wall st. journal, via truthout, reports that john murtha (u.s. democratic congress member) plans to introduce legislation to shut down abu ghraib. c.i. covers ted kennedy's speech today (way to go, ted!) (but he's always spoken out against the war - to give him the credit he's earned) and the incoming chair of the armed service committee in the house, so possibly, we're seeing a shift among the democrats? maybe they're about to actually lead?
before we pin all our hopes on that, let me note dave lindorff's 'Reversion to Form' (counterpunch):
Reverting to form, Democrats in Congress are cautiously trying to have it both ways so as to avoid having to take a stand on any of the issues that matter.
Faced with President Bush's own disastrous decision to go "double or nothing" on his losing Iraq War by adding another 20,000 or more troops to the front, House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid chose towrite a letter to the White House "urging" the president not to go that route.
The idea seems to be that if he goes ahead and sends the additional troops into the cauldron and things go from bad to worse, Pelosi and Reid will be able to say that they opposed the idea, while they will be immune from right-wing charges that they undermined the commander in chief, since they didn't do anything concrete to block his insane plan.
The truth is that Democrats could, if they had any principle and if they honored the wishes of the electorate, bring U.S. involvement in the Iraq War to a screeching halt. How? They could vote to cut off all funding for the Iraq War except for the costs of safely withdrawing all troops from the country. Nobody could accuse them, were they to do this, with putting American troops at risk. But they would have to face those who would accuse them of "cutting and running."
Democrats also have the votes to put an end to Bush's serial trashing of cherished civil liberties. Instead of grumbling about violations of the First and Fourth Amendment, as Democrats have been doing so ineffectively now for five years, they could simply vote to revoke the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, approved almost without objection by both houses of Congress back in September 2001 (there is no veto for resolutions). It is that resolution which Bush and his mob attorneys in the White House and "Justice" Department have been citing as justification for the president's assumption of dictatorial powers, such as the power to revoke habeas corpus rights of American citizens, the power to authorize torture and detention without trial, the power to kidnap and render people, the power to declare American citizens to be "unlawful combatants" devoid of citizenship rights, the power to invalidate duly passed acts of Congress, and the power to ignore federal laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Revoke the 2001 AUMF and the president would have no grounds, fraudulent and unconstitutional as they in any case are, to claim that the nation is in a state of war and that he, as commander in chief, is no longer constrained by the Constitution.
are they going to lead us away from the precipice or just follow bully boy off the cliff? i guess we'll soon know. tomorrow i'm planning to write about monday's democracy now. i had intended to write about it tonight but i've spend one hour and 26 minutes attempting to log in tonight. i kept getting error messages and i see that blogger/blogspot intends to go down AGAIN tonight. i do want to address 1 guest (an idiot) and note norman but i'm beyond fading tonight.
at the risk of hearing via e-mail from the man elaine's dubbed 'professional ass,' let me note that even if i do take a nap during the day - and i do - i generally get really tired at night. most nights, i'm ready for bed before nora barrows-friedman is done with an interview. (that's not a reflection on her. i'm just pregnant and pregnant a bit later than 1 might normally expect.) dennis bernstein is back. i guess he was on a long vacation (hopefully, he wasn't sick. he's discussed his health before on air). i meant to note that yesterday but had so little time because, like tonight, blogger/blogspot was going down.
i'll be honest, the ass' e-mail really did hurt my feelings. but that only happens once.
c.i. panned through the fool's gold that is the new york times and noted this nugget today:
By law, Congress can limit the nature of troop deployments, cap the size of military deployments and cut financing for existing or prospective deployments.
i'll note that the reporter who got truth in print was jeff zelenay but i'm in no mood to link to the paper of misrecord tonight. on the paper of misrecord, note this from editor & publisher about the laughable paper's silence on bully boy's planned escalation:
Tuesday it breaks that silence, with an editorial that expresses skepticism about the results of any escalation and whether the president would justify it adequately -- but stopping well short of opposing the idea. The Times, in fact, has called for a last-shot troop increase before. Now it says Bush's plan "needs to concentrate enough forces in Baghdad to bring some security to streets and neighborhoods, giving Iraq's leaders one last opportunity to try to bargain their way out of civil war....[']
uh, was there any point of the touchy-feel crap they ran by 1 of their EDITORS about how her husband died in iraq? i guess not. i guess the paper is just thrilled to the toes to be useless crap day after day.
erika read elaine's post and had already e-mailed before i started to blogging to say: 'screw the ass. no man has any idea of how much energy even the most normal pregnancy requires.' thanks for that, erika.
now here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot' and my advice for cowards is don't think you can lynch mob ehren watada without c.i. calling you on your crap:
Tuesday, January 9, 2006. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, more legal news for US soldiers, a newspaper attempts to 'whip' a war resister 'into line,' US Senator Ted Kennedy stands loudly against more troops giving their lives in Bully Boy's illegal war, a slaughter takes place on a residential street in Baghdad and the US press rushes to 'report' from one side, a UNICEF worker is shot dead, and Bully Boy wants a 'fresh start' after promoting, selling and starting an illegal war nearly four years ago.
Starting with US war resister Ehren Watada who, in June 2006, became the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to the illegal war. Last Thursday, at the Fort Lewis Army, a military pretrial, presided over by Lt. Col. John Head, heard arguments to outline the scope of the scheduled February 5th court-martial.
Today, the supposedly educated (if not enlightened) members of The Seattle Times editorial board issued their own journalistic ruling -- one that they apparently hammered out with bully clubs. Representing the finest of mob mentalities, if not journalism or democracy, The Seattle Times argues that Ehren Watada should be convicted on both counts (missing deployment and conduct unbecoming an officer) because . . . well the system just won't survive otherwise. Having killed the invidual to "save" what they see as a weak and dottering system (otherwise Watada wouldn't have to be convicted -- if they had any faith in the strength and resiliency of the American system, the Nervous Nels wouldn't have argued for his conviction for the good of the system), they embrace a long history of knuckle draggers who chose expediency over true democracy because there's nothing like a moral imperative to have the most closed minded reaching for the white sheets and rope.
For the system to struggle on, the editorial board argues, the individual must be stamped out and the accusers of Socrates couldn't have said it better in ancient times. If they've learned anything from their (limited) education, the only evidence is that, while calling for a judicial death, they stop short of imprisoment because they fear a martyr who could galvanize a public. So, by their rudimentary and flawed logic, Ehren Watada must be found guilty to give pause to any other service member that might follow in his footsteps thereby defending the "good Nazi" argument overruled in the Nuremberg Trials which found that following orders was not a valid excuse and that each soldier is an individual agent responsible for his or her own actions.
The Seattle Times sees service members as worker bees and one wonders how far they'd be willing to carry out their flawed logic. Were it The Berlin Times in the immediate aftermath of WWII would they editorialize in favor of Nazis sending Jews, gypsies and gays to the gas chambers? Doubtful because the only basis for their stand today is that the individual must be stamped out at all costs due to the board's own deluded belief in the weakness of the American system. (Possibly they'd term it "the American experiment"?). In an apparent correction to Max Weber (and a dismissal of Robert K. Merton's work on Universalism), the editorial board argues that the state must not only use military might as they see fit but also narrowly define "justice" when it suits their own purposes.
In a decade of journalistic cowardice, the editorial echoes many of the themes that saw the punishment of those journalists who, in real time, called out the Bully Boy for his Bunny-Fu-Fu hop around the continental United States on September 11th for what it was (cowardice), and saw a rush to pass off press releases as investigative journalism. The system will survive, it always does, it's modern day journalism that has decayed.
In the real world, where a spine is required to stand erect, Ehren Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military and The Seattle Times hoped for guilty verdict hasn't stopped the movement which includes people such as Watada, Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress next week (MLK day).
As Bernard Weiner (New Zeland's Scoop) notes, "The refusal of Lieutenant Ehren Watada to return to Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg of resistance inside the officer corps, and among the rank-and-file troops as well: Hundreds of on-duty soldiers have signed a petition calling for "redress," urging the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq."
As Bully Boy prepares for his US primetime address tomorrow (which, as Cedric and Wally point out, shouldn't startel viewers usually tuned in at that hour to The Biggest Loser, Criminal Minds and Lost), a new poll on escalation (sending more US troops to Iraq) is out. CBS helpfully (that's sarcasm) leads with a 48% to 45% split (48% opposed to sending more US troops into Iraq for the "short term') and then gets around to noting the obvious, "A majority -- 59 percent -- would prefer to see troop levels either reduced (30 percent) or brought to zero with a full withdrawal (29 percent)." Though Michael R. Gordon and others in the mainstream media can wax it on about the escalation, where are the articles (or editiorials) reflecting the American people's majority belief that it's time to bring troops home?
The same poll finds the American people better able to articulate the current state of the illegal war -- 71% believe the war is "going badly" and 72% disapprove of Bully Boy's " handling of the war."
Proving that the escalation is not just pie-in-the-sky dreaming from a cracked mind, Estes Thompson (AP) reports the an unnamed US Defense Department official has confirmed the escalation noting that "3,500 soliders of the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division" who are waiting in Kuwait "will be the first to move into Iraq" and that "[u]p to 20,000" other "troops will be put on alert and be prepared to deploy under the" Bully Boy's "plan" while March should see "about 17,400 Marines from Camp Lejeune are expected to be in Iraq as well." Ewen MacAskill (Guardian of London) reports: "As part of what could be Mr Bush's last Iraq gamble, the White House is trying to present the revised policy as a fresh start." In American society, convicts are supposed to get a fresh start . . . of course, that's generally after they've served time.
Julian E. Barnes (Los Angeles Times) reports that the escalation would require overturning policies and utilizing the National Guard for "lengthy second tours in Iraq" which may prove"controversial among state governors, who share authority over the Guard, and could heighten concerns in Congress over the war and Bush's plans for a troop increase."
And where is the US Congress?
As Jeff Zeleny (New York Times) reminded today: "By law, Congress can limit the nature of troop deployments, cap the size of military deployments and cut financing for existing or prospective deployments." Following Speaker of the House of Representative's Nancy Pelosi's lead on Sunday, others are beginning to issue stronger statements. (Others, of course, do not include Joe Biden.) Kate Phillips (New York Times) blogs that US Senator Edward Kennedy spoke this afternoon at the National Press Club where he termed the illegal war "George Bush's Vietnam." CBS and AP note that Kennedy announced he was "introducing a bill to block Mr. Bush from sending additional troops to Iraq without the consent of Congress." Susan Cornwell (Reuters) highlights this section of Kennedy's speech: "My bill will say that no additional troops can be sent and no additional dollars can be spent on such an escalation, unless and until Congress approves the president's plan." CNN reports that Kennedy sees the legislation as Congressional attempt "to reclaim the rightful role of Congress and the people's right to a full voice in the president's plan to send more troops to Iraq."
From Kennedy's speech (posted in full by Phillips):
As the election in November made clear, the vast majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and an even greater number oppose sending even more troops to Iraq today.
Families like the Harts and all Americans deserve a voice in that profound decision. Our Constitution gives them that right. The President is Commander-in-Chief, but in our democracy he is still accountable to the people. Our system of checks and balances gives Congress -- as the elected representatives of the people -- a central role in decisions on war and peace.
Today, therefore, I am introducing legislation to reclaim the rightful role of Congress and the people's right to a full voice in the President's plan to send more troops to Iraq. My bill will say that no additional troops can be sent and no additional dollars can be spent on such an escalation, unless and until Congress approves the President's plan.
My proposal is a straightforward exercise of the power granted to Congress by Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. There can be no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide whether to fund military action. And Congress can demand a justification from the President for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out.
This bill will give all Americans -- from Maine to Florida to California to Alaska and Hawaii -- an opportunity to hold the President accountable for his actions.
The speech comes as Richard Borreca (Honlulu Star-Bulletin) reports that the incoming chairof the US House's Armed Service Committee, Neil Abercrombie, stated, ""We are not going to fund any surges. We are not going to support expanding this war." In the interview, Abercrombie voices strong criticsm of US Secretary of State Condi Rice and says of the expected testimony before the Armed Service Committee of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "My question for Gates? What do they propose to do now? That was not obvious four years ago, and what will they propose that is different from the wrong path they have been following all these years?" Appears not everyone is willing to act as though the illegal war wasn't devised by the Bully Boy and a 'fresh start' occurs just because the Bully Boy says so.
In Iraq?
Bombings?
Reuters reports: "A house in the volatile Shi'ite district of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad was blown up and local residents said it was caused by a U.S. air strike. Doctors showed journalists the bodies of two men, a woman and two children they said died in the house. The U.S. military had no immediate comment." Reuters also notes a mortar attack in Mahmudiya that took one life and left three other family members wounded. AP reports two roadside bombs in Baghdad, one wounded a police officer, the other "wounded an 8-year-old girl."
Shootings?
UNICEF notes the shooting death of one of their own, Janan Jabero ("a 52-year-old Iraqi national") who was killed as he was driving through Baghdad and leaves behind two children and a wife -- "Roger Wright, UNICEF Representative for Iraq, says: 'Janan Jabero was a brilliant engineer and had been a key part of UNICEF's school rehabilitation programme in Iraq since 1999. His death has cost Iraq's children a staunch advocate and we deeply mourn his loss'."
Corpses?
Reuters notes 40 corpses discovered in Baghdad and six in Mosul.
In "Who new Baghdad was a seaside port?" news (it isn't), today a plane crashed at Baghdad International and the AP states that the 35 who died on board ("29 Turks, . . . on American, three from Oldova and on each from Russia and Ukraine") died, quoting "a Foreign Ministry official," due to "heavy fog." Remember that when flying into Phoenix. (Well maybe the 'fog' derived from the much talked of plans to encircle Baghdad with a 'moat' for 'security' reasons.)
In "I can't believe it's butter" news, Haifa Street, a residential street in Baghdad (though AP prefers "combat zone" which distinguishes it from any other street in Baghdad how?), was the site of a major assault. CBS and AP quote Iraqi government flack Ali al-Dabbagh stating, "God willing, Haifa Street will never threaten the Iraqi people again" to which the world responds, "They read Gone With The Wind in Baghdad?" Though translanted in many languages (including 24 times in Spanish, 19 times in Chinese) there's no record of it being translated into Arabic so let's help Ali al-Dabbagh by responding with the most famous line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." CBS News' Lara Logan notes that, despite today's full out assault, "What is particularly interesting about this is that for two years the U.S. military has held the street up as a part of their success in Baghdad. There was much violence along Haifa Street two years ago, and a deal was made between the Iraqis and insurgents living there to keep everything quiet as long as they didn't attack in that area. That deal now seems to be off." That is interesting, equally interesting is how CBS, CNN and everyone rushes in to prop up the joint-organization as an Iraqi call as if we're supposed to all believe now that the occupying force (US) doesn't call the shots. Equally interesting is the lack of skepticism and the (over) reliance upon what military flacks say occurred. Apparently, were the press not spoonfed, it would starve. CNN doesn't even present the qualifier "suspected" before using the catch-all "insurgents" (50 Iraqis died, at least 50, in the blood bath -- war planes, tanks, guns). Oh well, as Eason Jordan demonstrated some time ago, truth is something you tell only after a despot falls. (See Bonnie M. Anderson's News Flash.)
Turning to legal news, Reuters reports that Juston Graber has pleaded guilty to "aaggravated assault with a dangerous weapon" (and only to that charge) for his actions in the May 9, 2006 murders of three Iraqis near Tikrit and will now be expected to testify against the other three US soldiers (Raymond Girouard, William Hunsaker and Corey Clagett) whom military prosecutors say released Iraqis they had apprehended with the intent to then kill the three Iraqis with the cover of 'they were trying to escape.'
Meanwhile, Ryan Lenz (AP) reports the latest on the rape of fourteen-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the murder of her, her five-year-old sister, and both of her parents on March 12, 2006 by US soldiers. (James Barker has confessed to his crimes and will be testifying against others 'alleged' to have been involved.) Lenz reports that three months prior to the crimes, "homicidal ideations" were detected in Green by the Army Combat Stress Team ("Dec. 21, 2005") and they were . . . 'treated' with "several small doses of Seroquel -- a drug to regulate his mood" while he was instructed "to get some sleep" which obviously was a modern medicine at its finest (that was sarcasm). Lenz notes that, "If the charges are true . . . the attack would be among the most horrific instances of criminal behavoir by American troops in the nearly four-year-old war. It also would represent a worst-case scenario for the military's much-criticized practice of keeping mentally and emotionally unfit personnel in the killing fields of Iraq." But why stop there? Green, who will be tried in a civilian court because he'd already been discharged by the military when the realities came to light, was recruited despite having no high school degree and despite going from jail to the military -- he signed a "'moral' character waiver" which allowed him to enlist despite a reported history of prior drug and alcohol related offenses.
Lenz recounts the basics that emerged during the Article 32 hearings and James P. Barker's court hearing where he admitted his own crimes:
The plot to rape and kill was hatched as the soldiers hit golf balls at a checkpoint. They had seen the older daughter on patrols in the area. After drinking whiskey bought from Iraqi policemen, they masked their faces and crept through backyards in afternoon daylight to get to the family's home.
They knew the family kept a gun in one bedroom for protection.Once in the house, Green herded the father, mother and 5-year-old daughter to another room, closed the door and shot them dead. Green had blood on his clothes and boots when he returned.
Green and at least two others took turns raping the other daughter before killing her with the family's AK-47. They set her body on fire with kerosene dumped from a lamp in the kitchen in an effort to hide evidence.
Recounted primarily because independent media has been too busy to report it.
In news from Iraq, Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily (IPS) report on a ten-year-old boy, Yassir, playing with a toy gun becoming the target of US troops who pursued the child back to his house "and smashed almost everything in it" and quote a witness who stated that this came "after beating Yassir and his uncle hard, and they spoke the nastiest words." Hearts and minds and war crimes apparently.
1/09/2007
1/08/2007
thaw on war (theater special - wbai) & law & disorder on guantanamo
okay, right now, on WBAI this is playing:
Monday, January 8, 9-11pm
THEATER SPECIAL: THAW ON THE AIR
Member theater companies of THAW (Theatres Against War) perform an evening of dramatic readings curated by Cynthia Croot.
i hope you're listening. i am but i had the worst problem with the stream online and had given up early on. then flyboy suggested i call the gang thinking they might have an idea. c.i. said, 'hang up, i'm calling you back on my cell phone.' c.i. hates streams to begin with and, it turned out, a friend had the phone next to the radio. that was on speaker phone. so i could listen, c.i.'s cell phone was next to c.i.'s speakerphone.
flyboy and i put it on speakerphone and we're listening now. which really seems crazy when you think too much about it. i mean, c.i.'s listened to special programs on wbai that way long before the internet. and here's the internet come along and c.i.'s still listening that way and, right now, i'm tagging off that.
i hope the reason the stream kept going out was because a lot of people are listening. this is a really great program.
right now, juliana francis is doing a dramatic reading from the play a tree about a woman who is visited by a judge, an american woman, and ends up having iraqi children (whose parents have died in the illegal war) placed in her custody. that was something to hear. i was wondering, early on, where it was going. not in a 'oh, what's the point of this?' but in terms of the woman - i should explain the woman is writing her husband over a period of several days (her husband paul) - i was wondering. for instance, early on a judge shows up about the couple's taxes and i was thinking, well is he going to be a rapist or what? it's very interesting and will surprise you. i hope you heard it.
what else have we had?
i came in (after c.i. put me on speaker phone) with the guerillagrrls and they were discussing the fact that the 3,000 mark had been reached and passed -- 3014 u.s. troops have died in iraq. they also noted that the number includes 69 women. they noted that in the 1st year of the illegal war alone, there were 400 iraqi women reporting rapes - which, as any 1 who knows the first thing about rape victims, means there were even more than that. (most rapes go unreported.) i hadn't heard that figure before. 400 women raped. in 2003. they spoke of how, early on in the illegal war, only 30% of girls were attending schools because it was too dangerous for them (still is and the number's probably much lower - dahr jamail's noted that it's something like 30+% of all children in iraq currently attending school). they noted how women have to 'cover up' and wear burkas, et al., due to the 'liberation' of iraq via the united states.
they noted that, of the american soldiers, 60% of the 1s killed had not seen their 25th birthday. that 68 journalists died in iraq this year bringing the total number of journalists to 170 and making the illegal war the deadliest for journalists.
they talked about how the illegal war had costs u.s. tax payers at least $365 billion dollars and what could be purchased with that instead, such as 183 million brand new apple computers, mammogram for all women in the united states and money left over, or we could just send the bully boy and his entire administration into space ('and have money left over').
they addressed the issue of the theatre and how few women can be found in it as writers and choreographers.
oh, back to us troops. if you're doing care packages, they suggest tampons because that's not going in care packages. care packages are being prepared 'universally' and the reality is that the 'universal' male is not universal and that women are serving in iraq. so things like hair spray ('pump'), tampons, panty liners, etc. would be a help and they gave out the site anysoldier.com
as a good reference for any 1 interested in sending care packages.
they also did dramatic re-enactments, including chris matthews ultimate pig-boy moment on hardball (with john and elizabeth edwards).
judith malina, of the living theatre, did a reading from brecht's antigone that was chilling. you really missed something if you didn't hear that. (the broadcast may get archived. so check for that.)
i'm rushing because blogger/blogspot is going down AGAIN tonight.
ruth and i listened to WBAI's Law and Disorder today and i wanted to grab that. today's january 8th, the 11th will be the 5 year mark that 400 prisoners have been held at guantanamo bay - without any real justice or trial. like elaine and c.i., i use the word 'prisoner.' as c.i. long ago pointed out 'detainee' makes it sound like you just got stopped for a few minutes coming through customs. they are prisoners who have been held in affront to what justice in this country is supposed to stand for. every 1 is guaranteed a speedy trial. but for 5 years, at least 400 have been held on the bully boy's gut. this was the full hour, the focus for the full hour.
michael ratner talked about how they came to be there, people making money, settling grudges.
not captured by u.s. troops, turned over by pakistan, etc. bounty hunters looking to make a quick buck.
he also talked about how david hicks was 1 of the first names they saw (i believe 1st) and how they (center for constitutional rights) took on these cases and, when they 1st did, they were attacked with insults and worse. at that point, they knew nothing about the prisoners, whether they were terrorists or not, but the belief in the right to a fair trial was so important that they took the cases regardless.
of course now, as we've seen some released, we realize that they are not terrorists. what happened, my opinion, is that bully boy needed to scare up the nation some more and these were pawns for him to use, innocent victims. and they've been held even though they are innocent because, god forbid, bully boy admit he made a mistake (he lied as well but if he won't admit a mistake, forget about him admiting to lying).
they addressed the issue of the hatian refugees who were held at gauntanamo bay during bill clinton's presidency and how they were held at camp bulkeley until the courts said no.
their crime? being hiv positive.
they addressed the issue of the uiger muslmins who were held and are held because, though innocent, there's now, supposedly, no way to release them.
they had an interview with tausif paracha (sp?) whose 58-year-old uncle, who'd done all this charity work, was wrongly imprisoned in guantamao. he said his uncle was not a terrorist. but who really is in guantanamo? this is the internments (the 1s michelle malkin, the nut job, is all for) that will be a shame for our nation when we wise up. just like the internment of the japanese-americans during ww2.
michael ratner spoke of water boarding and other forms of torture used at guantanamo. i didn't hear force-feeding brought up, it may have been, but i would include that as torture. on waterboarding, he noted this was done in the battle of algiers and a guest they'd had on an earlier show. (i'm hoping mike will pick up on that because i'm remembering him writing about that interview michael ratner was talking about.)
that was some of what was played and i'm sorry to rush that but blogger/blogspot goes down in 5 minutes. (the time stamp is when i started writing, not when i finished.)
to stay on guantanamo, i want to note that codepink (medea benjamin and others, cindy sheehan included) have gone there. are there now. for more on that, see:
NO Torture: Close Guantánamo
January 11 is the International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo. Join protests that will be taking place all over the country, as well as a rally in D.C. And read about the unique CODEPINK-organized delegation of former detainees, family members of current detainees and peace activists who are traveling to Cuba to protest outside the gates of the Guantanamo Naval Base itself. For the latest CNN news article on Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin's arrival in Cuba, click here!
i've got like 3 minutes to get this posted. sorry to have rushed tonight. i'll cover a democracy now segment tomorrow. okay, here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, Januray 8, 20007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Bully Boy gets ready for primetime schilling, Iraqis doubt the puppet and so do the US State and Defense Departments, The Progressive scores the most important article of the year thus far for independent media (print), and while Joe Biden offers a what-ya-gonna-do shurg, war resisters continue resisting.
Starting with US war resister Ehren Watada who awaits the decision of Lt. Col. John Head, the presiding judge in the pretrial hearing that will outline the parameters for his February 5th court-martial. Teresa Watanabe (Los Angeles Times) boils the awaited decision down: "Do military officers have the right to publicly voice dissent about their commander in chief and U.S. war policy? That question highlighted a pretrial hearing last week at Fort Lewis Army base near Seattle involving 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the nation's first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq." As Mike Hersh (OpEd News) notes, if court-martialed and found guilty of all charges, Ehren Watada faces six years in prison. Chanan Suarez-Diaz (Socialist Worker) observes that Watada is part of "the movement of military resisters" and notes that "January 21 and 22, Watada's supporters will participate in a 'Citizen's Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq' -- designed to put the war on trial, rather than the brave men and women who resist it. Among the antiwar figures who will testify are former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Denis Halliday, who resigned in protest as United Nations coordinator of humanitarian aid in Iraq; and international law expert Richard Falk."
Meanwhile, Kyle Snyder, another US war resister, continues speaking out and resisting around the United States. In a co-authored post with Vietnam war resister Gerry Condon (Soldier Say No!), Snyder looks back at 2006 -- a year that for him started in Canada, found him returning to the US to turn himself in October and then self-checking out again after the US military again went back on their word -- and notes that Synder continues to speak out, asks that you contact General William McCoy, Jr. and demand the military discharge Snyder -- 573-596-0131; or, Public Affairs Office, 573-563-4013; fax: 573-563-4012, e-mail alleym@wood.army.mil with the message: "Discharge Kyle Snyder with No Punishment."
Snyder and Watada are part of a movement of resistance to the illegal war within the military that also includes Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress this month.
As resistance to the war mounts throughout the country and the world, an embarrassing bit of news slips out -- embarrasing to the US administration which has repeatedly denied that oil was any factor in the decision to wage illegal war. On Sunday, Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb (Independent of London) reported on the latest 'plan' for Iraq: "Iraqi's massive oil reserves, the thid-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Indpendent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to estract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972. The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil." Today on KPFA's The Morning Show (first newsbreak in the 2nd hour, anchored by Aileen Alfandary), Antonia Juhasz (author of The BU$H Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time) addressed the legislation:
It's good for the oil companies because Iraq still owns it's own oil and therefore the government bears the risk but every other function has been privatized and turned over to the foreign cormpanies and as far as Exxon, Chrevon and Conoco are concerned that will be them, and they're given a leg up in the competition with the presence of 1500,000 American troops occupying Iraq. . . . Iraq's Union of Oil Unions have stated clearly that they do not want privatization they do not want this oil law. What they want is democracy and the opportunity for Iraqis to devise a new oil plan for themselves.
Turning from legislation news to news of the puppet, this weekend, Nouri al-Maliki announced an 'answer' to the current civil war (apparently discovered at a War Hawks support group): CRACKDOWN. Now the 'crackdown' started in June and has continued throughout achieving nothing but increased violence (was that the goal?). Al Jazeera reports that Mahmoud al-Mashhadani ("the outspoken Sunni Arab speaker of the Iraqi parliament) responded to al-Maliki's plan with, "Al-Maliki has no authority under the constitution to enforce security plans unless approved by the parliament. After the suspension of the martial law, which empowers al-Maliki with extraordinary executive powers, he is in no position to implement security planss that were not approved beforehand by the parliament."
Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) reports al-Maliki describes phase XIV of the crackdown as "an open-ended operation".
As the puppet talks down Never Ending Crackdown in the Capital, the one pulling his strings continues attempting to pass escalation off as "surge." Mark Tran (Guardian of London) reports that the "plan" will include "benchmarks" and that Bully Boy faces a skeptical US public. Finding the 'plan' has been like casting Scarlett O'Hara; however, Bully Boy is confirmed to perform Wednesday night at 9:00 pm EST on most major networks as he unveils the "plan." Sunday, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) noted the "growing skepticism inside and outside the administration that the emerging package of extra toops, economic assistance and political benchmarks for the Baghdad government will make any more than a marginal difference in stabilizing the country" which appears to include officials from the US Departments of Defense and State who "doubt that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is capable of making the necessary reforms, given its track record of promising but not delivering since taking power in May and despite Maliki's assurances in a speech" on Saturday "that he would hold Iraqis accountable for implementing a new Baghdad security plan."
Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers) interviewed Lt. General Raymond Odierno who is now "the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq" for an article that ran Sunday and Youssef observes in that of his remarks on that escalation wouldn't be enough: "By echoing his predecessor, Odierno's comments raised concerns in both Washingtion and Iraq that the U.S. war effort is exhausting old tactics that haven't worked. Indeed, many Iraqis do not trust that a new Baghdad security plan can change their circumstances because the U.S. and Iraqi government have touted at least five such plans before, all of which failed to stop the violence."
As Bully Boy prepares for his primetime strut on Wednesday, the Democrats in the US Congress make some noises on opposing sending more US troops to fight a lost and illegal war. Tom Baldwin and Stephen Farrell (Times of London) observe: "The new Democratic leadership of Congress has for the first time given explicit warning that it might deny funding for up to 20,000 additional troops in Iraq, which President Bush is expected to order this week. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said the Democrats would refuse to give him 'a blank cheque with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. If the President choose to escalate the war . . . in his budget request, he is going to have justify it and this is new for him."
While US Speaker of the House Pelosi's remarks sound strong, US Senator Joe Biden, appearing Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press (where he also announced he was running for the 2008 Democratic nominee for president) responded to host Tim Russerts question of, "If President Bush calls for more American troops to Iraq, the so-called surge, Joe Biden will say . . ." to which -- in a vote non-getter -- Biden responded, "No. But there's not much I can do about it. Not much anybody can do about it. . . . If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there's no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop'."
And the Biden campaign rounds the corner with . . . a limp and appears to ask, "If Pelosi won't give you a blank check, will you take my VISA?" Which is the sort of non-stand that Sunsara Taylor (World Can't Wait) notes (at CounterPunch) "is really saying that the only people who can set political terms in this country are George Bush's neo-cons and Christian fascists and that everyone else has to find their place within these terms. But this must not be accepted. Just as it did during [Tricy Dick] Nixon's day, it will take political struggle breaking free of these terms and coming up from below to create a situation where those in power are compelled to change". Patrick Cockburn (Independent of London) also overcomes Biden's whimper by observing quite plainly, "The occupation has always fuelled the insurgency. More US troops means more resistance." Cockburn also (rightly) observes, "The US government has shown an extraordinary inability to learn any lessons from its failures in Iraq." Or, as Ramzy Baroud (Asia Times) put it, "The past three and a half years of utter failure in Iraq should have been the sign any rational leader would need to change course; but few ever argued that the president is an icon of leadership or even-headedness; thus the 'new' Iraq strategy."
Bombings?
AFP reports that a bomb (hidden under a car) "in a market at Zafaraniyah in south Baghdad" claimed three lives. Muhieddin Rashad (AP) reports "a roadside bomb wounded three policemen in a southeastern seation of the Iraqi capital". Reuters notes two police officers killed and three wounded in Ramadi by a "suicide truck bomber" while, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb wounded three people.
Shootings?
Reuters states that 4 people were shot dead in an attack on a bus (they base this on government sources -- an eyewitness earlier told Reuters the number was higher) in Baghdad and that a family "packing their furniture" were attacked in Baghdad and 6 were shot dead. AFP reports four people shot dead in Baquba. On the bus attack, the BBC says it was at least nine killed (and Reuters TV footage currently says 15)
Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) reports that, by official Iraq government statistics (released by the Iraqi Health Ministry), "In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher."
Despite the pronounced, undeniable failure of the Iraq war, Gillian Bradford (ABC's PM) reports that Alexander Downer (Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister) has declared that he's all for escalation and that he can play Mean Girls quite well: ""It's really a matter for the generals and the generals on the ground [to escalate or not to]. They are in a much better position to make those judgements than either I or, for that matter, dare I say it, Nancy Pelosi, or whoever it may be." Someone tell Alex that somehwere in his third or fourth aside, the "SNAP" was lost before he got to Nancy Pelosi's name. While Lexie works on his Joan Collins impersonation, the reality is that in a democracy, generals do not dictate policy. Civilian control of the military is embedded in democracies. It may help Lexie sleep at night (and provide more time for him to develop his Joan Collins impersonation) but it's really not in his job description to turn over decision power to the military.
On Saturday, Ruth noted David Harris' powerful article on Ron Kovic ("Ask A Marine," Rolling Stone, July 19, 1973). Already this year, an article emerges that may be the most powerful of 2007 (though, granted, with the state of independent media today, it may maintain that honor by default). Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg's "Homecoming Nightmares" appears in the January 2007 issue of The Progressive (not yet available online, pages 21 through 22) and takes a look at the experiences of several who have served in Iraq. This is from the opening of her article:
Hart Viges, thirty, served with the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq. "Anyone who thinks they are going to be treated as heroes or valuable people in the military, they're wrong," he says. "They're property. You're property of the United States government."
Even though Hart came home to Texas in January 2004, he still hasn't totally left Iraq.
"I don't know how many civilians we killed, I don't know how many enemy we killed," says Hart, remembering when he and fellow soldiers were ordered to fire on all taxicabs in Samawa. "I just don't know. I just don't know."
But at a water treatment plant outside Baghdad, Hart caught a man carrying explosives.
"I look into his eyes and his face," he says. "He's not a boogeyman, not a monster. He's scared and confused but recruited like me."
The man escaped from Hart. During the Americans' hunt for him, an Iraiq told them that his neighbors said something bad about Americans. They went to the hut and searched everything. All they found, Hart said, was a family and a small .22 caliber pistol. They arrested two young men.
"The mother was trying to kiss my feet, my cheek, crying," Hart recalls. "I just stood there, paralyzed. I just couldn't console her. I told my sergeant, 'These aren't the guys.' He said, 'Don't worry. They're all bad guys.'"
After Hart came home from Iraq in 2004, he had an emotional explosion and finally told his platoon sergeant, "I can't pull the trigger." His sergeant sent him to a chaplain who told him about conscientious objection. Hart applied. He was approved later that year and honorably discharged.
Hart now works in Texas as a waiter and peace activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War. But Iraq has still found him in his Austin home.
Everyday noises, sights, and smells are now deadly threats. The sound of a nail gun makes Hart jump behind trash cans for cover. Headlights flashing in his rearview mirror suddenly become flares from a roadside bomb.
As veterans continue to return with physical and/or mental injuries, many Iraqis look for somewhere, anywhere, else to live. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced today it was launching: "a $60 million appeal to fund its work over the next 12 months for hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people affected by the conflict in Iraq. The funds will cover UNHCR's protection and assistance programmes for Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey, as well as non-Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people within Iraq itself." The appeal is being made, in part, due to the fact that the UNHCR operated, from the start of the illegal war until last year, "on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilise and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would soon be able to go home." The UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, "estimates there are at least 1.6 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 1.8 million in neighboring states, particularly Syria and Jordan."
In the United States, former US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been nominated by the Bully Boy to be the new US envoy to the UN. AFP quotes Condi Rice noting that "[t]he past year shown very clearly how important the UN is for America and the world" which could be the closest admission No-one-could-have-guessed-Condi ever makes to an administration failure. ("The past year" would include the inept 'work' done by John Bolton in the post Khalilzad is now nominated for.) Ryan Crocker will move from US ambassador to Pakistan to replace Khalilzad as US ambassador to Iraq.
The post is sometimes referred to as the "US ambassador to Baghdad"; however, "the US ambassador to the heavily fortified Green Zone's heavily fortified US embassy." Speaking last Thursday with Nora Barrows-Friedman on KPFA's Flashpoints, Dahr Jamail noted of the embassy/fortress, "This was a $572 million contract that was awarded to a very corrupt . . . Kuwaiti construction firm with very direct ties to the Bush administration and this is an embassy that's going to have room for between 3 and 8,000 government employees, it has its own school . . . I don't think we should expect any Iraqi kids at this school, it has the largest swimming pool in the country, yoga studios, barbershops, beauty shops, its own water plant, its own electricity plant, it has apartment buildings. And when it's complete, it will be, it's 21 buildings and the area will be the size of the Vatican City. So that's the so-called embassy that's being built in Iraq so if we talk about when are we going to withdraw troops and why aren't the Democrats talking about withdrawal, this sort of thing, instead why is there talk of a 'surge'? It's because we . . . just need look no further than the physical evidence on the ground, augmented by the US policy like the National Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review Report -- all of these signs point towards permanent occupation of Iraq just like we have in Germany."
On the embassy/fortress/stockade, Guy Dinmore (Financial Times of London) notes that it's called "Fortress Baghdad" and resulted in "arguments inside the State Department amid fears that the overwhelming diplomatic presence will perpetuate a sense of US occupation and become a focus of local anger." That's called "understatement." Dinmore reports that, "Officials are also questioning why the Bush administration is sending more civilians into a deteriorating war zone, and the effectiveness of the work they can do. The embassy compound being bulit inside Baghdad's Green Zone covers 104, acres, making it six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York. A city within a city for more than 1,000 people, it will have its own water, sewers and electricity, six apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and some walls 15 feet thick."
Finally, in the United State, Tom Lochner (Contra Costa Times) reports: "Creatores of a hillside monument of crosses outside the Lafayette BART station began to put names on them Sunday while supporters, including mothers of fallen soldiers in Iraq, turned the gathering into an impromptu memorial service for the war dead. 'This memorial is a sacred place,' said Nadia McCaffrey of Tracy, the mother of Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, killed in Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004. 'Each one of those crosses has a name.'"
Programming heads up, on WBAI tonight (airwaves in the NYC area, online everywhere) and time given is EST:
Monday, January 8, 9-11pm
THEATER SPECIAL: THAW ON THE AIR
Member theater companies of THAW (Theatres Against War) perform an evening of dramatic readings curated by Cynthia Croot.
Monday, January 8, 9-11pm
THEATER SPECIAL: THAW ON THE AIR
Member theater companies of THAW (Theatres Against War) perform an evening of dramatic readings curated by Cynthia Croot.
i hope you're listening. i am but i had the worst problem with the stream online and had given up early on. then flyboy suggested i call the gang thinking they might have an idea. c.i. said, 'hang up, i'm calling you back on my cell phone.' c.i. hates streams to begin with and, it turned out, a friend had the phone next to the radio. that was on speaker phone. so i could listen, c.i.'s cell phone was next to c.i.'s speakerphone.
flyboy and i put it on speakerphone and we're listening now. which really seems crazy when you think too much about it. i mean, c.i.'s listened to special programs on wbai that way long before the internet. and here's the internet come along and c.i.'s still listening that way and, right now, i'm tagging off that.
i hope the reason the stream kept going out was because a lot of people are listening. this is a really great program.
right now, juliana francis is doing a dramatic reading from the play a tree about a woman who is visited by a judge, an american woman, and ends up having iraqi children (whose parents have died in the illegal war) placed in her custody. that was something to hear. i was wondering, early on, where it was going. not in a 'oh, what's the point of this?' but in terms of the woman - i should explain the woman is writing her husband over a period of several days (her husband paul) - i was wondering. for instance, early on a judge shows up about the couple's taxes and i was thinking, well is he going to be a rapist or what? it's very interesting and will surprise you. i hope you heard it.
what else have we had?
i came in (after c.i. put me on speaker phone) with the guerillagrrls and they were discussing the fact that the 3,000 mark had been reached and passed -- 3014 u.s. troops have died in iraq. they also noted that the number includes 69 women. they noted that in the 1st year of the illegal war alone, there were 400 iraqi women reporting rapes - which, as any 1 who knows the first thing about rape victims, means there were even more than that. (most rapes go unreported.) i hadn't heard that figure before. 400 women raped. in 2003. they spoke of how, early on in the illegal war, only 30% of girls were attending schools because it was too dangerous for them (still is and the number's probably much lower - dahr jamail's noted that it's something like 30+% of all children in iraq currently attending school). they noted how women have to 'cover up' and wear burkas, et al., due to the 'liberation' of iraq via the united states.
they noted that, of the american soldiers, 60% of the 1s killed had not seen their 25th birthday. that 68 journalists died in iraq this year bringing the total number of journalists to 170 and making the illegal war the deadliest for journalists.
they talked about how the illegal war had costs u.s. tax payers at least $365 billion dollars and what could be purchased with that instead, such as 183 million brand new apple computers, mammogram for all women in the united states and money left over, or we could just send the bully boy and his entire administration into space ('and have money left over').
they addressed the issue of the theatre and how few women can be found in it as writers and choreographers.
oh, back to us troops. if you're doing care packages, they suggest tampons because that's not going in care packages. care packages are being prepared 'universally' and the reality is that the 'universal' male is not universal and that women are serving in iraq. so things like hair spray ('pump'), tampons, panty liners, etc. would be a help and they gave out the site anysoldier.com
as a good reference for any 1 interested in sending care packages.
they also did dramatic re-enactments, including chris matthews ultimate pig-boy moment on hardball (with john and elizabeth edwards).
judith malina, of the living theatre, did a reading from brecht's antigone that was chilling. you really missed something if you didn't hear that. (the broadcast may get archived. so check for that.)
i'm rushing because blogger/blogspot is going down AGAIN tonight.
ruth and i listened to WBAI's Law and Disorder today and i wanted to grab that. today's january 8th, the 11th will be the 5 year mark that 400 prisoners have been held at guantanamo bay - without any real justice or trial. like elaine and c.i., i use the word 'prisoner.' as c.i. long ago pointed out 'detainee' makes it sound like you just got stopped for a few minutes coming through customs. they are prisoners who have been held in affront to what justice in this country is supposed to stand for. every 1 is guaranteed a speedy trial. but for 5 years, at least 400 have been held on the bully boy's gut. this was the full hour, the focus for the full hour.
michael ratner talked about how they came to be there, people making money, settling grudges.
not captured by u.s. troops, turned over by pakistan, etc. bounty hunters looking to make a quick buck.
he also talked about how david hicks was 1 of the first names they saw (i believe 1st) and how they (center for constitutional rights) took on these cases and, when they 1st did, they were attacked with insults and worse. at that point, they knew nothing about the prisoners, whether they were terrorists or not, but the belief in the right to a fair trial was so important that they took the cases regardless.
of course now, as we've seen some released, we realize that they are not terrorists. what happened, my opinion, is that bully boy needed to scare up the nation some more and these were pawns for him to use, innocent victims. and they've been held even though they are innocent because, god forbid, bully boy admit he made a mistake (he lied as well but if he won't admit a mistake, forget about him admiting to lying).
they addressed the issue of the hatian refugees who were held at gauntanamo bay during bill clinton's presidency and how they were held at camp bulkeley until the courts said no.
their crime? being hiv positive.
they addressed the issue of the uiger muslmins who were held and are held because, though innocent, there's now, supposedly, no way to release them.
they had an interview with tausif paracha (sp?) whose 58-year-old uncle, who'd done all this charity work, was wrongly imprisoned in guantamao. he said his uncle was not a terrorist. but who really is in guantanamo? this is the internments (the 1s michelle malkin, the nut job, is all for) that will be a shame for our nation when we wise up. just like the internment of the japanese-americans during ww2.
michael ratner spoke of water boarding and other forms of torture used at guantanamo. i didn't hear force-feeding brought up, it may have been, but i would include that as torture. on waterboarding, he noted this was done in the battle of algiers and a guest they'd had on an earlier show. (i'm hoping mike will pick up on that because i'm remembering him writing about that interview michael ratner was talking about.)
that was some of what was played and i'm sorry to rush that but blogger/blogspot goes down in 5 minutes. (the time stamp is when i started writing, not when i finished.)
to stay on guantanamo, i want to note that codepink (medea benjamin and others, cindy sheehan included) have gone there. are there now. for more on that, see:
NO Torture: Close Guantánamo
January 11 is the International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo. Join protests that will be taking place all over the country, as well as a rally in D.C. And read about the unique CODEPINK-organized delegation of former detainees, family members of current detainees and peace activists who are traveling to Cuba to protest outside the gates of the Guantanamo Naval Base itself. For the latest CNN news article on Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin's arrival in Cuba, click here!
i've got like 3 minutes to get this posted. sorry to have rushed tonight. i'll cover a democracy now segment tomorrow. okay, here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, Januray 8, 20007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Bully Boy gets ready for primetime schilling, Iraqis doubt the puppet and so do the US State and Defense Departments, The Progressive scores the most important article of the year thus far for independent media (print), and while Joe Biden offers a what-ya-gonna-do shurg, war resisters continue resisting.
Starting with US war resister Ehren Watada who awaits the decision of Lt. Col. John Head, the presiding judge in the pretrial hearing that will outline the parameters for his February 5th court-martial. Teresa Watanabe (Los Angeles Times) boils the awaited decision down: "Do military officers have the right to publicly voice dissent about their commander in chief and U.S. war policy? That question highlighted a pretrial hearing last week at Fort Lewis Army base near Seattle involving 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the nation's first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq." As Mike Hersh (OpEd News) notes, if court-martialed and found guilty of all charges, Ehren Watada faces six years in prison. Chanan Suarez-Diaz (Socialist Worker) observes that Watada is part of "the movement of military resisters" and notes that "January 21 and 22, Watada's supporters will participate in a 'Citizen's Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq' -- designed to put the war on trial, rather than the brave men and women who resist it. Among the antiwar figures who will testify are former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Denis Halliday, who resigned in protest as United Nations coordinator of humanitarian aid in Iraq; and international law expert Richard Falk."
Meanwhile, Kyle Snyder, another US war resister, continues speaking out and resisting around the United States. In a co-authored post with Vietnam war resister Gerry Condon (Soldier Say No!), Snyder looks back at 2006 -- a year that for him started in Canada, found him returning to the US to turn himself in October and then self-checking out again after the US military again went back on their word -- and notes that Synder continues to speak out, asks that you contact General William McCoy, Jr. and demand the military discharge Snyder -- 573-596-0131; or, Public Affairs Office, 573-563-4013; fax: 573-563-4012, e-mail alleym@wood.army.mil with the message: "Discharge Kyle Snyder with No Punishment."
Snyder and Watada are part of a movement of resistance to the illegal war within the military that also includes Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress this month.
As resistance to the war mounts throughout the country and the world, an embarrassing bit of news slips out -- embarrasing to the US administration which has repeatedly denied that oil was any factor in the decision to wage illegal war. On Sunday, Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb (Independent of London) reported on the latest 'plan' for Iraq: "Iraqi's massive oil reserves, the thid-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Indpendent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to estract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972. The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil." Today on KPFA's The Morning Show (first newsbreak in the 2nd hour, anchored by Aileen Alfandary), Antonia Juhasz (author of The BU$H Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time) addressed the legislation:
It's good for the oil companies because Iraq still owns it's own oil and therefore the government bears the risk but every other function has been privatized and turned over to the foreign cormpanies and as far as Exxon, Chrevon and Conoco are concerned that will be them, and they're given a leg up in the competition with the presence of 1500,000 American troops occupying Iraq. . . . Iraq's Union of Oil Unions have stated clearly that they do not want privatization they do not want this oil law. What they want is democracy and the opportunity for Iraqis to devise a new oil plan for themselves.
Turning from legislation news to news of the puppet, this weekend, Nouri al-Maliki announced an 'answer' to the current civil war (apparently discovered at a War Hawks support group): CRACKDOWN. Now the 'crackdown' started in June and has continued throughout achieving nothing but increased violence (was that the goal?). Al Jazeera reports that Mahmoud al-Mashhadani ("the outspoken Sunni Arab speaker of the Iraqi parliament) responded to al-Maliki's plan with, "Al-Maliki has no authority under the constitution to enforce security plans unless approved by the parliament. After the suspension of the martial law, which empowers al-Maliki with extraordinary executive powers, he is in no position to implement security planss that were not approved beforehand by the parliament."
Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) reports al-Maliki describes phase XIV of the crackdown as "an open-ended operation".
As the puppet talks down Never Ending Crackdown in the Capital, the one pulling his strings continues attempting to pass escalation off as "surge." Mark Tran (Guardian of London) reports that the "plan" will include "benchmarks" and that Bully Boy faces a skeptical US public. Finding the 'plan' has been like casting Scarlett O'Hara; however, Bully Boy is confirmed to perform Wednesday night at 9:00 pm EST on most major networks as he unveils the "plan." Sunday, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) noted the "growing skepticism inside and outside the administration that the emerging package of extra toops, economic assistance and political benchmarks for the Baghdad government will make any more than a marginal difference in stabilizing the country" which appears to include officials from the US Departments of Defense and State who "doubt that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is capable of making the necessary reforms, given its track record of promising but not delivering since taking power in May and despite Maliki's assurances in a speech" on Saturday "that he would hold Iraqis accountable for implementing a new Baghdad security plan."
Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers) interviewed Lt. General Raymond Odierno who is now "the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq" for an article that ran Sunday and Youssef observes in that of his remarks on that escalation wouldn't be enough: "By echoing his predecessor, Odierno's comments raised concerns in both Washingtion and Iraq that the U.S. war effort is exhausting old tactics that haven't worked. Indeed, many Iraqis do not trust that a new Baghdad security plan can change their circumstances because the U.S. and Iraqi government have touted at least five such plans before, all of which failed to stop the violence."
As Bully Boy prepares for his primetime strut on Wednesday, the Democrats in the US Congress make some noises on opposing sending more US troops to fight a lost and illegal war. Tom Baldwin and Stephen Farrell (Times of London) observe: "The new Democratic leadership of Congress has for the first time given explicit warning that it might deny funding for up to 20,000 additional troops in Iraq, which President Bush is expected to order this week. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said the Democrats would refuse to give him 'a blank cheque with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. If the President choose to escalate the war . . . in his budget request, he is going to have justify it and this is new for him."
While US Speaker of the House Pelosi's remarks sound strong, US Senator Joe Biden, appearing Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press (where he also announced he was running for the 2008 Democratic nominee for president) responded to host Tim Russerts question of, "If President Bush calls for more American troops to Iraq, the so-called surge, Joe Biden will say . . ." to which -- in a vote non-getter -- Biden responded, "No. But there's not much I can do about it. Not much anybody can do about it. . . . If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there's no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop'."
And the Biden campaign rounds the corner with . . . a limp and appears to ask, "If Pelosi won't give you a blank check, will you take my VISA?" Which is the sort of non-stand that Sunsara Taylor (World Can't Wait) notes (at CounterPunch) "is really saying that the only people who can set political terms in this country are George Bush's neo-cons and Christian fascists and that everyone else has to find their place within these terms. But this must not be accepted. Just as it did during [Tricy Dick] Nixon's day, it will take political struggle breaking free of these terms and coming up from below to create a situation where those in power are compelled to change". Patrick Cockburn (Independent of London) also overcomes Biden's whimper by observing quite plainly, "The occupation has always fuelled the insurgency. More US troops means more resistance." Cockburn also (rightly) observes, "The US government has shown an extraordinary inability to learn any lessons from its failures in Iraq." Or, as Ramzy Baroud (Asia Times) put it, "The past three and a half years of utter failure in Iraq should have been the sign any rational leader would need to change course; but few ever argued that the president is an icon of leadership or even-headedness; thus the 'new' Iraq strategy."
Bombings?
AFP reports that a bomb (hidden under a car) "in a market at Zafaraniyah in south Baghdad" claimed three lives. Muhieddin Rashad (AP) reports "a roadside bomb wounded three policemen in a southeastern seation of the Iraqi capital". Reuters notes two police officers killed and three wounded in Ramadi by a "suicide truck bomber" while, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb wounded three people.
Shootings?
Reuters states that 4 people were shot dead in an attack on a bus (they base this on government sources -- an eyewitness earlier told Reuters the number was higher) in Baghdad and that a family "packing their furniture" were attacked in Baghdad and 6 were shot dead. AFP reports four people shot dead in Baquba. On the bus attack, the BBC says it was at least nine killed (and Reuters TV footage currently says 15)
Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) reports that, by official Iraq government statistics (released by the Iraqi Health Ministry), "In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher."
Despite the pronounced, undeniable failure of the Iraq war, Gillian Bradford (ABC's PM) reports that Alexander Downer (Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister) has declared that he's all for escalation and that he can play Mean Girls quite well: ""It's really a matter for the generals and the generals on the ground [to escalate or not to]. They are in a much better position to make those judgements than either I or, for that matter, dare I say it, Nancy Pelosi, or whoever it may be." Someone tell Alex that somehwere in his third or fourth aside, the "SNAP" was lost before he got to Nancy Pelosi's name. While Lexie works on his Joan Collins impersonation, the reality is that in a democracy, generals do not dictate policy. Civilian control of the military is embedded in democracies. It may help Lexie sleep at night (and provide more time for him to develop his Joan Collins impersonation) but it's really not in his job description to turn over decision power to the military.
On Saturday, Ruth noted David Harris' powerful article on Ron Kovic ("Ask A Marine," Rolling Stone, July 19, 1973). Already this year, an article emerges that may be the most powerful of 2007 (though, granted, with the state of independent media today, it may maintain that honor by default). Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg's "Homecoming Nightmares" appears in the January 2007 issue of The Progressive (not yet available online, pages 21 through 22) and takes a look at the experiences of several who have served in Iraq. This is from the opening of her article:
Hart Viges, thirty, served with the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq. "Anyone who thinks they are going to be treated as heroes or valuable people in the military, they're wrong," he says. "They're property. You're property of the United States government."
Even though Hart came home to Texas in January 2004, he still hasn't totally left Iraq.
"I don't know how many civilians we killed, I don't know how many enemy we killed," says Hart, remembering when he and fellow soldiers were ordered to fire on all taxicabs in Samawa. "I just don't know. I just don't know."
But at a water treatment plant outside Baghdad, Hart caught a man carrying explosives.
"I look into his eyes and his face," he says. "He's not a boogeyman, not a monster. He's scared and confused but recruited like me."
The man escaped from Hart. During the Americans' hunt for him, an Iraiq told them that his neighbors said something bad about Americans. They went to the hut and searched everything. All they found, Hart said, was a family and a small .22 caliber pistol. They arrested two young men.
"The mother was trying to kiss my feet, my cheek, crying," Hart recalls. "I just stood there, paralyzed. I just couldn't console her. I told my sergeant, 'These aren't the guys.' He said, 'Don't worry. They're all bad guys.'"
After Hart came home from Iraq in 2004, he had an emotional explosion and finally told his platoon sergeant, "I can't pull the trigger." His sergeant sent him to a chaplain who told him about conscientious objection. Hart applied. He was approved later that year and honorably discharged.
Hart now works in Texas as a waiter and peace activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War. But Iraq has still found him in his Austin home.
Everyday noises, sights, and smells are now deadly threats. The sound of a nail gun makes Hart jump behind trash cans for cover. Headlights flashing in his rearview mirror suddenly become flares from a roadside bomb.
As veterans continue to return with physical and/or mental injuries, many Iraqis look for somewhere, anywhere, else to live. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced today it was launching: "a $60 million appeal to fund its work over the next 12 months for hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people affected by the conflict in Iraq. The funds will cover UNHCR's protection and assistance programmes for Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey, as well as non-Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people within Iraq itself." The appeal is being made, in part, due to the fact that the UNHCR operated, from the start of the illegal war until last year, "on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilise and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would soon be able to go home." The UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, "estimates there are at least 1.6 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 1.8 million in neighboring states, particularly Syria and Jordan."
In the United States, former US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been nominated by the Bully Boy to be the new US envoy to the UN. AFP quotes Condi Rice noting that "[t]he past year shown very clearly how important the UN is for America and the world" which could be the closest admission No-one-could-have-guessed-Condi ever makes to an administration failure. ("The past year" would include the inept 'work' done by John Bolton in the post Khalilzad is now nominated for.) Ryan Crocker will move from US ambassador to Pakistan to replace Khalilzad as US ambassador to Iraq.
The post is sometimes referred to as the "US ambassador to Baghdad"; however, "the US ambassador to the heavily fortified Green Zone's heavily fortified US embassy." Speaking last Thursday with Nora Barrows-Friedman on KPFA's Flashpoints, Dahr Jamail noted of the embassy/fortress, "This was a $572 million contract that was awarded to a very corrupt . . . Kuwaiti construction firm with very direct ties to the Bush administration and this is an embassy that's going to have room for between 3 and 8,000 government employees, it has its own school . . . I don't think we should expect any Iraqi kids at this school, it has the largest swimming pool in the country, yoga studios, barbershops, beauty shops, its own water plant, its own electricity plant, it has apartment buildings. And when it's complete, it will be, it's 21 buildings and the area will be the size of the Vatican City. So that's the so-called embassy that's being built in Iraq so if we talk about when are we going to withdraw troops and why aren't the Democrats talking about withdrawal, this sort of thing, instead why is there talk of a 'surge'? It's because we . . . just need look no further than the physical evidence on the ground, augmented by the US policy like the National Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review Report -- all of these signs point towards permanent occupation of Iraq just like we have in Germany."
On the embassy/fortress/stockade, Guy Dinmore (Financial Times of London) notes that it's called "Fortress Baghdad" and resulted in "arguments inside the State Department amid fears that the overwhelming diplomatic presence will perpetuate a sense of US occupation and become a focus of local anger." That's called "understatement." Dinmore reports that, "Officials are also questioning why the Bush administration is sending more civilians into a deteriorating war zone, and the effectiveness of the work they can do. The embassy compound being bulit inside Baghdad's Green Zone covers 104, acres, making it six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York. A city within a city for more than 1,000 people, it will have its own water, sewers and electricity, six apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and some walls 15 feet thick."
Finally, in the United State, Tom Lochner (Contra Costa Times) reports: "Creatores of a hillside monument of crosses outside the Lafayette BART station began to put names on them Sunday while supporters, including mothers of fallen soldiers in Iraq, turned the gathering into an impromptu memorial service for the war dead. 'This memorial is a sacred place,' said Nadia McCaffrey of Tracy, the mother of Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, killed in Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004. 'Each one of those crosses has a name.'"
Programming heads up, on WBAI tonight (airwaves in the NYC area, online everywhere) and time given is EST:
Monday, January 8, 9-11pm
THEATER SPECIAL: THAW ON THE AIR
Member theater companies of THAW (Theatres Against War) perform an evening of dramatic readings curated by Cynthia Croot.
1/05/2007
chatty city
a bit later than usual because i wanted to be sure to link to betty's latest chapter and she always reads it 1st to kat and c.i. as an audience and for feedback. they were getting back to california late tonight so i knew it would be late but told betty, 'call me as soon as it's up so i can link to it.'
it's up and it's entitled 'The First Factually Challenged Fool.' read it. it's hilarious and also continue betty's fact checking of the fact free thomas friedman.
elaine and mike have been kind enough to continue their weekend visits as the home bound blogger received 2 more weeks of house arrest. it's really not like house arrest. and now that the critical period has passed with no problems, i don't even really mind it. (that might be due to the fact that this time the choice was left up to me.) we've been listening to carly simon's wonderful new cd, into white. it's really a beautiful cd, you should give it a listen.
ruth and tracey gave it to me this morning as a gift. and i love it! this afternoon, when the mail arrived, there was the same cd from c.i. which was fine, as i told ruth, because i can give that 1 to t and she'll love it. (and c.i. just cares that people hear it.) ruth wondered why c.i. didn't bring it when they all visited this week and my guess is c.i. felt (a) i needed daily mail treats to keep from going stir crazy and (b) if it had been handed to me while every 1 was here, i would've felt obligated to listen when i just wanted to catch up with every 1. (mike got his copy when the gang visited him the next day.)
c.i. always gifts friends with carly's latest. (and often gifts recent ex-lovers with carly's latest albums as well.) i always trace the success of carly's comeback album (coming around again) to c.i. i'm only half-joking. for at least 6 months after that came out, where ever i went, if i bumped into any 1 who knew c.i. and me, he or she would always say, 'hey that really is a good album.' at a posh watering hole in nyc, i bumped into 1 of our old professors who opend with how he'd just recieved coming around again from c.i.
carly simon really is wonderful, as a singer and as a songwriter. elaine wrote about c.i.'s letters tonight (read that) and it is true. there were carly simon songs that i thought i knew and then c.i. would note a line or 2 in the middle of a letter and i would be like 'i never got that!' she really is gifted. i think 2 of my favorite songs of her's that weren't singles are 'we're so close' and 'it happens every day' (from spy and hello big man respectively). but, along with the well known hits, there are so many beautiful songs - 'never been gone' (spy), 'embrace me, my child' (no secrets), 'come back home' (spoiled girl), 'in pain' (come upstairs), 'we just got here' (have you seen me lately?), 'i'd rather it was you' (letters never sent), ... i could go on and on but the 1 i always beg c.i. to play on piano is 'you're the one.' (c.i. is incredible on the piano. i always meant to learn an instrument but never did. c.i. can play piano, guitar and bass. probably other instruments as well.)
'you're the one' is 1 i wish carly would do on a live cd. i also wish she'd do the regaee version of 'we have no secrets' on a live cd. but 'you're the one' is a song i never really noticed, it's on boys in the trees. and when i finally noticed it, i couldn't believe i'd missed it so long. i love that song, lyrics and music.
and what i love about carly is she's never been the 'little girl.' she started out, on the debut album, as a woman and she's only continued to grow over the years. there's something really pathetic about 40-year-old men (and older) trying to act like little boys or pretending that they've just fallen in love for the 1st time. carly's always sung from experience. she has a wonderful song (that i wish she'd remake because the production is snyth heavy as the 80s were) called 'take me as i am' which includes the lines 'take me as i am, for the woman i am, take me as i am' and, to me, that's always summed up her career which really has been an exploration of what it means to be a woman. she's charted those waters during times when many women denied their womanhood by playing it asexual or by playing 'little girl'. i really see tori amos as the only 1 whose really taken up the torch. i can hear echoes of carly in various acts (male and female) but tori's really the only 1 who puts it out there.
carly's notorious for her agoraphobia (sp?) and she certainly expresses her doubts (in songs and interviews) but when she lays down a song, even examining doubts, she does it with a sure hand and with confidence.
i think that's why women like her. there are a lot of females that try to cook up the sexy and end up turning off the audience. with carly, the sexy quality has always been just part of the mixture, part of what it is to be a woman. and there was never the 'go away, i'm only interested in performing for the boys' vibe that too many women have put off over the years. carly performs for men the same amount any straight woman does but there's a sly wink to it that lets us (women) know we're in on the game. like you were all at a table when some guy walked in that she found attractive and she'd announced, 'watch this, i'm going to try to catch his eye.'
it probably helps to have that voice. i can detect shades of odetta from time to time but that's really it. she's been a very unique vocalist (who went through a cat stevens phase on anticipation but even then it was on her terms).
so we've all just been listening to her into white cd all day.
for the last half-hour, i've been munching on some chips tracey gave me. i am a chip person but i've laid off during the pregnancy and tried to eat healthy (thanks to ruth on that). tracey knows i love chips and she brought over 2 bags. i'm eating the sea salt and olive oil one - made with russet potatoes 'all natural' it says on the bag. they're surprisingly good.
c.i. loves sea salt and loves all natural chips that are sea salt and vinegar but i've always found those too bitter. these have a more gentle taste. (or maybe i'm craving salty?) (i have been wanting a pickle all day.)
anita barrows is the name of nora barrows-friedman's mother as zach kindly told me in an e-mail today. she did the report on tillie olsen this week on KPFA's Flashpoints. (thank you for passing that on, zach.)
flyboy just said he wished crosby, stills & nash or crosby, stills, nash & young would do a cd like into white. he means the sound which is very ... i think i'd use the word 'flowing.' the album sounds very natural. (like the chips i'm eating!) it just sounds very beautiful.
i always wished nash and carly would do a duet. i've hoped for that for years and it hasn't happened so i'll assume it never will.
i know i'm too chatty (c.i. would roll the eyes!) but it's just been a really good day. the music helped absolutely but it's just been a nice day. i think it's because of the fact that it's the 1st weekend i haven't had to worry about the pregnancy. i know i said 'don't worry' and i pretty much kept to that but i did have my moments.
i've also just eaten today. mike brought some food that trina (his mother) had fixed and i didn't even let him make it to the kitchen, i was so hungry (and i've been that way all day, no matter how much i've eaten) that i said, 'oh let's have a picnic on the living room floor.' trina, like ruth, is a great cook and a great friend.
i have told ruth that i appreciate so much all that she's done - coming out to visit every monday through friday (and showing flyboy how to cook things other than steak and baked potatoes - ha ha) but that she didn't have to keep doing it. she said she wanted to and though she may curse me at the end of the day on her way home, i'll choose to believe her. my grandmother is visiting next week (with my mother) and i'm also looking forward to that. she called this morning to tell me about that and she was as excited as i am.
while i'm handing out thank yous, let me note my mother-in-law who has visited 3 times this week. we had 2 really good converstations and the 3rd visit was 'i'm just here to watch a dvd.' she'd bought some new edition of breakfast at tiffany's, a movie we both love, bought some boxes of junior mints, and we watched the movie and then she was gone saying, 'leave them wanting more.'
t has a crazy week at her salon so i told her wednesday not to worry about visiting this week. even so she ended up coming out this afternoon which was too nice of her. she's had a turnover in operators/stylists (i don't know the correct term, t will enlighten me when she reads this) and i know things are crazy right now.
and, of course, kat, c.i. and the gang (jim, dona, ty, jess and ava) came by to visit this week and stayed over. that was a real treat. and unexpected. i had asked c.i. not to visit because the distance is too great and, as i said, 'if you come during the 3 weeks, i'll worry that you're only here because flyboy wanted you here when i got bad news.' which is why they scheduled the visit for the day the doctor was going to announce the results of the 3 week critical period. that was actually jim and dona's 2nd visit because they also visited during the christmas break. jim's mother lives about 45 minutes to an hour away and jim was spending the 2nd half of the holdiays with her (the first 1/2 with his father) and dona was out here for the 2nd half.
if you think all of the visits meant i wasn't on the phone constantly, ask betty, cedric, wally, c.i. and my grandmother. they'll tell you different. (you can ask sunny too. i always call elaine at work but this week, i figured i'd give her a break, so sunny and i just spoke. which we do anyway, but i called her like crazy this week.) i told cedric and wally to both tell their girlfriends that it was their crazy pregnant friend. by the way, cedric's steady dating for 3 weeks now. if nothing else, i broke that bit of gossip.
okay, i'm obviously too chatty to talk about much else and i can feel myself on the verge of going into pregnancy talk which i'll spare you. here's c.i.'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, January 5, 2006. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, US war resister Ehren Watada's pretrial hearing began yesterday, Bully Boy shuffles the deck while an "I told you so" travels across the Atlantic from France, and Ahmed Hadi Naji, who worked for AP, is discovered dead.
Monday, February 5th, the US military attempts to court-martial Ehren Watada. Watada is the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Yesterday, at Fort Lewis in Washington, a pretrial hearing began that will determine what arguments are allowed in the court-martial and what arguments will be disallowed. The hearing was presided over by Lt. Col. John Head, the court-martial would have a jury made up of *a panel of* officers, and the AP reports that he will make his decision on "the parameters of the case" next week. Melanthia Mitchell (AP) reports that on Thursday: "Watada's parents sat in the back of the courtroom during the hearing, his father at times leaning forward on the bench with his hands clasped in front of him." As Linton Weeks (Washington Post) noted, Carolyn Ho, Ehren's mother, is a high school counselor who went on leave to raise awareness about her son and is on leave for the pretrial and the court-martial. Bob Watada, Ehren's father, has also been engaged in speaking tours around the country to raise awareness about Ehren and, for any wondering, Bob Watada recently retired (and recently remarried, Rosa Sakanishi, Ehren's step-mother, has accompanied Bob Watada on his speaking tours).
The US military wants to reduce the court-martial to a "yes" or "no" -- Did you refuse to deploy to Iraq? They wish to prevent Ehren Watada from explaining his decision -- in effect that are hoping to prevent him from making the best defense possible when he is facing six years in prison.
As Hal Bernton (Seattle Times) reported: "At a hearing Thursday at Fort Lewis, there was little dispute about the action taken by 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who last June refused to deploy with his brigade to Iraq. But defense and prosecutors sparred much of the afternoon about whether Watada's motives for opting out of the war should affect the outcome of a February court-martial trial that could result in a six-year prison term." If the military was interested in justice (and sure of their case), they wouldn't be attempting to shut down Watada's defense.
The prosucetor, Captain Dan Kuecker has stated, "There is no rational doubt in this situation; . . . it's a lawful order." Were he as sure of himself as he pretends to the press, there would be no attempts to prevent Watada from explaining both his actions and the reasons behind them.
Watada explained the reasons most recently to Kevin Sites (Kevin Sites in The Hotzone): "I think that in March of 2003 when I joined up, I, like many Americans, believed the administration when they said the threat from Iraq was imminent -- that there were weapons of mass destruction all throughout Iraq; that there were stockpiles of it; and because of Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist acts, the threat was imminent and we needed to invade that country immediately in order to neutralize that threat. Since then I think I, as many, many Americans are realizing, that those justifications were intentionally falsified in order to fit a policy established long before 9/11 of just toppling the Saddam Hussein regime and setting up an American presence in Iraq. . . . I think the facts are out there, they're not difficult to find, they just take a little bit of willingness and interest on behalf of anyone who is willing to seek out the truth and find the facts. All of it is in the mainstream media. But it is quickly buried and it is quickly hidden by other events that come and go. And all it takes is a little bit of logical reasoning. The Iraq Survey Group came out and said there were no weapons of mass destruction after 1991 and during 2003. The 9/11 Commission came out and said there were no ties with Iraq to 9/11 or al-Qaeda. The president himself came out and said nobody in his administration ever suggested that there was a link. And yet those ties to al-Qaeda and the weapons of mass destruction were strongly suggested. They said there was no doubt here were weapons of mass destruction all throughout 2002, 2003 and even 2004. So, they came out and they say this, and yet they say it was bad intelligence, not manipulated intelligence, that was the problem. And then you have veteran members of the CIA that come out and say, 'No. It was manipulated intelligence. We told them there was no WMD. We told them there were no tides to al-Qaeda. And they said that that's not what they wanted to hear'."
In essence, Ehren Watada is on trial for the media -- the media that sold the illegal war and the media that told the truth (eventually for some) about it. So it has been surprising to see nothing on Watada in the leading independent magazines in 2006. In 2007, The Nation discovered Watada on page 14 of the January 8 and 15th double issue in an article written by Marc Cooper (click here for Yahoo version -- subscribers only at The Nation website). Like many Americans, Watada believe the spin/lies from the US administration (repeated near word for word by most media outlets with little skepticism). Like many Americans, he's since come to see that reality and spin were two different things.
This new awareness is reflected not only in the civilian population but also, as Rachel Ensign (Citizen Soldier) reminds us, within the military as well: "A new poll conducted by the Army Times newspaper at the end of 2006 found that a majority of soldiers polled now disapprove of how Bush has conducted the Iraq war to date. . . . Only 41% of soldiers polled today think that we should have invaded Iraq -- down from 65% in 2003. This closely mirrors sentiment among civilians; only 45% of whom now believe that the war was a good idea."
Michael Gilbert (The News Tribune) reports that, based on comments and questions during the pretrial hearing, Lt. Col John Head "likely won't allow Lt. Ehren Watada to defend himself" by making the case for his actions and why he acted as he did and that Head declared, "At this point I'm not inclined to grant a hearing on the Nuremburg defense." The Nuremburg defense is in reference to the Nuremberg trials during which soldiers stating that they were only following orders were told that was not a legal excuse for their actions. As Ruth noted, following the August Article 32 hearing of Watada, "The message that Lieutenant Colonel Mark Keith appears to be endorsing is follow all orders but, if it later turns out that they were illegal, you are on your own and will take full responsibility. At best, like with Lieutenant Calley, the War Monger in the oval office may pardon you after you are convicted. What is the message? Why teach the obligation to follow only legal orders, why refute 'I was only following orders' as a defense and then punish Lieutenant Ehren Watada for doing just that while advising him that it is not his place to make such a determination when, in fact, the invididual who obeys the unlawful order is the one who will be held responsible by the military justice system?"
Why teach? Refer to Ruth's Report where she goes over retired Col. Ann Wright's testimony at the Article 32 hearing on what she taught soldiers at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg while teaching the Law of Land Warfare. Taught is FM 27-10 (Law of Land Warfare):
Section IV. DEFENSES NOT AVAILABLE 509. Defense of Superior Orders
a. The fact that the law of war has been violated pursuant to an order of a superior authority, whether military or civil, does not deprive the act in question of its character of a war crime, nor does it constitute a defense in the trial of an accused individual, unless he did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful. In all cases where the order is held not to constitute a defense to an allegation of war crime, the fact that the individual was acting pursuant to orders may be considered in mitigation of punishment.
Ehren Watada could be prosecuted for actions committed during war by the above; however, the US military does not want to allow him to use the same law to defend himself. Only a fool would call that "justice." This is what Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, is noting when he told Linton Weeks, "The United States talks out of both sides of its mouth. We've prosecuted soldiers in other countries for following orders to commit war crimes. But God forbid you should use that refusal as a defense in this country."
Christian Hill (The Olympian) reports, however, that the military prosecution may have outfoxed itself: "The judge, Lt. Col. John Head, told prosectors that he was not inclined to grant the evidentiary hearing, but 'they opened the door for him allowing it by prosecuting his statements'" thereby making it "relevant. Some of those statements have become relevant by the sheer nature of how the government has charged this case."
Head was not referring to the charge of missing deployment but the charge ("conduct unbecoming") based upon remarks Watada made about the war such as ""The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of Iraqis is not only a terrible and moral injustice, but it's a contradiction to the Army's own law of land warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes." Remember: A Citizens' Hearings is being convened January 20-22 at Evergreen State College.
Ehren Watada's awakening mirrors that of many Americans. It also has echoes
in the growing resistance within the military to the illegal war as many resisters vocalize sentiments similar to Watada's (usually noting the works of Howard Zinn). Others that a part of this growing resistance within the military include Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress this month.
While Watada faces court-martial for questioning the illegal war, France's president earns headlines for doing the same. AFP reports that Jacques Chirac speech today revolved largely around the illegal war: "As France had forseen and feared, the war in Iraq has sparked upheavals that have yet to show their full effects . . . exacerbated the divisions between communities and threatened the very integrity of Iraq. . . . It undermined the stability of the entire region, where every country now fears for its security and independence." (Chirac's also getting attention for, in the same speech, calling for slashing corporate taxes.)
Before noting some of the violence today in Iraq, let's note December again. Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) notes that the Iraq Interior Ministry's figure of 1,930 Iraqis dead for the month of December (an undercount) remains "a new high" for any month. Meanwhile, the count for US troop fatalities in Iraq for the month of December reached 115.
Bombings?
Reuters reports: "A roadside bomb struck a U.S. marine tank in the western city of Falluja on Friday", while a roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi soldiers and killed anohter in Baiji, and a roadside bomb in Kirkuk left two police officers wounded. Christopher Torchia (AP) reports
four Iraqis killed on the "outskirts" of Baghdad from mortar attacks.
Shootings?
Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in the Diyala Province. Reuters reports that "a former colonel" was shot dead in Mosul, as were a father and son in Iskandariya.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses were discovered in Baghdad ("2 sadr city, 2 dora, 2 amil, 2 jihad, 2 hurriyah, 1 kadhemiyah, 1 abu atsheer"). Reuters notes that three corpses were discovered in Iskandariya. And AP reports that Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28-years-old, "was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving work". AP notes that he is "the second AP employee killed in less than a month" and that he is the fourth "to die violently" in the illegal war. They note that Ahmed Hadi Naji is survived by his wife, Sahba'a Mudhar Khalil, and his four-month-old twins, Zaid (male) and Rand (female). Christopher Torchia (AP) reports that Ahmed Hadi Naji had worked "for the AP for 2 1/2 years".
And Aref Mohmmed (Reuters) reports that one "American civilian contractor and two Iraqi translators" were kidnapped in Basra today.
Changing focus . . .
So let's be really clear, torture in Iraq is rampant and that's because it's policy even though we have had a replacement of Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld who infamously told . . . general, retired, now retired, but at the time general, [Janis] Karpinski 'make sure this happens' regarding specific torture techniques that he wanted to begin using inside places like Abu Ghraib well that policy hasn't changed as I said, these people are still being tortured, they're just not letting people bring in their video cameras and their digital cameras so that the images can find themselves splashed across the screens of 60 Minutes II program, for example.
What is that? Dahr Jamail speaking with Nora Barrows-Friedman on yesterday's
KPFA's Flashpoints (use either to listen to an archived broadcast -- Rebecca's "nora barrows-friedman interviewed dahr jamail on flashpoints" offers an overview of the interview).
For an hour, Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dahr Jamail reviewed the year 2006 in Iraq, focusing on the death squads, women, children, attacks on civilians and much more.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Dahr, can you talk now about the permanent US military base structures this was being talked about openly and publicly in the spring of 2006. But how has that discussion progressed and what does a permananet US military base structure look like on the ground? How many are we talking here?
Dahr Jamail: We started out with over a hundred bases in Iraq and they are slowly consolidating this number down to, right now it's around, it was 53 last time I checked. So they're slowly consolidating them down and if people want an idea of what Iraq might look like in the next couple of years, well we just have to look at Afghanistan because that's where, kind of, this model started and there's a couple of years jump there. And if you look at Afghanistan, we've got, I believe, four major bases right around the area of where I believe the proposed pipeline's going to go. So we should expect something similar but more bases in Iraq. There's going to be, right now it looks like, between six and twelve, we're not real sure on the number, but between six and twelve of these permanent bases. The military and the corporate media won't call them permanent because they don't have to, because they just made sure that they would have permanent access into particular areas in Iraq and so there was nothing in the so-called constitutional referendum that took place on October 15 a year ago that banned access from a foreign country, that's why there was a lot of wrangling along that constitutional referendum and why even someone in the UN that I spoke with, I quoted him as saying there was 'undue, inappropriate, US influence on this constitution' and it was around Iraq's oil and it was also around permanent access. So as a result we have between six and twelves of these bases. Just to give you an example of what these bases look like there's one called Camp Anaconda which is actually an air field in Balad, just north of Baghdad, and Camp Anaconda is a base that has 250 of its own aircraft. Air Force officials there claim that it was the second busiest runway on earth. There are 20,000 soldiers on this base less than a thousand of whom ever leave whatsoever. There's a base exchange there where they sell televisions, iPods, CDs, DVDs, TVs, there's a first run movie theater, . . . very elaborate meals served by Kellog Brown & Root employing third country nationals which is kind of the way these people are referred to in Iraq by the contractors but really if we're going to call them what they are, they're slaves. They're people from places like India and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh working for slave wages serving these very elaborate meals because with the cost plus fix fee contract that means that when Halliburton is serving these very elaborate meals the more money they spend in Iraq, the more money they make. So that's what's being served in a huge base like that. Soldiers actually gain weight and if they don't of course want any of that food or if they get burnt out on it like say you would at a college, for example, at a college dorm, well then they can go to the 24 hour Burger King, they can go to the Popeye's Fried Chicken, they can go to the Subway sandwich shop, and then wash it down with a latte from Starbucks. So that's just one of these bases to give you an idea, there's also AT&T phone home centers, there's also a Hertz rental car which I find kind of amusing because it's not like they're going to leave the base and go for a little drive in Al-Anbar Province but there it is, Hertz-Rent-A-Car, . . . I like to specifically name these companies so people can take note of that. So that's what these bases look like in Iraq and to contextualize that a little bit, it sounds a lot like some of these bases we have in Germany now, doesn't it, which have been there, what are we talking now, a little over sixty years, so just to give people an idea of what the situation is on the ground regarding the bases, we talk about the US' so-called embassy in Baghdad that's being built as we speak. This was a $572 million contract that was awarded to a very corrupt . . . Kuwaiti construction firm with very direct ties to the Bush administration and this is an embassy that's going to have room for between 3 and 8,000 government employees, it has its own school . . . so I don't think we should expect any Iraqi kids at this school, it has the largest swimming pool in the country, yoga studios, barbershops, beauty shops, its own water plant, it's own electricity plant, it has apartment buildings. And when it's complete, it will be, it's 21 buildings and the area will be the size of the Vatican City. So that's the so-called embassy that's being built in Iraq so if we talk about when are we going to withdraw troops and why aren't the Democrats talking about withdrawal, this sort of thing, instead why is there talk of a 'surge'? It's because we . . . just need look no further than the physical evidence on the ground, augmented by the US policy like the National Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review Report -- all of these signs point towards permanent occupation of Iraq just like we have in Germany.
But never fear, Democrats are in power in the US Congress which translates as . . . a strongly worded letter. CNN reports that "leaders of the new Democratic Congress" sent an open letter to the Bully Boy which "said increasing troop levels in Iraq would be a 'serious mistake'." That's telling him! (And shades of the letter Carolyn Ho got from Congress.) AFP reports that the letter states "it is time to bring the war to a close." And no doubt, this wouldn't have even happened were it not for the activists on Wednesday (sse Thursday's snapshot). Cindy Sheehan, who handled the press conference Yawn Emmanuel and other Congress members fled from, today on Democracy Now!, addressed the realities too many elected Democrats want to avoid: that the war is costing the US 10 million dollars every hour, that plans and programs will cost money and defunding the war needs to be placed 'back on the table,' that the people want the war ended and the Democratic Party was voted into office not to wait around for another laughable 'plan' from the Bully Boy, to get the United States out of the illegal war.
Meanwhile, in shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, AFP reports that Bully Boy nominated the now former US director of national intelligence John Negroponte to be the Deputy Secretary of State -- second to Condi -- while he "announced that he had chosen vice adminiral Michael McConnell, a former head of the National Security Agency, to replace Negroponte at the head of all 16 US spy agencies". And as Christopher Torchia (AP) notes,
generals John P. Abizaid and George Casey will be replaced shortly.
Returning to news of war resisters, earlier this week, Mary Ambrose (New American Media) took a look at war resisters who seek asylum in Canada and noted the stories of Chris and Stephanie Teske -- Chris decided to self-checkout while stationed in Germany but US troops do not "have access to their passports" so, after deciding on Canada, Stephanie: "I cried a lot and told them we'd spent $3,000 on these tickets and my parents were waiting for us and frankly, we just got lucky."
it's up and it's entitled 'The First Factually Challenged Fool.' read it. it's hilarious and also continue betty's fact checking of the fact free thomas friedman.
elaine and mike have been kind enough to continue their weekend visits as the home bound blogger received 2 more weeks of house arrest. it's really not like house arrest. and now that the critical period has passed with no problems, i don't even really mind it. (that might be due to the fact that this time the choice was left up to me.) we've been listening to carly simon's wonderful new cd, into white. it's really a beautiful cd, you should give it a listen.
ruth and tracey gave it to me this morning as a gift. and i love it! this afternoon, when the mail arrived, there was the same cd from c.i. which was fine, as i told ruth, because i can give that 1 to t and she'll love it. (and c.i. just cares that people hear it.) ruth wondered why c.i. didn't bring it when they all visited this week and my guess is c.i. felt (a) i needed daily mail treats to keep from going stir crazy and (b) if it had been handed to me while every 1 was here, i would've felt obligated to listen when i just wanted to catch up with every 1. (mike got his copy when the gang visited him the next day.)
c.i. always gifts friends with carly's latest. (and often gifts recent ex-lovers with carly's latest albums as well.) i always trace the success of carly's comeback album (coming around again) to c.i. i'm only half-joking. for at least 6 months after that came out, where ever i went, if i bumped into any 1 who knew c.i. and me, he or she would always say, 'hey that really is a good album.' at a posh watering hole in nyc, i bumped into 1 of our old professors who opend with how he'd just recieved coming around again from c.i.
carly simon really is wonderful, as a singer and as a songwriter. elaine wrote about c.i.'s letters tonight (read that) and it is true. there were carly simon songs that i thought i knew and then c.i. would note a line or 2 in the middle of a letter and i would be like 'i never got that!' she really is gifted. i think 2 of my favorite songs of her's that weren't singles are 'we're so close' and 'it happens every day' (from spy and hello big man respectively). but, along with the well known hits, there are so many beautiful songs - 'never been gone' (spy), 'embrace me, my child' (no secrets), 'come back home' (spoiled girl), 'in pain' (come upstairs), 'we just got here' (have you seen me lately?), 'i'd rather it was you' (letters never sent), ... i could go on and on but the 1 i always beg c.i. to play on piano is 'you're the one.' (c.i. is incredible on the piano. i always meant to learn an instrument but never did. c.i. can play piano, guitar and bass. probably other instruments as well.)
'you're the one' is 1 i wish carly would do on a live cd. i also wish she'd do the regaee version of 'we have no secrets' on a live cd. but 'you're the one' is a song i never really noticed, it's on boys in the trees. and when i finally noticed it, i couldn't believe i'd missed it so long. i love that song, lyrics and music.
and what i love about carly is she's never been the 'little girl.' she started out, on the debut album, as a woman and she's only continued to grow over the years. there's something really pathetic about 40-year-old men (and older) trying to act like little boys or pretending that they've just fallen in love for the 1st time. carly's always sung from experience. she has a wonderful song (that i wish she'd remake because the production is snyth heavy as the 80s were) called 'take me as i am' which includes the lines 'take me as i am, for the woman i am, take me as i am' and, to me, that's always summed up her career which really has been an exploration of what it means to be a woman. she's charted those waters during times when many women denied their womanhood by playing it asexual or by playing 'little girl'. i really see tori amos as the only 1 whose really taken up the torch. i can hear echoes of carly in various acts (male and female) but tori's really the only 1 who puts it out there.
carly's notorious for her agoraphobia (sp?) and she certainly expresses her doubts (in songs and interviews) but when she lays down a song, even examining doubts, she does it with a sure hand and with confidence.
i think that's why women like her. there are a lot of females that try to cook up the sexy and end up turning off the audience. with carly, the sexy quality has always been just part of the mixture, part of what it is to be a woman. and there was never the 'go away, i'm only interested in performing for the boys' vibe that too many women have put off over the years. carly performs for men the same amount any straight woman does but there's a sly wink to it that lets us (women) know we're in on the game. like you were all at a table when some guy walked in that she found attractive and she'd announced, 'watch this, i'm going to try to catch his eye.'
it probably helps to have that voice. i can detect shades of odetta from time to time but that's really it. she's been a very unique vocalist (who went through a cat stevens phase on anticipation but even then it was on her terms).
so we've all just been listening to her into white cd all day.
for the last half-hour, i've been munching on some chips tracey gave me. i am a chip person but i've laid off during the pregnancy and tried to eat healthy (thanks to ruth on that). tracey knows i love chips and she brought over 2 bags. i'm eating the sea salt and olive oil one - made with russet potatoes 'all natural' it says on the bag. they're surprisingly good.
c.i. loves sea salt and loves all natural chips that are sea salt and vinegar but i've always found those too bitter. these have a more gentle taste. (or maybe i'm craving salty?) (i have been wanting a pickle all day.)
anita barrows is the name of nora barrows-friedman's mother as zach kindly told me in an e-mail today. she did the report on tillie olsen this week on KPFA's Flashpoints. (thank you for passing that on, zach.)
flyboy just said he wished crosby, stills & nash or crosby, stills, nash & young would do a cd like into white. he means the sound which is very ... i think i'd use the word 'flowing.' the album sounds very natural. (like the chips i'm eating!) it just sounds very beautiful.
i always wished nash and carly would do a duet. i've hoped for that for years and it hasn't happened so i'll assume it never will.
i know i'm too chatty (c.i. would roll the eyes!) but it's just been a really good day. the music helped absolutely but it's just been a nice day. i think it's because of the fact that it's the 1st weekend i haven't had to worry about the pregnancy. i know i said 'don't worry' and i pretty much kept to that but i did have my moments.
i've also just eaten today. mike brought some food that trina (his mother) had fixed and i didn't even let him make it to the kitchen, i was so hungry (and i've been that way all day, no matter how much i've eaten) that i said, 'oh let's have a picnic on the living room floor.' trina, like ruth, is a great cook and a great friend.
i have told ruth that i appreciate so much all that she's done - coming out to visit every monday through friday (and showing flyboy how to cook things other than steak and baked potatoes - ha ha) but that she didn't have to keep doing it. she said she wanted to and though she may curse me at the end of the day on her way home, i'll choose to believe her. my grandmother is visiting next week (with my mother) and i'm also looking forward to that. she called this morning to tell me about that and she was as excited as i am.
while i'm handing out thank yous, let me note my mother-in-law who has visited 3 times this week. we had 2 really good converstations and the 3rd visit was 'i'm just here to watch a dvd.' she'd bought some new edition of breakfast at tiffany's, a movie we both love, bought some boxes of junior mints, and we watched the movie and then she was gone saying, 'leave them wanting more.'
t has a crazy week at her salon so i told her wednesday not to worry about visiting this week. even so she ended up coming out this afternoon which was too nice of her. she's had a turnover in operators/stylists (i don't know the correct term, t will enlighten me when she reads this) and i know things are crazy right now.
and, of course, kat, c.i. and the gang (jim, dona, ty, jess and ava) came by to visit this week and stayed over. that was a real treat. and unexpected. i had asked c.i. not to visit because the distance is too great and, as i said, 'if you come during the 3 weeks, i'll worry that you're only here because flyboy wanted you here when i got bad news.' which is why they scheduled the visit for the day the doctor was going to announce the results of the 3 week critical period. that was actually jim and dona's 2nd visit because they also visited during the christmas break. jim's mother lives about 45 minutes to an hour away and jim was spending the 2nd half of the holdiays with her (the first 1/2 with his father) and dona was out here for the 2nd half.
if you think all of the visits meant i wasn't on the phone constantly, ask betty, cedric, wally, c.i. and my grandmother. they'll tell you different. (you can ask sunny too. i always call elaine at work but this week, i figured i'd give her a break, so sunny and i just spoke. which we do anyway, but i called her like crazy this week.) i told cedric and wally to both tell their girlfriends that it was their crazy pregnant friend. by the way, cedric's steady dating for 3 weeks now. if nothing else, i broke that bit of gossip.
okay, i'm obviously too chatty to talk about much else and i can feel myself on the verge of going into pregnancy talk which i'll spare you. here's c.i.'Iraq snapshot:'
Friday, January 5, 2006. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, US war resister Ehren Watada's pretrial hearing began yesterday, Bully Boy shuffles the deck while an "I told you so" travels across the Atlantic from France, and Ahmed Hadi Naji, who worked for AP, is discovered dead.
Monday, February 5th, the US military attempts to court-martial Ehren Watada. Watada is the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Yesterday, at Fort Lewis in Washington, a pretrial hearing began that will determine what arguments are allowed in the court-martial and what arguments will be disallowed. The hearing was presided over by Lt. Col. John Head, the court-martial would have a jury made up of *a panel of* officers, and the AP reports that he will make his decision on "the parameters of the case" next week. Melanthia Mitchell (AP) reports that on Thursday: "Watada's parents sat in the back of the courtroom during the hearing, his father at times leaning forward on the bench with his hands clasped in front of him." As Linton Weeks (Washington Post) noted, Carolyn Ho, Ehren's mother, is a high school counselor who went on leave to raise awareness about her son and is on leave for the pretrial and the court-martial. Bob Watada, Ehren's father, has also been engaged in speaking tours around the country to raise awareness about Ehren and, for any wondering, Bob Watada recently retired (and recently remarried, Rosa Sakanishi, Ehren's step-mother, has accompanied Bob Watada on his speaking tours).
The US military wants to reduce the court-martial to a "yes" or "no" -- Did you refuse to deploy to Iraq? They wish to prevent Ehren Watada from explaining his decision -- in effect that are hoping to prevent him from making the best defense possible when he is facing six years in prison.
As Hal Bernton (Seattle Times) reported: "At a hearing Thursday at Fort Lewis, there was little dispute about the action taken by 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who last June refused to deploy with his brigade to Iraq. But defense and prosecutors sparred much of the afternoon about whether Watada's motives for opting out of the war should affect the outcome of a February court-martial trial that could result in a six-year prison term." If the military was interested in justice (and sure of their case), they wouldn't be attempting to shut down Watada's defense.
The prosucetor, Captain Dan Kuecker has stated, "There is no rational doubt in this situation; . . . it's a lawful order." Were he as sure of himself as he pretends to the press, there would be no attempts to prevent Watada from explaining both his actions and the reasons behind them.
Watada explained the reasons most recently to Kevin Sites (Kevin Sites in The Hotzone): "I think that in March of 2003 when I joined up, I, like many Americans, believed the administration when they said the threat from Iraq was imminent -- that there were weapons of mass destruction all throughout Iraq; that there were stockpiles of it; and because of Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist acts, the threat was imminent and we needed to invade that country immediately in order to neutralize that threat. Since then I think I, as many, many Americans are realizing, that those justifications were intentionally falsified in order to fit a policy established long before 9/11 of just toppling the Saddam Hussein regime and setting up an American presence in Iraq. . . . I think the facts are out there, they're not difficult to find, they just take a little bit of willingness and interest on behalf of anyone who is willing to seek out the truth and find the facts. All of it is in the mainstream media. But it is quickly buried and it is quickly hidden by other events that come and go. And all it takes is a little bit of logical reasoning. The Iraq Survey Group came out and said there were no weapons of mass destruction after 1991 and during 2003. The 9/11 Commission came out and said there were no ties with Iraq to 9/11 or al-Qaeda. The president himself came out and said nobody in his administration ever suggested that there was a link. And yet those ties to al-Qaeda and the weapons of mass destruction were strongly suggested. They said there was no doubt here were weapons of mass destruction all throughout 2002, 2003 and even 2004. So, they came out and they say this, and yet they say it was bad intelligence, not manipulated intelligence, that was the problem. And then you have veteran members of the CIA that come out and say, 'No. It was manipulated intelligence. We told them there was no WMD. We told them there were no tides to al-Qaeda. And they said that that's not what they wanted to hear'."
In essence, Ehren Watada is on trial for the media -- the media that sold the illegal war and the media that told the truth (eventually for some) about it. So it has been surprising to see nothing on Watada in the leading independent magazines in 2006. In 2007, The Nation discovered Watada on page 14 of the January 8 and 15th double issue in an article written by Marc Cooper (click here for Yahoo version -- subscribers only at The Nation website). Like many Americans, Watada believe the spin/lies from the US administration (repeated near word for word by most media outlets with little skepticism). Like many Americans, he's since come to see that reality and spin were two different things.
This new awareness is reflected not only in the civilian population but also, as Rachel Ensign (Citizen Soldier) reminds us, within the military as well: "A new poll conducted by the Army Times newspaper at the end of 2006 found that a majority of soldiers polled now disapprove of how Bush has conducted the Iraq war to date. . . . Only 41% of soldiers polled today think that we should have invaded Iraq -- down from 65% in 2003. This closely mirrors sentiment among civilians; only 45% of whom now believe that the war was a good idea."
Michael Gilbert (The News Tribune) reports that, based on comments and questions during the pretrial hearing, Lt. Col John Head "likely won't allow Lt. Ehren Watada to defend himself" by making the case for his actions and why he acted as he did and that Head declared, "At this point I'm not inclined to grant a hearing on the Nuremburg defense." The Nuremburg defense is in reference to the Nuremberg trials during which soldiers stating that they were only following orders were told that was not a legal excuse for their actions. As Ruth noted, following the August Article 32 hearing of Watada, "The message that Lieutenant Colonel Mark Keith appears to be endorsing is follow all orders but, if it later turns out that they were illegal, you are on your own and will take full responsibility. At best, like with Lieutenant Calley, the War Monger in the oval office may pardon you after you are convicted. What is the message? Why teach the obligation to follow only legal orders, why refute 'I was only following orders' as a defense and then punish Lieutenant Ehren Watada for doing just that while advising him that it is not his place to make such a determination when, in fact, the invididual who obeys the unlawful order is the one who will be held responsible by the military justice system?"
Why teach? Refer to Ruth's Report where she goes over retired Col. Ann Wright's testimony at the Article 32 hearing on what she taught soldiers at the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg while teaching the Law of Land Warfare. Taught is FM 27-10 (Law of Land Warfare):
Section IV. DEFENSES NOT AVAILABLE 509. Defense of Superior Orders
a. The fact that the law of war has been violated pursuant to an order of a superior authority, whether military or civil, does not deprive the act in question of its character of a war crime, nor does it constitute a defense in the trial of an accused individual, unless he did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful. In all cases where the order is held not to constitute a defense to an allegation of war crime, the fact that the individual was acting pursuant to orders may be considered in mitigation of punishment.
Ehren Watada could be prosecuted for actions committed during war by the above; however, the US military does not want to allow him to use the same law to defend himself. Only a fool would call that "justice." This is what Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, is noting when he told Linton Weeks, "The United States talks out of both sides of its mouth. We've prosecuted soldiers in other countries for following orders to commit war crimes. But God forbid you should use that refusal as a defense in this country."
Christian Hill (The Olympian) reports, however, that the military prosecution may have outfoxed itself: "The judge, Lt. Col. John Head, told prosectors that he was not inclined to grant the evidentiary hearing, but 'they opened the door for him allowing it by prosecuting his statements'" thereby making it "relevant. Some of those statements have become relevant by the sheer nature of how the government has charged this case."
Head was not referring to the charge of missing deployment but the charge ("conduct unbecoming") based upon remarks Watada made about the war such as ""The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of Iraqis is not only a terrible and moral injustice, but it's a contradiction to the Army's own law of land warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes." Remember: A Citizens' Hearings is being convened January 20-22 at Evergreen State College.
Ehren Watada's awakening mirrors that of many Americans. It also has echoes
in the growing resistance within the military to the illegal war as many resisters vocalize sentiments similar to Watada's (usually noting the works of Howard Zinn). Others that a part of this growing resistance within the military include Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Appeal for Redress is collecting signatures of active duty service members calling on Congress to bring the troops home -- the petition will be delivered to Congress this month.
While Watada faces court-martial for questioning the illegal war, France's president earns headlines for doing the same. AFP reports that Jacques Chirac speech today revolved largely around the illegal war: "As France had forseen and feared, the war in Iraq has sparked upheavals that have yet to show their full effects . . . exacerbated the divisions between communities and threatened the very integrity of Iraq. . . . It undermined the stability of the entire region, where every country now fears for its security and independence." (Chirac's also getting attention for, in the same speech, calling for slashing corporate taxes.)
Before noting some of the violence today in Iraq, let's note December again. Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) notes that the Iraq Interior Ministry's figure of 1,930 Iraqis dead for the month of December (an undercount) remains "a new high" for any month. Meanwhile, the count for US troop fatalities in Iraq for the month of December reached 115.
Bombings?
Reuters reports: "A roadside bomb struck a U.S. marine tank in the western city of Falluja on Friday", while a roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi soldiers and killed anohter in Baiji, and a roadside bomb in Kirkuk left two police officers wounded. Christopher Torchia (AP) reports
four Iraqis killed on the "outskirts" of Baghdad from mortar attacks.
Shootings?
Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in the Diyala Province. Reuters reports that "a former colonel" was shot dead in Mosul, as were a father and son in Iskandariya.
Corpses?
Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 12 corpses were discovered in Baghdad ("2 sadr city, 2 dora, 2 amil, 2 jihad, 2 hurriyah, 1 kadhemiyah, 1 abu atsheer"). Reuters notes that three corpses were discovered in Iskandariya. And AP reports that Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28-years-old, "was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving work". AP notes that he is "the second AP employee killed in less than a month" and that he is the fourth "to die violently" in the illegal war. They note that Ahmed Hadi Naji is survived by his wife, Sahba'a Mudhar Khalil, and his four-month-old twins, Zaid (male) and Rand (female). Christopher Torchia (AP) reports that Ahmed Hadi Naji had worked "for the AP for 2 1/2 years".
And Aref Mohmmed (Reuters) reports that one "American civilian contractor and two Iraqi translators" were kidnapped in Basra today.
Changing focus . . .
So let's be really clear, torture in Iraq is rampant and that's because it's policy even though we have had a replacement of Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld who infamously told . . . general, retired, now retired, but at the time general, [Janis] Karpinski 'make sure this happens' regarding specific torture techniques that he wanted to begin using inside places like Abu Ghraib well that policy hasn't changed as I said, these people are still being tortured, they're just not letting people bring in their video cameras and their digital cameras so that the images can find themselves splashed across the screens of 60 Minutes II program, for example.
What is that? Dahr Jamail speaking with Nora Barrows-Friedman on yesterday's
KPFA's Flashpoints (use either to listen to an archived broadcast -- Rebecca's "nora barrows-friedman interviewed dahr jamail on flashpoints" offers an overview of the interview).
For an hour, Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dahr Jamail reviewed the year 2006 in Iraq, focusing on the death squads, women, children, attacks on civilians and much more.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Dahr, can you talk now about the permanent US military base structures this was being talked about openly and publicly in the spring of 2006. But how has that discussion progressed and what does a permananet US military base structure look like on the ground? How many are we talking here?
Dahr Jamail: We started out with over a hundred bases in Iraq and they are slowly consolidating this number down to, right now it's around, it was 53 last time I checked. So they're slowly consolidating them down and if people want an idea of what Iraq might look like in the next couple of years, well we just have to look at Afghanistan because that's where, kind of, this model started and there's a couple of years jump there. And if you look at Afghanistan, we've got, I believe, four major bases right around the area of where I believe the proposed pipeline's going to go. So we should expect something similar but more bases in Iraq. There's going to be, right now it looks like, between six and twelve, we're not real sure on the number, but between six and twelve of these permanent bases. The military and the corporate media won't call them permanent because they don't have to, because they just made sure that they would have permanent access into particular areas in Iraq and so there was nothing in the so-called constitutional referendum that took place on October 15 a year ago that banned access from a foreign country, that's why there was a lot of wrangling along that constitutional referendum and why even someone in the UN that I spoke with, I quoted him as saying there was 'undue, inappropriate, US influence on this constitution' and it was around Iraq's oil and it was also around permanent access. So as a result we have between six and twelves of these bases. Just to give you an example of what these bases look like there's one called Camp Anaconda which is actually an air field in Balad, just north of Baghdad, and Camp Anaconda is a base that has 250 of its own aircraft. Air Force officials there claim that it was the second busiest runway on earth. There are 20,000 soldiers on this base less than a thousand of whom ever leave whatsoever. There's a base exchange there where they sell televisions, iPods, CDs, DVDs, TVs, there's a first run movie theater, . . . very elaborate meals served by Kellog Brown & Root employing third country nationals which is kind of the way these people are referred to in Iraq by the contractors but really if we're going to call them what they are, they're slaves. They're people from places like India and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh working for slave wages serving these very elaborate meals because with the cost plus fix fee contract that means that when Halliburton is serving these very elaborate meals the more money they spend in Iraq, the more money they make. So that's what's being served in a huge base like that. Soldiers actually gain weight and if they don't of course want any of that food or if they get burnt out on it like say you would at a college, for example, at a college dorm, well then they can go to the 24 hour Burger King, they can go to the Popeye's Fried Chicken, they can go to the Subway sandwich shop, and then wash it down with a latte from Starbucks. So that's just one of these bases to give you an idea, there's also AT&T phone home centers, there's also a Hertz rental car which I find kind of amusing because it's not like they're going to leave the base and go for a little drive in Al-Anbar Province but there it is, Hertz-Rent-A-Car, . . . I like to specifically name these companies so people can take note of that. So that's what these bases look like in Iraq and to contextualize that a little bit, it sounds a lot like some of these bases we have in Germany now, doesn't it, which have been there, what are we talking now, a little over sixty years, so just to give people an idea of what the situation is on the ground regarding the bases, we talk about the US' so-called embassy in Baghdad that's being built as we speak. This was a $572 million contract that was awarded to a very corrupt . . . Kuwaiti construction firm with very direct ties to the Bush administration and this is an embassy that's going to have room for between 3 and 8,000 government employees, it has its own school . . . so I don't think we should expect any Iraqi kids at this school, it has the largest swimming pool in the country, yoga studios, barbershops, beauty shops, its own water plant, it's own electricity plant, it has apartment buildings. And when it's complete, it will be, it's 21 buildings and the area will be the size of the Vatican City. So that's the so-called embassy that's being built in Iraq so if we talk about when are we going to withdraw troops and why aren't the Democrats talking about withdrawal, this sort of thing, instead why is there talk of a 'surge'? It's because we . . . just need look no further than the physical evidence on the ground, augmented by the US policy like the National Security Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review Report -- all of these signs point towards permanent occupation of Iraq just like we have in Germany.
But never fear, Democrats are in power in the US Congress which translates as . . . a strongly worded letter. CNN reports that "leaders of the new Democratic Congress" sent an open letter to the Bully Boy which "said increasing troop levels in Iraq would be a 'serious mistake'." That's telling him! (And shades of the letter Carolyn Ho got from Congress.) AFP reports that the letter states "it is time to bring the war to a close." And no doubt, this wouldn't have even happened were it not for the activists on Wednesday (sse Thursday's snapshot). Cindy Sheehan, who handled the press conference Yawn Emmanuel and other Congress members fled from, today on Democracy Now!, addressed the realities too many elected Democrats want to avoid: that the war is costing the US 10 million dollars every hour, that plans and programs will cost money and defunding the war needs to be placed 'back on the table,' that the people want the war ended and the Democratic Party was voted into office not to wait around for another laughable 'plan' from the Bully Boy, to get the United States out of the illegal war.
Meanwhile, in shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, AFP reports that Bully Boy nominated the now former US director of national intelligence John Negroponte to be the Deputy Secretary of State -- second to Condi -- while he "announced that he had chosen vice adminiral Michael McConnell, a former head of the National Security Agency, to replace Negroponte at the head of all 16 US spy agencies". And as Christopher Torchia (AP) notes,
generals John P. Abizaid and George Casey will be replaced shortly.
Returning to news of war resisters, earlier this week, Mary Ambrose (New American Media) took a look at war resisters who seek asylum in Canada and noted the stories of Chris and Stephanie Teske -- Chris decided to self-checkout while stationed in Germany but US troops do not "have access to their passports" so, after deciding on Canada, Stephanie: "I cried a lot and told them we'd spent $3,000 on these tickets and my parents were waiting for us and frankly, we just got lucky."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)