1st, my 'terri gross whores for the insurance companies' needs to be read with trina's 'Fire Terry Gross.' 2nd 'terri' or 'terry' e-mails a visitor which is a fine question. but he then goes on to rip me apart for getting it wrong.
i'm not 2-years-old. i am some 1 who knows p.r. and i did want the terry gross post to be found. so i did 3 search engine searches and 'terri gross' (in the headine, not in the post) is a popular spelling. yes, it's wrong. which is why i spell it both ways in the post. i do that very often. it allows posts that i want to be found to be found.
thanks for your lack of concern.
now we're moving to heroes.
nbc needs to cancel it.
this show is crap.
i had something else to cover last night so i put nbc's bad show on hold.
we've got 1 damsel in distress after another.
bulls**t.
this is so old and this is why they ran off viewers. niki was tough, she could kick the crap out of any 1. then they tried to make her - and only her - 'bad' for having powers and needing 'treatment.'
her new character is just weak and rarely on.
and we've got claire victimized by sylar. is he going to rape her?
oh joy.
can't wait for that.
i'm sick of it.
the women on this show are pathetic. they're matt's wife asking, 'matt are you going to leave the house?'
who cares.
why don't these women have their own lives and why do they always need help and have no real powers of their own.
this is nonsense.
and nathan's not dead and i don't know any 1 that believes he is.
they're just jerking off and wasting all of our time.
i hear nbc is seriously considering cancelling the show.
they should. it just gets worse each year.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, January 13, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraq Inquiry hears some hearsay as well as some actual testimony, Barack wants more war money, demands are made in England for Gordon Brown to testify, while another prime minister (in the Netherlands) admits that the Iraq War did not have legal backing, and more.
Starting in London with the Iraq Inquiry. For any who missed yesterday's hearing and to give credit to an outlet for covering the events, we'll note this from yesterday's Pacifica Evening News (broadcast on KPFA and KPFK -- as well as other stations -- KPFA archives for 14 days, KPFK for 59):'s
John Hamilton: Prime Minister Tony Blair told then-president George W. Bush in 2002 that Britain would back military action if diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq's Saddam Hussein failed. That's according to testimony today by Blair's former communications chief as he appeared before a public inquiry into the Iraq War in London. Alastair Campbell said there never was a precipitant rush to war despite the close ties between Blair and Bush; however, Campbell said that Blair wrote personally to Bush to offer his support for military action if Saddam did not accede to the United Nations demands on disarmament before the March 2003 invasion. Here he describes the content of secret letters from Blair to the former president pledging British support for an invasion as early as 2002.Alastair Campbell: We share the analysis. We share the concern. We're absolutely with you in making sure that Saddam Hussein is -- face up to his obligations and Iraq is disarmed. If that cannot be done diplomatically, it has to be done mila-militarily. Britain will be there. That will definitely be the tenor of his communications to the president.John Hamilton: Campbell is a former journalist who was one of Blair's closest advisers from 1994 to 2003. He insisted today that Blair tried all along to disarm Saddam by diplomatic means. His testimony conflicted with widespread reports that a British intelligence dossier on Iraq's pre-war capabilities to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction was "sexed up" on Campbell's orders to make Saddam Hussein appear to be more of a threat to national security. Those reports were reinforced this week when the British Guardian newspaper reported that those who drafted the dossier were immediately asked to compare British claims against a 2002 speech to the United Nations by then-president George W. Bush. In that speech, the former president claimed Iraq would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within a year. The next day, the [British] dossier's timeline was halved to claimed Iraq could get the bomb within a year. Campbell today dismissed such reports.Alastair Campbell: But at no point did anybody from the prime minister down say to anybody within intelligence services, 'Look, you've got to sort of tailor it to fit this argument.' I defend every single word of the dossier I defend every single part of the process.John Hamilton: The five-person Iraq Inquiry also known as the Chilcot Inquiry was called by current Prime Minister Gordon Brown to examine the run up to the 2003 invasion. Critics point out that witness are not sworn to testify under oath. And others have criticized the panel's members for their lack of prosecutorial skills.
Jason Beattie (Daily Mirror) observes of Capmbell's testimony, "The Godfather of Spin bobbed and weaved his way through a five-hour long grilling without once displaying a hint of humility or a glimmer of self-doubt." Tom Newton Dunn (The Sun) zooms in on this detail, "Mr Campbell revealed Gordon Brown was in Tony Blair's 'inner circle' when the decision was made to go to war. The revelation is an embarrassment to the then-Chancellor who has long tried to distance himself." Before we get to today's hearing, we're going to stay with Gordon Brown and today's news. Brown came under pressure today regarding the Iraq Inquiry. Andrew Porter (Telegraph of London) reports, "Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, used Prime Minister's Questions to demand that the Prime Minister face questions from Sir John Chilcot's inquiry team in the coming weeks." Porter quotes Clegg stating, "Given everything that has come to light in the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War, will you now do the decent thing and volunteer to give evidence to the inquiry before people decide how to vote? When the decisions were taken to launch this illegal war, you weren't only in the room - you were the one who signed the cheques. People are entitled to know, before they decide how to vote in a general election, what your role was in this Government's most disastrous decision. What have you got to hide?" The Guardian of England has a web poll on the issue currently and, as this is dictated, the non-scientific results are 15% say that Brown shouldn't testify before the election and 85% say, "Yes. Voters hvae a right to know his responsibility." Tim Castle (Reuters) reports that Gordon Brown danced around the issue today declaring, "I have nothing to hide on this matter, I am happy to give eivdence." But that's not saying, "Fine, I'll do it." Helene Mulhooland (Guardian) adds, "Brown was also asked if he had any regrets regarding the war, and said he had already put on the record that he felt that the reconstruction of the country had been mismanaged. But he said he stood by all the decisions he was involved in during the run-up to the invasion in 2003."
The Liberal Democrats issued the following:
Following today's Prime Minister's Questions, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg is writing to Gordon Brown, urging him to indicate to the Chilcot Inquiry that he would prefer to appear before it ahead of the election.
The text of the letter is as follows: Dear Gordon,
I am writing to urge you to indicate immediately to Sir John Chilcot that it is your
strong preference to go before the Iraq Inquiry ahead of the General Election.
Follwoing developments yesterday at Alastair Campbell's hearing, your personal
role in decisions that led to the war in Iraq has now come under the spotlight. The
notion that you hearing should take place after the election in order that the Inquiry
remains outside of party politics therefore no longer holds. On the contrary, the
sense that you have been granted special treatment because of your position as
Prime Minister will only serve to undermine the perceived independence of the
Committee.
As I said to you across the floor of the Commons today, people have a right
to know the truth about the part you played in this war before they cast their
verdict on your Government's record. I urge you to confirm publicly that should Sir
John Chilcot invite you to give evidence to the Inquiry ahead of the election you
will agree to do so.
Nick Clegg
Along with Brown's testimony, there is great interest around Tony Blair's testimony (Blair is scheduled to testify later this month). Catherine Mayer (Time magazine) notes:Blair's star turn is expected to be so heavily subscribed that the inquiry has launched a public ballot for seats. A key question will be at what point the British government gave pledges to Washington about taking part in military action. The inquiry panel's questions to Campbell revealed for the first time the existence of private letters in 2002 from Blair to U.S. President George W. Bush. The "tenor" of these letters, said Campbell, was "We are going to be with you making sure that Saddam Hussein faces up to his obligations and that Iraq is disarmed. If that cannot be done diplomatically and it is to be done militarily, Britain will be there."
The Daily Mirror offers, "A little humility might have been appropriate when considering the dire situation Iraq is now in but perhaps we're expecting too much." Campbell has no humility. Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger notes that Campbell insists he ignored the morning papers in which case he might wish to know that BBC News offers a press roundup of coverage (with links). Meanwhile Andrew Sparrow (Guardian) notes Campbell's taken to blog to toss out the Bible to hide behind. The Guardian's Nicholas Watt also caught Campbell's self-dramatizing posts:
So, once again, we are treated to some "unadulterated, bilious shite" on Alastair Campbell's blog today.
OK, that language is a bit over the top. But those are the exact words Campbell once used in public to dismiss a Guardian piece I had written.
Now Tony Blair's former communications director is denouncing the media in general for its coverage of his appearance before the Iraq inquiry yesterday. He has taken exception to the way the press highlighted a series of notes Blair wrote to George Bush in the run-up to the war in 2003.
Campbell's post is rather amazing for its inability to grasp reality and for little tidbits that say so much. An example of the latter, Campbell spent last night seeing The Misanthrope. But possibly Campbell's really not familiar with Moliere and missed those points. (In his post, he's obssessed with Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis.)
Today the Inquiry heard from Nemat Shafik and Andrew Turnbull (link goes to video and transcript options). Turnbull was Tony Blair's Cabinet Secretary (September 2002 to 2005).
Chair John Chilcot: I think we are coming to the end of this session. We have learned from this session a number of lessons and you may have others to suggest and certainly some last reflections.
Andrew Turnbull: Well, I have got one in particular. That is -- the perception in the British public is, we said he had weapons of mass destruction and we went to war in order to find them and disarm them, and we didn't find them. Thererfore, the 179 people [British troops] who died, many more injured, their sacrfice is in vain. That's a very kind of popular view. What I find extraordinary is that -- how little knowledge there is of what the answer to this story is, and I hope that this Inquiry will devote some time to explaining what we now know about what actually happened, the two main sources being the Iraq Survey Group and the debriefing of Saddam Hussein. If I said to people, "Who is George Piro?", I don't think one in 60 million would know -- do you know who George Piro is? George Piro is the FBI agent who debriefed Saddam Hussein over a perid of five months. So there is a sense that we do know the answer, and --
We stop there. We're not interested in garbage and it's a damn shame the Inquiry let him yammer on. Saddam Hussein was crossed or felt crossed by the George H.W. Bush administration (when H.W. Bush was president). He's captured by US forces after the illegal war has started. You think he's going to tell the truth? He's got a good guess he's going to be dying (he was executed). You think he's not going to taunt his interrogators?
While the Inquiry does not swear anyone in (or make them affirm to tell the truth), witnesses need to offer testimony on what they observed. Turnbull was not present for the interrogation. He's referring to an American FBI agent's observations. Bring that FBI agent forward if you want to hear what the FBI heard from Saddam. But don't let witnesses continue this crap. There was a passage last week, of testimony, that was so tempting to use because it would be perfect for the snapshot and back up several assertions we've long made. It never made it in the snapshot because the witness 'testifying' wasn't present for what he was describing. The committee doesn't need to be composed of attorneys to grasp that you don't rely on hearsay evidence.
They need to put their foot down on this because it's happening more and more as the Inquiry goes on and you better believe those who are coming in know it. Turnbull knew it. He knew he could go on (and on and on -- from where we cut him off he speaks for another page and six more lines before being interrupted). He offered nothing of value. What he didn't witness, he didn't witness. Early in his testimony, he told Chilcot, "I thought Alastair Campbell's description of Clare Short as untrustworthy was very poor. I didn't agree with that." Fine. That's his observation. He's making that call based on what he saw. He did not see Saddam Hussein interrogated and he doesn't need to be pinning his hopes that the illegal war was 'good' onto testimony he can't back up because he didn't witness it.
Andrew Turnbull: I think there were two problems. One was the US. The other is we made -- along with that -- when we allocated, we made some incorrect assumptions. There was a belief that we would succeed in persuading -- since we had persuaded the US to go the UN route on the confrontation of Saddam Hussein, they would buy into the UN route for the post-crisis. I think Bush -- when Bush said the UN will have a vital role (inaudible), he was fobbing us off, and he meant the UN agencies would have a vital role, but he was absolutely resistant. So we took false comfort from that. We took false comfort from the fact that there are papers which say, "This is a well-educated socity" and there were words around in the papers which say "with a functioning, public -- relatively functioning public sector". It turned out that it partly collapsed of its own accord and then Bremer destroyed what was left. We had underestimated the discord that would arise. In a sense, we were preparing, but we didn't -- there were lots of things we didn't forsee and it was getting the -- an arrangment with US apparatus that was the thing that was realy difficult. [. . .] No, what we did not get were large numbers of internal displaced people and we did not get hunger, and I have come to the view that the UN, when they said they were feeding 60 per cent of the population, they were boasting. Valerie Amos went to Basra in June/early Jule and reported that the markets were simply flowing with produce. So I don't think we were looking at a much, much worse scenario on those two fronts. What we did not anticipate was the collapse of civil order, and you could say this comes back to the fact that the one assumption that was absolutely correct in this whol thing was that Saddam Hussein could be toppled very quickly with a surprisingly small number of people, but the number of people required to topple him in three weeks was far les than the number required to occupy what was left. That was a major strategic miscalculation, not principally of our doing.
Turnbull stated that if they'd gone with another war option, the British could have utilized "warships and airships" but far less boots on the ground.
Andrew Turnbull: Whether people really understood that significance, I don't know. Maybe they did, but they understimated just how difficult it was going to be, and one of the reasons we underestimated it was, in my view, that the emigre groups had the ear of the people that mattered in the Pentago who said, once you have decapitated the Saddam regime, it will not be difficult to create a functioning Iraqi society. We were overconfident in that and didn't forsee -- this whole idea -- we didn't forsee that we would be in the midst of an extreme security problem. We didn't foresee that the Iranians would meddle as much as they meddled. It goes back almost to that point, but I think we seriously failed to see what was the real problem. The real problem was security and we probably spent too much time on humanitarian -- the movement of people, refugee camps, safe havens and the food supply issues, and we didn't catch this other issue that, if we didn't establish security, nothing else counted for anything.
This is in contrast to Shafik's earlier testimony and Chilcot pointed that out to Turnbull before noting that Shafik wasn't there (and Turnbull was) so obviously on some level John Chilcott does grasp that people need to be testifying to what they witnessed. I was not impressed with Shafik's testimony and we're not emphasizing it. Iraq Inquiry Blogger weighs in on Turnbull's testimony:
In the event it was a fascinating session. He attacked Alastair Campbell for describing Clare Short as untrustworthy ("very poor"), criticised Blair for allowing the 'culture of challenge' to ebb from Cabinet life and introduced the new (to me) phrase "granny's footsteps" to describe the troubling way the September dossier was pieced together by No 10 and the spooks.
How was Middle East security ever going to be improved, he asked, by taking out Saddam Hussein and leaving Iran with a neighbour newly run by 15 million Shia?
Perhaps most moving were his remarks about the late Robin Cook. A number of commentators have said the former Foreign Secretary wasn't always the easiest of people to get on with; I interviewed him once and was left with the distinct impression that mine were by some considerable degree by far the stupidest questions he'd ever been asked (then again maybe they were).
But Turnbull's description of the "quite remarkable" man was highly affectionate. Alone in a Cabinet that had bought the case for war, Cook was the only person who wasn't convinced about WMD or the failure of containment "and I'm sorry he isn't around to take the credit for that".
Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) focuses on the legal opinion given the Cabinet before the start of the illegal war:
Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary at the time, who gave the inquiry unprecedented insights into how the Blair government took the country to war in 2003, said there were significant differences between the final legal opinion Lord Goldsmith presented to the cabinet, and an earlier version he gave privately to Tony Blair.
"It was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced 10 days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed," he said.
Blair has argued that the short statement Goldsmith subsequently gave the cabinet on the eve of the invasion was a "fair summary" of the attorney general's latest legal advice. However, it is now known that the only official legal opinion Goldsmith drew up was the one dated 7 March, which contained serious caveats about the lawfulness of an invasion.
David Brown (Times of London) adds, "Lord Turnbull said that the final legal opinion presented to the Cabinet 'was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced ten days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed'." For Chris Ames (Iraq Inquiry) the most telling moment of the hearing was that Turnbull became yet another who had faith in Blair early on but now didn't know what to make (he told the Inquiry he was confused by Tony Blair's recent claims that he would have invaded Iraq whether or not he thought it had WMD) and, "The trouble for Blair is that if the cabinet secretary didn't know what the true aim of his policy was, the evidence of all of the officials further away from him who have sworn that the objective of the policy was disarmament becomes worthless."
Back to yesterday's Pacifica Evening News (broadcast on KPFA and KPFK -- as well as other stations -- KPFA archives for 14 days, KPFK for 59) for other governmental bodies and the Iraq War:
John Hamilton: Also today an official Dutch investigation into the Iraq War concluded that the Hague government supported the war without legal backing, it did not fully inform Parliament about its plans. The committee's scathing report -- whose release was broadcast live on state television -- said the US led invasion probably targeted regime change in Iraq but military intervention for this reason was not supported by international law and the Dutch government was aware of that case.
And Tony Blair may be involved with this one as well. First, Dutch News reports a bitter split/argument "between the Labour party and the prime minister" with Parliament demanding Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkeneede issue some sort of a statement on the new findings. Afua Hirsch (Guardian) pronounces them to be "damning findings" and explains the inquiry had a mysterious document that is being kept secret: "The document – allegedly a letter from Tony Blair asking for the support of the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende – was handed over in a breach of diplomatic protocol and on the basis that it was for Balkenende's eyes only, an inquiry official told the Guardian." Andrew Porter (Telegraph of London) adds of the report:It stated: "The United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq from the 1990s did not give a mandate to the US-British military intervention in 2003."Mr Balkenende joined the "coalition of the willing" because he said Saddam Hussein had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions. Dutch MPs opposed the move.The report said the Dutch government did not adequately inform parliament in 2002 and 2003 about a US request for support for the invasion.Willibrord Davids, the committee chairman, said: "It could have been much more complete. Information from intelligence and security services was handed out selectively."
And Radio Netherlands reports the Dutch Prime Minister has written a letter to Parliament in which he "admitted that a better mandate in international law was required to begin a war against Iraq in 2003."
In Iraq, Nouri's up to something but who knows what? On yesterday's crackdown, we'll again turn to Pacifica Evening News (broacast on KPFA and KPFK -- as well as other stations -- KPFA archives for 14 days, KPFK for 59).Mark Mericle: Iraq's military seized a large cache of explosives and arrested suspected insurgents allegedly planning to target government ministries today in a crackdown across the capital that brought parts of the city to a standstill. The security measures demonstrated the ever present fear that insurgents will carry out more bombings like the ones against government buildings in past months that killed hundreds ahead of the March elections. The government's announcement that it had arrested 25 suspects and seized 400 kilograms of military grade explosives also set off bitter accusations from some Sunni politicians that the government had exaggerated the incident to burnish its security credentials. The deputy head of Parliament Security and Defense Committee said the insurgnents were explanning to target goverment ministries although he did not have details on which ones. There was now to independently verify the reports.On the crackdown and claims, Liz Sly and Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report that Iraqi state TV immediately began announcing there was no military coup taking place in an attempt to calm the residents and that state TV then began broadcasting claims of an allegedly foiled plot. They report:Whether the alleged plot has been fully thwarted is open to question, however.The quantities of explosives uncovered would barely equal that of one of the recent bombs. The government did not specify whether the security forces had found the bombs purported to be circulating.But the panic showed how jittery the city is as the elections approach. Though most roads were reopened by midmorning, schools were closed and some neighborhoods were sealed off into the evening. By nightfall, streets that would normally be bustling with traffic were almost deserted."People are feeling very nervous about the security situation and also about the political situation, which is getting more complicated every day," said Nabil Salim, a political scientist at Baghdad University.
Real violence continues in Iraq.
Bombings?
Xinhua reports "a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. military patrol near the city of Khalis". Press TV adds a bomber in Saqlawiya (Anbar Province) took his/her own life not far from a police station and killed 7 other people as well. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the Anbar bombing left six people wounded and that a Baghdad roadside bombing injured 2 people. Mohammed Hussein and Timothy Williams (New York Times) report that the bomber used a vehicle ("water truck") and that it "was allowed to enter the compound because it was believed to be part of rebuilding efforts there, the authorities said."
Shootings?
Xinhua reports 1 person has been shot dead (a second wounded) in Baquba today while an Iraqi soldier was wounded in a Sa'diyah shooting. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an attack on a Kirkuk Sahwa checkpoint in which 1 Sahwa was injured.
Yesterday Alsumaria TV reported that 1 Iraqi Christian -- 50-year-old Hikamt Elias -- was shot dead in Mosul yesterday. Tom McGregor (Dallas Blog) puts the latest assault on Iraqi Christians into persepctive noting the other assaults in the region (he gives the murdered the age of 75 and notes the name is Hikmat Sleiman):.
At the New York Times' At War Blog, two Iraqi correspondents for the paper share their thoughts on the region. In Anbar, the correspondent sees violence returning but hopes for improvements this year and has hopes for the elections scheduled for March. In Tikrit, the correspondent sees continued corruption, lack of basic services "and chaos" and a split between the people with some missing "the past under the rule of Saddam Hussein". On the subject of the intended elections, Reidar Visser (Iraq and Gulf Analsyis) weighs in on the efforts to ban a number of politicians (including the popular Salih al-Mutlak) and political parties:
Much of the lack of clarity relates to the essentially transitional character of the Iraqi de-Baathification process. The old de-Baathification committee, created on the basis of ideas from Paul Bremer and headed since 2004 by Ali Faysal al-Lami -- a Shiite political operator with particularly close ties to Iran -- is supposed to be replaced by a new "justice and accountability board" pursuant to the "justice and accountability act" passed in early 2008. However, Iraqi parliamentarians have been wrangling about who should sit on the new board, with a government proposal for a Maliki ally (Walid al-Hilli) to take over its leadership so far having been rejected in parliament, partly due to internal Shiite opposition. In the meanwhile, Lami, apparently in dialogue with the "justice and accountability committee" of the Iraqi parliament, continues to wield considerable influence in issues relating to de-Baathification.
It is Lami and the committee that appear to be the driving force behind the latest proposal to exclude Mutlak. It may be useful, therefore, to have a brief look at the political affiliations of these individuals. Lami has ties to Ahmad Chalabi, the Sadrist breakaway faction Asaib Ahl al-Haqq (involved in the Qays al-Khazaali case and the abductions and murder of British hostages), and Iran. As for the parliamentary committee, it is headed by a Sadrist, with a Badr member as number two. The other members are from the PUK, Daawa and yet another Sadrist who together form the majority (hence, the "Watani" alliance is stronger on the committee than Daawa as far as the Shiites are concerned). Additionally, there is a minority of two secularists on the committee, plus Rashid al-Azzawi who represents Tawafuq (and who on some issues may well find common ground with the Shiite Islamists rather than with the secularists).
The main problem with the proposal to exclude Mutlak is of course its abrupt, ad hoc nature, and the fact that it emerges in the middle of a period of transition for the de-Baathification bureaucracy. Firstly, why has not this been dealt with earlier? The fact is that Mutlak and his party have been an important part of Iraqi democracy for four years, and that they have played a key role on numerous occasions in furthering the democratic process -- for example when they along with other opposition parties demanded a timeline for local elections when the provincial powers law was adopted in February 2008. Mutlak has also been crucial in keeping the issue of Kirkuk on the agenda as a question of national concern, and was talking about "putting Iraq first" when this kind of approach was very unfashionable back in 2006 (of course, in a very predictable way, the Western mainstream media is still today obsessed with him as a "Sunni"). Thus, the very sudden singling out of him as a potential neo-Baathist (ostensibly on the basis of "new documents" that, of course, have not been made public) smacks of a highly politicised decision that can only weaken the public trust in the democratic process. With the exception of some Sadrists (especially locally in Amara), it took more than two weeks before the other Shiite Islamists began reacting in an audible fashion to the Iranian occupation of al-Fakka, and one cannot help wonder whether this latest move may reflect a certain panic over the way this issue has played into the hands of nationalists like Mutlak. Conversely, Mutlak's bloc, Iraqiyya, has once more highlighted its non-sectarian, Iraqi nationalist orientation by promptly and strongly rejecting slander by Saudi clerics against the (Shiite) Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
In the United States, Josh Rogin (Foreign Policy) notes another broken promise from President Barack Obama:
The administration came in promising not only to curb the drastic rise in military spending since 2001 but also to account for war spending transparently and on budget. Shortly after taking office, the White House requested $537 billion for the Pentagon as well as $128 billion for the wars in 2010, but stated in its budget documents that war funding is expected to go down to $50 billion for each year afterwards.
Well, so much for that. In addition to another $33 billion the administration will ask for in 2010 money to pay for the Afghanistan surge, the White House is seeking $159 billion for war operations in the 2011 budget request, according to this AP story. So the Obama team was only off by about $110 billion.What's more, the total $708 billion Pentagon request for 2011 would give about $549 billion for regular military operations, the largest total in history. Although to be fair, that's only about a 2 percent increase, which roughly matches the rate of inflation.
Also in the US, Tavis Smiley has cancelled his long running, yearly State Of The Black Union conference. Bruce A. Dixon (Black Agenda Report) weighs in on that decision:
Tavis can't stack the panels to exclude or silence the critics. How can he tell Cornel West, for example to stay home or stay quiet? He knows his panelists, he knows his audience, and he knows his politics. Even if no panelist dropped more than one of these points, the effect on Democrats and on the White House of any two or three of them, of public black criticism aired on TV in front of millions of African Americans would be catastrophic. The solid black support the Obama administration enjoys depends on excluding, marginalizing, and hiding any viewpoints to the left of corporate mainstream Democrats. As long as the only opponents of the president allowed access to the mic are Republicans, Obamites can demand that African Americans continue to circle the wagons around the president no matter how much he ignores the actual wishes of what is supposedly his core constituency.
A 2010 State of the Black Union would be an uncontrollable source of public, highly visible leftward pressure aligned with longstanding and deeply held political stands in the black America upon the Obama administration, something corporate media are intent on preventing. And nobody personifies corporate media more than the C-SPAN, the public voice of the cable TV industry, whose biggest player, Comcast is now poised to merge with NBC.
Tavis mumbles every now and then about speaking truth to power. But the last time he expressed even a mild disagreement with Barack Obama he was hounded off the Tom Joyner Morning show as a "hater" and forced to apologize. Speaking truth to power has its costs, and Tavis may be reluctant to pony up. It's like Tavis said. Ten years ago, when he started SOBU, we didn't have a black president.
I know Tavis and I like him. But I'm adding what I'm adding because the above isn't quite true. He wasn't just "hounded" for his remarks. He was targeted by Barack Obama's self-appointed Ambassador to Youth who had earlier worked successful astroturf campaigns to get James Carville and Ugh (I hate Paul) removed from CNN (accusing them of being Hillary supporters -- no one worried about Donna Brazile -- but no one ever has, she's led a very pathetic and lonely life) and worked the successful attack campaign on Gloria Steinem which included the professor penning columns that ran under student bylines. We don't praise Lie Face here and we never will. When students began ratting her out, it was over for Lie Face. She not only led the astroturf campaign against Tavis, she got to go on PBS and bring up the campaign against Tavis while not only not revealing her hidden part in it but also 'forgetting' to note that she wrote "Who died and made Tavis King?" -- the only real online post attacking Tavis. The Dixie Chicks were targeted by an astroturf campaign that got them forced off the air. The same sort of campaign was worked from the 'left' to go after Tavis. Other than that, Bruce Dixon's opinions are fine but I will not be silent while Missy Harris Lacewell thinks she can escape the blame for what she did. All that whoring and it really didn't get her anything other than the 'power' of posting online at The Nation. There's a term for a whore who can't even make a living wage but that's for another day.
iraqthe pacifica evening newsjohn hamiltonkpfkkpfa
the telegraph of londonandrew porter
time magazinecatherine mayerthe daily mirrorthe guardianandrew sparrow
chris ames
dutch newsafua hirsch
mark mericle
the los angeles timesliz slyned parker
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
bruce dixon
the new york times
1/13/2010
1/12/2010
terri gross whores for the insurance companies
npr's not-so-fresh-air is hosted by big whore terry gross - a tired hack who only stinks up the airwaves more and more each year.
tonight she brought on corporatist jonathan cohn and joined him in trying to sell barack's big give away as 'health care'.
single-payer?
oh it's not needed.
nothing's needed.
terry gross is disgusting and at her age her tired, emo phillips, let me toss out a lesbian vibe, act has gotten tired and stale.
this morning on morning edition, npr did a report on proposed health care exchanges. some 1 might suggest to terry that she listen to it since her guest completely contradicted the report.
why does npr exist?
i thought it was 'national public radio.'
i thought it existed to serve the public.
so why did we have so much talk about the congress (good dems according to cohn and bad republicans) and so little about the people.
i would argue that the first 10 minutes should have been about the public rejecting the proposal in poll after poll.
when the public reaction was fleetingly mentioned (2 sentences approximately), it was with cohn insisting that this was just because congress had done the work in public and it was messy and that's just too much for dumb americans to understand.
see, they only think they hate it.
they're too stupid to know what they really think.
good thing johnny s**t pants cohn is so much smarter and knows what every 1 thinks.
he wants the rest of it to be done in secret and justifies it and claims every 1 always knew this would happen.
he sure does try to speak for every 1, doesn't he?
i think when barack said - on the campaign trail - that the process would air on c-span, that most people who supported him believed him.
so shove it your lily white ass johnny.
i'm so sick of terry gross.
she's just a whore.
when congress cuts funding next, really slashes it for npr, they should keep her in mind.
she is just awful.
she has waged a non-stop (and uninformed) war against republicans for weeks now.
she brought on the idiot cohn today and he exists to tell people: YOUR PROBLEM IS REPUBLICANS.
really?
it was republicans that prevented single-payer?
presumably.
'presumably' because it's not like we could get a discussion on that topic.
it was republicans, he insisted, that forced the current bill in the senate.
really?
joe lieberman's a republican? ben nelson is a republican?
it was a commercial free hour of dishonesty.
firedoglake and all the other blogs should be all over the stunt terry pulled.
she misinformed america and she did so to push the senate proposal.
we don't need the public option, to listen to terry's bad show.
we don't need anything but what the senate's offering.
and it's fair, johnny insisted, and serves 80% of americans.
really?
women too?
oh, he didn't want to talk about 'hot button' issues like abortion, he explained and of course a good whore like terry does whatever the john wants.
this was so disgusting and she really needs to be under serious review for the stunts that she's been pulling lately.
that includes broadcast that hideous 9-11 'joke.' that includes every thing. she's not funny. she's not artistic.
she's an ugly woman with emo philips' hair cut and far too old to get by on quirky. some 1 needs to fire her.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
tonight she brought on corporatist jonathan cohn and joined him in trying to sell barack's big give away as 'health care'.
single-payer?
oh it's not needed.
nothing's needed.
terry gross is disgusting and at her age her tired, emo phillips, let me toss out a lesbian vibe, act has gotten tired and stale.
this morning on morning edition, npr did a report on proposed health care exchanges. some 1 might suggest to terry that she listen to it since her guest completely contradicted the report.
why does npr exist?
i thought it was 'national public radio.'
i thought it existed to serve the public.
so why did we have so much talk about the congress (good dems according to cohn and bad republicans) and so little about the people.
i would argue that the first 10 minutes should have been about the public rejecting the proposal in poll after poll.
when the public reaction was fleetingly mentioned (2 sentences approximately), it was with cohn insisting that this was just because congress had done the work in public and it was messy and that's just too much for dumb americans to understand.
see, they only think they hate it.
they're too stupid to know what they really think.
good thing johnny s**t pants cohn is so much smarter and knows what every 1 thinks.
he wants the rest of it to be done in secret and justifies it and claims every 1 always knew this would happen.
he sure does try to speak for every 1, doesn't he?
i think when barack said - on the campaign trail - that the process would air on c-span, that most people who supported him believed him.
so shove it your lily white ass johnny.
i'm so sick of terry gross.
she's just a whore.
when congress cuts funding next, really slashes it for npr, they should keep her in mind.
she is just awful.
she has waged a non-stop (and uninformed) war against republicans for weeks now.
she brought on the idiot cohn today and he exists to tell people: YOUR PROBLEM IS REPUBLICANS.
really?
it was republicans that prevented single-payer?
presumably.
'presumably' because it's not like we could get a discussion on that topic.
it was republicans, he insisted, that forced the current bill in the senate.
really?
joe lieberman's a republican? ben nelson is a republican?
it was a commercial free hour of dishonesty.
firedoglake and all the other blogs should be all over the stunt terry pulled.
she misinformed america and she did so to push the senate proposal.
we don't need the public option, to listen to terry's bad show.
we don't need anything but what the senate's offering.
and it's fair, johnny insisted, and serves 80% of americans.
really?
women too?
oh, he didn't want to talk about 'hot button' issues like abortion, he explained and of course a good whore like terry does whatever the john wants.
this was so disgusting and she really needs to be under serious review for the stunts that she's been pulling lately.
that includes broadcast that hideous 9-11 'joke.' that includes every thing. she's not funny. she's not artistic.
she's an ugly woman with emo philips' hair cut and far too old to get by on quirky. some 1 needs to fire her.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
| Tuesday, January 12, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Alastair Campbell appears before the Iraq Inquiry and makes clear that neither activists nor US service members matter to him, Campbell's testimony is judged "lies, damned lies," another government find the Iraq War to be an illegal war, and more. "Today, we are moving on to hear from Ministers and the most senior decision-makers over the next four weeks," chair John Chilcot declared in London. "We will then take a break over the period of the general election, before resuming public hearings in the summer." Chilcot is the chair of Iraq Inquiry and Tony Blair's spokesperson Alastair Campbell (link goes to video and transcript options) was today's witnesses and the press -- the world press with the exception of the US -- has turned out. In the US, George W. Bush sold the illegal war on a number of false claims. In England, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair used the lie that Iraq could attack England with WMD within 45 minutes. It was a lie, the Iraq Inquiry (chaired by John Chilcot) has established that. Tony Blair will appear before them in the near future and, at that time presumably, he will explain whether or not he learned before the start of the war that his claim was false. What is known is that his staff was informed, days before the start of the Iraq War, that his claim was false and, if procedure was followed, that fact should have reached Blair. Along with Blair, current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to testify. Among the commentaries on Campbell's testimony today, the most interesting is probably that of Ibrahim al-Marashi. He wrote the 'intel' for the Iraq War. He wrote it for his PhD and the British government stole it without attribution (as did Collie Powell who used it in his UN 'testimony' before the start of the Iraq War). al-Marashi writes in the Times of London: What actually happened was this: the British Government took my material, then added pages that argued for military action against Iraq and changed key words to suggest that Iraq had supported al-Qaeda. This formed part of what became known as the "Dodgy Dossier", published in February 2003. It followed a report released in September 2002, detailing Iraq's WMD programme and including the 45-minute figure four times. The BBC's assertion that Mr Campbell had inserted the 45-minute figure to "sex up" the document led to it being known as the "Sexed-up Dossier". Sir John Scarlett, the intelligence chief, told the Chilcot inquiry that some of the facts he presented to the Government were "lost in translation". I would say that what got lost in translation is that governments have been spinning wars since the US Government set up the Creel Commission in the First World War. John Scarlett, in the lead up to the Iraq War, was the chair of Tony Blair's Joint Intelligence Committee. He's already appeared before the committee. We'll note this section from today's hearing. Committee Lawrence Freedman: On 5 and 9 September you chaired two meetings in the Cabinet Office with senior officials, including John Scarlett, to discuss the dossier. Why were you chairing these meetings? Alastair Campbell: Because John Scarlett, having done what he considered to be a pretty advanced draft of the dossier, then said to me, I think quite rightly, "It is going to be a document the Prime Minister presents to Parliament. There are massive global expectations around it and I need a bit of presentational support," and that's what I gave him. Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Can I just clairfy something you said there? You said Scarlett had already done a draft. I didn't think a draft had been done. Alastair Campbell: There came a point where he said, "I have now reached a point where I need presentational advice on this". So we met on the 5th and the 9th. As a result of those meetings, a process was set out by me, in writing, around the system, which made clear what the dossier, in terms of its overall structure and contents, was going to be, but also emphasising to everybody within the system that this was now John Scarlett's work and anything that had gone before was redundant and irrelevant. Then, when he came back to me, it was to say, "I have now reached a position where I need presentational advice". I was chairing those meetings because the Prime Minister was going to be presenting the paper that John Was working on to Parliament, massive media interest right around the world, and I think it was entirely, not just appropriate, it was absolutely necessary that I should have done that. Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: But in most organisations chairing a meeting confers authority and accountability. So basically you are saying you are a customer of this process as well as giving help with the presentation. Alastair Campbell: I mean, look, in terms of the -- just as a point of accuracy by the way, the meetings were in Downing Street, not the Cabinet Office. Look, within the context of that meeting, I was the person who was charged by the Prime Minister to advise him on all the presentational aspects to do with the dossier, and indeed its production, which was going to be enormous. I think on the day that the dossier was published, the website sort of crashed and the interest was absolutely huge. So John's role within that, which was clearly understood by everybody -- and I think also in a way it hopefully was of assistance to John Scarlett and the JIC, that, in a sense, we were so clearly having that relationship, because to the rest of government it was sending very, very clearly the message: this is now the document that the Prime Minister is going to present to Parliament and that guy over there, John Scarlett, is the man in charge of it. David Brown (Times of London) reports, "He rejected Sir John's evidence to the inquiry that he could not have altered Mr Balir's foreword -- in which he claimed that the intelligence showed 'beyond doubt' that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- as it was a political statement" and quotes Campbell stating, "If John Scarlett or any of his team had had any concerns of real substance about the foreword then they know they could have raised those directly with the Prime Minister." Campbell was an ass throughout. He whined like a baby about the BBC and claimed it turned on Blair & Company and wouldn't report any good news from Iraq. He was and remains in a bubble, completely untouched by reality. Committee Member Roderic Lyne: You have expressed today your support for the policy that was followed on Iraq with very great conviction. Do you consider now that it has been a success and, looking back on it, what lessons would you draw from it beyond the points that have already been made, for example, just now, about the aftermath, and what regrets, if any, do you have? Alastair Campbell: Do I support it? Yes. I think that, as I said to you just before the break -- I think that Britain, far from beating ourselves up about this, should be really proud of the role that we played in changing Iraq from what it was to what it is now becoming and the potential impact that that has on the region. I think, for example that Libya and the moves that it made in relation to WMD, I think -- I don't know because I wasn't involved in those discussions, but I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't in part driven by them seeing these guys are serious now about this issue. I think that the -- when -- I saw the Prime Minister as closely and probably as often as anybody else, and I saw somebody of really deep conviction and integrity, who was making, without doubt, the most difficult decision of his premiership, knowing there were going to be consequences, but also understanding there are "what if" questions, had he taken another decision. Again, I thought Chris Meyer was really glib about the pontential impact on the transatlantic relationship in relation to that. Did he just accuse someone else of being glib? Asked of regrets, he doesn't once note loss of life and he wants to call someone else glib? Really? It gets worse. Watch what happens when he's prompted about loss of life. Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Looking at the huge cost in loss of life over, now, six and a half years, at the effects on the stability of the Middle Eastern region, at the development of international terrorism within Iraq, do you consider that, overall, the policy has succeeded? Alastair Campbell: I do, but not without reflecting often and realising the import of the ccaveats that you have just put into that. I think, in relation to the Middle East peace process -- and bear in mind the road map is still -- the outline -- and the Prime Minister did get the Americans to go down there. I don't think they can solely be blamed for the fact that there has been such little process. I think, in terms of security, yes, the death toll has been high in terms of Iraqis, and obviously any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it obviously weighs heavily on anybody who was involved in that process, most particularly, obviously, the Prime Minister. He yammers away but, note, he never mentions American lives. And, no, his being British is not an excuse. Every military officer testifying to the committee -- everyone -- mentioning loss of life has noted the US death toll. Campbell couldn't shut up about America or the United States when it was time to share blame. But here he notes the Iraqi death toll (he should, he's responsible for those deaths) and then pointedly declares "any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it . . ." Let's go to the stats. The death toll for the UK forces in Iraq? 179. For the US? 4373. Repeating, every British officer appearing before the committee who has noted the death toll has been sure to include the US death toll. 4373 is not a minor number. (139 is the number of service members killed from foreign countries other than the US or the UK -- "foreign countries" means "not Iraq.") But only some numbers matter to Campbell. Some numbers including thousands and hundreds of thousands don't matter to Campbell and never did. Wait. Let's let him explain it. Committee Member Martin Gilbert: My last question on this relates to the extraordinary demonstration, on 15 February 2003, in which vast numbers of people, including two of my three children walked through the streets of London protesting about the Iraq war, and it was said to be one of the largest demonstrations of recent times. What account did you take of this strength of public opinion and how did it inform the Prime Minister's preparation for what was going to be this very important Parliamentary debate? Alastair Campbell: In one very specific way -- I think the day before the march, I think I'm right that we were in Scotland. I can't remember that precisely. The march was getting huge publicity in the build-up. It was clearly going to be an enormous event, and you have got to remember this is a democracy, the Prime Minister was intending to stand for re-election, he knew that this was a deeply unpopular policy with an awful lot of people and not just unpopular, tuition fees or whatever it might have been; this was deep. I always have a rule of thumb that, if somebody goes on a march, there are probably ten others who thought about it. So there were a lot of people who were opposed. I think, what it definitely -- look, there was the political consideration. That was a big protest and he was -- he thought about it a lot and he was seized of its significance. But ultimately, I think it just made him think more deeply about the issue. The day before -- I will check the chronology on this -- he did a speech. We met some Iraqi exiles in a hotel in Scotland, who had got in touch with me actually and said -- because they sensed the UN thing going wrong, and they just came and said, "Look, he has got to see this through. He has got to see this through. We have got family back there, we know what Iraq is like. You have got all these people on the march, no doubt well-meaning, but they just do not understand the reality of this regime. Please." I took some of them to see the Prime Minister and he then made a speech where I think the line that was taken out of it by the media, he made what he called the moral case for war, becuase people were talking about the moral case, those on the march, the moral case for inaction, and the Prime Minister really just set out that there is a different view to take here and, ultimately, he didn't -- he always uwed this word. He said, "I don't disrespect those who have come to a different conclusion." After a break, Campbell corrected his timeline, "Can I just say that the moral case speech was the day of the march?" So thousands and thousands of people march -- and Campbell believes each marcher represents ten people -- and Campbell wants to pretend that people are being respected. Which people? Not the marchers. They don't get a private audience with Tony Blair. Iraqi exiles -- most of whom are now KNOWN LIARS -- get to meet with Blair. Blair's moving towards war, according to Campbell, and the world sees its largest demonstration and Blair responds by? Meeting with the ones demanding the war. Not with the ones opposed. He meets with the CHICKEN HAWKS who are TOO DAMN CHICKEN to FIGHT THEIR OWN BATTLES. The trashy exiles who sought refuge in another country and then used those countries as an operating base to drag the world into war. These trashy disgusting people, too scared to fight Saddam so they ran from their own country, demanding now that the US, the UK, Australia and other countries send in soldiers to do the job that the CHICKEN HAWKS were too scared to do themselves. Many of the exiles were on the CIA payroll throughout their period of exile. These weren't refugees. These were thugs like the ones in Florida who plot to overthrow Cuba. No country should grant asylum to any person who doesn't agree that the host country will not be used as a staging platform for war with the country they hail from. The exiles lived it up. And got special access. The people protesting? They got nothing. Oh, some of them were 'lucky' enough to see their sons or daughters, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, friends sent off to fight in this illegal war. And of course the exiles returned to Iraq. Whisked back in. For photo ops. And installed into the puppet government. Tony Blair's apology to the British should include putting them second to please a bunch of spoiled, cowardly exiles. Iain Martin (Wall St. Journal) observes, "But there is something strange about the unyielding nature of their responses and their lack of willingness to reflect meaningfully. Almost seven years since the invasion, it is disappointing that those who drove such an important decision are not more insightful about what went wrong and right." Today was probably the most media covered day of the hearing thus far (January 29th will be the big media day if Tony Blair appears then as scheduled). Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger live blogged the hearing at Twitter and noted of the media, "Several satellite trucks praked outside QE2 centre. Two protestors, one billboard saying Campbell, Blair, Scarlett should be tried at Hague." Tom Baldwin (Times of London) makes this call: "Indeed, the blanket news coverage his appearance generated, showed that the passions that burned so hot over the invasion have not been cooled by either global recession or regime change in Washington and a new leader in London, as well as Baghdad." Iraq Inquiry Blogger was not the only live blogger -- Emma Griffiths live blogged for BBC News.Glen Oglaza continued live blogging for Sky News and the Guardian's Andrew Sparrow live blogged. In addition, Andrew Gilligan (Telegraph of London) -- long on this story -- live blogged and his strongest post was probably the fact checking one: Mr Campbell's claims: 1. In evidence (Q1092) to the Commons' foreign affairs committee (FAC), he claimed: "The entire document was the product of the pen of the Joint Intelligence Committee chairman [John Scarlett]." 2. Campbell also claimed: "The allegation… that I, or anyone in Downing Street, exaggerated and distorted intelligence…is totally untrue." (para 9 of his memo to the FAC.) 3. Campbell or his deputy, Godric Smith, repeatedly claimed that there had been no political interference whatever in the dossier. For instance, at the Downing Street press briefing of 4 June 2003 (on page 6 of this PDF): "The dossier was entirely the work of the intelligence agencies… Suggestions that any pressure was put on the intelligence services by No 10 or anyone else to change the document were entirely false." The reality: 1. The foreword of the dossier was written by Campbell, as this memo of 17 September 2002, a week before publication, makes clear. In his own evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry a few weeks ago, Scarlett himself belatedly admitted this too. The foreword was where the dossier's most incendiary statements appeared, such as the claim that the intelligence on Saddam's WMD was "beyond doubt." 2. The 17 September memo also shows that Campbell suggested 15 changes to the executive summary and main body of the document to Scarlett. Most were accepted and their effect was to harden up the document's language from possibility to probability, or probability to certainty. 3. Among the most serious: following Campbell's suggestion in the memo, a false statement, unsupported by intelligence reporting, was inserted in the dossier that Saddam had continued to "make progress" with his illicit weapons programmes. Note that the above is an excerpt, Gilligan's fact check continues at the link. David Brown (Times of London) zooms in on the testimony regarding communications between Blair and Bully Boy Bush, "Tony Blair promised George Bush that Britain would support military action by the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a series of secret notes written a year before the invasion of Iraq." Philippe Naughton (Times of London) also zooms in on the notes, "Tony Blair's chief spin doctor revealed today that the former Prime Minister sent a series of notes to President Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in which he made clear that Britain would 'be there' if it came to military action against Saddam Hussein." Campbell actually stated a bit more than that. He declared that, before 9-11, Blair -- who made his desire for regime change clear in the 90s -- told Bush the Middle East would be the big focus. Richard Norton-Taylor and Afua Hirsh (Guardian) go for the notes as well, "Blair was determined to disarm Saddam, Campbell said. Blair's message to the US in April 2002 was he would try to do it through UN resolutions. However, 'if the only way is regime change through military action then the British government will support the American government', Campbell said, describing Blair's view." Al Jazeera reminds that Campbell is the one accused of having "sexed up" the pre-war 'intelligence': "Campbell, Downing Street's former director of communications and strategy, resigned in August 2003, the month after Dr David Kelly, a ministry of defence weapons expert was found dead near his home with slashed wrists. Earlier that year, he fiercely denied a BBC report that he "sexed up" a dossier claiming Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes to help justify the war." AFP reminds that following David Kelly's death, Campbell immediately slithered off, "At the time, Mr Campbell insisted he wanted to resign to spend more time with his family well before Mr Kelly's death and a previous official inquiry exonerated him over the affair. The Chilcot inquiry is not covering Mr Kelly's death." That BBC report on the 'sexed up' intell was done by Andrew Gilligan who offers these thoughts on the Inquiry members: I was particularly pleased that they did seem to get the detail of Campbell's key alteration to the dossier, when the nuclear threat posed by Iraq was hyped up on his direct request. As other witnesses to Chilcot have said, the actual intelligence was quite clear: Iraq was not a nuclear threat. But after documented interventions by Campbell, the dossier ended up claiming that Saddam, under certain circumstances, could have the Bomb within one to two years. Campbell claimed that his interventions were simply clarifying the dossier's nuclear wording because he "couldn't understand" it. It wasn't, in fact, a matter of expression, but of meaning -- the meaning was changed -- but the committee didn't press. Still, they at a couple of points expressed the mandarin equivalents of "This is wrong" and "I don't believe it." It remains to be seen whether this is more than token independent-mindedness -- but if it is more, it augurs well for the final report. And those who prefer or need video/audio can click here for Gilligan offering his thoughts on today's hearing to the BBC. The Daily Mail weighs in, "Quite the most striking aspect of Alastair Campbell's evidence to the Iraq War inquiry is that most of it was untrue. Blatantly, breathtakingly untrue. Take his claim that he was not making the case for war when he produced his dossier on Saddam Hussein's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction. Oh, yes you were, Mr Campbell. That was the whole point of the exercise." The Iraq Inquiry continues tomorrow. Meanwhile, another finding on the illegal was arrives. David Charter (Times of London) reports: The invasion of Iraq had no sound mandate under international law, according to the Dutch inquiry into the war released this morning. In a devastating rejection of the position of the British and Dutch governments, the inquiry, led by the former head of the Netherlands' Supreme Court, decided that the United Nations resolutions did not provide a legal basis for the use of force. Dutch ministers were further criticised in the report of the Davids Commission, which sat for ten months, for using intelligence from Britain and the US that showed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), rather than the "more nuanced" assessment of its own secret services. Today BBC News offers this analysis: "The report demolishes the Dutch ase for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond. It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says." The Times of India explains, "The commission's report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 'cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions.' The resolution, passed in 2002, had offered Iraq 'a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations'." Gilbert Kreijger (Independent of London) adds, "The report said the Dutch government did not adequately inform parliament in 2002 and 2003 about a US request that it support planning for the invasion, and about the timing of Dutch logistical support for the invasion." Radio Netherlands reports on the reaction of the country's Labour Party noting, "Marietta Hamer, leader of Labour's parliamentary party, says she was 'unpleasantly surprised' by Mr Balkenende's response to the report. Labour has called on Mr Balkenende to emphasise the difference between the 2003 cabinet -- the party was in opposition at the time -- and the current one. The party has called for another response to the criticisms in the Davids report this week." Turning to political news. First up, Jalal Talabani's heart has yet to completely fail him so he must have one. He certainly zips over to the US to have his arteries zipped clean often enough. But the president of Iraq -- who can't run for re-election because he's become one of the most despised politicians in the Kurdistan region (where he hails from -- declaring Kurdish independence a dream that must be tossed aside is what killed his party's chances in the summer elections) and who is supposed to be out of office by the end of the month -- can't stop 'suggesting' at a time when so few want to hear from him. Waleed Ibrahim, Jim Loney, Missy Ryan and Lin Noueihed (Reuters) report that today he called for measures exempting Parliament from prosecution because he's offended by some statements and he just knows these are Ba'athist statements. The only 'bath' Jalal knows from is the grease bath he absorbs each and every meal. This is the man who toppled in a Chicago bookstore and his own detail team needed help lifting him. In July the KRG held elections and one winner was Barham Saleh. As such he left his position as Nouri al-Maliki's deputy prime minister. AFP reports Roz Nuri Shawis has been made the new deputy prime minister. Meanwhile Alsumaria TV reports today: "Iraqi MP Izzat Al Shabandar escaped an assassination attempt in Al Jadriya District near the bridge leading to the presidential palace and Baghdad University Compound." They also note that 1 Iraqi Christian -- 50-year-old Hikamt Elias -- was shot dead in Mosul yesterday. But the big news will probably be the ongoing crackdown in Iraq's capital. Waleed Ibrahim, Jim Loney and Janet Lawrence (Reuters) report Baghdad is under curfew with at least 25 people arrested. What's known? Damn little. So you know the New York Times is all over it, pressed up against it, breathless and heavy panting. Today's groper is Timothy Williams. It's always cute when the paper goes weak knee-ed over claims instead of stating outright, "The following are claims by an installed government desperate to remain in office and we cannot verify any of what follows." So Nouri's image took a beating and now he claims he has stopped at least 4 -- count 'em, 4 -- suicide bombings today. You know what? The moon didn't crash into the earth today either. Maybe Nouri should claim credit for that as well. I'm sure the New York Times would breathlessly repeat it. The same Timmy that gushes today of how "the plot discovered by the Iraqi government on Tuesday would have been devastating if carried out." Much more devastating, of course, if it were a real plot. But Timmy can't verify that and why do reporting when there are so many fewer rules in 'reporting.' Besides, it's fun too! Watch: Timothy Williams denies rumors that he is pregnant with Nouri al-Maliki's child insisting that thus far, they've just done a half-and-half (mutual jackoff), government sources say. See! Fun! An Iraqi correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers explains that the curfew lasted for two hours and that rumors flew like crazy: The rumors today reminded me with those during Saddam regime when Saddam's followers used to spread rumors to control Iraqis and they strongly succeeded . Rumors are the most powerful weapons in Iraq an unfortunately, my people are very easy victims for this weapon. Poor Timmy, from headline to text, Chip Cummins (Wall St. Journal) does a much better job establishing what's known and what's claimed. Xinhua adds, "A police source told Xinhua that the Iraqi forces mainly focused their search operations on eastern Baghdad neighborhoods, including the Shiite bastion of Sadr City, which has long been the stronghold of Mahdi Army militia, loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr." Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a suicide car bombing outside Baquba which claimed the lives of 3 guards of "The manager of the economic security Directorate Captain Raid Akram" and the life of Akram as well. Lastly, in the US, Morris Davis is fighting for his liberty. Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) details how the man who objected to Bush's attempts at a kangaroo court (Guantanamo) retired and went to work for the Library of Congress only to be fired there for his personal, off the job, comments: While there, he continued to speak out against the military tribunals in Guantanamo. In an op-ed on November 10, 2009, in the Wall Street Journal, he took issue with the Obama Justice Department's decision to try some Guantanamo detainees in federal court and others in military court. "In effect, it means that the standard of justice for each detainee will depend in large part upon the government's assessment of how high the prosecution's evidence can jump and which evidentiary bar it can clear," he wrote. "The evidence likely to clear the high bar gets gold medal justice: a traditional trial in our federal courts. The evidence unable to clear the federal court standard is forced to settle for a military commission trial, a specially created forum that has faltered repeatedly for more than seven years. That is a double standard I suspect we would condemn if it was applied to us." He also published a letter to the editor in The Washington Post on the same date, criticizing former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for contending that "the decision to try Guantanamo detainees in federal courts comes down to a choice between protecting the American people and showcasing American justice." This, said Davis, was "fear mongering." The ACLU is representing Davis and Rachel Myers explains, "Col. Davis has a constitutional right to speak about issues of which he has expert knowledge, and the public has a right to hear from him. Davis, and other public employees, don't check their free speech rights at the Library of Congress gate." |
1/11/2010
london?
that's Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "What Harry Worry?" and i have a ton of e-mails asking me if i'm going to london?
maybe. we're discussing it.
i hadn't told any 1.
how did c.i. find out?
she finds out everything!!!!
:)
here she is this morning:
Sidebar: Those interested in British politics should read Bruce Anderson's article. I know too many players (mentioned by Anderson and not mentioned) to comment but it's a riveting column. (I'm neither vouching for its veracity nor accusing of it being wrong. I am saying it's a good read -- which is probably more than Rebecca -- who is knee-deep in the situation -- can say at present. How deep is she? I think I can say this, she's being asked to come to London.)
i didn't tell her. we've kept the thing secret. my friend helping with the labour campaigns has asked if i could go to london to be available for more sounding board support.
we are thinking about it.
and i'd be doing it as a personal favor.
but c.i. found out and she's always proud of my abilities and decided to trumpet it today.
i am in no way mad about that.
i love getting recognition!
and i am good at p.r. i retired, but i am very good at it and was very good at it.
so i'm thinking over the offer and c.i. 'outing' me online means i need to make a decision fairly quick.
so tomorrow i'll blog about nbc's heroes and tonight i'm stopping here so flyboy and i can figure out what to do. (his vote is: 'whatever you want. i'm fine either way.')
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, January 11, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Iraq and Iran continue to have border disputes but oil concerns are replaced with nuclear ones, the Iraq Inquiry hears about many things including Harry Potter, new documents indicate Tony Blair's government may have altered assertions to match up with George W. Bush, the Netherlands has their own Iraq issues brewing, and more.
Starting in London where the Iraq Inquiry resumed their public hearings for the week. The Inquiry is chaired by John Chilcot. Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger blogs and tweets the public hearing and notes:
Two weekend nuggets that you may have missed, especially if you're not a Twitter follower. By a strange twist of synchronicity, exactly one hour before the Campbell session starts at 10h00, the Dutch equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry will release its own report on that country's involvement in Iraq.
I won't pretend to follow the minutiae of Netherlands politics but at least one media report suggests that "Tuesday could be the blackest day" of the Dutch PM's career: it sounds as though he resisted the creation of the "Davids Commission" as long as he possibly could. No parallels there then.
The second thing Iraq Inquiry Blogger notes is this BBC profile of committee member Roderic Lyne. Glen Oglaza (Sky News) is also providing live Twittering of the Iraq Inquiry. On the Dutch issue, Radio Netherlands states the country's prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende's future "could [be] deterime[d]" by the findings: "Unless the commission resolves all doubts about the level of Dutch support, the lower house will in all likelihood demand a full parliamentary enquiry. One of the main questions that many people hope the Davids Commission will answer is whether the cabinet fully informed the lower house about the Netherlands' involvement in Iraq. Rumours about the involvement of Dutch special forces and intelligence operatives have been circulating since the invasion and if they prove to be true, it could lead to the prime minister's resignation."
Today the Iraq Inquiry heard from Lt Gen Richard Shirref and Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw (link goes to video and transcript options). Shaw commander the British M-NF forces from January 2007 to August of 2007 while Shirref was in charge from July 2006 until Shaw took over. British forces were primarily in and around Basra and the now forgotten Maysan.
Lt Gen Richard Shirref: The two provinces which were principally the concern of the British, Maysan and Basra, were a different story though. Maysan had always been a very difficult province. There were effectively no security at all where MNF were concerned. The cities of Amarah and Majarr-al-Kabir were effectively no-go areas, and in particular Amarah; any operations into Amarah resulted in significant fighting, at times up to battle group level. The principal British base in Maysan, Camp Abu Naji, was being subjected to continuous attack, as was any movment up and down the route to and from that camp.
For an overview of what the British faced in 2006, this is from the November 22, 2006 snapshot:
In England, This Is London reports: "Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett this afternoon surprised MPs by signalling the countdown to a withdrawal from Iraq. She told the Commons that Basra, where the bulk of the UK's 7,200 personnel are stationed, could be handed over from British military control to Iraqi forces as early as next spring." Basra has been a violent area for British soldiers (and for Iraqis). Earlier this month, on England's Rememberance Sunday, four British troops were killed while on a boat patrol in Basra and three more were wounded. The four killed included Sharron Elliott who was "the second British female servicewoman to die in action." The other three were Jason Hylton, Ben Nowak, and Lee Hopkins. Mortar attacks have been common in Basra and, in August, a British soldier died as a result of wounds received from mortar rounds. In October, a British soldier died in Basra from road traffic. The end of October was also when the British consulate in Basra was evacuated after it was decided it was no longer safe after two months of mortar attacks. (In August, British troops 'evacuated' from their base in Amara due to repeated mortar attacks.)
Amara would have been a topic to explore. The British fled with no notice. The base was then ripped apart by 'insurgents' in less than 12 hours of the British fleeing. The committee largely ignored the issue. Committee member Lawrence Freedman did observe, "Effectively, our forces were spending a lot of their time protecting themselves and were therefore not available for other tasks." Shirref didn't want to go into as anything other than a fleeting mention and he quickly asserted Basra was all that mattered.
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: Basra itself seemed to me to be the key issue, the second city of Iraq, and it was in Basra that the British reputation was going to stand or fall. What I found when I arrived was effectively no security at all. Any movement required deliberate operation to conduct -- to get around the city. There was a significant lack of troops on the ground. I think when I went out on my recce in May 2006, the single battalion commander responsible for a city of 1.3 million people told me that he could put no more than 13 half platoons or multiples on the ground, less than 200 soldiers on the ground, in a city of 1.3 million. You compare that, for example, with what I recall, as a young platoon commander in West Belfast in the late 1970s when there was a brigade on the ground. The result of all that was what I call a cycle of insecurity. No security meant no reconstruction and development, it meant a loss of consent, the militia filled the gap and, effectively, the militia controlled the city. So my objective was to re-establish security in Basra.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: You say "re-establish," what you have described is a pretty gloomy prospect. How do you think, after all this time, this situation had been allowed to develop?
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: I can't answer that. All I can tell you is the situation as I found it.
Of the day's other witness, Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian of England) observes, "Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw, British commander based in Basra in 2007, told the inquiry that Basra was 17th on the department's list of priorities. That British forces there had to rely on US money was 'pretty shaming', Shaw said." Where did American money go -- identified by Shirreff as "US tax payer money," which it is, but let's note he was aware of it and credited it as such repeatedly in his own testimony -- on propaganda films according to Shirreff (he didn't use the word "propaganda") which aired on local televsion. Back to Shaw. He used the term "the dark state" and was asked of it, told it sounded like something out of Harry Potter leading him to reply it wasn't JK Rowling:
What it meant, therefore, was that you had a direct link between the people in power advising Maliki sat in his Cabinet down through the shadow state and down to their militias, the sort of violent militias, the criminals, the murderers and the terrorists at the bottom, there was a strict linkage between those three, and so what you ended up with was a system where the dark state was protected by the official state.
Tomorrow Alastair Campbell appears before the Iraq Inquiry and his appearance comes after a revelation over the weekend. Chris Ames (Guardian) explains:Once again it is the media -- rather than the Iraq inquiry – who are putting new information about Iraq into the public domain. In today's Guardian, Richard Norton-Taylor and I reveal the extent to which the notorious September 2002 dossier on Iraq's WMD was sexed-up on Alastair Campbell's instructions to fit in with bogus American claims. The idea that Campbell and intelligence chief John Scarlett were unwitting participants in accidental sexing-up has taken another blow. There is a prologue and an epilogue to today's story. The prologue shows that Campbell and Scarlett knew exactly what they were doing. The epilogue shows that Campbell was still not happy, even after the dossier's worst-case estimate of how quickly Saddam Hussein could get a bomb was effectively halved to fit in with what George W Bush had told the UN. According to his published diaries, on 2 April 2002 Campbell and Scarlett were at a meeting at Chequers where Tony Blair had made clear that the aim of UK government policy was "regime change". Three weeks later Campbell met officials including Scarlett "to go through what we needed to do communications wise to set the scene for Iraq, eg a WMD paper and other papers about Saddam. Scarlett a very good bloke." In July 2002, Blair, Campbell and Scarlett were all present at the now famous Downing Street meeting where Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of MI6, reported that in the US "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq.
Tim Shipman (Daily Mail) adds, "The first draft of the British dossier was completed, using intelligence from MI6, on Septemofber 10, 2002. It concluded that it would take 'at least two years' for Iraq to get a nuclear bomb. But two days later President Bush used a keynote address to the United Nations to declare: 'Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year'." And "11 days later," Tony Blair began stating publicly "a year or two."
Turning to political issues in Iraq. Last week, many of Nouri's political rivals were informed they were being banned from the expected March elections. Today Michael Jansen (Irish Times) reported, "IRAQ'S NATIONAL security council, the country's highest political body, yesterday discussed a call to ban 15 political parties and candidates from standing in the March 7th parliamentary election on the grounds that they are tied to the outlawed Baath Party. If accepted by the election commission, the proposal, put forward by a body charged with purging Baathists, would deny representation to both Sunni and secular Iraqis and torpedo any chance of national unity." Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) adds:
The commission is heir to the old De-Baathification Commission, set up in 2003 by Paul Bremer, the US czar of Iraq, and led by Ahmed Chalabi and his cronies. Among those banned was one of Iraq's most significant players, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni leader and an important member of parliament, whose National Dialogue Front is a popular vote-getter among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni populace. Mutlaq, a well-known politician, has drawn support from current and former Baathists, secular Sunnis opposed to the Shiite-sectarian rulers in Baghdad, and Iraqis concerned about the intrusive influence of Iran in Iraqi affairs.
Over the past several months, Mutlaq had helped to build a powerful opposition bloc set to challenge both Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who controls a faction of the secretive, sectarian Shiite Dawa party, and the broader Shiite alliance comprised of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, and Chalabi, the neoconservatives' favorite wheeler-dealer. That alliance was formed with the strong support of Iran, whose authoritarian leaders and radical clerics helped assemble it. ISCI, which has a paramilitary arm, the Badr Brigade, was formed in 1982 as an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and for many years it was actually under the command of Iranian military officers. Sadr, a mercurial Shiite nationalist, has fallen under Iran's umbrella, too, and he has spent most of the past two years living in Qom, Iran's religious capital. Chalabi, despite his neocon connections, has long been suspected of having covert ties to Iran's intelligence service.
Bremer was responsible for de-Ba'athification. But who was responsible for de-de-Ba'athifcation. The White House (under Bush) made that one of the Iraq benchmarks -- benchmarks Nouri signed off on. To bring the Ba'athists back in was one of the benchmarks and a weak law was tossed around Parliament but not implemented and when is anything going to be done about that? And why is the US propping up the government it created? Have we all forgotten the Pentagon Papers and the shocking revelation that the government was admitting the US was in Vietnam to prop up the government they'd created? Nouri al-Maliki signed off on those benchmarks and was never forced to follow them. James Cogan (WSWS) notes some troubling signs:
Tensions in Sunni communities were already rising before this latest provocation. The attempt to proscribe Mutlaq and other Sunni parties follows the rewriting of the electoral law by the Shiite and Kurdish parties to reduce the proportion of seats elected in Sunni areas. There have also been reports of widespread arrests and killings of Sunnis by government troops and police.
According to the newspaper Azzaman, "hundreds of young people have been taken away from Tikrit, Anbar and Mosul". In Baghdad, there have allegedly been numerous arrests in the Sunni majority district of Abu Ghraib, in the west of the city. At least 10 militiamen of the Sunni "Awakening" militias in the capital have reportedly been assassinated.
The Obama administration has made no public comment on the actions of the Justice and Accountability Board. However, it can hardly welcome a development that threatens to inflame communal tensions and undermine arrangements that underpin its plans to reduce troop numbers down to 50,000 by August and redirect US forces to Afghanistan.
It is barely two years since the US military struck a deal with the bulk of the Sunni-based insurgency to abandon armed resistance in exchange for an end to sectarian persecution by Shiite forces, regular payment and implicit guarantees of greater political influence for the Sunni elite.
This as NPR's Quil Lawrence (Morning Edition, text and audio link) reports on the one-time 'model' Anbar Province which is now seeing increased violence and disenchanted citiznes who protest with chants of "Save us" and "We've been sold out." The "model" depended upon cash. In April 2008, Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker explained to Congressional committees how the 'model' worked: The US military paid Sunni 'insurgents' cash to stop attacking US military equipment and US service members. The US appears to have stopped payments around the month of June of this year and Nouri -- who was supposed to take over payments long ago -- sometimes pays, sometimes pays a portion and sometimes tells these 'insurgents' (who became Sawha -- "Awakenings," "Sons Of Iraq") the check's in the mail. With payments questionable (and Arab media reports rumors that payments end this month) and with the bulk of Sahwa still not brought into Iraqi security forces, many Sahwa no longer feel the need to do what they were once paid for.
Moving to border issues. WashingtonTV reports that Iraq has asked the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agnecy about Iran's reported plans "to build a nuclear reactor near the border between the two countries." Energy and border issues appear to go hand-in-hand for Iraq and Iran. In December, the world was left to sort out the competing claims (as oil prices soared) that Iran had or was occupying an Iraqi oil field. Iran denied the occupation and/or insisted that it was Iran's oil field anyway while Iraq insisted the occupation was taking place and that it was Iraq's oil fields. As noted in Friday's snapshot, Alice Fordham (Times of London) reported that Hoshyar Zebari (Iraq's Foreign Minister) met with Manouchehr Mottaki (Iran's Foreign Minister) in Baghdad to address the Fakka oil field: "Both ministers indicated after the meeting that they had not been able to resolve the ownership of the parts of Fakka oil field disputed since the 1988 end of the Iran-Iraq war, nor had they agreed on a version of what happened in the incursion. Mr Zebari said that after 'direct action' was taken by the Iraqi Government the Iranian flag was lowered at the site, while Mr Mottaki said that the Iraqi side might have been partly to blame." The Tehran Times reported that the two reached "important agreements for resolving the disputes over their borders" and that Iran would build a fence to settle the Fakka oil field dispute. UPI observed, 'If Iran took control of the southern fields it, rather than Iraq, would surpass Saudi Arabia, its Sunni-dominated regional rival." Yesterday Press TV quoted Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Iran's Ambassador to Iraq, stating, "The eight-year war between Iran and Iraq and environmental issues have to some extent shifted the border demacrations between the two countries, if corrected the uncertainty regarding the Fakkeh oil field can be resolved."
Iran and Iraq's relations were the subject of the latest Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera) where moderator Jasim al-Azzawi was joined by Issam al-Chalabi (Iraq's Oil Minister, 1987 - 1990) and Seyed Mohammad Marandi (University of Tehran).
Jasim al-Azzawi: Issam al-Chalabi, some Iraqi politicians, including the prime minister, they downplayed the importance of the Iranian incursion and the seizure of the Fakkah oil well. Iran calls it a misunderstanding. What is your take? What is your interpretation of the Iranian action?
Issam al-Chalabi: First of all, I'm not surprised by the reactions from Maliki and some of his aides and politicians because of their bad past history. And there is doubt about their loyalty. It is questionable. They were brought up in Iran and Iran is like a godfather to them. As for the Iranian? I really am not surprised by such action because this is not the first time. It happened so many times throughout the past century, throughout the past decades, with every single Iraqi regime regardless of whether it was a monarchy or a republican. Even when we have a regime that's considered to be a brotherly regime like the one we have with Iran, yet we see that Iran had overstepped and infringed on the sovereignty of Iraq. I am a bit surprised: Why did they use force? If they had such a good relationship with the Iraqi government, couldn't they sit down and talk if they had any grievances, if they had any claim on any piece of land or anything else? That is something that makes me wonder what is behind the action and the time of the Iranian regime.
Jasim al-Azzawi: Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Issam al-Chalabi, is wondering about the reason behind it and, before you answer that, history as well as the last bilateral agreement signed between Iraq and Iran with the help of Algiers in 1975, the famous agreement [1975 Algiers Agreement], shows that Fakkah is on Iraqi land. You're not disputing that are you?
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: No. I think it's obvious that the Iranians have no problem with the Algiers Accord. I think that was the reason why Saddam Hussein invaded and destroyed both of the -- much of the infrastructure of both countries as a result and of course he had the support of many Western countries and many regimes in the region, as well, at that time. Iranians from the very start, even during the war, they said that that is the basis of any agreement with Iraq. And fortunately, the current Iraqi government says the same thing as well. Iran has no problem with the border. The problem was that basically this region, because of the war and because of the problems that Iraq had after the invasion of Kuwait -- a weak central government, and then the chaos that ensued after the American invasion of the country, the border isn't all that clear in some spots. Exactly where it should stand is not clear. Should it be a few hundred metres --
Jasim al-Azzawi: That is not a very good explaination, Seyed Mohammad Marandi. You'll have to much better than that.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: Well -- I think it's quite clear: The border has to be defined by a joint-committee on both sides and both sides have agreed to establish a joint-committee to demarcate the land so that it is precise where things stand. Otherwise it wasn't a major issue at all. And I don't think the Iranians had any intentions or the Iraqi government had any intention to create any problems between the two countries. I think that there are forces both within the borders of Iraq and without that want an excuse to create tensions between Iran and Iraq. I think countries like Saudi Arabia, the United States and some people who are remanents of the Ba'athist regime would like to create a superficial crisis that is really non-existent and there is no reason --
Issam al-Chalabi: Can I?
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: -- for either side to have any trouble. It is easy resolvable --
Jasim al-Azzawi: I am surprised, Seyed Marandi, that you would blame some regional countries rather than the actions of the Iranian government. Ironically, it was Iran which after the agreement signed between Iraq and Iran deposited all the agreement of the 1975, including the protocols regarding borders, which included 262 border stakes, the coordinates of which, the location, the description, all that was deposited with the United Nations. So, Issam al-Chalabi, I am asking you this time, why doesn't the Iraqi government publish the agreement to show everybody exactly who owns what?
Issam al-Chalabi: With all due respect to Dr. Marandi, I think he needs to correct some of his information. As you mentioned correctly, this had all been settled with the Algerian Accord and the protocols were signed by the ministers of Foreign Affairs of both Iraq and Iran and Algeria. Then it was Abdelaziz Boutefilka, the current president of Algeria. And then it was Iran itself who deposited the documents, all the documents, all the protocols, including the coordinates of the border because on the markers with the descriptions to the United Nations in both languages -- English and French -- it doesn't take much. If they don't have it in Iran, if they don't have it in Baghdad, they can simply ask the Secretary General of the United Nations, 'For God's sake, send us a copy and then we sit down." The problem --
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: I think you misunderstood what I was saying though.
Issam al-Chalabi: Okay, can I just finish please, Dr. Marandi? What happened maybe during the Iraq-Iran war that some of the markers had been destroyed on the border there but then it's not that difficult. You have the maps, we have the coordinates, then simply ask for them and put them back again. It doesn't require forces from anybody.
Turning to violence, today Reuters notes a Baghdad sticky bombing has left three people (employed by an Iraqi MP) were injured, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured four people (including three police officers) and, dropping back to Sunday, a Baghdad sticky bombing which wounded six people.
In the US, the Dept of Defense and the VA has put together a suicide prevention conference "held at the Hyatt Regency on Capital Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C., on Jan. 11-13 from 8 a.m. -- 5 p.m. EST." This as Kimberly Hefling (AP) reports that the VA announced a 26% increase during the years 2005 through 2007 in veteran suicides.
Matthew Rothschild's guest on this week's The Progressive Radio Show is Nona Willis Aronowitz and I'm noting the non-Iraq related show because of her mother, the late Ellen Willis, who was a wonderful woman and a good friend. Nona's father is the noted left thinker Stanley Aronowitz who has a new piece at ZNet calling for people on the left to make a break from the forces that hold them back and suggesting "the starting point would be the left's clean break from the Democrats." Read the piece in full and, no, that's not a prankster impersonating Carl in the comments, he really is that much of a crackpot and a liar. Yes, the same Carl who helped for "Progressives" for Obama, the same Carl who injected himself into a Democratic Party primary is now attempting to claim otherwise. From his grave, Stalin watches in open-mouthed shock and admiration at Carl's continual efforts to revise his own personal history. Back to Nona, you can find out more about her writing at her website including the book she and Emma Bee Bernstein wrote Girldrive -- Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism.
We'll close with this from Debra Sweet's "Guantanamo Turns 8 While More Lives Slip Away" (World Can't Wait):Monday January 11 is the 8th anniversary of the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo. The emblematic symbol of the Bush regime's "war on terror," in which men have been openly tortured, kept in isolation, force-fed, and for years deprived of any legal respresentation or contact with the outside world, is still open.It's being called "Obama's prison" now. On January 22, 2009, the new president announced that he would close Guantanamo in a year because it's existence was a public relations nightmare for U.S. foreign policy makers. As of this week, there's no closing date, but a vague indication it could be closed in 2011.
Sweet also notes, "Protests of John Yoo on both ends of the country Tuesday, Jan. 12th! Fire, Disbar, and Prosecute War Criminal John Yoo! John Yoo, principal author of the "torture memos" justifying the Bush torture enterprise, is on a book tour, appearing on Jon Stewart's show (!) Monday night."
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iraq
the guardianchris amesrichard norton-taylor
james coganwsws
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robert dreyfussthe nation
press tv
nprmorning editionquil lawrence
al jazeera
inside iraq
jasim al-azzawi
the times of londonalice fordham
the world cant waitdebra sweet
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