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?
8/22/2007
8/21/2007
white house ignores congress again
kat's "Kat's Korner: Cowboy Junkies kick it up another notch" went up sunday. read it. love it. it's wonderful.
now let's talkl the white house and the scandals. ap reports that instead of complying with congress' request for documentation (as well as testimony) the white house decided to say 'can i have another day to complete my homework' as dick cheney's staff admitted they have "documents that 'may be responsive' to an investigation into a secret eavesdropping program, although it would not turn over the papers without a fight" and are asking for an extension.
ap (another ap article, no thte same 1) also notes that senator patrick leahy says the administration is now in 'contempt' but he prefers 'cooperation' so - my wording - he'll keep letting them screw him over.
an article in the new york times this morning (no link, i'm ticked off at them) had a white house flack saying leahy loves 'hyperbole' but nothing will probably come from it. true that.
peter grier (christian science monitor) reports
And this upcoming battle promises to be far more complex than a run-of-the-mill dispute over an agriculture bill, say, or tax legislation. The law in this area is unusually dense and difficult. The underlying activity is classified. One of the key administration figures dealing with the issue is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official in whom many in Congress have little trust.
alberto? what's he up to? alan maass (socialist worker) notes alberto's new power grab:
ALBERTO GONZALES justified the use of torture against detainees in the U.S. government's "war on terror." Now, the attorney general is ready to claim new powers in putting prisoners to death in U.S. jails--again, in the name of the "war on terror."
Gonzales' Justice Department is preparing to implement another poisonous provision quietly slipped into last year’s reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act that gives the attorney general the power to shorten the time that death row prisoners have to appeal convictions in federal courts.
Specifically, Gonzales would have the power to approve state requests for prosecutors to use "fast-track" procedures "that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The time limit for death row prisoners to file appeals in the federal courts would be cut in half, from one year to six months after their state appeals were resolved--regardless of new evidence of innocence coming to light. Federal judges would also face stricter deadlines for deciding on appeals.
maass notes that this power grab was stried under bill clinton but a federal court said it 'hadn't done enough to assure that defendants had competent attorneys.' the patriot act appears to have given alberto this new power. and, of course, congress is too scared to stand up to him.
why am i ticked at the new york times (more than usual)? read cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" and you'll find out the latest dump the paper of no record has taken on the peace movement.
for how campaigns can hurt themselves with their websites, check out trina's 'Radish Hot & Sour Soup in the Kitchen' and for the latest in betinna's life since learning her husband thomas friedman has another wife, read betty's 'Reality sinks in.'
meanwhile, cnn reports that the bully boy is frustrated with a do nothing leader who accomplishes zilch and whose own people don't like him. they left out the line where bully boy explains, 'i hate a copy cat.'
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Tuesday, August 21, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Camilo Mejia chairs a board, the puppet of the occupation isn't feeling the love, Matthew Rothschild explains the need for impeachment, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Camilo Mejia served in Iraq, served in Iraq well after his contract ran out and, as a non-US citizen, the military couldn't extend his contract but they chose to pretend like they could. They also denied him CO status. He tells his story Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia in which was released in May. One story not in the book, because it just happened, is that he's just been elected the chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War board of directors.
Aaron Glantz (One World) reports that IVAW held their elections during the St. Louis Veterans for Peace conference and elected Mejia with Garrett Reppenhagen explaining that IVAW "decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do." Glantz reports on IVAW's big success in Fort Drum where the local chapter is up and running and now claims 20 members and, of course, has the first GI coffeehouse in the nation (for this illegal war) with Different Drummer as well as that September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting.
Mejia will be at Different Drummer this Thursday for a reading (starts at 6:30 pm) from Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and the GI Coffee House is located in Watertown, NY (12 Paddock Arcade, 1 Public Square, 13601).
Mejia tells Glanz, "There's a sort of revolution taking place in the streets. It's not being reported by the mainstream media, but we in the antiwar movement know what's going on. There is a rebellion going on in the ranks of the military that is not being reported."
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.
John Stauber (CounterPunch) notes: "IVAW was founded in 2004 and today it is a rapidly growing grassroots, independent anti-war group with members active in 43 states and deployed on bases in Iraq. These rank and file soldiers are not partisans; they are Americans who have seen first hand the greatest political betrayal of our lifetime, the US attack on Iraq and the long occupation. Iraq Veterans Against the War are not the concoction of a liberal think tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in 2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy, criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for political gain." If only the media -- big and small -- could do the same.
Yesterday, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the Project for Excellence in Journalism "study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period."
The report, entitled "Campaign For President Takes Center Stage In Coverage," notes that during "the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war -- the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront -- filled 15% of the total newshole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%." And the report zooms in one period: "Attention to the Iraq war fell across all five media sectors in the second quarter. The bulk of the decline occurred after May 24, when Congress approved funding without including troop withdrawal timetables, a move widely viewed as a White House victory." So when the Democrats in Congress caved, the media followed the lead?
The report doesn't cover independent or public broadcast media (and focuses on TV) but to focus on that period (April through June), a few broadcasts deserve noting. Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) utilized the May 25th hour to examine Maxine Hong-Kingston and veterans efforts to explore war and peace (click here to watch/listen, here to read) and on May 11th, Moyers spent the third segment with Marilyn D. Young, editor with Lloyd C. Gardner of Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (audio/video and transcript) with Young addressing the lies that the illegal war was built upon. May 28th, Free Speech Radio News presented a a special Memorial Day look at the some of the costs of the war in US anchored by Aaron Glantz where he spoke with veterans and their families (and drew on the knowledge and experience he has as a result of devoting so much time to covering all aspects of the illegal war). June 11th WBAI's Law and Disorder (Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian -- though I don't believe Boghosian was part of that discussion) explored the topic of resistance within the US military with Tod Ensign. Democracy Now! featured many segments during that period but we'll note three: June 6th Goodman discussed the efforts to steal/privatize Iraqi oil, the 'benchmarks' and the Democratically controlled Congress with Antonia Juhasz; the May 14 discussion with Yanar Mohammed about the realities of life for women in the 'liberated' Iraq; and the June 12 interview of Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh discussing how the US military had targeted him for speaking out against the illegal war.
A few of the print media stories during this time worth noting would include Bay Fang's "The Talibanization of Iraq" (Ms. magazine, spring 2007 issue)and certainly CounterPunch and Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) have seriously and repeatedly covered the illegal war during this period. And The Nation? They spent the first six months of this year offering more feature articles on the election than on the illegal war. They also were first out of the gate with the non-stop horse race gas bagging on the 2008 elections. In fact, their first article on the 2008 election appeard online November 3rd ("The Off-Year Primary" -- ran in the November 20th print edition) -- four days before the 2006 elections had taken place. Do we want to talk about the American Idol column that got disappeared? No? Didn't think so. (Though officially 'disappeared,' you can seeMike's "The Third Estate Sunday Review " and then Elaine's "Monday" and then Rebecca's "cynthia mckinney" -- each excerpted a section of the column after it had been 'disappeared' but before it was also gone from Google cache.)
At Truthdig (audio and transcript) James Harris and Josh Scheer speak with Matthew Rothschild about his new book You Have No Rights and Harris brings up the executive order the Bully Boy issued last month noting "it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls 'stabilization efforts in Iraq,' your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you are aware of that?" Rothschild: "I have the order in my hand. I was just writing something on the computer to update our website with something on that. Yeah. If you are -- in the mind of the secretary of the Treasury -- posing a significant risk of committing an act of violence -- you don't have to have committed an act of violence. If he thinks you are at risk of committing an act of violence in order to protest the policies of the Iraqi government or the Bush administration's policies to promote what it calls 'economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq,' then the secretary of the Treasury can put a freeze on all your assets. This is unbelievable. What Bush is trying to achieve her, by executive order, are things that he can't achieve legislatively. Someone's got to put a stop to this. Congress has got to put a stop to it because he is seizing all sorts of authoritarian powers right now by executive decree."
Harris: But Matthew, let's be real for a second. Here we are, year four of this war. Given what you've seen so far from Congress, can they really make a change in this war? Can they really change the mind of George Bush?
Rothschild: They're going to have to step up to the plate sometime, or we can kiss our Constitution goodbye, because Bush is trampling all over it. Cheney's trampling all over it. What we need to happen, in my mind, is impeachment proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee against Bush and against Cheney, to make them know that they are going to be held accountable or at least there's going to be a process to try to hold them accountable, that they can't get away scot-free with all this stuff, and to tell the next president or the one after that that they can't get away with this stuff.
They will keep getting away with it as long as the media refuses to inform the public. Perfect example . . .
On August 17th when Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno spoke with reporters via a video-link, he did not simply state that there would be likely be a decrease in the number of US troops in Iraq next year (as many MSM outlets reported). He sold this as a testing 'strategy': "By conducting a deliberate reduction of our forces is what's necessary in the future whenever we determine to do that. By conducting a deliberate reduction, phased with the increase in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces, I think it significantly reduces the risk of us then losing the areas that we've been able to secure so far. That's why a deliberate plan over time I think will be most successful. " He then went on to avoid "specifics on numbers, because I think I need to leave that to General Petraues" but made clear that the escalation will most likely be ending next year. His 'strategy' is to use that as a 'test'. Which would mean the numbers could just as easily go right back up. Was he spinning? Most likely. But that is what he stated in the press briefing, that it was a means of testing (and also gave the impression that he'd always understood that the escalation would end in April of 2008).
And of course he pushed the myth (still no evidence provided, just charges) that Iran is doing this, that and everything but helping the sun rise each morning. So the news, reported by KUNA today, that a Syrian, not an Iranian, was arrested in Mosul must have led to some sobbing at Centcom.
As the British prepare to withdraw from southern Iraq, the BBC interviewed Mike Colbourne ("UK's chief police adviser") who stated of the Basra police, "The corruption that we are talking about does range from financial corruption through to serious offences such as murder, kidnap. There are a number of Iraqi police service officers who are clearly aligned to militias. I think it is fair to say that there is sectarian violence that is being committed by both police officers and other Iraqi security forces officers. That is just the truth of the situation as it is at the moment."
Staying on the topic of departures, AFP reports that US Senators Carl Levin and John Warner have released a joint statment calling for Nouri al-Maliki's government to be given one last chance: "We believe that the recent high-level meetings among Iraqi political leaders could be the last chance for this government to solve the Iraqi political crisis. And should it fail, we believe, the Iraqi Council of Representatives and the Iraqi people need to judge the government of Iraq's record and determine what actions should be taken - consistent with the Iraqi constitution - to form a true unity government to meet those responsibilities." Jonathan Weisman (Washington Post) quotes Levin declaring, "I hope the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government." Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) notes that prior to leaving for Syria, al-Maliki had another 'alliance' meeting but the Iraqi Parliament doesn't return from their vacation until September 4th (the same day the US Congress returns from their vacation) and, "That timeline leaves a narrow window for the politicians to solve major issues before the Sept. 15 report.
The report . . . Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has termed Iraq's 'progress' with regards to national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" (a more truthful term would be "non-existent") and that he repeated the lie about civilian deaths being down (apparently the Los Angeles Times doesn't read McClatchy Newspapers because that comment goes unchecked). Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus are supposed to report to the US Congress Sept. 15th on the 'progress' in Iraq (in what many assume will be words written for them by the White House). AP notes Crocker's stated "Washington's blueprint for reconciliation was insufficient to win back control of the country" but then he attempted to explain "Congressional benchmarks do not tell the whole story". First, they are White House 'benchmarks' -- pushed by the White House, adopted by Congress. Second, "insufficient to win back control of the country" pretty much says it all.
In some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad explosion that "targeted a US convoy" claimed the lives of 2 Iraqis and left four wounded. Reuters notes that the number wounded rose to fourteen and that a bomber in vest killed themselves and left eight people wounded in Falluja
Shootings?
Reuters notes 7 family members were shot dead in a Latifiya home invasion ("included three women and a baby girl").
Corpses?
Reuters notes 12 corpses were discovered in Baghdad today.
Though the bombings in northern Iraq were only last week (last Tuesday in fact), many in the media have lost interest. Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that the confirmed death toll now stands at 354 with "80 more are known to be missing" and the wounded toll is 600 while "[t]he pungent smell of the dead hangs low in this village, and not even the colorful headdresses the men have wrapped across their faces can keep it out."
The violence has created refugees -- externally and internally -- and today Jen Utz (Democracy Now!) filed a report from Damascus on refugees in Syria where she spoke with one Iraqi family and noted that "Iraqi refugees are forbidden from working in Syria, and the family's savings are running out. Plus, they tell me that life in exile is emotionally criplling, and they have no hope they'll go home anytime soon" while Omar explains to her the problem: "What's happening in Iraq is because of your president. He's the main reason. Most of the Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes and their families. They have had family members kidnapped or killed. There is no house in Iraq that doesn't have a problem like this. There must be a solution for the Iraqi people. Why don't they find a solution?"
Okay, we're doing a transition here -- external refugees are immigrants. Labor reporter David Bacon regularly covers the stories that usually don't get covered which includes immigration and he also addresses child labor such as children from the ages of 11-years-old to 17-years-old working the banana groves in the Philippines.
now let's talkl the white house and the scandals. ap reports that instead of complying with congress' request for documentation (as well as testimony) the white house decided to say 'can i have another day to complete my homework' as dick cheney's staff admitted they have "documents that 'may be responsive' to an investigation into a secret eavesdropping program, although it would not turn over the papers without a fight" and are asking for an extension.
ap (another ap article, no thte same 1) also notes that senator patrick leahy says the administration is now in 'contempt' but he prefers 'cooperation' so - my wording - he'll keep letting them screw him over.
an article in the new york times this morning (no link, i'm ticked off at them) had a white house flack saying leahy loves 'hyperbole' but nothing will probably come from it. true that.
peter grier (christian science monitor) reports
And this upcoming battle promises to be far more complex than a run-of-the-mill dispute over an agriculture bill, say, or tax legislation. The law in this area is unusually dense and difficult. The underlying activity is classified. One of the key administration figures dealing with the issue is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official in whom many in Congress have little trust.
alberto? what's he up to? alan maass (socialist worker) notes alberto's new power grab:
ALBERTO GONZALES justified the use of torture against detainees in the U.S. government's "war on terror." Now, the attorney general is ready to claim new powers in putting prisoners to death in U.S. jails--again, in the name of the "war on terror."
Gonzales' Justice Department is preparing to implement another poisonous provision quietly slipped into last year’s reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act that gives the attorney general the power to shorten the time that death row prisoners have to appeal convictions in federal courts.
Specifically, Gonzales would have the power to approve state requests for prosecutors to use "fast-track" procedures "that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The time limit for death row prisoners to file appeals in the federal courts would be cut in half, from one year to six months after their state appeals were resolved--regardless of new evidence of innocence coming to light. Federal judges would also face stricter deadlines for deciding on appeals.
maass notes that this power grab was stried under bill clinton but a federal court said it 'hadn't done enough to assure that defendants had competent attorneys.' the patriot act appears to have given alberto this new power. and, of course, congress is too scared to stand up to him.
why am i ticked at the new york times (more than usual)? read cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" and you'll find out the latest dump the paper of no record has taken on the peace movement.
for how campaigns can hurt themselves with their websites, check out trina's 'Radish Hot & Sour Soup in the Kitchen' and for the latest in betinna's life since learning her husband thomas friedman has another wife, read betty's 'Reality sinks in.'
meanwhile, cnn reports that the bully boy is frustrated with a do nothing leader who accomplishes zilch and whose own people don't like him. they left out the line where bully boy explains, 'i hate a copy cat.'
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Tuesday, August 21, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Camilo Mejia chairs a board, the puppet of the occupation isn't feeling the love, Matthew Rothschild explains the need for impeachment, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Camilo Mejia served in Iraq, served in Iraq well after his contract ran out and, as a non-US citizen, the military couldn't extend his contract but they chose to pretend like they could. They also denied him CO status. He tells his story Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia in which was released in May. One story not in the book, because it just happened, is that he's just been elected the chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War board of directors.
Aaron Glantz (One World) reports that IVAW held their elections during the St. Louis Veterans for Peace conference and elected Mejia with Garrett Reppenhagen explaining that IVAW "decided to make support of war resisters a major part of what we do." Glantz reports on IVAW's big success in Fort Drum where the local chapter is up and running and now claims 20 members and, of course, has the first GI coffeehouse in the nation (for this illegal war) with Different Drummer as well as that September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting.
Mejia will be at Different Drummer this Thursday for a reading (starts at 6:30 pm) from Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and the GI Coffee House is located in Watertown, NY (12 Paddock Arcade, 1 Public Square, 13601).
Mejia tells Glanz, "There's a sort of revolution taking place in the streets. It's not being reported by the mainstream media, but we in the antiwar movement know what's going on. There is a rebellion going on in the ranks of the military that is not being reported."
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.
John Stauber (CounterPunch) notes: "IVAW was founded in 2004 and today it is a rapidly growing grassroots, independent anti-war group with members active in 43 states and deployed on bases in Iraq. These rank and file soldiers are not partisans; they are Americans who have seen first hand the greatest political betrayal of our lifetime, the US attack on Iraq and the long occupation. Iraq Veterans Against the War are not the concoction of a liberal think tank or PR firm; they have very little funding; they are not avoiding criticism of Democrats; and they are not playing political games trying to bank-shot Democratic candidates into the White House and Congress in 2008. They are in open non-violent revolt against US foreign policy, criticizing politicians of all stripes who would exploit the war for political gain." If only the media -- big and small -- could do the same.
Yesterday, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted the Project for Excellence in Journalism "study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period."
The report, entitled "Campaign For President Takes Center Stage In Coverage," notes that during "the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war -- the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront -- filled 15% of the total newshole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%." And the report zooms in one period: "Attention to the Iraq war fell across all five media sectors in the second quarter. The bulk of the decline occurred after May 24, when Congress approved funding without including troop withdrawal timetables, a move widely viewed as a White House victory." So when the Democrats in Congress caved, the media followed the lead?
The report doesn't cover independent or public broadcast media (and focuses on TV) but to focus on that period (April through June), a few broadcasts deserve noting. Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) utilized the May 25th hour to examine Maxine Hong-Kingston and veterans efforts to explore war and peace (click here to watch/listen, here to read) and on May 11th, Moyers spent the third segment with Marilyn D. Young, editor with Lloyd C. Gardner of Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam (audio/video and transcript) with Young addressing the lies that the illegal war was built upon. May 28th, Free Speech Radio News presented a a special Memorial Day look at the some of the costs of the war in US anchored by Aaron Glantz where he spoke with veterans and their families (and drew on the knowledge and experience he has as a result of devoting so much time to covering all aspects of the illegal war). June 11th WBAI's Law and Disorder (Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian -- though I don't believe Boghosian was part of that discussion) explored the topic of resistance within the US military with Tod Ensign. Democracy Now! featured many segments during that period but we'll note three: June 6th Goodman discussed the efforts to steal/privatize Iraqi oil, the 'benchmarks' and the Democratically controlled Congress with Antonia Juhasz; the May 14 discussion with Yanar Mohammed about the realities of life for women in the 'liberated' Iraq; and the June 12 interview of Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh discussing how the US military had targeted him for speaking out against the illegal war.
A few of the print media stories during this time worth noting would include Bay Fang's "The Talibanization of Iraq" (Ms. magazine, spring 2007 issue)and certainly CounterPunch and Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) have seriously and repeatedly covered the illegal war during this period. And The Nation? They spent the first six months of this year offering more feature articles on the election than on the illegal war. They also were first out of the gate with the non-stop horse race gas bagging on the 2008 elections. In fact, their first article on the 2008 election appeard online November 3rd ("The Off-Year Primary" -- ran in the November 20th print edition) -- four days before the 2006 elections had taken place. Do we want to talk about the American Idol column that got disappeared? No? Didn't think so. (Though officially 'disappeared,' you can seeMike's "The Third Estate Sunday Review " and then Elaine's "Monday" and then Rebecca's "cynthia mckinney" -- each excerpted a section of the column after it had been 'disappeared' but before it was also gone from Google cache.)
At Truthdig (audio and transcript) James Harris and Josh Scheer speak with Matthew Rothschild about his new book You Have No Rights and Harris brings up the executive order the Bully Boy issued last month noting "it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls 'stabilization efforts in Iraq,' your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you are aware of that?" Rothschild: "I have the order in my hand. I was just writing something on the computer to update our website with something on that. Yeah. If you are -- in the mind of the secretary of the Treasury -- posing a significant risk of committing an act of violence -- you don't have to have committed an act of violence. If he thinks you are at risk of committing an act of violence in order to protest the policies of the Iraqi government or the Bush administration's policies to promote what it calls 'economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq,' then the secretary of the Treasury can put a freeze on all your assets. This is unbelievable. What Bush is trying to achieve her, by executive order, are things that he can't achieve legislatively. Someone's got to put a stop to this. Congress has got to put a stop to it because he is seizing all sorts of authoritarian powers right now by executive decree."
Harris: But Matthew, let's be real for a second. Here we are, year four of this war. Given what you've seen so far from Congress, can they really make a change in this war? Can they really change the mind of George Bush?
Rothschild: They're going to have to step up to the plate sometime, or we can kiss our Constitution goodbye, because Bush is trampling all over it. Cheney's trampling all over it. What we need to happen, in my mind, is impeachment proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee against Bush and against Cheney, to make them know that they are going to be held accountable or at least there's going to be a process to try to hold them accountable, that they can't get away scot-free with all this stuff, and to tell the next president or the one after that that they can't get away with this stuff.
They will keep getting away with it as long as the media refuses to inform the public. Perfect example . . .
On August 17th when Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno spoke with reporters via a video-link, he did not simply state that there would be likely be a decrease in the number of US troops in Iraq next year (as many MSM outlets reported). He sold this as a testing 'strategy': "By conducting a deliberate reduction of our forces is what's necessary in the future whenever we determine to do that. By conducting a deliberate reduction, phased with the increase in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces, I think it significantly reduces the risk of us then losing the areas that we've been able to secure so far. That's why a deliberate plan over time I think will be most successful. " He then went on to avoid "specifics on numbers, because I think I need to leave that to General Petraues" but made clear that the escalation will most likely be ending next year. His 'strategy' is to use that as a 'test'. Which would mean the numbers could just as easily go right back up. Was he spinning? Most likely. But that is what he stated in the press briefing, that it was a means of testing (and also gave the impression that he'd always understood that the escalation would end in April of 2008).
And of course he pushed the myth (still no evidence provided, just charges) that Iran is doing this, that and everything but helping the sun rise each morning. So the news, reported by KUNA today, that a Syrian, not an Iranian, was arrested in Mosul must have led to some sobbing at Centcom.
As the British prepare to withdraw from southern Iraq, the BBC interviewed Mike Colbourne ("UK's chief police adviser") who stated of the Basra police, "The corruption that we are talking about does range from financial corruption through to serious offences such as murder, kidnap. There are a number of Iraqi police service officers who are clearly aligned to militias. I think it is fair to say that there is sectarian violence that is being committed by both police officers and other Iraqi security forces officers. That is just the truth of the situation as it is at the moment."
Staying on the topic of departures, AFP reports that US Senators Carl Levin and John Warner have released a joint statment calling for Nouri al-Maliki's government to be given one last chance: "We believe that the recent high-level meetings among Iraqi political leaders could be the last chance for this government to solve the Iraqi political crisis. And should it fail, we believe, the Iraqi Council of Representatives and the Iraqi people need to judge the government of Iraq's record and determine what actions should be taken - consistent with the Iraqi constitution - to form a true unity government to meet those responsibilities." Jonathan Weisman (Washington Post) quotes Levin declaring, "I hope the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government." Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) notes that prior to leaving for Syria, al-Maliki had another 'alliance' meeting but the Iraqi Parliament doesn't return from their vacation until September 4th (the same day the US Congress returns from their vacation) and, "That timeline leaves a narrow window for the politicians to solve major issues before the Sept. 15 report.
The report . . . Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has termed Iraq's 'progress' with regards to national reconciliation "extremely disappointing" (a more truthful term would be "non-existent") and that he repeated the lie about civilian deaths being down (apparently the Los Angeles Times doesn't read McClatchy Newspapers because that comment goes unchecked). Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus are supposed to report to the US Congress Sept. 15th on the 'progress' in Iraq (in what many assume will be words written for them by the White House). AP notes Crocker's stated "Washington's blueprint for reconciliation was insufficient to win back control of the country" but then he attempted to explain "Congressional benchmarks do not tell the whole story". First, they are White House 'benchmarks' -- pushed by the White House, adopted by Congress. Second, "insufficient to win back control of the country" pretty much says it all.
In some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad explosion that "targeted a US convoy" claimed the lives of 2 Iraqis and left four wounded. Reuters notes that the number wounded rose to fourteen and that a bomber in vest killed themselves and left eight people wounded in Falluja
Shootings?
Reuters notes 7 family members were shot dead in a Latifiya home invasion ("included three women and a baby girl").
Corpses?
Reuters notes 12 corpses were discovered in Baghdad today.
Though the bombings in northern Iraq were only last week (last Tuesday in fact), many in the media have lost interest. Lelia Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that the confirmed death toll now stands at 354 with "80 more are known to be missing" and the wounded toll is 600 while "[t]he pungent smell of the dead hangs low in this village, and not even the colorful headdresses the men have wrapped across their faces can keep it out."
The violence has created refugees -- externally and internally -- and today Jen Utz (Democracy Now!) filed a report from Damascus on refugees in Syria where she spoke with one Iraqi family and noted that "Iraqi refugees are forbidden from working in Syria, and the family's savings are running out. Plus, they tell me that life in exile is emotionally criplling, and they have no hope they'll go home anytime soon" while Omar explains to her the problem: "What's happening in Iraq is because of your president. He's the main reason. Most of the Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes and their families. They have had family members kidnapped or killed. There is no house in Iraq that doesn't have a problem like this. There must be a solution for the Iraqi people. Why don't they find a solution?"
Okay, we're doing a transition here -- external refugees are immigrants. Labor reporter David Bacon regularly covers the stories that usually don't get covered which includes immigration and he also addresses child labor such as children from the ages of 11-years-old to 17-years-old working the banana groves in the Philippines.
8/20/2007
al-sadr claims british forced out of iraq & more
be sure to check out ruth's latest 'Ruth's Report'.
ay-yi-yi. so 1 of the creeps who used to try to find out info about me and was desperate in that 'i am your #1 fan! i love you! if i can't have you, no 1 can!' has now been repeatedly harassing c.i., sending threatening and abusive e-mails. even now, he's sent another 1. because he couldn't scare c.i. (he really wanted to get a 'please, please, don't hurt me' e-mail from c.i., if you ask me) he's now sending e-mails claiming to be in tight with the people over google and saying the common ills is going down, down, down! he's going to kill the website.
what a sick f**ck.
really.
he lives in his own demented & sick world.
i feel really awful because c.i. only replied to him (in 2005!) because i asked.
the psycho was creeping me out with his 'we were meant to be together' e-mails and i was going to be leaving on vacation any second. so after c.i. calls me and says, 'some nut is e-mailing me about you,' i asked c.i. to help me out and tell the guy i had already left and wouldn't be checking my e-mails.
i've avoided the psycho and all the psychos.
if it weren't for me asking c.i. to do that, maybe the psycho would have just gone away?
the longest e-mail he's written is something like 35K and that was a few weeks back (and the last 1 c.i. read) where he was just threatening and abusing and just this really sick, drunk, perverted piece of sh*t.
he will not go away.
he keeps e-mailing and e-mailing.
and he's so disgusting.
when he was trying to find out personal information on me, i got a picture of him and he's so disgusting.
i guess these wackos don't usually look like antonio banderas but i remember seeing the sicko's photo and thinking, 'eeeewwww gross.'
his latest threats seem the last straw. i mean what else does he have left to threaten after this?
but, even though i know c.i.'s not scared of him, it does have to take a toll, just having to go into the public account and see that wacko has e-mailed again and again and again.
in the independent of london, james macintyre's 'Army chiefs deny al-Sadr's claim of victory in Iraq' tells you that the british are denying, the british are denying! what? that, as muqtada al-sadr claims, they've been defeated and that's why they're going to withdraw. he's quoted saying, 'the british have given up and know they will be leaving iraq soon. they are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. without that they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt.'
now the key here is august 2006 and if you've been paying attention, you know what i'm talking about.
meanwhile ap is reporting that by spring or summer, unnamed military officials say, the escalation could be reduced. no link because i've got a 'virutal memory low' message on the laptop. i found it at forbes. i can't insert links but i can type it up and you can probably click on it that way: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/20/ap40375o2.html -- so try that. you'll also see ap spinning carl levin's remarks today and claiming he noted 'postive results'. here is what he said that they are leaving out: 'the purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to have the -- give the opportunity to the iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements. they have failed to do that. they have totally and utterly failed.'
i wanted to link to kat's review that went up sunday. i always start by copying and pasting c.i.'s snapshot because then i'm not looking at a blank screen and wondering how to fill it. so i have the snapshot but i wish i had taken the time to paste in the link to kat's review. i will note it tomorrow.
that's going to be it because the computer is moving so so so so slow.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, August 20, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the death of another soldier, the Dems don't debate and the moderator doesn't care, another governor is assassinated in Iraq, UK and US troops are "stretched," and more.
Starting with war resisters. This year has seen three war resisters publish their stories in book form. First up was Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale which was followed in May by Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and then, this month, Aidan Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq. Susan L. Rife (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) reports on Delgado who will "speak at various book-related events in Florida in September and October". Delgado explains, "As a child, I always thought of myself as a writer, always wanted to be a writer. . . . I encountered a lot of writer's block. So I would write whatever section seemed the most immediate to me, then once I had a bunch of little modules or sections, I'd write them together." Delgado is a reader (which always helps when writing a book). In a book discussion at The Third Estate Sunday Review, Mike noted that Delgado's "descriptions really make it come alive and he's a really strong writer," with Rebecca offering, "I think the book is a more 'You are there' approach than a reflection," while Cedric focused on the way Delgado captured his religious awakening in Iraq and Elaine comparing his writing style favorably to Lillian Hellman's noting, "He has a very good eye for physical detail but he also is very strong in zooming in on the telling incident." Rife writes, "The son of an American diplomat who had spent his childhood in Thailand, Senegal and Egypt, the former New College of Florida student was deployed to Iraq as a mechanic with the 320th Military Police in Nasiriyah and at the prison in Abu Ghraib. Outraged by treatment of Iraqi prisoners and prejudice against civilians, he filed for conscientious objector status." According to the Taguba Report, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command into the crimes at Abu Ghraib began in May 2003. As Delgado recounts on page 184-185, as late as January 2004, a commander was telling people to destroy evidence:
The first sergeant calls us to attention and then turns the formation over to the commander. The captain dispenses with the military formality and begins to rant at us immediately.
"I just came back from Brigade Headquarters with all the other company commanders, where General Karpinski chewed our asses about all these g**damn rumors going around! You all need to stamp this talk out! Immediately. Apparently there's word going around that some MPs were doing some things they weren't supposed to be doing and somebody took pictures of it all. You don't need to be writing about this to your families, you don't need to be telling them on the phone, and you don't need to be talking about it to each other. You better stop spreading these g**damn rumors!"
The commander pauses for a moment and then switches tactics, becoming suddenly congenial and chummy, "Look, we're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public. If we have a problem within the military, then we'll handle it internally. We don't need to let the media and the civilians into our business. If you have photos that you're not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don't talk about this to anyone, don't write about it to anyone back home. We're a family and we're going to handle this like a family. I don't want to hear any more of this kind of talk in my unit. You all just focus on going home in March, hoo-ah!"
Hoo-ah, we responded. The commander rambles on for a bit and then dismisses us. As I leave, I wonder what could have possibly gotten the entire base so worked up. There's no doubt now that everything we've heard about is true, and it must be even worse than we thought, for the commander himself to get on our backs about it. All a family? I laugh. We're only a family when the captain wants us to do his bidding or conceal some wrongdoing. The Army has tried that rhetoric before, talking about family and Army pride and everything else to try to get you to buy into what they do. When the Army talks about "handling something internally," it's only because they've done something so obviously wrong, they can't allow the rest of the country to see it. This doesn't surprise me. After all, if Americans back home saw Iraqi prisoners shot dead for throwing stones, saw the wretched conditions inside Abu, or saw the way the MPs dealt with the prisoners, what would they think of our glorious and righteous invasion? The truth about Abu Ghraib has to be concealed, has to be "kept in the family," because if the average citizen saw what we're doing to the people here, they would know in their guts that it's un-American.
Again, Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq came out this 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.
Veterans for Peace concluded their conference in St. Louis Sunday (it ran from August 15 through the 19th). It was their 22nd annual conference. They note that the "temperature was hot (100 degrees), the worshops were hot, the speakers were hot, and IVAW was hot!" Tim Townsend (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) reported on Dennis Kucinich's strong reception Friday noting that Kucinich declared "the U.S. Congress should force the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. But he also brought the crowd to its feet multiple times with a passionate delivery of his positions." AFP notes that Kucinich declared, "The Democratic leadership of the House and the Senate must finally live up to their responsibility and the promise they made to voters last year to end this war." This was followed with, "It doesn't take legislation, it simply requires a refusal to approve any additional funds and to use the $97 billion recently appropriated to bring our troops home as quickly as possible."
Earlier in the conference (Wednesday), Bud Deraps, WWII vet, spoke about Depleted Uranium: "We have learned that DU was first used in our 1991 Gulf War and that inhalation is the major cause of DU contamination. It has long been believed that it takes ten years or more for lung cancer to form from smoking. The NY Sun reported in an Aug. 6, 2007 article that there are increasing cancer cases being found in US troops that have served in the Gulf for as few as 2 to 3 years. For example, 40 year old Army chaplain Fran Sturart served in Iraq for a year after Mar. 2003. In Mar. 2006, she had a rare form of ovary germ cell cancer seen only before in teenage girls. Army Sgt. Lauderdale went to Kuwait in Jan. 2005. By the end of Mar. they found he had Stage 2 cell cancer of the mouth and tongue. Taken to Walter Reed on April 1, a doctor there said he had seen a 21 year old just back from Iraq with a similar cancer. Lauderdale, 59, died at Reed on July 14, 2006, a year and a half after arriving in Kuwait. Currently, the State Dept. Web says the US military cites four separate studies by NATO, the Rand Corp., the European Commission and the World Health Org - that found NO evidence of adverse health effects from Depleted Uranium! It is reported that we used over 320 tons of DU weapons in the brief Gulf War and over 2000 tons in the years 2003 and 04 alone. Massive bombings continue to this day. The Iraq environment minister confirms 350 sites DU contaminated by heavy bombing, saturating much of that destroyed nation. Frequent sand storms, helicopter take-offs and landings carry the deadly dust size ceramic particles aloft where they are being spread far and wide. Counting the Gulf and our present wars, we have had well over a million troops, contract and government workers cycle in and out of the region, many on their 4th tour, all possibly DU contaminated."
Larry Ingram (Collinsville Herald) reported last week on Roland James and Lane Anderson who made the decision to travel to the conference via bicycles and to do some from the Vietnam Veterans Against the war convention in Chicago because they trace the illegal war to the US "dependence on Persian Gulf oil". Zhanda Malone (Edwardsville Intelligencer) notes Anderson "handed out index cards" throughout the journey of "Things we can all do to prevent wars for oil" which "included drink needed liquid from the tap, not bottled water, drive and accelerate slower, walk and bike whenever possible; carpool to school and work; resist impulse buying; share, repair and care for power equipment; use manual tools; and grow food at home."
On September 15th (see ANSWER for more information) a mass protest will be taking place in DC and IVAW will lead a "die-in". This will be part of a several days of action lasting from the 15th through the 18th. September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. CODEPINK will be conducting a Peoples March Inside Congress (along with other groups and individuals) on September 17th. United for Peace & Justice (along with others) will begin Iraq Moratorium on September 21st and follow it every third Friday of the month as people across the country are encouraged to wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands, purchase no gas on those Fridays, conduct vigils, pickets, teach-ins and rallies, etc. And those are only some of the upcoming actions.
On Saturday, Julian E. Barnes and Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reported that Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno declared that Bully Boy will need to change strategy or "the elevated U.S. troop levels in Iraq will continue until this time next year". That would mean, if Odierno is correct, any departures would come in August 2008, just in time for the GOP national convention. The numbers being tossed around for drawbacks (not withdrawal) would leave approximately 140,000 US forces in Iraq which is higher than the pre-escalation total present at the start of this year. Also on Saturday, Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker (New York Times) reported on the White House's intentions regarding the September 15th reports to Congress (Petraeus and Crocker) which is to use the reports to resell the illegal war all over again and cited unnamed White House officials including one who "made it clear that the goal of the planned annoucement was to counter public pressure for a more rpaid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on 'a sustainable footing' at least through the end of the Bush presidency." On Sunday, the BBC reported UK General Richard Dannatt declaring that "the government has overstretched our armed forces" but, for some reason. Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith (Sunday Times of London) explained that Stephen Biddle, "military advisor to President George W Bush," that the British departure from Iraq will lead to "a number of British casualties" and the reporters note this is in keeping "with British military estimates that withdrawal could cost the lives of 10 to 15 soldiers." Tim Shipman (Telegraph of London) reported that British officers are listened to far less now by "America's top commanders" and quoted one "senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraues's thinking" summarizing it: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time -- more than a year -- they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties. They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control." And, along with British troops being stretched, Lolita C. Baldor (AP) reported that "the [US] Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decided to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring."
On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece written by seven active duty service members entitled "Iraq As We See It" (click here for Common Dreams, click here for International Herald Tribune -- available in full at both without registration) which noted "Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricty, telephone services and sanitation. 'Lucky' Iraqis live in communities barricaded with concrete walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal. In an environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. . . . In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal." The piece is signed by US Army specialist Buddhika Jayamaha, Sgt. Wesley D. Smith, Sgt. Jeremy Roebuck, Sgt. Omar Mora, Sgt. Edward Sandmeier, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, Staff Sgt. and Jeremy A. Murphy.
Of course the Iraqis have been clear, in poll after poll, about wanting ALL foreign troops out of their country. The puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, is among the roadblocks. At Inside Iraq (McClatchy Newspapers), an Iraqi correspondent notes the puppet's claims that Iraq is now sovereign by describing Sadoon Street in Baghdad "Anyway whoever controls Sadoon Street, its not the Iraqi government which means that our Prime Minister doesn't tell the truth which means that we are not really sovereign country. When a government can't control a street, its not a government, its only a group of puppets. When a government can't provide the minimum level of security, its just a shadow, when a government take the instruction from other places than its country, its just a shadow. Its time to get rid of all the Iraqi puppets in the Green Zone and start searching for real Iraqi" leadership.
The puppet is in Syria now after his 'alliance' proved to be such a bust. Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) reported Sunday that the country's "top five government leaders began a review of the country's de-Baathification law Saturday but appeared not to have reached an agreement on that topic or any of the other critical issues that have plunged the country into a political crisis. . . . . The lack of concrete results from meetings this week diminish hopes of creating a unified government by Sept. 15, when President Bush and Congress are to receive a report about condtiions in Iraq." AFP notes the Bully Boy has stopped mentioning 'benchmarks' when speaking of Iraq and that's because the situation is so grave and because the puppet trashed 'benchmarks' two and sixteen when he shut Sunnis out of his new 'alliance.' On Sunday, Damien Cave (New York Times) offered an analysis of the puppet noting "Some American officials privately describe him as a paranoid failure," describing US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's observation about the "pretty striking" visible Iraqi frustration with the puppet but "noted that there was as much anger within the government as outside, on the streets," while Iraqis either search for an alternative or "complain that they are not able to replace Mr. Maliki until the Americans signal strong opposition and identify a replacement."
And yet the disaster that the US government has intentionally (and illegally) created in Iraq doesn't dissuade an itching for war with Iran. Today Stephen Farrell (New York Times) observed US Major General Rick Lynch claimed that "50 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps" training Shi'ite militias fell apart when the general "conceded that no Revolutionary guard members had been captured in his region . . . The accusations came days after United States officials said the White House might list the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization."
Also this weekend came news of life in Iraqi prisons. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted today, "In other Iraq news, new images have been released showing hundreds of Iraqi prisoners packed into cramped wire cages. The video was released after Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi visited the Rusafa prison camp in Baghdad. The prisoners are held by the dozens in wire mesh covered with plastic sheeting. On the tape, al-Hashemi is seen addressing the prisoners about their conditions. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi: 'Those who are outside are no better than you, at least you have security. It is true that you do not have freedom , but you are better than many outside'." Saturday Waleed Ibrahim and Peter Graff (Reuters) reported on the "hundreds of inmates packed into tented wire-mesh cages" and the claim by Lt. Col. Christopher Garver that the US isn't responsible for the treatment or the conditions.
Turning to some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted "the governmor of the province of Muthanna has been killed in a roadside bombing. The assasination of Mohammed Ali al-Hassani is the second of provincial governor in Iraq in the last two weeks." Bushra Juhi (AP) reports that he was traveling in a SUV "en route to his office" with three bodyguards, an office manager and a driver -- along with al-Hassani, a bodyguard and the driver were killed. CBS and AP note that three people died besides the governor. On August 11th, Khalil Jalil Hamza was killed. He had been the governor of the Qadasiyah province. The Belfast Telegraph notes that both assasinated governors "were members of the Surpreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a Shi'ite group that has been fighting the Mahdi Army militia for control of oil-rich southern Iraq." As noted in Friday's snapshot, The assassinated Khalil Jalil Hamza was just replaced with Shiek Hamid al-Khudhan who is "secretary-general of the Badr Brigade".
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a motorcycle bombing in Baghdad that claimed 1 life (twelve wounded), a Baghdad car bombing that claimed 5 lives (twenty wounded), a Baghdad roadside bomb that left four wounded and a Kirkuk roadside bombing that claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier.
Shootings?
Reuters reports two police officers (brothers) were shot dead in Baiji and "a civil servant" was shot dead in Hawijia.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters reports 2 corpses (police officers) were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "An MNC-I Soldier died of non-battle related causes August 19 in Baghdad." The announcement brought the ICCC total to 49 US service members killed in Iraq this month so far and 3707 killed in the illegal war since it began." The cause of death? "Under investigation." Last week, the US military announced 17 deaths, 3 of which were Baghdad deaths that have "an investigation ongoing" (the 2 US service members who died August 16th in Baghdad and Shawn D. Henset who died August 14th in Baghdad).
Turning to politics in the United States, yesterday at Drake University, the candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination . . . met. Couldn't really call it a debate, couldn't call it a discussion since George Stephanopoulos has no idea how to moderate. For instance, a knowledgeable moderator wouldn't wait to well after the third way mark to finally get to the topic of Iraq while, at the same time, noting "I want to move on to another issue we're hearing about a lot from the voters from Iowa in the poll. More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue." Again, Steph got to that well after a third of the debate was over, close to the half-way mark. If the point's not clear, voters wanted to hear about Iraq but Steph wasted everyone's time wondering about Obama and what was said about Obama and blah blah blah useless blah. Does he have a secret crush on Obama? In the Iraq section, Bill Richardson had a question for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and there's little Steph saying he wants "Obama on that question." Does Obama need that much hand holding just to make it through public appearances?
Bill Richardson declared: "Here's my plan: My plan is that, to end this war, we have to get all the troops out, all of them. Our kids are dying. Our troops have become targets. My plan has diplomacy, a tri-partite entity within Iraq, a reconciliation among the three groups. I would have a division of oil revenues. I'd have an all-Muslim peacekeeping force, headed by the United Nations, a donor conference. But none of this peace and peace building can begin until all of our troops are out. We have different positions here. I believe that if you leave any residual forces, then none of the peace that we are trying to bring can happen. And it's important. And it's critically important that we do this with an orderly timetable. But what is key is all of the troops out -- no residual forces. You leave residual forces behind, the peace cannot begin."
This was in opposition to Joe Biden and Richardson replied, "Well, Anthony Cordesman from ABC News, a distinguished military expert, many generals agree with me that we can complete this withdrawal within six to eight months."
Biden wants to partition Iraq into three regions. Apparently he's running for the role of God. Steph wanted to lunch time poll in the midst of a debate and the results were as stupid as his efforts. Hillary Clinton wanted to make something clear.
What? Who knows. Speaking of what needs to be done, by her plan, to get troops out of Iraq, she declared "this is going to be very dangerous and very difficult. A lot of people don't like to hear that." And since she thinks they don't want to hear it, she doesn't follow up on it changing the topic to equipment. Hillary Clinton stumbled around and the point is she's not for bringing all troops home -- not before the election, not if she's sworn in January 2009. The same is true of Barack Obama. A lot of people do NOT like to hear that. Not in the Democratic Party.
Chris Dodd was left out of the discussion -- apparently Steph has no crush on him. Edwards stated that he felt there was an "orderly way [to] bring our troops out over the next nine or 10 months." Instead of following that with an explanation, running with it to demonstrate a distinct reason why anyone should support him, he instead wasted the rest of his spot playing cheerleader for other candidates. Steph then all but served the question to Hillary's clone/twin Barack Obama who gave non-answers as well but -- as usual -- made a point of whining that in 2002 he was against the illegal war. In 2002, Obama was against the illegal war. In 2004, he was for continuing the illegal war and against bringing the troops home. Once sworn into the Senate in Januray 2005, he voted for every proposal to continue the illegal war until this past summer. But in 2002, America take note, in 2002 Barack Obama was against the war -- which appears to be all his campaign has to offer.
After Steph tossed to to Obama, Dennis Kucinich declared, "We can talk about George Bush driving a bus into a ditch, but let's not forget there was a Democratic Senate in charge that OK'ed the war. And those senators who are up on this stage helped to authorize that war and they have to take responsibility for that. Likewise, they have to take responsibility for funding the war. You say you're opposed to it, but you keep funding it. I think the American people have to look at that and ask, What's going on? Now, I've had a plan on the table for four years to get out of Iraq, and Democrats in Congress have to stand up to the pledge they made in 2006 to take us out of that war. They have to tell the president now, 'Bring the troops home. We're not going to give you any more money for that war.' The American people have a right to expect that we're going to take a new direction. But, frankly, you cannot expect a new direction with the same kind of thinking that took us into war in the first place. We cannot leave more troops there. We cannot privatize Iraq's oil. We cannot partition that country and expect there's going to be peace. We need a president who understands that, one who's been right from the start, and one who has shown the judgment, the wisdom, and the maturity to take the right stand at the time that it counted most, when the American people needed someone to stand up. And I'm the one who did that."
And that was pretty much it. Less than a third of the debate was spent on the issue of Iraq. Steph declared, before Chris Dodd could even weigh in, "Let's move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah." Seth wanted to know about prayer. Apparently he thought ABC was seeking input on the 20/20 'news' special "A Presidential Confidant." And too much reality makes Steph's do drip so it was off to nonsense. But remember what Steph said at the start of the tiny Iraq section: "I want to move on to another issue we're hearing about a lot from the voters from Iowa in the poll. More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue. They all wanted to know what your plans were to get out of Iraq, and to get out safely from Iraq."
The voters wanted to know about Iraq. Steph wanted to talk prayer. Mike Gravel was cut off during the Iraq section. John Donnelly (Boston Globe) notes Gravel asking, "Why do we think that we can rule that country? This is American imperialism you're hearing up here, and that hasn't worked and it will never work."Since Gravel wasn't allowed to speak freely (interruptions and crosstalk) and since he was shut out of the previous debate, we'll note that on August 8th, he was a guest for the first hour (the only guest) on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.
Mike Gravel: It's important to be in these debates so that people can hear my voice and say that guy looks a little unusual, "I didn't know he was still alive" or "I never heard of him before." Keep in mind people who generally are over 40 who remember or are a little bit interested in politics 30, 25 years ago
Diane Rehm: You're 77.
Mike Gravel: That's right. They know who I am. I was very, very controversial. I was what they call a maverick. But also I took some very hard stands. And it's interesting, when you talk about ending the draft, when you talk about releasing the Pentagon Papers, stopping a nuclear testing on the North Pacific, starting the nuclear critique so that we wouldn't use it for, for a generation of electricity and then, at the time, I was looked at, I was marginalized by mainline media. And so now, when we look back 25 years, people say, "My God, you did a lot of courageous things." Well I did a lot of things that the media didn't buy into because I wasn't conventional wisdom then and I'm not now.
Diane Rehm: Considering the current situation in Iraq, do you believe it was a mistake to end the draft?
Mike Gravel: No, not in the slightest. In fact, I'm very proud of the fact that George Bush does not have the boots on the ground to invade Iran. They're going to have to do it with some other device. And thank God for Sy Hersh who blew the whistle on their possible use of nukes in that regard. And as you recall, in the first debate I challenged Hillary, Obama, Edwards, they all pledged that the nukes were still on the table with respect to Iran. Iran's done nothing to us. We're the -- they have have a beef with us. We destabilized. There were only two democracies in 1953 in the Middle East. One was Israel the other one was Iran. And what did we do? Our CIA and Kermit Roosevelt [Jr. -- known as "Kim"], the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, was so proud, wrote a book [Countercoup] about how we destroyed their democracy and look what -- we put in a king, then a king got lost, now we got the ayatollahs. If we would just leave the Iranians alone, they have a real interesting record of moving to democracy.
On the topic of Iraq, he declared, "I see nobody in sight that's prepared to truly end the war. And what I see is politics as usual whether it's on the liberal side let's say with Dennis Kucinich or on the middle or the far . . . right with other Democrats. But there's no, I see no will to end the war because you end it right now in the Congress with the leadership, the Democrats have taken over, and this is a tragic failure. I submitted to the Congress a procedure, a law, I call it "The Withdrawal Act" that would make it a felony and would put Bush in jail or set up a prima facie case for impeachment if he did not follow the law. The Constitution's very clear: the Congress makes the laws, the Executive has to enforce and obey the laws. But you now have to set it up so that he'll veto and how do you get this passed, this law passed? Real simple. You see, they do a cloture vote. Oh one cloture vote, two, can't do it. Stop. Or an override veto. Can't do it? Stop. That's ridiculous. The rules permit to have a vote on cloture every single day, seven days a week, and all the way through this August recess which they're all taking -- and then when the bill comes back vetoed they can repeat it every single day and, I promise you, Diane, that in twenty, forty days we will have a law on the books to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Now time is fleeting. This could have been done by Labor Day and all, I mean all the troops, would come home by Christmas.
Of Sunday's debate, China's People Daily Online sums up the Iraq section with, "A few, including Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, talked about an immediate withdrawal, while others warned that it would be difficult to mount a swift withdrawal." Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post) analyzes the debate here. Javier C. Hernandez ( Boston Globe) profiled Dennis Kucinich over the weekend in solo face time for the hour (the candidate was meeting with the Boston Globe's editorial board) during which Kucinich likened his foreign policy to Jimmy Carter's and noted that the White House was guilty of "committing a 'monstrous crime' by going to war in Iraq, pointing to what he described as hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and to questions about whether administration officials lied in making the case for war. Kucinich, who has called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, said US forces should immediately end their 'occupation' of Iraq and said a multinational peacekeeping force should be brought in to help stabilize the country."
In the Democratic forum held yesterday, the moderator repeatedly refused to ask, "WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?" Candidates went soft and fuzzy (with the few exceptions noted already). That's a waste of time. It's also much worse because Iraq is dropping off the media radar yet again. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reported today, "In media news, a new study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period."
ay-yi-yi. so 1 of the creeps who used to try to find out info about me and was desperate in that 'i am your #1 fan! i love you! if i can't have you, no 1 can!' has now been repeatedly harassing c.i., sending threatening and abusive e-mails. even now, he's sent another 1. because he couldn't scare c.i. (he really wanted to get a 'please, please, don't hurt me' e-mail from c.i., if you ask me) he's now sending e-mails claiming to be in tight with the people over google and saying the common ills is going down, down, down! he's going to kill the website.
what a sick f**ck.
really.
he lives in his own demented & sick world.
i feel really awful because c.i. only replied to him (in 2005!) because i asked.
the psycho was creeping me out with his 'we were meant to be together' e-mails and i was going to be leaving on vacation any second. so after c.i. calls me and says, 'some nut is e-mailing me about you,' i asked c.i. to help me out and tell the guy i had already left and wouldn't be checking my e-mails.
i've avoided the psycho and all the psychos.
if it weren't for me asking c.i. to do that, maybe the psycho would have just gone away?
the longest e-mail he's written is something like 35K and that was a few weeks back (and the last 1 c.i. read) where he was just threatening and abusing and just this really sick, drunk, perverted piece of sh*t.
he will not go away.
he keeps e-mailing and e-mailing.
and he's so disgusting.
when he was trying to find out personal information on me, i got a picture of him and he's so disgusting.
i guess these wackos don't usually look like antonio banderas but i remember seeing the sicko's photo and thinking, 'eeeewwww gross.'
his latest threats seem the last straw. i mean what else does he have left to threaten after this?
but, even though i know c.i.'s not scared of him, it does have to take a toll, just having to go into the public account and see that wacko has e-mailed again and again and again.
in the independent of london, james macintyre's 'Army chiefs deny al-Sadr's claim of victory in Iraq' tells you that the british are denying, the british are denying! what? that, as muqtada al-sadr claims, they've been defeated and that's why they're going to withdraw. he's quoted saying, 'the british have given up and know they will be leaving iraq soon. they are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. without that they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt.'
now the key here is august 2006 and if you've been paying attention, you know what i'm talking about.
meanwhile ap is reporting that by spring or summer, unnamed military officials say, the escalation could be reduced. no link because i've got a 'virutal memory low' message on the laptop. i found it at forbes. i can't insert links but i can type it up and you can probably click on it that way: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/20/ap40375o2.html -- so try that. you'll also see ap spinning carl levin's remarks today and claiming he noted 'postive results'. here is what he said that they are leaving out: 'the purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to have the -- give the opportunity to the iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements. they have failed to do that. they have totally and utterly failed.'
i wanted to link to kat's review that went up sunday. i always start by copying and pasting c.i.'s snapshot because then i'm not looking at a blank screen and wondering how to fill it. so i have the snapshot but i wish i had taken the time to paste in the link to kat's review. i will note it tomorrow.
that's going to be it because the computer is moving so so so so slow.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, August 20, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the death of another soldier, the Dems don't debate and the moderator doesn't care, another governor is assassinated in Iraq, UK and US troops are "stretched," and more.
Starting with war resisters. This year has seen three war resisters publish their stories in book form. First up was Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale which was followed in May by Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia and then, this month, Aidan Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq. Susan L. Rife (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) reports on Delgado who will "speak at various book-related events in Florida in September and October". Delgado explains, "As a child, I always thought of myself as a writer, always wanted to be a writer. . . . I encountered a lot of writer's block. So I would write whatever section seemed the most immediate to me, then once I had a bunch of little modules or sections, I'd write them together." Delgado is a reader (which always helps when writing a book). In a book discussion at The Third Estate Sunday Review, Mike noted that Delgado's "descriptions really make it come alive and he's a really strong writer," with Rebecca offering, "I think the book is a more 'You are there' approach than a reflection," while Cedric focused on the way Delgado captured his religious awakening in Iraq and Elaine comparing his writing style favorably to Lillian Hellman's noting, "He has a very good eye for physical detail but he also is very strong in zooming in on the telling incident." Rife writes, "The son of an American diplomat who had spent his childhood in Thailand, Senegal and Egypt, the former New College of Florida student was deployed to Iraq as a mechanic with the 320th Military Police in Nasiriyah and at the prison in Abu Ghraib. Outraged by treatment of Iraqi prisoners and prejudice against civilians, he filed for conscientious objector status." According to the Taguba Report, the US Army Criminal Investigation Command into the crimes at Abu Ghraib began in May 2003. As Delgado recounts on page 184-185, as late as January 2004, a commander was telling people to destroy evidence:
The first sergeant calls us to attention and then turns the formation over to the commander. The captain dispenses with the military formality and begins to rant at us immediately.
"I just came back from Brigade Headquarters with all the other company commanders, where General Karpinski chewed our asses about all these g**damn rumors going around! You all need to stamp this talk out! Immediately. Apparently there's word going around that some MPs were doing some things they weren't supposed to be doing and somebody took pictures of it all. You don't need to be writing about this to your families, you don't need to be telling them on the phone, and you don't need to be talking about it to each other. You better stop spreading these g**damn rumors!"
The commander pauses for a moment and then switches tactics, becoming suddenly congenial and chummy, "Look, we're all a family here. We don't air our dirty laundry in public. If we have a problem within the military, then we'll handle it internally. We don't need to let the media and the civilians into our business. If you have photos that you're not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don't talk about this to anyone, don't write about it to anyone back home. We're a family and we're going to handle this like a family. I don't want to hear any more of this kind of talk in my unit. You all just focus on going home in March, hoo-ah!"
Hoo-ah, we responded. The commander rambles on for a bit and then dismisses us. As I leave, I wonder what could have possibly gotten the entire base so worked up. There's no doubt now that everything we've heard about is true, and it must be even worse than we thought, for the commander himself to get on our backs about it. All a family? I laugh. We're only a family when the captain wants us to do his bidding or conceal some wrongdoing. The Army has tried that rhetoric before, talking about family and Army pride and everything else to try to get you to buy into what they do. When the Army talks about "handling something internally," it's only because they've done something so obviously wrong, they can't allow the rest of the country to see it. This doesn't surprise me. After all, if Americans back home saw Iraqi prisoners shot dead for throwing stones, saw the wretched conditions inside Abu, or saw the way the MPs dealt with the prisoners, what would they think of our glorious and righteous invasion? The truth about Abu Ghraib has to be concealed, has to be "kept in the family," because if the average citizen saw what we're doing to the people here, they would know in their guts that it's un-American.
Again, Delgado's The Sutras Of Abu Ghraib: Notes From A Conscientious Objector In Iraq came out this 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.
Veterans for Peace concluded their conference in St. Louis Sunday (it ran from August 15 through the 19th). It was their 22nd annual conference. They note that the "temperature was hot (100 degrees), the worshops were hot, the speakers were hot, and IVAW was hot!" Tim Townsend (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) reported on Dennis Kucinich's strong reception Friday noting that Kucinich declared "the U.S. Congress should force the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. But he also brought the crowd to its feet multiple times with a passionate delivery of his positions." AFP notes that Kucinich declared, "The Democratic leadership of the House and the Senate must finally live up to their responsibility and the promise they made to voters last year to end this war." This was followed with, "It doesn't take legislation, it simply requires a refusal to approve any additional funds and to use the $97 billion recently appropriated to bring our troops home as quickly as possible."
Earlier in the conference (Wednesday), Bud Deraps, WWII vet, spoke about Depleted Uranium: "We have learned that DU was first used in our 1991 Gulf War and that inhalation is the major cause of DU contamination. It has long been believed that it takes ten years or more for lung cancer to form from smoking. The NY Sun reported in an Aug. 6, 2007 article that there are increasing cancer cases being found in US troops that have served in the Gulf for as few as 2 to 3 years. For example, 40 year old Army chaplain Fran Sturart served in Iraq for a year after Mar. 2003. In Mar. 2006, she had a rare form of ovary germ cell cancer seen only before in teenage girls. Army Sgt. Lauderdale went to Kuwait in Jan. 2005. By the end of Mar. they found he had Stage 2 cell cancer of the mouth and tongue. Taken to Walter Reed on April 1, a doctor there said he had seen a 21 year old just back from Iraq with a similar cancer. Lauderdale, 59, died at Reed on July 14, 2006, a year and a half after arriving in Kuwait. Currently, the State Dept. Web says the US military cites four separate studies by NATO, the Rand Corp., the European Commission and the World Health Org - that found NO evidence of adverse health effects from Depleted Uranium! It is reported that we used over 320 tons of DU weapons in the brief Gulf War and over 2000 tons in the years 2003 and 04 alone. Massive bombings continue to this day. The Iraq environment minister confirms 350 sites DU contaminated by heavy bombing, saturating much of that destroyed nation. Frequent sand storms, helicopter take-offs and landings carry the deadly dust size ceramic particles aloft where they are being spread far and wide. Counting the Gulf and our present wars, we have had well over a million troops, contract and government workers cycle in and out of the region, many on their 4th tour, all possibly DU contaminated."
Larry Ingram (Collinsville Herald) reported last week on Roland James and Lane Anderson who made the decision to travel to the conference via bicycles and to do some from the Vietnam Veterans Against the war convention in Chicago because they trace the illegal war to the US "dependence on Persian Gulf oil". Zhanda Malone (Edwardsville Intelligencer) notes Anderson "handed out index cards" throughout the journey of "Things we can all do to prevent wars for oil" which "included drink needed liquid from the tap, not bottled water, drive and accelerate slower, walk and bike whenever possible; carpool to school and work; resist impulse buying; share, repair and care for power equipment; use manual tools; and grow food at home."
On September 15th (see ANSWER for more information) a mass protest will be taking place in DC and IVAW will lead a "die-in". This will be part of a several days of action lasting from the 15th through the 18th. September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. CODEPINK will be conducting a Peoples March Inside Congress (along with other groups and individuals) on September 17th. United for Peace & Justice (along with others) will begin Iraq Moratorium on September 21st and follow it every third Friday of the month as people across the country are encouraged to wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands, purchase no gas on those Fridays, conduct vigils, pickets, teach-ins and rallies, etc. And those are only some of the upcoming actions.
On Saturday, Julian E. Barnes and Carol J. Williams (Los Angeles Times) reported that Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno declared that Bully Boy will need to change strategy or "the elevated U.S. troop levels in Iraq will continue until this time next year". That would mean, if Odierno is correct, any departures would come in August 2008, just in time for the GOP national convention. The numbers being tossed around for drawbacks (not withdrawal) would leave approximately 140,000 US forces in Iraq which is higher than the pre-escalation total present at the start of this year. Also on Saturday, Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker (New York Times) reported on the White House's intentions regarding the September 15th reports to Congress (Petraeus and Crocker) which is to use the reports to resell the illegal war all over again and cited unnamed White House officials including one who "made it clear that the goal of the planned annoucement was to counter public pressure for a more rpaid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on 'a sustainable footing' at least through the end of the Bush presidency." On Sunday, the BBC reported UK General Richard Dannatt declaring that "the government has overstretched our armed forces" but, for some reason. Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith (Sunday Times of London) explained that Stephen Biddle, "military advisor to President George W Bush," that the British departure from Iraq will lead to "a number of British casualties" and the reporters note this is in keeping "with British military estimates that withdrawal could cost the lives of 10 to 15 soldiers." Tim Shipman (Telegraph of London) reported that British officers are listened to far less now by "America's top commanders" and quoted one "senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraues's thinking" summarizing it: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time -- more than a year -- they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties. They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control." And, along with British troops being stretched, Lolita C. Baldor (AP) reported that "the [US] Army has nearly exhausted its fighting force and its options if the Bush administration decided to extend the Iraq buildup beyond next spring."
On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece written by seven active duty service members entitled "Iraq As We See It" (click here for Common Dreams, click here for International Herald Tribune -- available in full at both without registration) which noted "Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricty, telephone services and sanitation. 'Lucky' Iraqis live in communities barricaded with concrete walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal. In an environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. . . . In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal." The piece is signed by US Army specialist Buddhika Jayamaha, Sgt. Wesley D. Smith, Sgt. Jeremy Roebuck, Sgt. Omar Mora, Sgt. Edward Sandmeier, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, Staff Sgt. and Jeremy A. Murphy.
Of course the Iraqis have been clear, in poll after poll, about wanting ALL foreign troops out of their country. The puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, is among the roadblocks. At Inside Iraq (McClatchy Newspapers), an Iraqi correspondent notes the puppet's claims that Iraq is now sovereign by describing Sadoon Street in Baghdad "Anyway whoever controls Sadoon Street, its not the Iraqi government which means that our Prime Minister doesn't tell the truth which means that we are not really sovereign country. When a government can't control a street, its not a government, its only a group of puppets. When a government can't provide the minimum level of security, its just a shadow, when a government take the instruction from other places than its country, its just a shadow. Its time to get rid of all the Iraqi puppets in the Green Zone and start searching for real Iraqi" leadership.
The puppet is in Syria now after his 'alliance' proved to be such a bust. Megan Greenwell (Washington Post) reported Sunday that the country's "top five government leaders began a review of the country's de-Baathification law Saturday but appeared not to have reached an agreement on that topic or any of the other critical issues that have plunged the country into a political crisis. . . . . The lack of concrete results from meetings this week diminish hopes of creating a unified government by Sept. 15, when President Bush and Congress are to receive a report about condtiions in Iraq." AFP notes the Bully Boy has stopped mentioning 'benchmarks' when speaking of Iraq and that's because the situation is so grave and because the puppet trashed 'benchmarks' two and sixteen when he shut Sunnis out of his new 'alliance.' On Sunday, Damien Cave (New York Times) offered an analysis of the puppet noting "Some American officials privately describe him as a paranoid failure," describing US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's observation about the "pretty striking" visible Iraqi frustration with the puppet but "noted that there was as much anger within the government as outside, on the streets," while Iraqis either search for an alternative or "complain that they are not able to replace Mr. Maliki until the Americans signal strong opposition and identify a replacement."
And yet the disaster that the US government has intentionally (and illegally) created in Iraq doesn't dissuade an itching for war with Iran. Today Stephen Farrell (New York Times) observed US Major General Rick Lynch claimed that "50 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps" training Shi'ite militias fell apart when the general "conceded that no Revolutionary guard members had been captured in his region . . . The accusations came days after United States officials said the White House might list the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization."
Also this weekend came news of life in Iraqi prisons. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted today, "In other Iraq news, new images have been released showing hundreds of Iraqi prisoners packed into cramped wire cages. The video was released after Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi visited the Rusafa prison camp in Baghdad. The prisoners are held by the dozens in wire mesh covered with plastic sheeting. On the tape, al-Hashemi is seen addressing the prisoners about their conditions. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi: 'Those who are outside are no better than you, at least you have security. It is true that you do not have freedom , but you are better than many outside'." Saturday Waleed Ibrahim and Peter Graff (Reuters) reported on the "hundreds of inmates packed into tented wire-mesh cages" and the claim by Lt. Col. Christopher Garver that the US isn't responsible for the treatment or the conditions.
Turning to some of today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted "the governmor of the province of Muthanna has been killed in a roadside bombing. The assasination of Mohammed Ali al-Hassani is the second of provincial governor in Iraq in the last two weeks." Bushra Juhi (AP) reports that he was traveling in a SUV "en route to his office" with three bodyguards, an office manager and a driver -- along with al-Hassani, a bodyguard and the driver were killed. CBS and AP note that three people died besides the governor. On August 11th, Khalil Jalil Hamza was killed. He had been the governor of the Qadasiyah province. The Belfast Telegraph notes that both assasinated governors "were members of the Surpreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a Shi'ite group that has been fighting the Mahdi Army militia for control of oil-rich southern Iraq." As noted in Friday's snapshot, The assassinated Khalil Jalil Hamza was just replaced with Shiek Hamid al-Khudhan who is "secretary-general of the Badr Brigade".
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a motorcycle bombing in Baghdad that claimed 1 life (twelve wounded), a Baghdad car bombing that claimed 5 lives (twenty wounded), a Baghdad roadside bomb that left four wounded and a Kirkuk roadside bombing that claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier.
Shootings?
Reuters reports two police officers (brothers) were shot dead in Baiji and "a civil servant" was shot dead in Hawijia.
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses discovered in Baghdad. Reuters reports 2 corpses (police officers) were discovered in Mosul.
Today the US military announced: "An MNC-I Soldier died of non-battle related causes August 19 in Baghdad." The announcement brought the ICCC total to 49 US service members killed in Iraq this month so far and 3707 killed in the illegal war since it began." The cause of death? "Under investigation." Last week, the US military announced 17 deaths, 3 of which were Baghdad deaths that have "an investigation ongoing" (the 2 US service members who died August 16th in Baghdad and Shawn D. Henset who died August 14th in Baghdad).
Turning to politics in the United States, yesterday at Drake University, the candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination . . . met. Couldn't really call it a debate, couldn't call it a discussion since George Stephanopoulos has no idea how to moderate. For instance, a knowledgeable moderator wouldn't wait to well after the third way mark to finally get to the topic of Iraq while, at the same time, noting "I want to move on to another issue we're hearing about a lot from the voters from Iowa in the poll. More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue." Again, Steph got to that well after a third of the debate was over, close to the half-way mark. If the point's not clear, voters wanted to hear about Iraq but Steph wasted everyone's time wondering about Obama and what was said about Obama and blah blah blah useless blah. Does he have a secret crush on Obama? In the Iraq section, Bill Richardson had a question for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and there's little Steph saying he wants "Obama on that question." Does Obama need that much hand holding just to make it through public appearances?
Bill Richardson declared: "Here's my plan: My plan is that, to end this war, we have to get all the troops out, all of them. Our kids are dying. Our troops have become targets. My plan has diplomacy, a tri-partite entity within Iraq, a reconciliation among the three groups. I would have a division of oil revenues. I'd have an all-Muslim peacekeeping force, headed by the United Nations, a donor conference. But none of this peace and peace building can begin until all of our troops are out. We have different positions here. I believe that if you leave any residual forces, then none of the peace that we are trying to bring can happen. And it's important. And it's critically important that we do this with an orderly timetable. But what is key is all of the troops out -- no residual forces. You leave residual forces behind, the peace cannot begin."
This was in opposition to Joe Biden and Richardson replied, "Well, Anthony Cordesman from ABC News, a distinguished military expert, many generals agree with me that we can complete this withdrawal within six to eight months."
Biden wants to partition Iraq into three regions. Apparently he's running for the role of God. Steph wanted to lunch time poll in the midst of a debate and the results were as stupid as his efforts. Hillary Clinton wanted to make something clear.
What? Who knows. Speaking of what needs to be done, by her plan, to get troops out of Iraq, she declared "this is going to be very dangerous and very difficult. A lot of people don't like to hear that." And since she thinks they don't want to hear it, she doesn't follow up on it changing the topic to equipment. Hillary Clinton stumbled around and the point is she's not for bringing all troops home -- not before the election, not if she's sworn in January 2009. The same is true of Barack Obama. A lot of people do NOT like to hear that. Not in the Democratic Party.
Chris Dodd was left out of the discussion -- apparently Steph has no crush on him. Edwards stated that he felt there was an "orderly way [to] bring our troops out over the next nine or 10 months." Instead of following that with an explanation, running with it to demonstrate a distinct reason why anyone should support him, he instead wasted the rest of his spot playing cheerleader for other candidates. Steph then all but served the question to Hillary's clone/twin Barack Obama who gave non-answers as well but -- as usual -- made a point of whining that in 2002 he was against the illegal war. In 2002, Obama was against the illegal war. In 2004, he was for continuing the illegal war and against bringing the troops home. Once sworn into the Senate in Januray 2005, he voted for every proposal to continue the illegal war until this past summer. But in 2002, America take note, in 2002 Barack Obama was against the war -- which appears to be all his campaign has to offer.
After Steph tossed to to Obama, Dennis Kucinich declared, "We can talk about George Bush driving a bus into a ditch, but let's not forget there was a Democratic Senate in charge that OK'ed the war. And those senators who are up on this stage helped to authorize that war and they have to take responsibility for that. Likewise, they have to take responsibility for funding the war. You say you're opposed to it, but you keep funding it. I think the American people have to look at that and ask, What's going on? Now, I've had a plan on the table for four years to get out of Iraq, and Democrats in Congress have to stand up to the pledge they made in 2006 to take us out of that war. They have to tell the president now, 'Bring the troops home. We're not going to give you any more money for that war.' The American people have a right to expect that we're going to take a new direction. But, frankly, you cannot expect a new direction with the same kind of thinking that took us into war in the first place. We cannot leave more troops there. We cannot privatize Iraq's oil. We cannot partition that country and expect there's going to be peace. We need a president who understands that, one who's been right from the start, and one who has shown the judgment, the wisdom, and the maturity to take the right stand at the time that it counted most, when the American people needed someone to stand up. And I'm the one who did that."
And that was pretty much it. Less than a third of the debate was spent on the issue of Iraq. Steph declared, before Chris Dodd could even weigh in, "Let's move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah." Seth wanted to know about prayer. Apparently he thought ABC was seeking input on the 20/20 'news' special "A Presidential Confidant." And too much reality makes Steph's do drip so it was off to nonsense. But remember what Steph said at the start of the tiny Iraq section: "I want to move on to another issue we're hearing about a lot from the voters from Iowa in the poll. More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue. They all wanted to know what your plans were to get out of Iraq, and to get out safely from Iraq."
The voters wanted to know about Iraq. Steph wanted to talk prayer. Mike Gravel was cut off during the Iraq section. John Donnelly (Boston Globe) notes Gravel asking, "Why do we think that we can rule that country? This is American imperialism you're hearing up here, and that hasn't worked and it will never work."Since Gravel wasn't allowed to speak freely (interruptions and crosstalk) and since he was shut out of the previous debate, we'll note that on August 8th, he was a guest for the first hour (the only guest) on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.
Mike Gravel: It's important to be in these debates so that people can hear my voice and say that guy looks a little unusual, "I didn't know he was still alive" or "I never heard of him before." Keep in mind people who generally are over 40 who remember or are a little bit interested in politics 30, 25 years ago
Diane Rehm: You're 77.
Mike Gravel: That's right. They know who I am. I was very, very controversial. I was what they call a maverick. But also I took some very hard stands. And it's interesting, when you talk about ending the draft, when you talk about releasing the Pentagon Papers, stopping a nuclear testing on the North Pacific, starting the nuclear critique so that we wouldn't use it for, for a generation of electricity and then, at the time, I was looked at, I was marginalized by mainline media. And so now, when we look back 25 years, people say, "My God, you did a lot of courageous things." Well I did a lot of things that the media didn't buy into because I wasn't conventional wisdom then and I'm not now.
Diane Rehm: Considering the current situation in Iraq, do you believe it was a mistake to end the draft?
Mike Gravel: No, not in the slightest. In fact, I'm very proud of the fact that George Bush does not have the boots on the ground to invade Iran. They're going to have to do it with some other device. And thank God for Sy Hersh who blew the whistle on their possible use of nukes in that regard. And as you recall, in the first debate I challenged Hillary, Obama, Edwards, they all pledged that the nukes were still on the table with respect to Iran. Iran's done nothing to us. We're the -- they have have a beef with us. We destabilized. There were only two democracies in 1953 in the Middle East. One was Israel the other one was Iran. And what did we do? Our CIA and Kermit Roosevelt [Jr. -- known as "Kim"], the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, was so proud, wrote a book [Countercoup] about how we destroyed their democracy and look what -- we put in a king, then a king got lost, now we got the ayatollahs. If we would just leave the Iranians alone, they have a real interesting record of moving to democracy.
On the topic of Iraq, he declared, "I see nobody in sight that's prepared to truly end the war. And what I see is politics as usual whether it's on the liberal side let's say with Dennis Kucinich or on the middle or the far . . . right with other Democrats. But there's no, I see no will to end the war because you end it right now in the Congress with the leadership, the Democrats have taken over, and this is a tragic failure. I submitted to the Congress a procedure, a law, I call it "The Withdrawal Act" that would make it a felony and would put Bush in jail or set up a prima facie case for impeachment if he did not follow the law. The Constitution's very clear: the Congress makes the laws, the Executive has to enforce and obey the laws. But you now have to set it up so that he'll veto and how do you get this passed, this law passed? Real simple. You see, they do a cloture vote. Oh one cloture vote, two, can't do it. Stop. Or an override veto. Can't do it? Stop. That's ridiculous. The rules permit to have a vote on cloture every single day, seven days a week, and all the way through this August recess which they're all taking -- and then when the bill comes back vetoed they can repeat it every single day and, I promise you, Diane, that in twenty, forty days we will have a law on the books to withdraw the troops from Iraq. Now time is fleeting. This could have been done by Labor Day and all, I mean all the troops, would come home by Christmas.
Of Sunday's debate, China's People Daily Online sums up the Iraq section with, "A few, including Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, talked about an immediate withdrawal, while others warned that it would be difficult to mount a swift withdrawal." Anne E. Kornblut (Washington Post) analyzes the debate here. Javier C. Hernandez ( Boston Globe) profiled Dennis Kucinich over the weekend in solo face time for the hour (the candidate was meeting with the Boston Globe's editorial board) during which Kucinich likened his foreign policy to Jimmy Carter's and noted that the White House was guilty of "committing a 'monstrous crime' by going to war in Iraq, pointing to what he described as hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and to questions about whether administration officials lied in making the case for war. Kucinich, who has called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, said US forces should immediately end their 'occupation' of Iraq and said a multinational peacekeeping force should be brought in to help stabilize the country."
In the Democratic forum held yesterday, the moderator repeatedly refused to ask, "WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?" Candidates went soft and fuzzy (with the few exceptions noted already). That's a waste of time. It's also much worse because Iraq is dropping off the media radar yet again. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reported today, "In media news, a new study shows corporate news coverage of the Iraq war has dropped sharply in the last four months. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Iraq war accounted for just fifteen percent of news coverage, down from twenty-two percent earlier this year. Network evening news coverage of the war went from forty-percent to nineteen percent. The Democratic and Republican presidential campaign emerged as the most-covered issue over the same period."
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