Thank you for the kind e-mails. If, as many of you wrote, felt Wednesday's post was among the best I've done here ("except when writing about peace," added Megan) give credit to Isaiah's comic that I reposted.
"Iraqi Lawmakers Back Draft Bill for Withdrawal Timetable" (Democracy Now!)
A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have approved a draft bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and a freeze on current troop levels. The measure would require Iraqi leaders to seek parliamentary approval for any extension of foreign troops when the UN mandate expires this year. At least one-hundred thirty eight of Iraq's two-hundred-seventy-five member parliament have signed on.
C.I. covered the above in yesterday's "Iraq snapshot" but I don't blog on Thursdays so, on the chance that someone may have missed it, I wanted to be sure to note it here today. I also thought Cedric's "Bully Boy doesn't understand 'foreign forces'" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY SAYS FOREIGNERS OUT OF IRAQ!" (joint-post) covered the arrogance of the administration quite well:
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIX MIX -- DC.
IRAQI PARLIAMENTARIANS HAVE VOTED. THEY WANT A WITHDRAWAL DATE FOR ALL FOREIGN FORCES TO LEAVE IRAQ.
REACHED FOR COMMENT AT THE WHITE HOUSE BY THESE REPORTERS, BULLY BOY RESPONDED, "I AGREE, THEM FOREIGNERS NEED TO GET OUT. IRAQ BELONGS TO THE U.S.A.!"
They, Wally and Cedric, provide a humorist, often absurdist, take on the news. Just a little background, they started doing joint-posts because both were working on the 2006 elections in their spare time and Cedric was considering putting his site on hold. Wally offered that they could do joint-posts and they enjoyed that so much that they've kept it up. Sometimes they will break the humor if there's an issue that's important and they can't find a way to address it otherwise. For instance, when John Kerry's office was swearing that Kerry wouldn't back down or apologize for a speech he gave, Cedric and Wally showed strong support for Kerry and hit hard at those trashing the senator. Then Kerry demonstrated (once again) how fond he is of the buckle. That was really it for John Kerry. As C.I. called it the day Kerry buckled, the shot at 2008 presidential nominee was over. As a result of that buckle, there's not going to be any support from this community for Kerry. We won't rush to defend him because he refuses to stand. He destroyed himself. You only get so many chances and most weren't feeling that generous after the 2004 campaign. But he had a shot and proved yet again that he only knows how to buckle. His motto truly should be: "I stood up before I stood down."
"This Minute and Then the Next" (Laurie Hasbrook, CounterPunch):
Haifa signs her letter "Love and peace." In the only time she owns, possibly the last time she will write to her friends in the States, Haifa writes of the tyranny and injustice that typifies daily life in Iraq. And then, in closing she blesses us, with wishes of love and peace.
Just this minute and then the next, whenever we feel defeated, or bored, or tired of the struggle to end tyranny and injustice, let us remember Haifa. Remember her daily struggles, her fears for her children, her desperation. Remember that, in spite of all, she sends wishes of love and peace. And remember, "Right now is the only time we own!"
Let us work, let us battle, nonviolently, for just this minute and then the next to ease the anguish of our Iraqi brothers and sisters. Now, as yet another supplemental spending bill will soon be presented to the U.S. Congress, seeking $145 billion additional dollars for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our voices are more needed than ever. Obscenely expensive projects which the U.S. Congress will be asked to fund will procure weapons and weapon systems due to arrive in Iraq no sooner than 2009 and 2010. Please join our efforts to oppose any further spending for war. Not one more dollar, not one more life.
Please see our website, www.vcnv.org, to read "Iraq and Afghanistan Supplemental Spending 2008: A comprehensive analysis of the 2008 Iraq war funding request" by jeff Leys.
A must read! Call or write to us at Voices (773-878-3815/info@vcnv.org) to get involved.
Well thank you, Hasbrook, you just took the idea I was hoping to use this weekend. I'm joking. (That was the idea I was thinking of, however.) I went with the end of the column because otherwise I would be quoting her and then quoting her quoting someone else and I know that can get confusing. But she's writing about her own daily life and then about the daily life of a friend in Iraq. It's a very powerful column.
Staying on the theme of Mother's Day, this is from CODEPINK:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
As we walk the halls of Congress today with mothers whose children are serving in Iraq, we are taking Julia Ward Howe's original Mother's Day Proclamation to heart and to the powers that be.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
We are in DC with celebrities, leaders of the feminist movement, military families, mother-daughter teams and other supporters from around the country for five days of powerful actions to urge Congress to stand up to Bush and bring our troops home by the holidays. It's not too late to join us! Get all the information here.
As mothers, as women, we especially want to reach out to Nancy Pelosi, who recently stated: "When people ask me what are the three most important issues today in Congress, I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children. Their health, their education, their economic security, their families, their environment...and, of course, a world at peace in which they can thrive."
After her trip to Syria, Pelosi also said that as a mother, she wanted to "exhaust every remedy for peace". We want to remind her she can create a more peaceful future for all of our children by bringing our troops home. Send her our Mother's Day letter or craft your own here.
And if you haven't yet, please be sure to sign our Women's Appeal to Congress for Mother's Day 2007.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
We are not just gathering in DC. Mothers and their families in Berea, KY, Casper, WY, Albany, NY, Ramstein, Germany, and over 50 other cities will converge in parks, on bridges, and other public places on Mother's Day to declare their opposition to the Iraq war. Women are holding house parties with neighbors and friends to show and discuss CODEPINK's new DVD, Women Say NO To War: Iraqi & American Women Speak Out. Click here to find a Mother's Day action near you. For inspiration take a look at: Make It A Mother's Day for Peace, by our friends at Brave New Films.
Now is the time for us to arise. This Mother's Day, let's make Julia Ward Howe proud.
In the great and general interests of peace,
Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Lori, Medea, Melissa, Midge, Nancy, Patricia, Rae, Samantha, and Sonia
P.S. Spend your summer with CODEPINK! Join us for the US Social Forum in Atlanta and our weekly series of activist trainings in DC. Or come with CODEPINK and Global Exchange on a trip to Iran July 7-20.
I should probably take a moment to thank my own mother. Both of them. My own mother passed on an interest in the world around us and good bone structure. She died in accident (as did my father). So my second mother is also my second my father -- my brother who had to be both. The easiest thing in the world for him would have been to allow relatives to raise me. He was barely 18. When he faced objections, he put college on hold for a year to prove that he could do it and that he was serious about doing it. He went on to get several degrees and he went from being a usually supportive big brother to someone I've appreciated more and more with each year that passes.
I had an interesting e-mail from a reader that Sunny showed me at lunch today. I'll share her story but not her name. Her mother died in 1996. She was already an adult when her mother passed away but that, of course, doesn't make it any easier. She works in an office and has a cubicle neighbor who gets on nerves each April and each Mother's Day. This woman is over 20 years older (I'll call her "co-worker") than the woman who wrote and her mother died in 2000.
In April 2000, which means the entire month of April is co-worker going on, day after day, about how she's having so many problems because this is the month her mother died. (Co-worker's problems are year round and stem from the fact that the end of the work day means you drink until you pass out.) As if getting through that in April isn't hard enough, co-worker also launches into in the two week lead up to Mother's Day. Co-worker has worked with the woman for four years. Co-worker will end her (possibly drunken?) musings with, "You don't know how hard it is. Someday you'll lose your mother." For three years, week after week in April, the woman would inform/remind co-worker that, indeed, she did know what it was like to lose her mother because her mother had died as well. It didn't make a difference. This year, the woman gave up on it. The woman wrote, "On a good day, it's just irritating. On a bad day, I wish my supervisor would come over and tell ____ to stop wailing." Co-worker doesn't just talk on some days, she tears up, begins sobbing and then starts wailing. I couldn't work with that. Not year after year. Not knowing that every April and for two weeks leading up to Mother's Day, I was going to have to put up with that.
The woman who wrote asked what I thought of it? I think co-worker may have some comprehension issues, is drunk at work and/or never grasped that she wasn't the center of the universe. I think the woman needs to talk to the supervisor even if won't do any good (the woman feels it won't). In her cubicle, the woman is on the phone with clients all day and has to explain what's going on repeatedly each time this year when a client will ask about the loud noise in the background. The woman's hardly 'charming' the rest of the year. One day, she'll come in raving about Will & Grace that she saw in syndication, the next day, she'll act like she can't remember the title and start trashing gays and lesbians using words that do not belong in the work place. The cubiles have walls that are the height of a normal person. When the walls got put in, the co-worker saw them as an invitation to yell all remarks. She'll be in her cubicle talking to a person two cubicles over. Those are the 'good' months. Since March, co-worker's been watching The Unit and yet Wednesday she was talking about a show that she just started watching the week before -- The Unit.
I think co-worker has serious problems and I honestly do not believe she's only hitting the booze, as she brags in the office, the second she gets home in the evening. I also think that a 52-year-old, of either gender, that brags about getting drunk until they pass out each evening has issues that need to be addressed. The woman wrote that the last week of April, she thought co-worker might actually be fired. She'd worked herself up into such a frenzy that she could no longer speak and was just shrieking to the point that the supervisor (finally) came over, thought co-worker must be having a heart attack or stroke, and called 9-11. When the fire department arrived, co-worker cussed them out and cussed the supervisor out for calling them.
Let me repeat, I couldn't work with that. Co-worker has an adult daughter and is always telling the woman who wrote me that, "You remind me of my daughter." Even that doesn't translate into a "good" thing because co-worker and the daughter have a stormy relationship -- which usually means when they're not speaking, co-worker takes it out on the woman. As the woman was winding down her e-mail she (a) apologized for dumping that and (b) wrote that she didn't realize how awful it was day after day. There's no need to apologize. We all need to let it out from time to time.
But one thing that wasn't stated in the e-mail that I think might be bothering the woman who wrote is that co-worker seeks attention constantly and, in the process (as she gets it over and over), it may seem like the death of co-worker's mother is the most important thing in the world. I've talked about my parents death at this site more than I do in real life (at least more than I do in real life at this point). The reason for that is because e-mails will come in noting that a holiday is difficult. People assume I will understand (and I can relate). But I did a gief group for a few years in the 90s and one of the participants was in a similar situation to the woman who wrote. His co-worker wasn't as dramatic but it did become a situation where the supervisor was spending all this time with the co-worker over a death (that had happened many years prior) and making a point in office meetngs to bring up that the co-worker had lost her mother. He was a hotbed of rage over that and it took sometime before he got to the point where he coudl process what was going on inside him -- that this woman's mother was being elevated into office discussion while his own mother was never mentioned. (His own mother had passed away five months prior to his joining the grief group. His co-worker's mother had passed away a decade prior.) So I do think that may be at play here. The woman is attempting to be a responsible adult while her co-worker acts like an out of control child and, in the process, is rewarded and the co-worker's mother becomes topic A in the office.
If anything like that is going on for the woman who wrote (or anyone reading), I would say what I told the man which is, "Just because people take part in the drama doesn't mean they take it seriously. Look around and you may see that some of the actions are just an attempt to shut the woman up."
It's equally true that some people have (or had) complicated relationships with their mothers (and/or their fathers but we're staying on the topic of mothers). So it can be a difficult day and a difficult lead up to the day. If you think that applies to you, focus on two things: the peace aspect of the day and on probing your own feelings.
In no way am I implying that the woman who wrote has a problem that's just her own. Obviously, many of us go through it. Add in that the wailing is not something I could work with for basically six weeks of each year. I think her job is failing her (and others in her office) by refusing to address this problem. (It's really simple. You don't tell the woman she has to get counseling -- you can suggest it -- but you do tell the co-worker that it's upsetting and distrubing to others in the office as well as clients they are speaking with so it needs to stop. At the very least, the boss tells the co-worker to go to the women's room when she feels she's losing her composure.) But for the man in the grief group, once he was able to tie into the fact that his co-worker's late mother was being elevated to non-stop discussion (including "Poor ___, she loved her mother so much"), he was able to realize that he didn't want or need that.
But if I were the woman who wrote, I would take those complaints to the boss and explain that they needed to be addressed. If your a boss, I hope you read this and are appalled by what one office has to put up with. I hope further that you'll look to your own offices and see if one person's drama is destructive.
Those are my thoughts after a long week.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, May 11, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Cheney lies again while the press plays silent, more US service members are announced dead in Iraq, and a campus activism takes place as the Bully Boy prepares to mumble through another canned speech.
Yesterday in Iraq, Cheney spun like crazy. As Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) pointed out, Dick Cheney quoted David H. Petraeus, top US commander in Iraq, repeatedly, "General Petraeus has underscored the fact that the enemy tactics are barbaric. . . . We can expect more violence as they try to destroy the hopes of the Iraqi people." As pep talks go, not a lot of reality. Last week, Rick Rogers (San Diego Union-Tribune) reported on a military study that found only 40% of US marines would be willing to "report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian" and the number of those in the army was 55 pecent. As Gregg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher) observered: "At the Associated Press' annual meeting in New York on Tuesday, I sat in the audience observing Gen. Petraeus on a huge screen, via satellite from Baghdad, as he answered questions from two AP journalists. Asked about a U.S. Army Surgeon General study of over 1,300 troops in Iraq, released last week, which showed increasing mental stress -- and an alarming spillover into poor treatment of noncombatants -- Petraeus replied, 'When I received that survey I was very concerned by the results. It showed a willingness of a fair number to not report the wrongdoing of their buddies.' That's true enough, but then he asserted that the survey showed that only a 'small number' admitted they may have mistreated "detainees" -- a profoundly misleading statement. Actually, the study found that at least 10% of U.S. forces reported that they had personally, and without cause, mistreated civilians (not detainees) through physical violence or damage to personal property. So much for the claims by President Bush, military leaders and conservative pundits that 99.9% of U.S. troops always behave honorably. Of course, that kind of record has never been achieved by any country in any war." Along with that reality, we have the first hand stories being told.
It was about two a.m., but I could see very well because there were streetlights on our road and because the American illumination rounds that kept the sky lit up all night.
Suddenly, I looked over to my left and saw the bodies of four decapitated Iraqis in their bloodied white robes, lying a few feet from a bullet-ridden pickup truck to the side of the road. Because I sat on top left of the vehicle, and because the bodies were on the left-hand side of the road, I had them in clear view. I assumed that someone had used a massive amount of gunfire to behead them.
"Sh*t," I said.
A few second later, our slow-moving APC came to a stop. Among the three APCs in our convoy, I was the only soldier immediately ordered down to the ground. As I slid down into the APC and then out the hatch, Sergeant Jones told me to look for brass casings, which would be signs that Iraqi fighers with AK-47s had been shooting at American soldiers in the area.
I saw no sign of brass casings, but I did see an American soldier shouting at the top of his lungs while two other soldiers stood quietly next to him."We f**king lost it, we just f**king lost it," the soldier was shouting. He was in a state of complete distress, but the soldiers next to him were not reacting. The distressed soldier stood about twenty yeards from me, and another forty or so yards from the four decapitated bodies.
Two other soldiers were laughing and kicking the heads of the decapitated Iraqis. It was clearly a moment of amusement for them. This was their twisted game of soccer.
I froze at the sight of it, and for a moment could not believe my eyes. But I saw what I saw, and was so revolted and horrified that I defied Sergeant Jones's orders and climbed right back into the APC.
[. . .]
I found Private First Class Hayes with a woman under an empty carport. He pointed his M-16 at her head but she would not stop screaming.
"What are you doing this for?" she said.
Hayes told her to shut up.
"We have done nothing to you," she went on.
Hayes was starting to lose it, and we weren't even supposed to be talking to this woman. I told her that we were there on orders and that we couldn't speak to her, but on and on and on she bawled at Hayes and me.
"You Americans are disgusting! Who do you think you are, to do this to us?"
Hayes slammed her in the face with the stock of his M-16. She fell facedown into the dirt, bleeding and silent. The woman lay still on the ground. I pushed Hayes away."What are you doing, man?" I said to him. "You have a wife and two kids! Don't be hitting her like that."
He looked at me with eyes full of hatred, as if he was ready to kill me for saying those words, but he did not touch the woman again. I found this incident with Hayes particularly disturbing because during other times I had seen him in action in Iraq, Hayes had showed himself to be one of the most levelheaded and calm soldiers in my company. I had the sense that if he could lose it and hit a woman the way he had, any of us could lose it.
The above is from US war resister Joshua Key's The Deserter's Tale -- the 'little' book that some expected to get a tiny flurry of attention the week of release and then quickly fade. Instead, it continues to get attention from across the political spectrum (and around the world), is stocked in bookstores across the country. ZNet runs the most recent review of it, by Derrick O'Keefe who found, "The Deserter's Tale is told in simple, compelling prose. Joshua Key's story may just be one perspective on the Iraq war, but in many ways the young war resister is also speaking on behalf of the voiceless thousands senselessly killed in this war. Relentlessly honest, and graphic, this book stands out as unique and significant amidst the shelves of books critiquing the Bush administration’s foreign policy. It will surely stand up long after this war is over as a condemnation both of the pretensions of empire, and of the grotesque inequality that scars life in the United States itself."
Key is not the only war resister to tell his story in book form. The just released Road from Ar Ramaid: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia is Camilo Mejia's account, an account he is also sharing currently on a speaking tour with other war resisters. That includes, as Courage to Resist noted yesterday, Agustin Aguayo:
Army Spc. Agustin Aguayo stepped off of a plane today at Sacramento International Airport after being imprisoned by the U.S. Army and held in Germany for nine months. Agustin was convicted of missing movement and desertion for refusing to redeploy to Iraq last year and publicly speaking out against the war. Agustin's wife Helga and Courage to Resist supporters met him at the airport, give him a couple hours to relax from his 18-hour journey from Germany, and whisked him to his first speaking event in California’s capitol. From here, Agustin is beginning a multi-city tour covering much of Northern California. In the upcoming days, Agustin will be joined by fellow Iraq War resisters Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía, Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes, and Marine L/Cpl Robert Zabala.The upcoming dates for the speaking out tour include:
Friday May 11 - Stockton 6pm at the Mexican Community Center, 609 S Lincoln St, Stockton. Featuring Agustin Aguayo.
Saturday May 12 - Monterey 7pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 490 Aguajito Rd, Carmel. Featuring Agustin Aguayo and Camilo Mejia. Sponsored by Veterans for Peace Chp. 69, Hartnell Students for Peace, Salinas Action League, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Courage to Resist. More info: Kurt Brux 831-424-6447
Sunday May 13 - San Francisco 7pm at the Veterans War Memorial Bldg. (Room 223) , 401 Van Ness St, San Francisco. Featuring Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia and Pablo Paredes. Sponsored by Courage to Resist, Veteran's for Peace Chp. 69 and SF Codepink.
Monday May 14 - Watsonville 7pm at the United Presbyterian Church, 112 E. Beach, Watsonville. Featuring Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes and Robert Zabala. Sponsored by the GI Rights Hotline & Draft Alternatives program of the Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV), Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Watsonville Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF), Watsonville Brown Berets, Courage to Resist and Santa Cruz Veterans for Peace Chp. 11. More info: Bob Fitch 831-722-3311
Tuesday May 15 - Palo Alto 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church (Fellowship Hall), 1140 Cowper, Palo Alto. Featuring Camilo Mejia. Sponsored by Pennisula Peace and Justice Center. More info: Paul George 650-326-8837
Wednesday May 16 - Eureka 7pm at the Eureka Labor Temple, 840 E St. (@9th), Eureka. Featuring Camilo Mejia. More info: Becky Luening 707-826-9197
Thursday May 17 - Oakland 4pm youth event and 7pm program at the Humanist Hall, 411 28th St, Oakland. Featuring Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes and the Alternatives to War through Education (A.W.E.) Youth Action Team. Sponsored by Veteran's for Peace Chp. 69, Courage to Resist, Central Committee for Conscientious Objector's (CCCO) and AWE Youth Action Team.
Friday May 18 - Berkeley 7pm at St. Joseph the Worker featuring Camilo Mejia.
US war resisters are part of a growing movement of war resistance within the military: Camilo Mejia, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Joshua Key, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Cheney made other laughable claims in Baghdad yesterday. Many in the press, including Joshua Partlow (Washington Post), Alissa J. Rubin and basically anyone filing from Iraq, noted that Cheney declared, "We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war. . . . The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again." If it sounds familiar, it's part of the scare lie that the US administration used to launch an illegal war. It's been disproven and discredited. Strangely, though major outlets found time to include the lie, there wasn't room to call it out. Now in the leadup to the illegal war this lie would be repeated over and over. It was a lie then but many in the mainstream ran with it (click here for one notable exception, McClatchy Newspapers -- then Knight-Ridder). After that and other lies were exposed -- after the US was involved in an illegal war -- some in the press would express shock that the discredited lie was believed by so many in the public. Why was that? Because despite mini-culpas there was no strong calling out of the lies and, even today, the lie can be jotted down and appear in print without a reporter feeling it is their duty (and it is their duty) to note that what Cheney uttered was a lie. One example, Warren P. Strobel and Margaret Talev's "Senate reports say Saddam rejected cooperating with terrorists" (McClatchy Newspapers) calling out the lie in September of last year:
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein rejected pleas for assistance from Osama bin Laden and tried to capture terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi when he was in Iraq, a Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday found, casting further doubt on the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq.
President Bush and other administration officials repeatedly cited Saddam's alleged ties to radical Islamic terrorists before the March 2003 invasion as one reason to take military action against Iraq.
Yes and Cheney continues to do so without being called out on it, so don't blame the public when the press fails at its own job.
A failure of the British press currently is the slobbering going over about Mr Tony. As Tariq Ali noted at CounterPunch, "Tony Blair's success was limited to winning three general elections in a row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician, but without much substance; bereft of ideas he eagerly grasped and tried to improve upon the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. But though in many ways Blair's programme has been a euphemistic, if bloodier, version of Thatcher's, the style of their departures is very different. Thatcher's overthrow by her fellow-Conservatives was a matter of high drama: an announcement outside the Louvre's glass pyramid during the Paris Congress brokering the end of the Cold War; tears; a crowded House of Commons. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack. Thatcher's supporters described themselves afterwards as horror-struck by what they had done. Even Blair's greatest sycophants in the British media: Martin Kettle and Michael White (The Guardian), Andrew Rawnsley (Observer), Philip Stephens (FT) confess to a sense of relief as he finally quits." Speaking with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) today, Tariq Ali noted, "We had no real accounting of why he's leaving as prime minister. And the fact is he's leaving is, because he's hated. And the reason he's hated is because he joined the neocons in Washington and went to war against Iraq, which now 78% of the population in this country [England] oppose. And when people are being asked what will Blair’s legacy be, a large majority is saying Iraq. And I think that's what he will be remembered for, as a prime minister who took a reluctant and skeptical country into a war designed by Washington and its neoconservative strategists, all of whom are in crisis. And you listen to Blair now and his successor, Brown, and they sound much worse than any Democrat in the Senate or the House, because they realize the war's unpopular. These guys carry on living in a tiny bubble, media bubble, which they construct. And I think the BBC's sycophancy, the way in which they portrayed him yesterday as if he was a sort of dead Princess Diana, doesn't do them proud. It was a low point in BBC journalism, with one of their political correspondents saying, 'Gosh, look at him. Isn't he a winner?' Well, he isn't a winner, which is why he's leaving. And a reluctant party is saying farewell to him, because they think they’ll lose the next election if he’s in charge. That's what's going on."
And what's going on Iraq today?
Bombings?
Ibon Villelabeitia and Dean Yates (Reuters) report that Baghdad has seen truck bombing attacks on bridges today that have left at least 26 dead, at least 60 wounded and damanged bridges. Jenan (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Basra explosion that left one civilian wounded. Reuters reports a bridge outside Taiji was bombed "main highway connecting the capital [Baghdad] with cities in the north" and that four Iraqi soldiers were killed in the explosion, a Zaafaraniya bombing that left two dead and four wounded.
Shootings?
Jenan (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the Samara shooting death of "brigadier Amar Kareem Khlaf". Reuters reports a Kirkuk drive-by that left one person dead and the shooting death of Falluja's deputy mayor.
Corpses?
Reuters reports one corpses was discovered in Hawija.
Earlier today Reuters reported the Baghdad death of a US soldier (two more wounded) from a Thursday roadside bombing, the Tikrit death of a US soldier (9 wounded) from a Thursday bombing, the Thursday death of a US soldier in Diwaniya from "small-arms fire" and the Thursday death of a US soldier in Baghdad also from "small-arms fire".
This as AP reports that Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani , in a speech delivered at Cambridge, declared, "I think that in one or two years we will be able to recruit our forces, to prepare our forces and say goodbye to our friends." The total number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is now 3386 -- that's 3386 'goodbyes' Talabani can say. Long after the four year mark has passed on the illegal war, everyone is supposed to buy that now (now!) it will only take one or two more years. And of course in one or two more years, no doubt, the message will still be "It'll just take a year or two more." How many deaths is it going to take? The next time someone -- in the US Congress, in the Iraqi Parliament, wherever -- wants to tell the world how much more X it will take for the illegal war to be 'won,' let's all ask them to drop the months or years and tell us how many more lives. How many more lives will this illegal war take? CBS and AP report: "The U.S. commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said he doesn't have enough troops for the mission in Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad that has seen a rise in violence blamed largely on militants who fled the Baghdad security operation. Mixon also said Iraqi government officials are not moving fast enough to provide the 'most powerful weapon' against insurgents -- a government that works and supplies services for the people." For such a government to exist, it would have to be one put foward by the Iraqi people and not yet another puppet government installed by the US. Meanwhile, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reports this on CBS: "In media news, CBS has dismissed an Iraq war veteran over his involvement in an ad campaign criticizing the war. General John Batiste appears in an ad from the group VoteVets dot org. Batiste has been working as a CBS News consultant." Amy Goodman and Greg Palast will be on Sunday's Book TV (C-Span) (7:00 pm EST).
The US House of Representatives passed a measure today. It funds the Iraq war but by piecemeal. The Senate now takes up the vote. It's called going through the motions. Instead, we'll turn to campus activism where Bully Boy's speech today at St. Vincent college (in Penn.) has led to a huge outcry. James Gerstenzang (LA Times) reports that "Students vigorously debated the invitation at a town-hall meeting last month. A former St. Vincent College president wrote a scathing newspaper essay saying Bush had no place on the campus. About a quarter of the tenure-rank faculty wrote an open letter to Bush challenging the Iraq war as contrary to Roman Catholic doctrine. Several dozen people held a candlelight vigil Thursday night protesting the visit. And for several Sundays, nuns protested on the edge of the campus. The discord, polite and reasoned as it may be, is emblematic of passions across the country as the war moves further into its fifth year, with increasing military deployments and mounting death tolls among Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops." Jennifer Loven (AP) reports a crowd of at least 150 protesting and quotes philosophy major Ronny Menzie "I didn't finish my thesis because I didn't want my graduation with him. I think it's a blight, an embarrassment on a Catholic college." and Iraq war vet Jonas Merrill who made a 90 minute drive to protest the Bully Boy's appearance, "We're fighting for the guys still over there." This campus response isn't a brand new development for the administration. David Nitkin (Baltimore Sun) observes, "Graduation visits by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials are galvanizing opponents at campuses across the country, sparking intense debates and frustrating White House hopes. A similar outcry greeted Bush last month at a South Florida community college. Protesters flocked to the campus even though it was considered to be an accommodating environment, with a large Cuban-American population." And Ron Hutcheson (McClatchy Newspapers) reminds, "Other even more conservative campuses also have been touched by unrest over the war. Last month, a small group of students and faculty at Brigham Young University, the nation's premier Mormon school, objected to a commencement address by Vice President Dick Cheney."
iraq tariq ali agustin aguayo democracy now amy goodman the new york times alissa j. rubin the washington post joshua partlow
