" James Denselow: "This smacks of spin, a last throw of the dice designed to pre-empt the anti-war lobby and justify the US's continued presence. This is an issue of how America goes to war, and how it gets out of it. It is rare for a leader in a democracy to take a country into war, and to take the country out." Click here for Thom Shanker's laughable 'Bully Boy is right and look Council on Foreign Relations and a host of War Hawks say so!" And no link to The Nation because John Nichols is apparently representing the entire magazine and most of the timid left who refuse to call out the Vietnam nonsense (Nichols zooms in Korea. Way to go, we'll all go home and watch M*A*S*H!). This is how the Vietnam revisionary history took hold to begin with, people smart enough to know it needed calling out refusing to do so. (In fairness, Nichols is apparently the only working at the magazine today.) Check instead the piece by Ron Fullwoood (OpEdNews). Or The UnCapitalist Journal which notes, "Incapable of admitting utter catastrophe in waging a 21st Century war of aggression that has left the U.S. armed forces debilitated and incapable of effectively fighting even a single theater war against a real enemy, and unable to face up to the wreck visited upon the fiscal house of the nation by irresponsible tax cuts for the rich coupled with unending, uncontrolled costs of vaporous war against a stateless band of criminal maniacs, the President of the United States of America is about to go all the way back and blame Richard Milhouse Nixon for this miserable failure of a Presidency."
Though the puppet has made no known comment on Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia, Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reports he's spitting mad over talk that he needs to go declaring, "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people." Setting the issue of the election aside, al-Maliki wasn't elected by the people and should have been tossed out in May of 2006 by the Iraq Constitution since he failed to meet the deadline to put together his cabinet (after missing it, for those who've forgotten, al-Maliki tossed out the Constitutional deadline and created his own deadline -- which he also missed). Paul Tait and Mohammad Zargham (Reuters) report that al-Maliki declared of US criticism (the reporters note it wasn't "clear if he was referring to Bush or [US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker"), "These statements do not concern us a lot. We will find many around the world who will support us in our endeavour." Really? Because the puppet was whining (when the US Congress was speaking of withdrawal at the end of spring) that the US forces couldn't leave (though poll after poll demonstrates the Iraqi people want them to). The puppet who never met a conspiracy he couldn't latch on to also began seeing a plot caused by the trip he's currently on, "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere." "Our"? It's his trip. Is the "we" also al-Maliki speaking of himself in the plural form? While al-Maliki gives a performance to rival Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert H. Reid (AP) reports that members of Iraq's Parliament "lack the votes to replace him" (maybe not) and that the White House fears no one else "could do a better job". So Iraq's stuck with al-Maliki the way the Democratically controlled US Congress tries to stick the American people with Bully Boy? Further calling Reid's reporting skills into question, he cites War Hawk Kenny Pollack -- who's been so 'right' about everything from the start (that was sarcasm). Jonathan Steele (Guardian of London via ICH) observes of al-Maliki's outburst, "In one sense, the crisis only confirms what has been clear for months. Whoever sits in the Green Zone in nominal charge of Iraq's government has little power or authority beyond its walls. Bush's political project for Iraq looks more fragile than ever."
Fragile? In some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad car bombing claimed 1 life (five wounded), a Baghdad mortar attack that wounded two, a truck bombing in the Salahuddin Province that killed 12 (twenty-five wounded), a car bombing in Tikrit that claimed 1 life (police officer, three more wounded), a Kirkuk car bombing that wounded one police officer and a roadside bombing near Flaifel left four members wounded. Reuters reports 6 killed (thrity-five wounded) in a motorcycle bombing in Muqdadiya, 20 dead (fifty wounded) in a tanker bombing in Baiji. The Baiji truck bombing death toll rose to 45 dead (eighty wounded), CBS and AP report. Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) notes the death toll has climbed to 51 and that it "leveled" Baiji's "main police station" as well as causing "neighboring buildings" to collapse while noting the toll contains "such high casualties because most residents do their shopping in late morning and the station was located on a main commerical street."
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Ahmed Hassan was shot dead in Al Riath.
Stabbings?
Reuters reports, "Armed men stabbed a female professor to death in the Shi'ite city of Kufa".
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 15 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Counting corpses that is 88 deaths and that's not all of the deaths today.
The US military announced: "Fourteen Task Force Lightning Soldiers died when the aircraft they were riding went down in northern Iraq Wednesday. Two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were on a night operation when one of the aircraft crashed. That helicopter had been carrying four crewmembers and 10 passengers. Initial indications are that the aircraft experienced a mechanical malfunction." Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) notes at least 63 helicopters have crashed (my term) in the illegal war with at least 36 being "struck by enemy fire". CBS and AP note that the deadliest helicopter crash in the illegal war took place on January 26, 2005 "when a CH-53 Sea Stallion transport helicopter went down in a sandstorm in western Iraq, killing 31 U.S. troops." Like that helicopter crash, this one too "is under investigation." The January 26th helicopter crashed outside Ar Rutbah.
The US military wasn't done -- they announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed and three others were wounded during combat operations in an area west of the Iraqi capital Aug. 22." Today's deaths brought the total number of US service members killed in the illegal war to 3722 with 64 of those from the month of August thus far (ICCC).
And finally, in media news, Jeff Zeleny and the New York Times have smeared the peace movement with a big-old-fat lie. Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama (and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful) delivered a speech to the VFW where he declared, "The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. When men and women who die in service to this country are laid to rest, there must be no protests near the funerals. Its' wrong and it needs to stop." Obama was referring to the 'vangical fringe that is the gay hating Fred Phelps crowd. The extreme right wing set. As Cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" noted yesterday, somehow New York Times' Jeff Zeleny heard that and decided Obama was talking about the peace movement: "He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: 'It needs to stop'." The print version of the story ran in this morning's paper on A11 and does not contain the error/lie; however, the story is still up online at the paper's website and has not been corrected. How many times is the Times going to smear the peace movement during this illegal war?
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