"Senate Holds Hearing On Continuation Of Fatally Flawed Military Commissions (7/7/2009)
Use Of 'Coerced Evidence' Makes Them Unconstitutional, Says ACLU" (ACLU):
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON – The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing today on the proposed continuation of the controversial Guantánamo military commissions system. The chairman of the committee, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), has inserted language related to military commissions into the current Senate draft of the Defense Authorization bill and President Obama has recently declared his intention to revive the fatally flawed commissions after suspending them by executive order his first day in office.
In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union is scheduled to testify on military commissions at a separate hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Wednesday morning.
“The military commissions are unconstitutional and were created not to enforce the law but to circumvent it,” said Christopher Anders, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel. “Bringing back the military commissions would signal to the rest of the world that the United States continues to flout the rule of law.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the first version of the Bush administration’s military commissions illegal. President Obama, as a candidate, took the position that the second and current version of the military commissions, as implemented through the Military Commissions Act, should be rejected, but he is now pushing Congress to help revive these proceedings with certain changes.
While both the president’s proposal and the new legislation passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee would bar evidence obtained through torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, they would still allow for the admission of other “coerced evidence.” That means that forced confessions and hearsay evidence that would be barred from every U.S. courtroom and court-martial would still be admissible. By contrast, the Constitution, the Federal Rules of Evidence used in federal criminal courts, and rules for military courts-martial prohibit all evidence obtained by coercion. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported last week that a recent undisclosed Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluded that the use of coerced evidence in at least some military commission proceedings would be unconstitutional.
" The military commissions are fatally flawed and no amount of tinkering will fix them,” Anders added. “The system is set up to ensure convictions, not give defendants an impartial hearing. When the military commissions stack the deck against a fair trial, how can we trust their outcomes?”
In addition to being unconstitutional, the military commissions are unnecessary. Under our criminal justice system, the government already has sufficient tools at its disposal to prosecute terrorism suspects, including a wide array of criminal laws that even prohibit activities that are often only remotely related to terrorism. Civilian and military courts are perfectly capable of dealing with classified evidence and protecting national security while also providing fundamental rights. The United States has successfully prosecuted more than 200 defendants in international terrorism cases in federal courts for crimes committed both before and after 9/11. By comparison, only three terrorism suspects were successfully prosecuted in the military commissions system at Guantánamo.
“President Obama put an end to the use of torture and abuse because he knew that it was contrary to our most fundamental values. Yet the president and Congress are now considering allowing forced confessions – the fruit of some of those very same practices – to be used against defendants,” said Anders. “Under the new legislation, involuntary confessions forced out of witnesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other torture sites could be used to convict people. Due process cannot exist when we allow hearsay and coerced evidence in our courtrooms, and justice cannot exist without due process. The military commissions must be shut down for good if America is to repair its legacy as an international beacon of human rights and civil liberties.”
The hearing is covered by C.I. in the snapshot today. Be sure to read it. C.I. starts it after the day's violence in Iraq. The press release came out before the hearing. I was hoping they'd have something about the hearing itself because, reading C.I.'s report, it's worse than even the press release thought it would be.
"Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93: A Look at His Legacy With Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young & Jonathan Schell" (Democracy Now!).
I'm providing the link. It's read, watch or listen. I'm going to talk a little bit about this segment. It was very disappointing.
Thank goodness for Young who had some perspective. Jonathan Schell is the biggest joke in the world. He's done 'blog posts' for Iraq. A few. A few times. He's an embarrassment. He was one of those idiots trying to scare up votes for John Kerry (I voted for John Kerry) by calling 2004 "the torture election." Jonathan and War Hawk Robert McNamara had a half-in-half at a nuclear freeze rally so instead of offering reality, Schell's singing "That's why I fell for [bomb, bomb] the leader of the pack. Leader of the pack, and now he's gone. Leader of the pack, and now he's gone." It was so embarrassing.
Young stayed firm.
Howard Zinn?
Better than I expected but is he really talking about the topic? No. He's spitting out generic statements and I'm really worried if he's able to follow the conversation. I'm not joking or being snide, I'm seriously worried because that was just really shocking.
Marilyn Young addressed McNamara's War Crimes (Zinn gave generic comments about War Crimes -- anyone's War Crimes) and Schell spent forever repeatedly attempting to justify and minimize McNamara's actions. It was disgusting.
Disgusting has been All Things Media Big and Small in the last two weeks (continuing today).
"TV: Trash TV" (Ava and C.I., The Third Estate Sunday Review):
And while people pretend that Michael Jackson: Still Dead is news, it keeps real news off the radar. So it's especially disgusting when Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News and The (KPFA) Morning Show waste listeners time with this garbage. And flat out outrageous when Democracy Now! uses its radio and TV time to 'cover' bad gossip.
Michael Jackson wanted to be Diana Ross for years. Then he wanted to be a White woman. At last, in death, he is. He's Anna Nicole Smith for 2009. And all the ghouls and all the idiots -- who can't be bothered with following actual news -- rush to watch more and more infotainment and kid themselves that they're in any way informed or aware of what's going on in the world. Shame on anyone pretending to be a public affairs or news program that assists them in mistaking trash TV for news.
Amen. This is a wonderful commentary. It needed saying and, as usual, Ava and C.I. stepped up to the plate.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Tuesday, July 7, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqi police become the target of choice, the US Senate Armed Service Committee appears to have no grasp of the US legal system and no respect for it, a War Hawk dies, and more.
Gay Life After Saddam is a documentary the BBC commissioned which was set to air Sunday, July 5th on BBC Radio 5 Live; however, the Wimbledon Men's Final ran late Sunday and the program has been rescheduled to air Sunday July 12th from nine to ten p.m. (1:00 to 2:00 p.m. PST). Ashley Byrne did the investigative reporting for the documentary and, at the BBC, Byrne explains, "What is clear, and confirmed by separate evidence from various human rights groups, is that some gay men have been subjected to appalling violent abuse. . . . Gay men inside Iraq have been able to seek santuary in safe houses, thanks to the UK-based Iraqi Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) group, which manages them from London. The documentary team were granted exclusive access to one of the homes on the outskirts of Baghdad". The people Byrne speaks to maintain it was easier to be a gay Iraqi when Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq. So much for 'liberation' and 'democracy.' Again, the specail has been rescheduled for this coming Sunday, July 12th.
Moving over to an Iraq War veteran in Canada, David Solnit, co-author with Aimee Allison of Army Of None, notes the following action (taking place tomorrow):
Kimberly Rivera, mother of three, wife, and soldier of conscience is now living in Canada, but that could all change on July 8th. Join Courage to Resist at a support rally outside of the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco, July 8, 12 noon - 1pm 580 California Street at Kearny, San Francisco (4 blocks up Montgomery from Montgomery BART, left on Calif. St, right side of street just before Kearny) http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=580%20California%20Street%2C%2014th%20floor&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl%20) We will bring signed petitions to the Consulate General, urging the Canadian politicians to respect the will of the Canadian people, the Canadian parliament, whom have twice voted recommendations to allow war resisters to stay and the basic moral imperative that does not separate children from their loving mother.Kimberly has this to say: "I want to stay in Canada, with my family, because the Iraq War is immoral, illegal and I couldn't in good conscience go back. The amount of support I'm getting from Canadians is amazing. The parents of my kids' friends, MPs and even strangers on the street keep telling me that they can't believe the votes in Parliament aren't being respected." Kimberly Rivera is the first outspoken female Iraq War resister to publically and legally seek refuge in Canada. Kimberly, along with her partner Mario, son Christian (7 years old) and daughter Rebecca (4 years old), fled to Canada in January 2007 when Kimberly refused redeployment. In late November 2008 Kimberly gave birth to her Canadian daughter Katie (8 months old). She served in Iraq in 2006 and experienced, firsthand, the reality of this ongoing illegal war and occupation. On July 8th, Kimberly is going to Canadian federal court, to appeal the decision in her Pre-Removal Risk Assessment. If her appeal fails, she will be asked to leave Canada, or forcibly removed -- and delivered into the custody and jurisdiction of the United States Army where Kimberly will face charges that will carry, at the very least, a 4 year sentence in a military stockade. Four years or more away from her young children, away from her baby daughter, away from her husband -- she will be kept in an Army prison. She has served in Iraq, she has been to combat; now, because she has decided to exercise her conscience, she faces imprisonment, additional forced separation from her family and eviction from her new home. Act to help Kimberly on July 8th! Join Courage to Resist in protesting the Canadian governments attempts to violate a loving mother's human rights!Sign the letter online & for more info: http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/726/1/
Over the weekend, US Vice President Joe Biden continued his trip to Iraq. Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) reported that his "mission to promote national reconciliation in Iraq was rebuffed Friday by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who told him that the issue was a domestic Iraqi affair and that U.S involvement wouldn't be welcome." US involvement wouldn't be welcome . . . but Nouri's happy to have the involvement of US forces on the ground in Iraq because otherwise he would be overthrown. That involvement he's all for. An Iraqi correspondent for McClatchy offers her take here. Sheryl Gay Stolberg (New York Times) added, "One official said the vice president made it clear that if Iraq returned to ethnic violence, the United States would be unlikely to remain engaged, 'because one, the American people would have no interest in doing that, and as he put it, neither would he or the president." Yesterday, Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) explained that "the Americans helped most leading Iraqi politicians, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, come to power -- and stay there -- they can no longer expect the Iraqis to acknowledge the help, because being close to the Americans risks alienating average Iraqis." Which has never prevented the puppet from biting the hand that continues to feed him and why Alsumaria reports today, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki refused any foreign interference in Iraqi affairs; two days after the United States cautioned that it might disengage in Iraq if the country fails to reach national reconciliation. In a meeting with tribal sheikhs, security chiefs and local officials in Anbar, Al Maliki reiterated that he won't allow anyone to meddle in Iraqi affairs and oversee the political process and national reconciliation." Independent journalist Dahr Jamail (MidEast Dispatches) uses Biden's visit to provide the context on the non-departure and non-withdrawal:
On July 4 in Baghdad, Vice President Joe Biden, who campaigned with Barack Obama on a platform of ending the occupation of Iraq, found himself in one of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's lavish buildings, the Al-Faw Palace. While one of Saddam Hussein's thrones sat on the side of the room, Biden presided over a swearing-in ceremony for 237 soldiers, who were becoming US citizens. Speaking of the ceremony, Biden said, "We did it in Saddam's palace, and I can think of nothing better. That S.O.B. is rolling over in his grave right now." Perhaps the irony of both the scene and his statement were lost to Biden. For if Saddam Hussein was rolling in his grave, the reason would have less to do with one of his palaces being used as a naturalization center for US soldiers, and more to do with the fact that the US government has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq anytime soon.
We have passed the June 30 deadline that, according to a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on November 17, 2008, was the date all US forces were to have been withdrawn from all of Iraq's cities. Today, however, there are at least 134,000 US soldiers in Iraq - a number barely lower than the number that were there in 2003. In addition, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified on June 9 that the United States would maintain an average of at least 100,000 troops in Iraq through fiscal year 2010.
The SOFA is a sieve, and the number of US military personnel in Iraq is remaining largely intact for now. Add to the 134,000 US soldiers almost the exact number of military contractors (132,610 and increasing), 36,061 of which, according to a recent Department of Defense report, are US citizens.
Dahr Jamail's latest book was just released this month and is The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The weekend trend in Iraq was attacks on police officers resulting in the deaths of at least 6 police officers with eight more wounded. Though primarily in Mosul, the attacks also took place in Baghdad and Kirkuk.On Saturday, 1 was killed and one wounded and a Mosul bombing targeting a police squad car resulted in one civilian being injured, Sunday's numbers were 3 killed with two wounded while a Mosul car bombing targeted the police but wounded three civilians, and Monday saw 2 killed and five wounded. (And use links in linked day's entries for wounded totals.)Meanwhile 'safe' Iraq still requires police training takes place . . . outside the country. Iraq's Foreign Ministry announced Sunday that their ambassador to Canberra, Ghanim Taha al-Shebly, attended graduation ceremonies for Iraqi police officers in . . . Australia: "Ambassador AL-Shebly delivered a speech on the occasion in which he expressed his thanks to the Federal Police and the Australian Government for their initiative in providing development programs to the elite members of the Iraqi National Police, which included training in management and leadership development, administrative and criminal evidence in order to strengthen the Iraqi Police Service." The Ministry also announced Sunday that Mustafa Musa Tawfik, Charge d'affairs in the Iraqi Embassy in Seoul, gave a speech at the "training course for the dvelopment of policies and programs human rights in filed in Iraq" in . . . (South) Korea.The need to continue training outside of Iraq is not surprising considering the ongoing violence; however, it needs to be noted that US government ended the training program which had been taking place in Jordan even though it was cost effective and, according to outsiders, effective period. The claim at the time was that training should take place in Iraq where it would be more cost efficient. And lucky for that cover story, reporters haven't been eager to point out that Iraqis continue to train in foreign countries. The only real difference now is that they are not training in Arab countries.
The targeting of police officers continued in Iraq today. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports two Iraqi "servicemen and one civilian" were injured in a shooting at a Baghdad checkpoint and 1 police officer was shot dead in Mosul while his father (also a police officer) was left wounded. In both incidents, silencers were used on the guns and McClatchy was noting (in their daily violence round-ups) over the weekend how common the use of silencers was becoming. Reuters notes 1 Iraqi soldier was shot dead at a Mosul checkpoint with two other people left injured and they note 1 police officer shot dead in Mosul in a drive-by.
From violence to the thing everyone wants to get their hands on: Oil. Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) quotes Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari saying, "We showed the world two things -- that the Iraqi oil industry is open for investment for the first time, and second, that the process was transparent." The statement comes on the heels of the first auction and as Iraq prepares for the second auction. Angel K. Yan (Red Net) notes, "China's three major oil companies are thinking of participating in Iraq's second auction of oil and gas fields later this year, in a move to get a better foothold in the country's oil industry." The first auction was at the end of last month and the big winners were British Petroleum and China National Petroleum Corporation who partnered up and won what Robin Pagnamenta (Times of London) described as "access to Iraq's biggest oilfield." At The Ecologist, Dan Box offers a historical view of England and Iraq. Vivian Wai-yin Kwok (Forbes) notes China Daily is reporting China National Petroleum Corporation and China Petrochemical Corporation plan to bid in the second auction. Jane Arraf observes that "factors including lingering security fears and concerns that Iraq's climate for foreign oil investment is still shifting" are weighing on some foreign companies.
"Good morning, everybody," declared US Senator Carl Levin bringing to order the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Military Commission and the trial of Detainees for Violations of the Law of War. "In its 2006 decision in the Hamdan case, the Supreme Court held that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convetions prohibts the trial of detainees for violations of the law of war unless the trial is conducted 'by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.' The Court concluded that 'the regular military courts in our system are the courts-martial established by congressional statutes' but that a military commission can be regularly constituted by the standards of our military justice system 'if some practical need explains deviations from court-martial practice'.'' His opening remarks set up the hearing so we'll also note this section.
Senator Carl Levin: Of great importance, the provision in our bill would reverse the existing presumption in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that rules and procedures applicable to trials by courts martial would not apply. Our new language says, by contrast, that: "Except as otherwise provided, the procedures and rules of evidence applicable in trials by general courts-martial of the United States shall apply in trials by military commission under this chapter." The exceptions to this rule are, as suggested by the Supreme Court, carefully tailored to the unique circumstances of the conduct of military and intelligence operations during hostilities. Three years ago, when this Committee considered similar legislation on military commissions, I urged that we apply two tests. First, will we be able to live with the procedures that we establish if the tables are turned and our own troops are subject to similar procedures? Second, is the bill consistent with our American system of justice and will it stand up to scrutiny on judicial review? I believe that those remain the right questions to consider and that language we have included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 meets both tests. Over the last three years, we have seen the legal advisor to the Convening Authority for military commissions forced to step aside after a military judge found that he had compromised his objectivity by aligning himself with the prosecution. We have had prosecutors resign after making allegations of improper command influence and serious deficiencies in the military commission process. We have had the Chief Defense Counsel raise serious concerns about the adequacy of resources made available to defendants in military commissions cases, writing that: "Regardless of its other procedures, no trial system will be fair unless the serious deficiencies in the current system's approach to defense resources are rectified." So even if we are able to enact new legislation that successfully addresses the shortcomings in existing law, we will have a long way to go to restore public confidence in military commissions and the justice that they produce. However, we will not be able to restore confidence in military commissions at all unless we first substitute new procedures and language to address the problems with the existing statute.
The hearing was composed of two panels. The first panel was composed of the Dept of Defense's Jeh C. Johnson, Dept of Justice's David S. Kris and JAG's Vice Adm Bruce E. MacDonald. The second panel was composed of Retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, Retired Maj Gen John Altenburg Jr. and the American University's Daniel Marcus.
Senator Carl Levin: Let me ask you first, Mr. Johnson, I quoted from the Hamdan case in my opening remarks, saying that the Court in Hamdan said: "The regular military courts in our system are the courts-martial established by congressional statutes." But they also said that a military commission can be regularly constituted if there's a practical need that explains the ndeviations from court-martial practice. We have attempted in our language to do exactly that. And my question first of you is, in your view, does our bill conform to the Hamdan standards?
Jeh C. Johnson: Senator, as you, as you noted, Hamdan uh-uh requires -- and of course Hamdan was at a time that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 did not exist, as I recall. The holding of Hamdan was that military commissions -- and I'm not going to get this exactly right -- but that military commission should depart from UCMJ courts only in situations of evident practical need. The proposed legislation, uh, in our view definitely brings us closer to the UCMJ model and the circumstances under which the military commissions, uhm, contemplated by this bill and UCMJ courts differ are, in our judgment, circumstances that are necessary, uhm, given -- given the needs here. Uh, for example, uh, there is no Miranda requirement imposed by-by this-by this legislation. Article 31 UCMJ is specifically excluded from application here. Article 31 is what uh calls for Miranda warnings in uh UCMJ circumstances. The legislation also takes what I believe is a very appropriate and practical approach to-to hearsay. As you noted in your opening remarks, Mr. Chariman, the-the-the burden is no longer on the opponent to demonstrate uh-uh that hearsay should be excluded. There is a notice requirement in the proposed legislation and if the proponent of the hearsay can demonstrate reliability and materiality and that the declarant is not available as a practical matter given the unqiue circumstances of military operations and intelligence operations, the hearsy could be admitted.
And people make fun of the way Sarah Palin speaks? The Dept of Defense sends that stammering uh-uh dofus into a hearing? He's the Dept's General Counsel?
First off, Article 31 is not the military's Miranda. UCMJ's Article 31 predates Miranda by 16 years. Don't confuse the two. Article 32 is not a copy of Miranda. Miranda can be seen as a civilian copy of Article 32. What an idiot. And, no, he has no knowledge of the law. Admitting hearsay goes against everything the US justice system stands for and that includes the US military justice system. The Senate should be ashamed of himself for authoring legislation that shreds the US justice system. Let's not let them off (and I don't) but let's be clear that Johnson's a stammering fool who came off like a drunk barely able to keep his head up at the bar (you really needed to see the way Johnson's head dipped and swung to this side and to that side). David Kris was just as much of an ass as Levin's being but he could speak. What he had to say was frightening. Terrorism, Kris said speaking for the Dept of Justice, should be prosecuted in military courts, not civilian ones and proscuted, pay attention to this, by the Defense Department. Slippery slope is apparently a concept foreign to the idiots Barack's appointed. Senator John McCain, the Ranking Member of the Committee, wanted to know if there was a difference in the proceedings based on whether the trials were held in the US or at Guantanamo? Johnson fretted that "due process" would apply if held in the US and "that the courts have not determined applies -- applies now" at Guantanamo. Johnson had a real problem being concise. Not because he was adding detail but because he was restating the same thing over and over. He did that with Levin in Levin's first round of questioning (leading the Chair to note that there was only six minutes in the round) and he tried that with McCain who cut him off.
Senator John McCain: So what you're saying is that you believe that there could be some differneces in procedure if the trials were held in Guantanamo or the United States of America?
Jeh Johnson: I'm not sure I would be prepared to say significant difference, Senator.
Senator John McCain: It would be important for this committee to know what your view is? It might have something to do with the way that we shape legislation. If they're going to have all kinds of additional rights if they're tried in the United States of America as opposed to Guantanamo, I think that the committee and the American people should know that.
Jeh Johnson: One of the things that I mentioned in my prepared statement, Senator, is that when it comes to the admissability of statements, the administration believes that a volunatriness standard should apply on account of the reality of military operations and we think that that is something that uh due process may require particularly if military commissions come to the United States, that the courts may impose a voluntariness standard.
Senator John McCain: Well I hope that you and Mr. Kris will provide for the record what you think the difference is and the process would be as to the location of uh those trials. I think it's very important. Certainly is to me.
Vice Adm Bruce E. MacDonald made clear to Senator Lindsey Graham that the US has more restrictive use on hearsay than, for example, an international tribunal in Rawanda. Boo-hoo. What Constitution did MacDonald swear to uphold and is not coherent enough to grasp what oath he took? And someone tell the idiot to comb his hair. That fallen lock wouldn't play on a guy half his age and for a man showing up before Congress in military dress it was flat out embarrassing. (His hair was comparable to Paul Wolfowitz for any needing a visual. Only worse.) Senator Mark Udall praised Lindsey Graham and had nothing to add. Disappointing. If any Senator did a half-way decent job and seemed to have an understanding of the law it was Senator Jack Reed who did speak up for at least some civilian courts, at least some of the trials needing to take place in civilian courts and he also noted that a number of criminals are being glorified by having their actions, their crimes, inflated into something more than that. It was a very sad hearing and the first panel lasted about one hour and seventeen minutes. The second panel moved more quickly. Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy and Retired Rear Admiral John Hutson made it very clear that he was opposed to the notion of allowing the Defense Dept to begin conducting trials. He spoke of the US system of justice and it would be wonderful if the senators present had either stood up and applauded or slapped their heads in I-didn't-not-know-that gestures. Instead, his words appeared to sail over their clueless heads. We're going to note his remarks at length:
Even greater than democracy itself, the greatest export of all from the United States is justice. Daniel Webster once said, "Justice, Sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth. It's the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together." But justice is fragile and easily disparaged. It must be nurtured and handled with great care. I was an early and ardent supporter of military commissions. Initially, I was drawn to their historical precedents and, more importantly, I was confident that the United States Armed Forces could and would conduct fair trails even of reprehensible defendants. My own experience gained during 28 years in the Navy and our long history of providing due process while trying our own military personnel in courts-marital gave me this confidence. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the commissions that were created did not live up to the traditions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Predictably, they became a significant distraction for the military. I hasten to add that this was in spite of the stalwart, honorable effort of many, many military personnel themselves. Indeed, that is one of the great tragedies of this saga, and largely makes one of the points that I wish to underline. The primary role of the military is to fight and win our nation's wars or, stated more precisely, to provide the time and space necessary for real solutions -- economic, cultural, social, religious -- to take place. Prosecution of miscreants is an occasionally necessary sidebar to that mission but shouldn't distract from it. We have the UCMJ and the military court-martial system to expedite the legitimate role of the military, not interfere with it. If a sailor on a ship is alleged to have committeed a crime, we must expeditiously and fairly resolve that problem. Otherwise it can fester and interfere with unit cohesion and impede an effective fighting force. The UCMJ and the Manual for Courts Martial serve that purpose alone. They solves problems for the armed forces; not create them. Our recent history with military commissions has been the opposite. I've come to realize that even a perfect commission regime would be a distraction for the military. It's simply not part of its mission. I am very concerned when the military is called upon to perform functions outside of its core mission even when I'm confident that it can do it well. Preserving and ensuring justice in the United States is the primary mission of the Department of Justice, not the Department of Defense. If there will be criticism of our prosecution of alleged terrorists -- and there will be -- the Department of Justice and the US Federal Court system are equipped to deal with that criticism. Indeed, it is part of their responsibility to face it, address it and resolve it.
Monday Kat reviewed Regina Spektor's latest album. I should have noted that this morning but was in rush to get to the hearing (see, it's connected) and (still connected), Kat will share her thoughts on the hearing tonight so be sure to visit her site.
Turning to peace and justice news, infamous War Criminal and scourge of the globe Robert McNamara is dead. In an online discussion at the Washington Post (conducted by Robert G. Kaiser), Promise and Power author Deborah Shapley provided this context:
Washington, D.C.: Hi Bob -- I wrote a biography of McNamara, "Promise and Power," published in 1993. For the record, he told me he did not quit over the grim outlook in Vietnam because he wasn't that sure he was right, and because holding on could force Hanoi's hand politically, in his view. Therefore, the deaths of additional Americans at that time (1965 ff) were not in vain. My personal opinion is that his 1995 book "In Retrospect" gave the impression he thought the war was 'totally wrong' at the time -- which is not what his record shows -- at all! He went on telling the president they could bring off something-or-other, albeit in more pessimistic terms. Some people want to seem on the right side of history even when they were on what 'in retrospect' was the wrong side of history. Too bad for the servicemen that he misrepresented (or seemed to misrepresent) his own record.
In this decade, the War Criminal recast himself as a bra-less starlet followed around by professional gadfly Errol Morris for the mockumentary Fog Of War (aka The Bore Never Shuts Up). As with any Morris revisionary opus, the point of the mocumentary was that no one was really guilty. Alexander Cockburn (CounterPunch) observes:
He faded comfortably away. The last time we saw him vividly was in 2004 as the star of Morris's wildly over-praised, documentary The Fog of War, talking comfortably about the millions of people he's helped to kill.
Time and again, McNamara got away with it in that film, cowering in the shadow of baroque monsters like LeMay or LBJ, choking up about his choice of Kennedy's gravesite in Arlington, sniffling at the memory of Johnson giving him the Medal of Freedom, spouting nonsense about how Kennedy would have pulled out of Vietnam, muffling himself in the ever- useful camouflage of the "fog of war."
Danny Schechter (News Dissector) explains, "McNamara returned to his Waterloo (Hanoi) some years back for a conference on the "lessons of the war" with General Giap, the winner, and several American Generals, the losers. He was challenged by the feisty Vietnamese American documentary director, Tiana [Thi Thanh Nga], who made 'From Hollywood to Hanoi' and other films for all the deaths he caused. There is precious footage of him freaking out and arrogantly lecturing her. The Vietnamese government was too diplomatic to express its rage." On Democracy Now! today, Marilyn Young, Howard Zinn and Johnny Apologist Schell appeared to discuss War Hawk McNamara. Historian Marilyn Young (author of many books and recently co-editor of Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam) is worth noting. She explained of McNamara:
One of the legacies is that there is none, in a sense. The first clip that you ran, you could have run it now. About Iraq, several years ago, about Afghanistan today. It's as if it doesn't go anywhere. There is knowledge, and then it's erased in between McNamara should be kind of a morality tale. During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, he initially -- he was responsible really -- for the initial escalation. In 1964, he and Bundy gave -- '65, I'm sorry -- gave Johnson what's called "The Fork in the Road Memorandum," in which they said, "Now, we have really thought this over and we have two choices. We could increase military pressure or we could negotiate." And they strongly urged the increase of military pressure and Johnson went along with that. Not that he was, you know, I think he was a little unwilling, but that is another subject. Gradually, by later in 1965, by 1966, and certainly by 1967, he was completely disenchanted with the war. And he said it in public at the Senate hearings on bombing targets. And he said, "This bombing is just not going to work." The next thing he knew, he was out. And he said later he never knew whether he had quit or Johnson had fired him. And then, as Howard [Zinn] said, he was absolutely silent. You can imagine that the silence was expressed in onse sense by his opposition to nuclear weapons, which was very sincere and I'm sure Jonathan can talk about that. He and Bundy both focused on the dangers of nuclear war as if that attempt to prevent a future war was going to erase the war they had both just conducted. And then in 1995 he comes out with In Retrospect and everybody quotes, "We were wrong, terribly wrong." But if you read the full paragraph, what it says is: "We weren't wrong in our values and our intentions, we were wrong about our judgments and capabilities." And the book as a whole is an excuse. It's a struggle -- he almost comes to terms and then he runs away from coming to terms. And he does the same thing, I think, in Fog of War. And he did the same thing for the rest of his life -- and approach to what he had really been responsible for, and then a bouncing off it, too awful to face. And it happens over and over again. He says, for example, he lists all the terrible mistakes that he made -- that "they" made. He never says "I." He says "they." And he says, "We just didn't understand that Vietnam was about nationalism." He doesn't ask why they didn't understand that. There were internal critics. George Ball, Paul Capenburg, but also, he was surrounded, if you read the newspapers, by Lidman, by Morgenthau, by I.F. Stone, who was vigorously writing about the Vietnam war. By George Cain, a great historian of South East Asia. So, if he wanted to know what the upsurge, the insurgency in South Vietnam was about, he had lots of sources. He never comes close to explaining why he didn't pay attention to any of that. Instead he says, "Oh my God! We just didn't know they were nationalists." How come?
iraqashley byrnebbc news
aimeee allisondavid solnit
the new york timessheryl gay stolberg
alissa j. rubinliz slythe los angeles times
dahr jamail
mcclatchy newspapers
the washington postrobert g. kaiserdeborah shapley
danny schechter
democracy nowmarilyn youngjonathan schellhoward zinn
kats korner
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Sexist Melinda Henneberger embraces her own
What a proud day for failed mainstream media journalist Melinda Henneberger. At her hideous site, this is a typical comment to her latest 'article' on Sarah Palin:
Vaughn D. Gale
6:32PM Jul 3rd 2009
NOT!!!! Anyone who says something like that is GIVING HER 10 POINTS for SNATCH AND SKIN COLOR YOU RACIST!!!
What a proud moment for Melinda. Sweet Melinda, so very concerned that women be treated with respect, right?
Wrong.
It's also cute the way she captures Sarah Palin's remarks. Like many people, Palin starts her sentences with "and." I don't. It's a personal pet peave of mine and, if you searched this journal for the last three years, I would be surprised I would be surprised if you found more than one sentence of mine which started with "And." (I have no problem with others doing it. I just had a teacher who would hit us with a ruler if we started a sentence with "and" -- I really mean hit us with a ruler. So I do not start a sentence with "and.") Instead of allowing that, Melinda runs everything together to make it appear Palin makes no sense.
It really is interesting to look back on how the press attacks and fixes.
Barack Obama is a lousy speaker. Yet until Ava and C.I. regularly started hitting on his stumbling and stammers and uh-uh-uhs, it really wasn't noted. The press was happy to cover for him and they continue to do so. They not only leave out words he says (such as when he packs more than one verb into a sentence), they smooth over his words while putting quotation marks around it, pretending he actually said that.
They did the same thing for George W. Bush.
It is always interesting to see who the press decides to serve and, pay attention, it's never the public.
It's also not really a Republican/Democrat split. They have their favorites and pets on both sides. You can usually trace it down to who is enslaved to the corporations -- both the press and the politicians.
So they love Bush and they love Obama. They love any liar who declares war on the people.
They're not in the business of informing. They're in the business of trickery and deceit.
What a proud day for Melinda.
Not only does she expose her own hatred for women, she encourages her 'readers' to attack women for the 'crime' of being women.
The quote at the top is disgusting but, please note, it's one of the milder ones Melinda's attracted.
Again, what a proud day for her.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, July 3, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Joe Biden is in Iraq, so are land mines and the UN is drawing attention to the crisis, al-Sadr followers protest Biden, and more.
"Biden has come here to divide Iraq according to his plan." Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq yesterday and among today's activities is a protest of his visit by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr. Andrew Quinn and Sattar Rahim (Reuters) report al-Sadr supporters marched in Baghdad and remarks from al-Sadr (including "Biden has come here to divide Iraq according to his plan") were read aloud to the crowd. The remark by al-Sadr refers to Biden's support for a federation of three autonomous areas in Iraq: Shia, Sunni and Kurd. That plan is among the reasons Biden has become the point-person for the administration on Iraq because the Kurds are increasingly unhappy with the US and increasingly vocal about what they see as US abandonment of their interests and needs. Quinn and Rahim note that al-Sadr's supporters were vocal as well, chanting "down, down USA" while burning US flags during their protest. Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports the Kurds aren't the only ones worrying that Iraq has been abandoned and she quotes Hoyshar Zebari, Iraq's Foreign Minister, stating, "My message to them [US] is . . . you lost Afghanistan in 2001, 2002, and 2003 because you turned your attention to Iraq from Afghanistan -- now you are redirecting your attentions of Afghanistan and if you disengage with Iraq, it could be another failure. The situation is not that solid." Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Timothy Williams (New York Times) quote Biden declaring he is there to ask: "What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?" Mark Silva (Chicago Tribune) quotes Biden stating, "The reason I came is the president wants focus within the White House on the implementation of our administration's plan to both draw down troops in Iraq and also to promote a political settlement on unresolved issues from boundary disputes to the oil law."
Alsumaria notes it is is a three-day visit and that the vice president "arrived to Baghdad Airport amidst a sand storm which prevented him from conducting a scheduled visit to the US Embassy." The White House offers three photos of the arrival and Biden being greeted by Zebari and the top US commander in Iraq Gen Ray Odierno. Thomas M. Defrank (New York Daily News) reports Biden had breakfast with son Beau. Delware's WDEL has an audio report here. Beau Biden is the Attorney General for the state of Delaware and serving in Iraq as a captain in Delaware's Army National Guard. Biden's the first child of a president or vice president to serve in this decade's Iraq War. (The 2008 Republican presidential ticket had two candidates with children serving in Iraq. US Senator John McCain's son Jimmy served in Iraq. Governor Sarah Palin's son Track is serving in Iraq.) Despite George W. Bush sending other people's children into harm's way, neither of his daughters served in his illegal war of choice. Nor did Mary or Deferment Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughters, serve.
Taking a sidebar on Dick Cheney, for those who have forgotten, retired Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to Nigeria to vet accusations that Saddam Hussein (then president of Iraq) was attempting to obtain yellow-cake uranium from the country. Wilson found no evidence to support the claims. Despite that investigation, the false assertion began working its way into cases for the illegal war made by the Bush administration and Bully Boy Bush himself would say that they'd recently learned Saddam attempted to obtain yellow-cake uranium from Africa. Was that Nigeria?Wilson, at that point didn't know, and attempted to find out. Maybe Saddam had tried with another African country? Nope. It was Nigeria. The administration was lying.What do you do?Wilson began warning reporters and then began speaking out publicly.In retaliation, the administration that LIED and attacked. This was their pattern repeatedly. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill went public with issues, the administration attacked him and the press -- hey, David Gregory -- ran with the administration's lies and presented them as fact. In O'Neill's case, he was being accused of stealing government information on discs. Gregory stood on camera, for Today, waiving a copy of Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty and repeating the White House charges with a who-knows-what-really-happened spin. Apparently the only one who could know reality would be the non-idiots who knew to read the introduction of a book before repeating baseless charges because the discs are covered in the intro. (As was so often the case on Today, Katie Couric would have to grab the mop and clean up for her co-workers the following day.)Now they were going after Joe Wilson.And it wasn't enough to go after Joe Wilson because this was a petty, mafia-like administration. They didn't just go after Wilson, they went after his wife and began outing her to the press as a CIA agent until they found some one (Robert Novak) willing to print their tale.Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent and her cover was blown by the government she worked for.Thanks to the efforts of George H.W. Bush and his administration, what had just taken place was a crime. Not for reporters, but for government officials or workers involved in the outing.Dick Cheney's right-hand I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby ended up convicted from the investigation. Many thought and hoped others would be as well. That was not the case. It was hoped that with a new administration, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson would have the support of the government on their side as they attempted to discover what had happened to them.That has not been the case. "Status quo you can believe in" is the Obama administration's slogan and they've done everything they can to prevent the truth from coming out.R. Jeffrey Smith's "New Evidence Cheney Swayed Reaction to Leak" (Washington Post) takes you through the latest that's emerged as Barry O's Justice Dept argues the truth must be buried. One of their claims is that to allow Cheney's testimony during the Plamegate investigation to be known would prevent other vice presidents from offering testimony to a criminal investigation. Uh, no, it wouldn't. And if testimony means anything, it means that it's not buried out of fear of what might happened some day.Barack's administration is not open, it's not trying to be open and is not attempting to put the US back on balance. It is attempting to continue all the abuses from the Bush administration. And it gets a lot of help from a cowardly Congress. (It's noted in the article that Congress once fought the Bush White House to make Cheney's testimony public. Not noted in the article is that any member of Congress could make Cheney's testimony public on the House or Senate floor.)
Back to Iraq, Biden is not the only official visiting Iraq. Alsumaria reports that France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon met with Nouri al-Maliki and Jalal Talabani today with Fillon and Maliki doing a joint-press conference at Baghdad International Airport ". . . Fillon pointed out that Iraq is on the right track. No one should be worried over Iraq redress for it intends to cooperate with its neighbor and it constitutes an intergral part of the region's stability. France undertakes to help Iraq to reach stability as soon as possible, to resolve conflicts with its neighbor and to get fast result, Fillon said. He also added that France takes upon itself assisting Iraq to emancipate from international sanctions which hinder development process." Xinhua reports the two "signed a cooperation agreement to promote bilateral economic, cultural and scientific relations. According to the statement, the agreement stated that France comitted to support Iraq to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to conclude a partenership agreement with the European Union." CCTV observes (link has text and video) that Fillon was heading a delegation of "30 high-level business executives" and quotes him stating, "It is high time now we look to the future. The team accompanying me represents major French firms. Currently we have firms working in Iraq in the field of transportation and airports." At the start of the week, Jonas Gahr Storra met with Zebari. Store is the Norewegian Foreign Affairs Minister. Among the topics discussed were assisting Iraq in clearing land mines. Yesterday Patrick Quinn (AP) explained that the United Nations sees Iraq as "one of the world's most contaminated countries" when it comes to land mines and quotes the UN"s Development Fund's Kent Paulusson stating, "The government needs to recognize the size of the problem and deal with it. [. . .] Some areas are so contaminated that people can't live there." CNN notes that UNICEF joined the UN Development Fund in drawing attention to the land mine problem in Iraq and notes UNICEF's report: "The report says about 1 million Iraqi children are at risk of being injured or killed by mines and unexploded ordnance. Some 2,000 children -- a quarter of all victims -- have been maimed or killed by cluster bomblets since 2003, the report said." Aseel Kami (Reuters) adds Iraq's Environment Ministry estimates there are 25 million land mines in Iraq and that the border between Iraq and Iran "is particularly mine-infested." David Morgan (Global Arab Network) observes, "Vast stretches of potentially highly productive agricultural land cannot be cultivated because of the potentially lethal hazards presented by explosive materials that still lie undetected. Hundreds of Iraqi people continue to suffer injuries and dozens have been killed."
Today the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees notes a new "special residentail centre for Iraqi refugees in the southern Armenian village of Darbnik. The building, a former agricultural college provided to UNHCR by the government last year, features 46 apartments and a social and recreation room. It was rehabilitated by UNHCR implementing partner, YMCA/Shelter." The Iraq War has resulted in a refugee crisis of both external and internal refugees. The refugees are a diverse group but a large number of them are Iraqi Christians. The assault on Iraq's LGBT community has led to a number of them becoming refugees as well. Sunday July 5th BBC Radio 5 airs Gay Life After Saddam (7 to 8 p.m. in England -- that will be eleven to noon PST). Ashley Byrne and Gail Champion produce the special for Made in Manchester. James Chaperlard (Crain's Manchester Business) reports:
In Gay Life After Saddam, presenter Aasmah Mir finds out how life for the country's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community (LGBT), has got worse since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Human rights campaigners claim hundreds of LGBT people have been killed or tortured while others have fled the country fearing for their safety since Saddam was toppled from power six years ago.
Not noted in the article but among the people interviewed for the special is Nouri al-Maliki, puppet of the occupation.
At CounterPunch today, Anthony DiMaggio offers a look at Iraq and it's a serious attempt so he gets a link. I don't agree with the bulk of anything he says and feel he's repeating points that were made some time ago and that many don't hold up today. The continued and illegal occupation does stabilize Iraq. It puts into power the US interest, their puppets, and it blocks any real representation of Iraqis. It is not a sovereign government. It's one that would not exist were the US not still occupying the country.The illegal war itself and the continued occupation breed violence but part of the breeding is not just resentment over the continued presence of the US, it's also resentment over the installation of the puppet government. The exiles placed in power (by the US) are not representative of Iraq.The US took sides, installed one faction, a fundamentalist faction, and backed them because they believed this faction was ruthless and unafraid to resort to violence (the US was correct on both counts) and that these thugs would intimidate Iraqis into silence.Violence has never gone away in Iraq since the start of the illegal war. But that doesn't mean the puppet regime doesn't 'stabilize' it to a point where the violence lowers slightly, just enough to lull people into looking the other way.The 'civil war' wasn't a civil war. It was a genocide where the thugs in power went about ethnically cleansing parts of Baghdad. They succeeded. They did that with the whole world watching and with most of us not even grasping what was going on.DiMaggio is taking on the continued presence of US forces and also disputing the idea that there's any level of 'stability' in Iraq currently. The resentment and rage goes beyond the presence of foreign fighters. It goes to the fact that the 'rulers' are exiles installed by the occupiers, not chosen by the people. And those 'rulers' do allow for a form of 'stability' but they do it by targeting the Iraqi civilians and by using terror tactics.DiMaggio's argument's great for 2003 but it's completely out of step today because the people still pushing for continued war on and occupation of Iraq are not being countered with any claims DiMaggio's making. Their argument is that when the US leaves, violence levels will soar. DiMaggoi insists that US forces on the ground cause resentment and violence. That was true in 2003 and remains true today; however, we know more today and what he's saying isn't enough. It's not just the military, it's what they prop up, it's the 'government' the US has created.The response to those who insist in 2009 that the illegal war must continue for stability is that no one knows what will happen when US forces leave but there's not a real government there now and claiming stability via a thug regime doesn't encourage democracy or allow US forces to ever leave. The government is not of the people and it doesn't represent them. It will always need force behind it to remain in power.Lastly, the referendum on the Status Of Forces Agreement is not happening this month. It can't. It requires planning. The US stepped in and al-Maliki was more than happy to go along with it. The claim is it will now be held in January when national elections are held. Alsumaria explains, "Meanwhile, the government seeks to delay the referendum till January 2010, when the country also holds parliamentary elections as holding both at the same time will save money. In this concern, lawmakers and electoral authorities say there is no way a referendum can be organized in just a month." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports, "Attention here is now shifting to national elections expected in January. The elections are seen as the best hope for addressing the grievances of Iraqi factions that feel they've been left out of a political system created by the US and dominated since 2003 by a Shiite-led government."
Turning to some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Mosul roadside bombing which injured three Iraqi soldiers and a Tikrit roadside bombing wounded one police officer.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 person was shot dead in Mosul and "an officer in the Iraqi army called Saddam Hussein" was shot ded in Kirkuk. Reuters notes "three judges who were traveling together in a car in northern Hilla" were injured in a shooting by unknown assailants.
Corpses?
Reuters notes 1 male corpse was discovered in Mosul and 1 female corpse in Hilla -- both has "bullet wounds to . . . head and chest".
Yesterday the US Defense Dept identified the four soldiers killed in Baghdad June 29th: "They were assigned to the 120th Combined Arms Battalion, Wilmington, N.C. Killed were: Sgt. 1st Class Edward C. Kramer, 39, of Wilmington, N.C. [;] Sgt. Roger L. Adams Jr., 36, of Jacksonville, N.C. [;] Sgt. Juan C. Baldeosingh, 30, of Newport, N.C. [and] Spc. Robert L. Bittiker, 39, of Jacksonville, N.C." Jennifer McLogan (WCBS) speaks with Baldeosingh's sisters Jennyfer and Diana Baldeosingh. Jennyfer states, "At first it's anger. Why did he go? Why him?" Diana states, "Some of them have done two or three tours, they have families and kids, they need to be with them -- not over there. We did our time there. It's time to come home, please." John Valenti and Sophia Chang (Newsday -- link has text and video) also speak with the two sisters and they note: "He also leaves behind his wife, Rebecca, and three young daughters -- Emily, 2, and 5-year-old twins, Isabella and Kylie." ENCToday speaks with Brian Wheat, the stepfather of Robert Bittiker and explains, "Bittiker leaves behind his wife Tami, and two sons Cameron, 14, and Ronnie, 18, who just graduated from Southwest High School". The Salisbury Post notes Edward Kramer's wife Vicki issued a statement explaining, "He loved us very much and he did this for his children [Erica, age nine, and Megan, age seven] so they wouldn't have to". Catherine M. Welch (WHQR) reports a Sunday event to remember Kramer, "A memorial walk is planned for Sunday at 6:00 p.m. It will start at the Wilmington Fire Department Headquarters on Marketstreet in downtown Wilmington and end at the National Guard Armory."
World Can't Wait has several upcoming actions including:
Monday, July 13, The World Can't Wait and other organizations will protest the inclusion of military recruiters at the national NAACP Convention in New York City.
4:30-7:00pm New York Hilton Hotel 1335 6th Avenue (53/54 Streets)Also, on Thursday, July 16, when Barack Obama addresses the convention, we'll be there protesting the expanded war in Afghanistan, drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan, and Obama's refusal to release the torture photos and prosecute the Bush era war criminals. 9:30am until noon @ New York Hilton Read letter sent by NYC High School student to Benjamin Jealous, CEO of the NAACP, asking him why recruiters are invited to the convention. Sign on to letter to be sent to the officers and Board of the NAACP this week:To Benjamin Jealous, President & CEO, NAACP
iraqjane arraf
the christian science monitorthe new york timessheryl gay stolberg
timothy williams
mark silvathe chicago tribune
anthony dimaggio
mcclatchy newspapers
laith hammoudi
aseel kami
alsumaria
the washington postr. jeffrey smith
cnn
Vaughn D. Gale
6:32PM Jul 3rd 2009
NOT!!!! Anyone who says something like that is GIVING HER 10 POINTS for SNATCH AND SKIN COLOR YOU RACIST!!!
What a proud moment for Melinda. Sweet Melinda, so very concerned that women be treated with respect, right?
Wrong.
It's also cute the way she captures Sarah Palin's remarks. Like many people, Palin starts her sentences with "and." I don't. It's a personal pet peave of mine and, if you searched this journal for the last three years, I would be surprised I would be surprised if you found more than one sentence of mine which started with "And." (I have no problem with others doing it. I just had a teacher who would hit us with a ruler if we started a sentence with "and" -- I really mean hit us with a ruler. So I do not start a sentence with "and.") Instead of allowing that, Melinda runs everything together to make it appear Palin makes no sense.
It really is interesting to look back on how the press attacks and fixes.
Barack Obama is a lousy speaker. Yet until Ava and C.I. regularly started hitting on his stumbling and stammers and uh-uh-uhs, it really wasn't noted. The press was happy to cover for him and they continue to do so. They not only leave out words he says (such as when he packs more than one verb into a sentence), they smooth over his words while putting quotation marks around it, pretending he actually said that.
They did the same thing for George W. Bush.
It is always interesting to see who the press decides to serve and, pay attention, it's never the public.
It's also not really a Republican/Democrat split. They have their favorites and pets on both sides. You can usually trace it down to who is enslaved to the corporations -- both the press and the politicians.
So they love Bush and they love Obama. They love any liar who declares war on the people.
They're not in the business of informing. They're in the business of trickery and deceit.
What a proud day for Melinda.
Not only does she expose her own hatred for women, she encourages her 'readers' to attack women for the 'crime' of being women.
The quote at the top is disgusting but, please note, it's one of the milder ones Melinda's attracted.
Again, what a proud day for her.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Friday, July 3, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Joe Biden is in Iraq, so are land mines and the UN is drawing attention to the crisis, al-Sadr followers protest Biden, and more.
"Biden has come here to divide Iraq according to his plan." Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq yesterday and among today's activities is a protest of his visit by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr. Andrew Quinn and Sattar Rahim (Reuters) report al-Sadr supporters marched in Baghdad and remarks from al-Sadr (including "Biden has come here to divide Iraq according to his plan") were read aloud to the crowd. The remark by al-Sadr refers to Biden's support for a federation of three autonomous areas in Iraq: Shia, Sunni and Kurd. That plan is among the reasons Biden has become the point-person for the administration on Iraq because the Kurds are increasingly unhappy with the US and increasingly vocal about what they see as US abandonment of their interests and needs. Quinn and Rahim note that al-Sadr's supporters were vocal as well, chanting "down, down USA" while burning US flags during their protest. Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports the Kurds aren't the only ones worrying that Iraq has been abandoned and she quotes Hoyshar Zebari, Iraq's Foreign Minister, stating, "My message to them [US] is . . . you lost Afghanistan in 2001, 2002, and 2003 because you turned your attention to Iraq from Afghanistan -- now you are redirecting your attentions of Afghanistan and if you disengage with Iraq, it could be another failure. The situation is not that solid." Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Timothy Williams (New York Times) quote Biden declaring he is there to ask: "What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?" Mark Silva (Chicago Tribune) quotes Biden stating, "The reason I came is the president wants focus within the White House on the implementation of our administration's plan to both draw down troops in Iraq and also to promote a political settlement on unresolved issues from boundary disputes to the oil law."
Alsumaria notes it is is a three-day visit and that the vice president "arrived to Baghdad Airport amidst a sand storm which prevented him from conducting a scheduled visit to the US Embassy." The White House offers three photos of the arrival and Biden being greeted by Zebari and the top US commander in Iraq Gen Ray Odierno. Thomas M. Defrank (New York Daily News) reports Biden had breakfast with son Beau. Delware's WDEL has an audio report here. Beau Biden is the Attorney General for the state of Delaware and serving in Iraq as a captain in Delaware's Army National Guard. Biden's the first child of a president or vice president to serve in this decade's Iraq War. (The 2008 Republican presidential ticket had two candidates with children serving in Iraq. US Senator John McCain's son Jimmy served in Iraq. Governor Sarah Palin's son Track is serving in Iraq.) Despite George W. Bush sending other people's children into harm's way, neither of his daughters served in his illegal war of choice. Nor did Mary or Deferment Cheney, Dick Cheney's daughters, serve.
Taking a sidebar on Dick Cheney, for those who have forgotten, retired Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to Nigeria to vet accusations that Saddam Hussein (then president of Iraq) was attempting to obtain yellow-cake uranium from the country. Wilson found no evidence to support the claims. Despite that investigation, the false assertion began working its way into cases for the illegal war made by the Bush administration and Bully Boy Bush himself would say that they'd recently learned Saddam attempted to obtain yellow-cake uranium from Africa. Was that Nigeria?Wilson, at that point didn't know, and attempted to find out. Maybe Saddam had tried with another African country? Nope. It was Nigeria. The administration was lying.What do you do?Wilson began warning reporters and then began speaking out publicly.In retaliation, the administration that LIED and attacked. This was their pattern repeatedly. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill went public with issues, the administration attacked him and the press -- hey, David Gregory -- ran with the administration's lies and presented them as fact. In O'Neill's case, he was being accused of stealing government information on discs. Gregory stood on camera, for Today, waiving a copy of Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty and repeating the White House charges with a who-knows-what-really-happened spin. Apparently the only one who could know reality would be the non-idiots who knew to read the introduction of a book before repeating baseless charges because the discs are covered in the intro. (As was so often the case on Today, Katie Couric would have to grab the mop and clean up for her co-workers the following day.)Now they were going after Joe Wilson.And it wasn't enough to go after Joe Wilson because this was a petty, mafia-like administration. They didn't just go after Wilson, they went after his wife and began outing her to the press as a CIA agent until they found some one (Robert Novak) willing to print their tale.Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent and her cover was blown by the government she worked for.Thanks to the efforts of George H.W. Bush and his administration, what had just taken place was a crime. Not for reporters, but for government officials or workers involved in the outing.Dick Cheney's right-hand I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby ended up convicted from the investigation. Many thought and hoped others would be as well. That was not the case. It was hoped that with a new administration, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson would have the support of the government on their side as they attempted to discover what had happened to them.That has not been the case. "Status quo you can believe in" is the Obama administration's slogan and they've done everything they can to prevent the truth from coming out.R. Jeffrey Smith's "New Evidence Cheney Swayed Reaction to Leak" (Washington Post) takes you through the latest that's emerged as Barry O's Justice Dept argues the truth must be buried. One of their claims is that to allow Cheney's testimony during the Plamegate investigation to be known would prevent other vice presidents from offering testimony to a criminal investigation. Uh, no, it wouldn't. And if testimony means anything, it means that it's not buried out of fear of what might happened some day.Barack's administration is not open, it's not trying to be open and is not attempting to put the US back on balance. It is attempting to continue all the abuses from the Bush administration. And it gets a lot of help from a cowardly Congress. (It's noted in the article that Congress once fought the Bush White House to make Cheney's testimony public. Not noted in the article is that any member of Congress could make Cheney's testimony public on the House or Senate floor.)
Back to Iraq, Biden is not the only official visiting Iraq. Alsumaria reports that France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon met with Nouri al-Maliki and Jalal Talabani today with Fillon and Maliki doing a joint-press conference at Baghdad International Airport ". . . Fillon pointed out that Iraq is on the right track. No one should be worried over Iraq redress for it intends to cooperate with its neighbor and it constitutes an intergral part of the region's stability. France undertakes to help Iraq to reach stability as soon as possible, to resolve conflicts with its neighbor and to get fast result, Fillon said. He also added that France takes upon itself assisting Iraq to emancipate from international sanctions which hinder development process." Xinhua reports the two "signed a cooperation agreement to promote bilateral economic, cultural and scientific relations. According to the statement, the agreement stated that France comitted to support Iraq to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to conclude a partenership agreement with the European Union." CCTV observes (link has text and video) that Fillon was heading a delegation of "30 high-level business executives" and quotes him stating, "It is high time now we look to the future. The team accompanying me represents major French firms. Currently we have firms working in Iraq in the field of transportation and airports." At the start of the week, Jonas Gahr Storra met with Zebari. Store is the Norewegian Foreign Affairs Minister. Among the topics discussed were assisting Iraq in clearing land mines. Yesterday Patrick Quinn (AP) explained that the United Nations sees Iraq as "one of the world's most contaminated countries" when it comes to land mines and quotes the UN"s Development Fund's Kent Paulusson stating, "The government needs to recognize the size of the problem and deal with it. [. . .] Some areas are so contaminated that people can't live there." CNN notes that UNICEF joined the UN Development Fund in drawing attention to the land mine problem in Iraq and notes UNICEF's report: "The report says about 1 million Iraqi children are at risk of being injured or killed by mines and unexploded ordnance. Some 2,000 children -- a quarter of all victims -- have been maimed or killed by cluster bomblets since 2003, the report said." Aseel Kami (Reuters) adds Iraq's Environment Ministry estimates there are 25 million land mines in Iraq and that the border between Iraq and Iran "is particularly mine-infested." David Morgan (Global Arab Network) observes, "Vast stretches of potentially highly productive agricultural land cannot be cultivated because of the potentially lethal hazards presented by explosive materials that still lie undetected. Hundreds of Iraqi people continue to suffer injuries and dozens have been killed."
Today the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees notes a new "special residentail centre for Iraqi refugees in the southern Armenian village of Darbnik. The building, a former agricultural college provided to UNHCR by the government last year, features 46 apartments and a social and recreation room. It was rehabilitated by UNHCR implementing partner, YMCA/Shelter." The Iraq War has resulted in a refugee crisis of both external and internal refugees. The refugees are a diverse group but a large number of them are Iraqi Christians. The assault on Iraq's LGBT community has led to a number of them becoming refugees as well. Sunday July 5th BBC Radio 5 airs Gay Life After Saddam (7 to 8 p.m. in England -- that will be eleven to noon PST). Ashley Byrne and Gail Champion produce the special for Made in Manchester. James Chaperlard (Crain's Manchester Business) reports:
In Gay Life After Saddam, presenter Aasmah Mir finds out how life for the country's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community (LGBT), has got worse since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Human rights campaigners claim hundreds of LGBT people have been killed or tortured while others have fled the country fearing for their safety since Saddam was toppled from power six years ago.
Not noted in the article but among the people interviewed for the special is Nouri al-Maliki, puppet of the occupation.
At CounterPunch today, Anthony DiMaggio offers a look at Iraq and it's a serious attempt so he gets a link. I don't agree with the bulk of anything he says and feel he's repeating points that were made some time ago and that many don't hold up today. The continued and illegal occupation does stabilize Iraq. It puts into power the US interest, their puppets, and it blocks any real representation of Iraqis. It is not a sovereign government. It's one that would not exist were the US not still occupying the country.The illegal war itself and the continued occupation breed violence but part of the breeding is not just resentment over the continued presence of the US, it's also resentment over the installation of the puppet government. The exiles placed in power (by the US) are not representative of Iraq.The US took sides, installed one faction, a fundamentalist faction, and backed them because they believed this faction was ruthless and unafraid to resort to violence (the US was correct on both counts) and that these thugs would intimidate Iraqis into silence.Violence has never gone away in Iraq since the start of the illegal war. But that doesn't mean the puppet regime doesn't 'stabilize' it to a point where the violence lowers slightly, just enough to lull people into looking the other way.The 'civil war' wasn't a civil war. It was a genocide where the thugs in power went about ethnically cleansing parts of Baghdad. They succeeded. They did that with the whole world watching and with most of us not even grasping what was going on.DiMaggio is taking on the continued presence of US forces and also disputing the idea that there's any level of 'stability' in Iraq currently. The resentment and rage goes beyond the presence of foreign fighters. It goes to the fact that the 'rulers' are exiles installed by the occupiers, not chosen by the people. And those 'rulers' do allow for a form of 'stability' but they do it by targeting the Iraqi civilians and by using terror tactics.DiMaggio's argument's great for 2003 but it's completely out of step today because the people still pushing for continued war on and occupation of Iraq are not being countered with any claims DiMaggio's making. Their argument is that when the US leaves, violence levels will soar. DiMaggoi insists that US forces on the ground cause resentment and violence. That was true in 2003 and remains true today; however, we know more today and what he's saying isn't enough. It's not just the military, it's what they prop up, it's the 'government' the US has created.The response to those who insist in 2009 that the illegal war must continue for stability is that no one knows what will happen when US forces leave but there's not a real government there now and claiming stability via a thug regime doesn't encourage democracy or allow US forces to ever leave. The government is not of the people and it doesn't represent them. It will always need force behind it to remain in power.Lastly, the referendum on the Status Of Forces Agreement is not happening this month. It can't. It requires planning. The US stepped in and al-Maliki was more than happy to go along with it. The claim is it will now be held in January when national elections are held. Alsumaria explains, "Meanwhile, the government seeks to delay the referendum till January 2010, when the country also holds parliamentary elections as holding both at the same time will save money. In this concern, lawmakers and electoral authorities say there is no way a referendum can be organized in just a month." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports, "Attention here is now shifting to national elections expected in January. The elections are seen as the best hope for addressing the grievances of Iraqi factions that feel they've been left out of a political system created by the US and dominated since 2003 by a Shiite-led government."
Turning to some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Mosul roadside bombing which injured three Iraqi soldiers and a Tikrit roadside bombing wounded one police officer.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 person was shot dead in Mosul and "an officer in the Iraqi army called Saddam Hussein" was shot ded in Kirkuk. Reuters notes "three judges who were traveling together in a car in northern Hilla" were injured in a shooting by unknown assailants.
Corpses?
Reuters notes 1 male corpse was discovered in Mosul and 1 female corpse in Hilla -- both has "bullet wounds to . . . head and chest".
Yesterday the US Defense Dept identified the four soldiers killed in Baghdad June 29th: "They were assigned to the 120th Combined Arms Battalion, Wilmington, N.C. Killed were: Sgt. 1st Class Edward C. Kramer, 39, of Wilmington, N.C. [;] Sgt. Roger L. Adams Jr., 36, of Jacksonville, N.C. [;] Sgt. Juan C. Baldeosingh, 30, of Newport, N.C. [and] Spc. Robert L. Bittiker, 39, of Jacksonville, N.C." Jennifer McLogan (WCBS) speaks with Baldeosingh's sisters Jennyfer and Diana Baldeosingh. Jennyfer states, "At first it's anger. Why did he go? Why him?" Diana states, "Some of them have done two or three tours, they have families and kids, they need to be with them -- not over there. We did our time there. It's time to come home, please." John Valenti and Sophia Chang (Newsday -- link has text and video) also speak with the two sisters and they note: "He also leaves behind his wife, Rebecca, and three young daughters -- Emily, 2, and 5-year-old twins, Isabella and Kylie." ENCToday speaks with Brian Wheat, the stepfather of Robert Bittiker and explains, "Bittiker leaves behind his wife Tami, and two sons Cameron, 14, and Ronnie, 18, who just graduated from Southwest High School". The Salisbury Post notes Edward Kramer's wife Vicki issued a statement explaining, "He loved us very much and he did this for his children [Erica, age nine, and Megan, age seven] so they wouldn't have to". Catherine M. Welch (WHQR) reports a Sunday event to remember Kramer, "A memorial walk is planned for Sunday at 6:00 p.m. It will start at the Wilmington Fire Department Headquarters on Marketstreet in downtown Wilmington and end at the National Guard Armory."
World Can't Wait has several upcoming actions including:
Monday, July 13, The World Can't Wait and other organizations will protest the inclusion of military recruiters at the national NAACP Convention in New York City.
4:30-7:00pm New York Hilton Hotel 1335 6th Avenue (53/54 Streets)Also, on Thursday, July 16, when Barack Obama addresses the convention, we'll be there protesting the expanded war in Afghanistan, drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan, and Obama's refusal to release the torture photos and prosecute the Bush era war criminals. 9:30am until noon @ New York Hilton Read letter sent by NYC High School student to Benjamin Jealous, CEO of the NAACP, asking him why recruiters are invited to the convention. Sign on to letter to be sent to the officers and Board of the NAACP this week:To Benjamin Jealous, President & CEO, NAACP
iraqjane arraf
the christian science monitorthe new york timessheryl gay stolberg
timothy williams
mark silvathe chicago tribune
anthony dimaggio
mcclatchy newspapers
laith hammoudi
aseel kami
alsumaria
the washington postr. jeffrey smith
cnn
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The tortured and torturing logic of the White House
"Justice Department once again delay release of torture report" (Free Speech Radio News):
The Department of Justice has again delayed the release of a CIA report on interrogations during the Bush Administration. The CIA Inspector General compiled the report because of allegations of detainee torture. The CIA released a highly-redacted version last year that revealed little to the public. The American Civil Liberties Union sued to release more details from the report.
How embarrassing is that news? How shameful for the US? How about the fact that China's Xinhau gets to report on it? They note how this report was supposed to have already been released but the Justice Department asked for an extension to go through July 1st and how, once that arrived, they said they needed more time. It's a non-stop the-dog-ate-my-homework excuse and it's very embarrassing for the US on the world stage.
Meanwhile Mr. Hopey Changey wants to use 'evidence' obtained by torture in courts.
"ACLU: Obama Admin. Relying on Tortured Confession In Habeas Case" (Jason Leopold, The Public Record):
The American Civil Liberties Union accused the Obama administration in court papers Wednesday of relying on statements obtained through torture to support the indefinite detention of a prisoner being held at Guantanamo Bay who is being defended by the civil rights organization. In a 37-page legal brief, portions of which are redacted, the ACLU asked a U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the case to suppress all statements obtained against their client through torture. The habeas corpus case revolves around Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who was believed to be 12-years-old when he was captured in December 2002, was “subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic and sustained program of highly coercive interrogation” on more than 50 occasions. “U.S. personnel at Bagram [Air base in Afghanistan, where Jawad was detained after his arrest] subjected Mr. Jawad to beatings, forced him into painful “stress positions,” deprived him of sleep, forcibly hooded him, placed him in physical and linguistic isolation, pushed him down stairs, chained him to a wall for prolonged periods, and subjected him to threats, including threats to kill him, and other intimidation,” the ACLU’s legal brief states.
I'm reminded of the musical Hair. Specifically "Easy To Be Hard." "How can people be so cruel/ How can people be so cruel/ Easy to be hard/ Easy to be cold."
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Kenneth Pollack Laments, Patrick Murphy tackles Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and more.
Today US House Rep Patrick Murphy spoke about the need to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Clinton era compromise came about when Colin Powell and others flaunted their homophobia and refused to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, a pledge Bill Clinton campaigned upon. The compromise was that you couldn't be asked about your sexuality and you couldn't talk about it. Unless you were straight. It was a compromise and, for that time period, a step forward. Today is out of date and out of step. Josh Drobnyk (Pennslyvania Ave. Blog) reports that with Ellen Tauscher's departure from Congress (she's now Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security), Murphy will now take the lead on the Military Readiness Enhancement Act which would not only repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it would also allow everyone to serve regardless of their sexuality and with no requirement that they hide who they are. Iraq War veteran Murphy states, "This is going to take months and months, but change is going to happen." Yesterday Lt Dan Choi learned that a US Army board was recommending he be discharged because he is gay and refuses to hide in a closet. Martin Wisckol (Orange County Register) quotes Choi, "I'm a leader. A setback is an opportunity to keep fighting, and I'm going to do that through my actions." Yesterday Jasmyn Belcher (WRVO -- audio and text) spoke with Choi who explained, "My job is to be here and to continue being an officer everything I was trained to do regardless of the discomfort, regardless of the emotions that are going on, you still do your duty. I believe this is my duty to stand up and to fight to stay in." Choi is not done fighting and hopefully he will be successful at a higher level but if he's not he will be, as Stan noted last night, the 266th US service member to be discharged for being gay since Barack Obama was sworn in as president. If Barack wanted to, all he need do is issue an executive order for a stop-loss on discharges under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That would stop it right away. Congress could then address it but all the people (over 200 under Obama already) being discharged would no longer be drummed out of the military as a result of that executive order. CNN notes this citing Knights Out's Sue Fulton: "Fulton said that while Obama can't change the law himself, he could sign an executive order halting discharges while the policy is under review." Barry O likes to play helpless but he's not. One executive order is all it would take. The Syracuse Post-Standard editorializes for the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy to be eliminated and observes that "enforcing the policy has cost taxpayers more than $400 million since 1994."
Joe Garofoli (San Francisco Chronicle) adds, "Still, some analysts say Choi's case is another example of how Washington leaders aren't showing much urgency -- or leadership -- in overturning 'don't ask, don't tell.' Obama has said he wants Congress to overturn the law; congressional laders say they are waiting for the president to take the lead; and military leaders say they won't change the policy unless directed by Congress." Mike McAndrew and Mark Weiner (Syracuse Post-Standard) report Choi "said he refuses to lie about being involved in a relationship with another man. Choi said the relationship has made him a better person, a better Christian and a better officer." Alexa James (Times Herald-Record) quotes Choi explaining, "All I did was tell the truth. I refused to lie about my boyfriend. His name is Matthew, not Martha."
Today McClatchy Newspapers' Sahar Issa appeared on Democracy Now! to address Iraq.
Sahar Issa: National Sovereignty Day, of course, is a day that is celebrated by the hearts of all Iraqis, you must know that Iraqi's pride -- is a proud country -- Iraqis are proud people. It is difficult for them not to be happy at the action of foreign troops leaving their cities and streets. At the same time that they are happy to gain control over their streets and cities there is doubt in their hearts whether the Iraqi security forces are actually adequate to the task that is in front of them in the coming days and weeks and months of keeping the peace and keeping the population secure. This is as the bottom of the doubts that you see: Is the Iraqi force actually adequate to the task? Are the Iraqi forces infiltrated by many? The Iraqi force has been formed upon somewhat sectarian lines. The Iraqi force also because of the administrative corruption -- has many people who have brought in their relatives, their friends, their neighbors, people who are not professional. And after six years, perhaps it would be a legitimate question to ask and to forward to the American forces: after six years of training they have understaken to present Iraq with a new force after dismantling the old one, why isn't the Iraqi force actually adequate to the task? The people of Iraq ask this question. It is the first question they ask. They are still not confident that the Iraqi forces are capable.
Those observations jibe with those of Alissa J. Rubin's (New York Times), "The excitement however, has run hollow for many Iraqis, who fear that their country's security forces are not ready to stand alone and who see the government's claims of independence as overblown." Back to the Democracy Now! segment:
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Sahar Issa, what about the ability of the Iraqi government to provide basic services to the population? There's obviously many reports of corruption within the government and continued infighting among the various factions. How has the public seen the ability of the government to administer the society?
SAHAR ISSA: To tell you the truth, if you look back a little bit, you will find that with the height of violence that only started coming down in the beginning of 2008, and while human life was at stake, violence was like a blanket, cutting off a cross-section of what is really happening inside the Iraqi government, because everything was so clouded, people were hurt, they couldn't look further than their lot.
But when the violence ebbed after the beginning of 2008, people started picking up the reins of their lives, looking around to see what was going on. And they found, horrendously, that the government is totally riddled with corruption. It is totally built on tribal and sectarian bases, where people have their relatives in very sensitive places simply to make the profit. And the confidence in Iraqis that they had at first when they went to elect their government, they lost this confidence. They said, "Then what is the difference, if it is going to be tribal again? What is the difference between this government and the past, even if it is elected, if it is going to use the same lines?"
And that is, of course, part of the problem, is that it is not a matter of just putting the government out there. The problem is this government needs to gain the confidence of the people. It needs to give them something that they can hold onto. It needs to look at their very difficult lives. They didn't have electricity when the -- you know, outside this building, if I walk out now, it is so hot, toys will melt in cars. To just to give you an idea, toys will melt in cars. That is the heat. And people don't have electricity. After six years, they don't have water in their homes.
I spoke to a person yesterday in Beya'a neighborhood, when we were touring the city for reactions. And she said, "How can I be happy with sovereignty, if sovereignty has not brought me enough water to bathe, I can't wash my clothes, if I don't have electricity so I can sleep at night? What kind of sovereignty is this?" We are struggling, my dear friend. We are struggling so hard to reach square one. And so far, we haven't achieved it yet.
AMY GOODMAN: Sahar Issa, are you afraid of having your image known, of being identified as a reporter?
SAHAR ISSA: Oh, certainly, certainly, certainly. Working for a foreign -- never mind a US, American -- news agency will have me very clearly titled as the pastor's pie or working for the occupation. People -- the simpler people, let us say -- can't differentiate between a person who is picking up information and lighting things and making things public for -- to, how do you say, to extend a hand to other people to know what is actually going on inside our country. They can't tell the difference between this person and the person who's gathering information perhaps for intelligence preferences. And therefore, yes, of course, I am afraid. No one knows. Only my parents and my children and the people working with me know. And even the people who are working with me, not all of them know where I live. That's how bad it is.
Jeremy Scahill was also a guest on the segment.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this is a very contrived sort of Hallmark holiday here. I doubt that decades from now many Iraqis are going to be, you know, telling their grandchildren where they were on National Sovereignty Day. I mean, remember the whole stumbling of President Bush: when he declared Iraqi sovereignty, he talked about the definition of sovereignty as a sovereign entity. Paul Bremer already officially handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis five years ago, and yet we have 130,000 US troops that remain in the country. This really is George Bush's Iraq plan that Barack Obama is now implementing and taking the political risk of implementing, because if the violence blows up, then of course it looks very much like Barack Obama has been a failure in Iraq, and not George Bush. So Obama, in many ways, has played into the Bush administration's hand. But we can see the clearest endgame of the US occupation in the fact that the Iraqi government, on a day when they declare their own sovereignty and you have the US military commander handing over the keys to the Defense Ministry, the Iraqi Oil Ministry opens up the country for bidding now on its oil resources, and you had eight of the ten top oil companies in the world that are not part of a nationalized state apparatus. In other words, eight of the ten most powerful private oil corporations in the world are now bidding for large shares of the Iraqi oil supply. I mean, to me, this is a grotesque symbol of what exactly is happening in Iraq.
And let me just say, Juan, that while we're seeing the sort of contrived celebrations, where ordinary Iraqis, for the most part, are not permitted to go into these big celebrations -- it's largely off-duty police officers, Iraqi soldiers and dignitaries -- the reality is that US soldiers are simply going to the outskirts of the cities and could easily go in to strike at them. General Ray Odierno, the top US military commander there, would not be clear on how many US soldiers are going to remain in the region. At the end of the day, the US has a massive eighty-football-field-size embassy. They have thousands upon thousands of contractors, 130,000 troops still in the country. And they're going to keep a force of 35,000 to 50,000 residual US forces when Obama is officially done withdrawing from Iraq. So, in reality, we see Barack Obama implementing, almost to the letter, George Bush's and the neocons' plan for Iraq, while putting a Democratic stamp on it and essentially downsizing and rebranding what remains a US occupation. So, no, this is Hallmark holiday stuff. And I think it's clear for anyone who's been following this that this is the same situation as when Bush tried to declare Iraqi sovereignty, when Paul Bremer snuck out of Baghdad in June of 2004.
At Information Clearing House, Jeremy explains of the for-show play-day:
While a lot of the media hype today focuses on the U.S. "withdrawal," that is hardly the reality. As previously reported, U.S. military commanders have said they are preparing for an Iraq presence for another 15-20 years, the U.S. embassy is the size of Vatican City, there is no official plan for the withdrawal of contractors and new corporate mercenary contracts are being awarded. The Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) between the U.S. and Iraq gives the U.S. the right to extend the occupation indefinitely and to continue intervening militarily in Iraq ad infinitum. Article 27 of the SoFA allows the U.S. to undertake military action, "or any other measure," inside Iraq's borders "In the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq." As the airwaves and internet are flooded with reports of this new Iraqi sovereignty and U.S. withdrawal, it is important to remember a bit of history. Five years ago -- almost to the day -- President Bush put on an almost identical show. His proconsul L. Paul Bremer "handed over sovereignty" to the Iraqi government just before he skulked out of Baghdad on a secret flight (right after he issued an order banning Iraq from prosecuting contractors). Despite the pronouncements and proclamations and media hype, the occupation continued and real sovereignty was non-existent.
Meanwhile CNN reports that Moqtada al-Sadr has released a call for all US forces to leave Iraq and stated their presence "shows that the (Iraqi) government and the occupation are not serious about the withdrawal". Noting the silence on Iraq in the US, Dan Baltz asks "Have We Forgotten Iraq?" (Washington Post) in which he wonders, "If they [the White House] are wrong [about Iraq being able to stand up], there may be questions about what kind of country Americans are preparing to leave behind. Obama could find himself under pressure to adjust the withdrawal timetable." Or he could realize that it was a mistake to delay withdrawal because there is nothing else the US military can do (even the war hawks should agree with that) and allowing them to remain in the country as babysitters really turns them into sitting ducks of the continued occupation. And let's stop pretending the White House doesn't have plans. As we noted in Third's "Editorial: Save us from the panty sniffers" Sunday, US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill gave a press conference in the US June 18th:
What should have bothered Americans was Hill's refusal to discuss "contingency plans" for Iraq should the (partial) pull-back from cities (June 30th) result in increased violence. "Well, again," he repeated, "I don't want to discuss contingency plans." Why not? And why aren't these contingency plans known to the American public?
While Thomas E. Ricks (Foreign Policy) ignored Hill's press conference, he feels something important is missed from the press conference Gen Ray Odierno held yesterday in Baghdad: "We'll be operating in the belts around Baghdad." Ricks takes that to mean "that the U.S. strategy in the coming months will be to try to protect Baghdad by cutting off insurgents and militias operating in the fields, towns and palm groves that surround much of the capital. And that was where some of the heaviest fighting took place during the spring and summer of 2007, as 'the surge' began." So that may be, that may be, as Cass Elliot once sang ("California Earthquake") but equally true, and reporters know this, when a person loses it at a scheduled press conference, that's also known as "very telling." Translation, Reuters shouldn't have been the only outlet to report on Odierno Earthquake yesterday. And, no, Ricks hasn't written of that.
Here's some of the exchange from the DoD transcript:Q General, it's Andrew Gray from Reuters. You talked about a small number of U.S. forces remaining in the cities to train and advise. Can you put a figure? How many U.S. forces will remain? GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah, people have been trying to get me to say a figure now for about a month. And the reason I won't do it is because it's going to be different every single day, and it'll be based on how much training, how much advising, how much coordination is required. That will change each and every day. So I won't put a number on it. It is a smaller number, a significantly smaller number than what we've had in the cities now. But it has very specific missions: train the Iraqi security forces, advise them as we continue to move forward, enable them in order to -- potentially if they need some help with aviation, logistics, et cetera. But more -- almost as important, coordinate and help us to continue our situational awareness of all situations within Iraq. And that will help us to better support the Iraqi security forces.
Q General, just to follow up briefly, I am disappointed you didn't give us the scoop after a month of holding out, but I wonder if you could at least give us a -- you know, is it an -- a few thousand? If you could give us a kind of ballpark -- are we talking about several thousand? Would that be a reasonable ballpark to use? GEN. ODIERNO: Again -- again, there's hundreds of cities around, and we have hundreds of -- you know, and I've let the local commanders work this out. So for me to give a number would frankly be inaccurate, and I just don't want to do it. There'll be trainers, advisers, helping throughout all of the Iraqi cities where we continue to support and advise Iraqi security forces. Q Whatever the number is, how are you going to convince them basically, the U.S. forces remaining, not to jump in and be helpful, where perhaps you would prefer that the Iraqis take the lead? What will be different about what they're told to do, in a situation where they might think, their first instinct is, gosh, we can do that better.
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, again this is -- I call it -- we are working on changing our mindsets in the city. And I equate it to when we first started the surge, where we had to change our mindset. So pushing our soldiers back out, getting back into the communities, really partnering with the Iraqi security forces and today, it's the same kind of thing. We have to change our mindset. When we're in the cities, there's very specific things that we'll do. Actually we've been out of the cities, a large majority of the cities now, for the last eight months. So it's really only Mosul and the last remnants that we've had, in Baghdad, that have pulled out over the last few weeks. So we've actually been implementing this in many parts of Baghdad for a long time. And they understand what their mission is. They understand what we expect them to do. And you know, we have worked this very closely with all of the leaders in Iraq. We've worked -- I've worked very closely with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, the operations commanders, the operational commanders in order to work this out. And I feel very comfortable with where we're at.
Q General, it's Tom Bowman with NPR. I mean, you're reluctant to talk about how many trainers and mentors are in the cities. And it raises a question about whether or not this is just a show or not whether, you know, this is just semantics. There are essentially U.S. soldiers with guns in the cities. You can call them trainers or mentors. But how different is it from what we saw maybe two-three weeks ago? And if you have U.S. soldiers just outside the cities, I mean, what is this? Is this just a show for the American people?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I would say, you probably didn't listen to what I just said. Because what I just said was, having battalions and brigades inside a city is significantly different than having trainers, advisers and MiTT teams. And I said, we'll be operating in the belts around Baghdad. I've been very clear about this, just like we did in the surge. We had -- the reason we had to surge forces is, we had to get people in the cities. And then we had to eliminate safe havens and sanctuaries in the belts around Baghdad. It's the same thing, except the Iraqis will take responsibility for security in the cities. We will continue to do full-spectrum operations, outside of the cities, to work the safe havens and sanctuaries around the cities. And we will continue to do that. And it's legitimate, legitimate operations that we'll continue to conduct outside of the cities. If you're here in Baghdad, you would know. There is a significant change inside of the cities. There are thousands among thousands of soldiers that have pulled out of Baghdad. There -- and there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in southern Iraq, there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in Ramadi, there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in Fallujah for months now. And we've been executing this very well. So again, if you're here in Iraq, you would see it for yourself there is a significant change.
As we noted yesterday, he apologized for his outburst (and referred to it as his "temper"). But that's a key moment of the press conference and not just because some reporters are now talking of starting a pool to see how quickly they can get Odierno to explode in the next press briefing, but also because that's not normal behavior from him. He's under huge pressure from the White House to walk their line and stick to their script and his feelings are rather well known about that at this late date. The troops haven't left Mosul and are not leaving Baghdad and no one knows what else and no one knows how many. Except Ray Odierno. He knows exactly what is going on with US troops in Iraq. And he's not allowed to reveal that. That's where his frustration comes in. He felt like the biggest idiot in the world because he couldn't answer the question that he knew the answer to but which the White House won't let him speak on. That, Thomas E. Ricks, is an important detail.
Now let's sit down at the piano, it's time for "Miss Kenneth Laments" -- the lost Cole Porter song. "Sure, well, first, of course," hemmed and hawed War Hawk and Cheerleader Kenny Pollack, "as listeners of your show are aware, 'cause I've been on the show any number of times to talk about, this, I did believe that an, uh, invasion would be necessary but not the invasion that we got. Not in the time that we did it, not in the way that we did it, not how we did it or with whom we did it. As for what have we accomplished? I think the jury is still out." Brookings Boy Kenny sure was nervous and, please note, his 'answer' was to a question about whether or not the Iraq War was worth it. Monday on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Diane explained, "And here's a question for you, Ken Pollack, you were among those who favored US invasion of Iraq. What do you believe we have gained if anything?" The question wasn't did he support the illegal war before it started.
And yet, he nervously stated, before getting to the question he'd been asked, ""Sure, well, first, of course, as listeners of your show are aware, 'cause I've been on the show any number of times to talk about, this, I did believe that an, uh, invasion would be necessary but not the invasion that we got. Not in the time that we did it, not in the way that we did it, not how we did it or with whom we did it." First, let's again note, this is the talking point and War Hawks pushed it after Vietnam as well. It goes like this: "The problem wasn't the war and its illegality, the problem was the way it was fought." No, the problem was the war. As for what he advocated for? His 2002 book Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq made it pretty clear in the title but in it he argues for the US "to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam's regime, and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction." Saddam had no WMDs. Kenny boy forgot to include that on NPR Monday. He forgot to admit that or own any of his mistakes. Instead, he wanted to complain that the war he dreamed of arrived in the wrong size and color.
The Wall St. Journal's Gina Chon appears briefly at the start of the program, reporting from Iraq, but technical difficulties sideline her.
Diane Rehm: Okay, let's talk about what the Iraqi people can and cannot do.
Paul Pillar: As part of the bargaining that Prime Minister Maliki had to get agreement with his cabinet and Parliament for the security agreement, he agreed that there would be a referendum to approve or disapprove the agreement. Your caller is correct that July 30th was the date that had been previously set but it appears that it is most likely going to be delayed until January to coincide with the Parliamentary election. So that will be an important outcome -- whether or not the Iraqi people approve it. If they disapprove it, then what -- as I understand the agreement -- what comes into play is the withdrawal clause which basically says 'either party has a year to terminate the agreement' which means that would move up the deadline for all US forces to -- to get out by almost a year -- to 2010 rather than 2011. But, again, that does not preclude some new agreement being negotiated between the governments of the day in Baghdad and Washington.
Kenneth Pollack: This is a really important point because what you're seeing now is the Iraqis using the politics to deal with the security situation in potentially very difficult ways, dangerous ways. We talked a lot about how the Iraqis, the Iraqi people, are ambivalent about the agreement. We haven't talked about Prime Minister Maliki and his own ambivalence. At one level, he knows that he can't allow the country to fall apart and he's nervous that his own security forces can't hold it together. By the same token though, he sees the United States as an impediment to his consolidation of power and I think that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he's moving it to January in hope that it will either discredit all of his political adversaries or cause a termination of the agreement prematurely exactly as Paul was suggesting.
[. . .]
Diane Rehm: Just before the break, one of our callers, Lily in Syracuse, New York, had asked about the referendum that's going to take place -- the decision of the Iraqi [. . .] [people] to stay or not to stay. That's a really important point, Paul.
Paul: It's very important and I'm glad we got the call, that raised the issue but I would simply agree with what we heard from Ken before the break. It's partly Maliki continuing to play a political game. But if -- if the referendum, it's voted down, uh, in January, uh, there are going to be extremely difficult decisions for the Obama administration to make about its policy and posture in Iraq over the course of the next year. To some extent, it might be seen as a political blessing for much of his constituency, it means getting out earlier, but he is going to have to sit down with his commanders, with General Petraeus, General Odeireno, or who ever is occupying their jobs at that time and have some very hard talk about the security situation in Iraq as of the end, not of 2011, but of 2010.
Diane: Elise?
Elise Labott: And let's not forget that President Obama won, in part, the presidency on his campaign to withdraw US forces from Iraq. He said that the war in Afghanistan was the more important war, the war that was the greater threat to US national security with the emergent -- the reemergence of the Taliban and al Qaeda and he wanted to pay more attention to that war and by all accounts you can't do that with 130,000 troops in Iraq. But the question is if the sectarian violence gets worse, if Iraq continues to spiral, the question is: Does Barack Obama have blood on his hands if -- if he withdraws all of his troops from Iraq and a lot of people -- it's a moral dilemma for him.
Diane Rehm: Ken Pollack?
Kenneth Pollack: Well I think that there's also a strategic consideration which is that the truth is that Iraq is ultimately of far greater strategic consequence to the United States than Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a problem because of the terrorism problem and because of relationship to Pakistan but you can't solve the problem of Afghanistan through Pakistan.
That last Pollack 'gem' is included to dissuade his cult from e-mailing and saying, "His 2002 book said!" Don't give me that crap. Don't spit out the Slate book review claiming Kenny's 2002 book said Afghanistan was more important. Kenny's all over the map, always has been, there's never been a cohesive argument from him. Only baseless charges followed by meaningless laments. The full hour was devoted to Iraq (here for that segment itself) for those who missed it. (I did. An NPR friend passed it on.) The guests were (very briefly) Gina Chon, CNN's Elise Labott, Brookings Kenneth Pollack and Georgetown's Paul Pilar.
Earlier mid-June US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill claimed that fatalies were down in the month of June. Silly Chris and silly reporters who fell for that garbage. Reuters reports that there was a spike and that the official numbers from the Iraqi Health Ministry is 373 for the month of June. Those are the Iraqi government figures. The actual figures are likely far higher. In some of today's violence, Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Iraqi forces shot dead a man in Mosul (a 'suspect') and that a Mosul roadside bombing injured a police officer.
Sir! No Sir! Exposing and Debunking Military Lies from Vietnam to Iraq notes a national anti-war conference put on by National Assembly to End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pittsburg End The War to be held at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Veterans for Peace's Michael T. McPherson, Arab American Union's Marily Levin, Black Voices for Peace's Gail Austin, Arab American Union's Monadel Herzallah and Iraqi poet-activist Zaineb Alani are among those participating. Cindy Sheehan will be participating as well and we'll note her in just a moment. Diane Rejman is also with Veterans for Peace and she tackles recruitment at CounterPunch noting:
The recruiting system leaves out the second part of this. Recruiters talk about travel, adventure, skill-training, and getting your college education paid for. They don't mention that the travel and adventure may involve being in 110 degree+ temperatures, loaded up with gear, sleeping in tents, having your life threatened on a daily basis, and maybe not even having enough clean water to drink. They don't mention that the skill-training is usually not transferable to a civilian job, or that some of the skills taught include how to be a prejudiced, hate-filled, bigot, who can be capable of killing another human being without feeling. They don't explain that the military will teach a person to hate when he or she enlists, but doesn't teach love when the soldier returns. And they certainly don't mention that only 14 percent of soldiers who sign up for the GI Bill use the benefit.
The lies of omission often go further. A recruiter may promise a job as a pilot, knowing the soldier won't qualify and will possibly end up as a truck driver in Iraq – one of the most dangerous jobs. A prospective Navy medic may not understand that he or she may end up in a combat zone since they are the ones who take care of Marines. Or the biggest lie of all – they convince the soldier he or she is signing up for three years, and don't point out that these days, with the stop-loss program in place, the enlistment agreement (note I don't use the word "contract") currently commits the soldier potentially to a life sentence.
But you know what, these are only a few of the lies involved in keeping a war machine going. The bigger ones come from society itself. That war is a good thing. That movies and video games represent reality. You get killed in a video game, press a button, and start over. You don't lose a friend, body parts, or your mind.
Click here to see Diane Rejman performing Bob Dylan's "Joe Brown."
As noted in yesterday's snapshot, US presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and others on The Spirty of Humanity being detained by the Israeli government and prevented from delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan is calling out the detention:
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Human Rights' Activist and Gold Star Mother, Cindy Sheehan, calls on the Israeli government to immediately release the members and crew of the boat The Spirit of Humanity that was attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the devastated peoples of Gaza.Speaking from Newton, Mass, Ms. Sheehan commented: "The detention of the crew and human rights' workers on The Spirit of Humanity is a clear violation of international law, as the blockade of Gaza is a clear violation of not only international law but the human rights of the people of Gaza. Not only must the Israeli government immediately release and recompense the captives, but it must allow the humanitarian aid to penetrate the blockade."
She continued: "I not only call on the Israeli government to do the right thing, but I call on our own President, who has claimed that he is an advocate for human rights, to condemn this act of international piracy by the rogue state of Israel and also demand the release of the kidnapped aid workers. This condemnation must be as strong and clear as the condemnation for the Somali 'pirates' was. A very courageous and dear friend of mine, Cynthia McKinney, was on that boat and the captives must all be treated with dignity and respect and speedily released."
Cindy Sheehan's Myth America Tour continues this month. The dates for the start of the month include:
July 8th Wednesday 2 to 4 p.m. Cleveland Book Signing
Mac Bac's Books
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Hts. OH
Akron Main Public Library
July 8th 7 to 9 p.m.
60 S. High St.
Akron, OH 44326
Cleveland Community pot luck with Cindy
July 9th four to six p.m.
10220 Clifton Ave.
Lakewood, OH
St. Coleman's Parish Hall
July 9th seven to nine p.m.
West 65th and Madison
Drum Circle
July 10th noon to two p.m.
National Assembly to End the War
July 11th to 12th
Pittsburgh
Al Franken in a US Senator. See, the US can do recounts and can be patient. Al Franken and Norm Coleman (his Republican opponent who lost) proved (probably not intentionally on Coleman's part) that the Supreme Court did not need to stop the process in Bush v. Gore. The votes could have been counted. And would have been easily before Christmas 2000. Al Franken is interviewed by former US Senator Fred Thompson here. The only one put out by the long drawn out process was Senator Amy Klobuchar and even she and her staff managed. The US can do recounts, no matter what the Supreme Court thinks.
iraqmike mcandrewmark weinerjoe garofolithe san francisco chroniclealexa james
jeremy scahillthe washington postdan balzthe new york timesalissa j. rubinsahar issamcclatchy newspapersdemocracy now
nprthe diane rehm show
cindy sheehan
elise labott
The Department of Justice has again delayed the release of a CIA report on interrogations during the Bush Administration. The CIA Inspector General compiled the report because of allegations of detainee torture. The CIA released a highly-redacted version last year that revealed little to the public. The American Civil Liberties Union sued to release more details from the report.
How embarrassing is that news? How shameful for the US? How about the fact that China's Xinhau gets to report on it? They note how this report was supposed to have already been released but the Justice Department asked for an extension to go through July 1st and how, once that arrived, they said they needed more time. It's a non-stop the-dog-ate-my-homework excuse and it's very embarrassing for the US on the world stage.
Meanwhile Mr. Hopey Changey wants to use 'evidence' obtained by torture in courts.
"ACLU: Obama Admin. Relying on Tortured Confession In Habeas Case" (Jason Leopold, The Public Record):
The American Civil Liberties Union accused the Obama administration in court papers Wednesday of relying on statements obtained through torture to support the indefinite detention of a prisoner being held at Guantanamo Bay who is being defended by the civil rights organization. In a 37-page legal brief, portions of which are redacted, the ACLU asked a U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the case to suppress all statements obtained against their client through torture. The habeas corpus case revolves around Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who was believed to be 12-years-old when he was captured in December 2002, was “subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic and sustained program of highly coercive interrogation” on more than 50 occasions. “U.S. personnel at Bagram [Air base in Afghanistan, where Jawad was detained after his arrest] subjected Mr. Jawad to beatings, forced him into painful “stress positions,” deprived him of sleep, forcibly hooded him, placed him in physical and linguistic isolation, pushed him down stairs, chained him to a wall for prolonged periods, and subjected him to threats, including threats to kill him, and other intimidation,” the ACLU’s legal brief states.
I'm reminded of the musical Hair. Specifically "Easy To Be Hard." "How can people be so cruel/ How can people be so cruel/ Easy to be hard/ Easy to be cold."
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, Kenneth Pollack Laments, Patrick Murphy tackles Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and more.
Today US House Rep Patrick Murphy spoke about the need to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Clinton era compromise came about when Colin Powell and others flaunted their homophobia and refused to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, a pledge Bill Clinton campaigned upon. The compromise was that you couldn't be asked about your sexuality and you couldn't talk about it. Unless you were straight. It was a compromise and, for that time period, a step forward. Today is out of date and out of step. Josh Drobnyk (Pennslyvania Ave. Blog) reports that with Ellen Tauscher's departure from Congress (she's now Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security), Murphy will now take the lead on the Military Readiness Enhancement Act which would not only repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it would also allow everyone to serve regardless of their sexuality and with no requirement that they hide who they are. Iraq War veteran Murphy states, "This is going to take months and months, but change is going to happen." Yesterday Lt Dan Choi learned that a US Army board was recommending he be discharged because he is gay and refuses to hide in a closet. Martin Wisckol (Orange County Register) quotes Choi, "I'm a leader. A setback is an opportunity to keep fighting, and I'm going to do that through my actions." Yesterday Jasmyn Belcher (WRVO -- audio and text) spoke with Choi who explained, "My job is to be here and to continue being an officer everything I was trained to do regardless of the discomfort, regardless of the emotions that are going on, you still do your duty. I believe this is my duty to stand up and to fight to stay in." Choi is not done fighting and hopefully he will be successful at a higher level but if he's not he will be, as Stan noted last night, the 266th US service member to be discharged for being gay since Barack Obama was sworn in as president. If Barack wanted to, all he need do is issue an executive order for a stop-loss on discharges under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That would stop it right away. Congress could then address it but all the people (over 200 under Obama already) being discharged would no longer be drummed out of the military as a result of that executive order. CNN notes this citing Knights Out's Sue Fulton: "Fulton said that while Obama can't change the law himself, he could sign an executive order halting discharges while the policy is under review." Barry O likes to play helpless but he's not. One executive order is all it would take. The Syracuse Post-Standard editorializes for the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy to be eliminated and observes that "enforcing the policy has cost taxpayers more than $400 million since 1994."
Joe Garofoli (San Francisco Chronicle) adds, "Still, some analysts say Choi's case is another example of how Washington leaders aren't showing much urgency -- or leadership -- in overturning 'don't ask, don't tell.' Obama has said he wants Congress to overturn the law; congressional laders say they are waiting for the president to take the lead; and military leaders say they won't change the policy unless directed by Congress." Mike McAndrew and Mark Weiner (Syracuse Post-Standard) report Choi "said he refuses to lie about being involved in a relationship with another man. Choi said the relationship has made him a better person, a better Christian and a better officer." Alexa James (Times Herald-Record) quotes Choi explaining, "All I did was tell the truth. I refused to lie about my boyfriend. His name is Matthew, not Martha."
Today McClatchy Newspapers' Sahar Issa appeared on Democracy Now! to address Iraq.
Sahar Issa: National Sovereignty Day, of course, is a day that is celebrated by the hearts of all Iraqis, you must know that Iraqi's pride -- is a proud country -- Iraqis are proud people. It is difficult for them not to be happy at the action of foreign troops leaving their cities and streets. At the same time that they are happy to gain control over their streets and cities there is doubt in their hearts whether the Iraqi security forces are actually adequate to the task that is in front of them in the coming days and weeks and months of keeping the peace and keeping the population secure. This is as the bottom of the doubts that you see: Is the Iraqi force actually adequate to the task? Are the Iraqi forces infiltrated by many? The Iraqi force has been formed upon somewhat sectarian lines. The Iraqi force also because of the administrative corruption -- has many people who have brought in their relatives, their friends, their neighbors, people who are not professional. And after six years, perhaps it would be a legitimate question to ask and to forward to the American forces: after six years of training they have understaken to present Iraq with a new force after dismantling the old one, why isn't the Iraqi force actually adequate to the task? The people of Iraq ask this question. It is the first question they ask. They are still not confident that the Iraqi forces are capable.
Those observations jibe with those of Alissa J. Rubin's (New York Times), "The excitement however, has run hollow for many Iraqis, who fear that their country's security forces are not ready to stand alone and who see the government's claims of independence as overblown." Back to the Democracy Now! segment:
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Sahar Issa, what about the ability of the Iraqi government to provide basic services to the population? There's obviously many reports of corruption within the government and continued infighting among the various factions. How has the public seen the ability of the government to administer the society?
SAHAR ISSA: To tell you the truth, if you look back a little bit, you will find that with the height of violence that only started coming down in the beginning of 2008, and while human life was at stake, violence was like a blanket, cutting off a cross-section of what is really happening inside the Iraqi government, because everything was so clouded, people were hurt, they couldn't look further than their lot.
But when the violence ebbed after the beginning of 2008, people started picking up the reins of their lives, looking around to see what was going on. And they found, horrendously, that the government is totally riddled with corruption. It is totally built on tribal and sectarian bases, where people have their relatives in very sensitive places simply to make the profit. And the confidence in Iraqis that they had at first when they went to elect their government, they lost this confidence. They said, "Then what is the difference, if it is going to be tribal again? What is the difference between this government and the past, even if it is elected, if it is going to use the same lines?"
And that is, of course, part of the problem, is that it is not a matter of just putting the government out there. The problem is this government needs to gain the confidence of the people. It needs to give them something that they can hold onto. It needs to look at their very difficult lives. They didn't have electricity when the -- you know, outside this building, if I walk out now, it is so hot, toys will melt in cars. To just to give you an idea, toys will melt in cars. That is the heat. And people don't have electricity. After six years, they don't have water in their homes.
I spoke to a person yesterday in Beya'a neighborhood, when we were touring the city for reactions. And she said, "How can I be happy with sovereignty, if sovereignty has not brought me enough water to bathe, I can't wash my clothes, if I don't have electricity so I can sleep at night? What kind of sovereignty is this?" We are struggling, my dear friend. We are struggling so hard to reach square one. And so far, we haven't achieved it yet.
AMY GOODMAN: Sahar Issa, are you afraid of having your image known, of being identified as a reporter?
SAHAR ISSA: Oh, certainly, certainly, certainly. Working for a foreign -- never mind a US, American -- news agency will have me very clearly titled as the pastor's pie or working for the occupation. People -- the simpler people, let us say -- can't differentiate between a person who is picking up information and lighting things and making things public for -- to, how do you say, to extend a hand to other people to know what is actually going on inside our country. They can't tell the difference between this person and the person who's gathering information perhaps for intelligence preferences. And therefore, yes, of course, I am afraid. No one knows. Only my parents and my children and the people working with me know. And even the people who are working with me, not all of them know where I live. That's how bad it is.
Jeremy Scahill was also a guest on the segment.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this is a very contrived sort of Hallmark holiday here. I doubt that decades from now many Iraqis are going to be, you know, telling their grandchildren where they were on National Sovereignty Day. I mean, remember the whole stumbling of President Bush: when he declared Iraqi sovereignty, he talked about the definition of sovereignty as a sovereign entity. Paul Bremer already officially handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis five years ago, and yet we have 130,000 US troops that remain in the country. This really is George Bush's Iraq plan that Barack Obama is now implementing and taking the political risk of implementing, because if the violence blows up, then of course it looks very much like Barack Obama has been a failure in Iraq, and not George Bush. So Obama, in many ways, has played into the Bush administration's hand. But we can see the clearest endgame of the US occupation in the fact that the Iraqi government, on a day when they declare their own sovereignty and you have the US military commander handing over the keys to the Defense Ministry, the Iraqi Oil Ministry opens up the country for bidding now on its oil resources, and you had eight of the ten top oil companies in the world that are not part of a nationalized state apparatus. In other words, eight of the ten most powerful private oil corporations in the world are now bidding for large shares of the Iraqi oil supply. I mean, to me, this is a grotesque symbol of what exactly is happening in Iraq.
And let me just say, Juan, that while we're seeing the sort of contrived celebrations, where ordinary Iraqis, for the most part, are not permitted to go into these big celebrations -- it's largely off-duty police officers, Iraqi soldiers and dignitaries -- the reality is that US soldiers are simply going to the outskirts of the cities and could easily go in to strike at them. General Ray Odierno, the top US military commander there, would not be clear on how many US soldiers are going to remain in the region. At the end of the day, the US has a massive eighty-football-field-size embassy. They have thousands upon thousands of contractors, 130,000 troops still in the country. And they're going to keep a force of 35,000 to 50,000 residual US forces when Obama is officially done withdrawing from Iraq. So, in reality, we see Barack Obama implementing, almost to the letter, George Bush's and the neocons' plan for Iraq, while putting a Democratic stamp on it and essentially downsizing and rebranding what remains a US occupation. So, no, this is Hallmark holiday stuff. And I think it's clear for anyone who's been following this that this is the same situation as when Bush tried to declare Iraqi sovereignty, when Paul Bremer snuck out of Baghdad in June of 2004.
At Information Clearing House, Jeremy explains of the for-show play-day:
While a lot of the media hype today focuses on the U.S. "withdrawal," that is hardly the reality. As previously reported, U.S. military commanders have said they are preparing for an Iraq presence for another 15-20 years, the U.S. embassy is the size of Vatican City, there is no official plan for the withdrawal of contractors and new corporate mercenary contracts are being awarded. The Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) between the U.S. and Iraq gives the U.S. the right to extend the occupation indefinitely and to continue intervening militarily in Iraq ad infinitum. Article 27 of the SoFA allows the U.S. to undertake military action, "or any other measure," inside Iraq's borders "In the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq." As the airwaves and internet are flooded with reports of this new Iraqi sovereignty and U.S. withdrawal, it is important to remember a bit of history. Five years ago -- almost to the day -- President Bush put on an almost identical show. His proconsul L. Paul Bremer "handed over sovereignty" to the Iraqi government just before he skulked out of Baghdad on a secret flight (right after he issued an order banning Iraq from prosecuting contractors). Despite the pronouncements and proclamations and media hype, the occupation continued and real sovereignty was non-existent.
Meanwhile CNN reports that Moqtada al-Sadr has released a call for all US forces to leave Iraq and stated their presence "shows that the (Iraqi) government and the occupation are not serious about the withdrawal". Noting the silence on Iraq in the US, Dan Baltz asks "Have We Forgotten Iraq?" (Washington Post) in which he wonders, "If they [the White House] are wrong [about Iraq being able to stand up], there may be questions about what kind of country Americans are preparing to leave behind. Obama could find himself under pressure to adjust the withdrawal timetable." Or he could realize that it was a mistake to delay withdrawal because there is nothing else the US military can do (even the war hawks should agree with that) and allowing them to remain in the country as babysitters really turns them into sitting ducks of the continued occupation. And let's stop pretending the White House doesn't have plans. As we noted in Third's "Editorial: Save us from the panty sniffers" Sunday, US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill gave a press conference in the US June 18th:
What should have bothered Americans was Hill's refusal to discuss "contingency plans" for Iraq should the (partial) pull-back from cities (June 30th) result in increased violence. "Well, again," he repeated, "I don't want to discuss contingency plans." Why not? And why aren't these contingency plans known to the American public?
While Thomas E. Ricks (Foreign Policy) ignored Hill's press conference, he feels something important is missed from the press conference Gen Ray Odierno held yesterday in Baghdad: "We'll be operating in the belts around Baghdad." Ricks takes that to mean "that the U.S. strategy in the coming months will be to try to protect Baghdad by cutting off insurgents and militias operating in the fields, towns and palm groves that surround much of the capital. And that was where some of the heaviest fighting took place during the spring and summer of 2007, as 'the surge' began." So that may be, that may be, as Cass Elliot once sang ("California Earthquake") but equally true, and reporters know this, when a person loses it at a scheduled press conference, that's also known as "very telling." Translation, Reuters shouldn't have been the only outlet to report on Odierno Earthquake yesterday. And, no, Ricks hasn't written of that.
Here's some of the exchange from the DoD transcript:Q General, it's Andrew Gray from Reuters. You talked about a small number of U.S. forces remaining in the cities to train and advise. Can you put a figure? How many U.S. forces will remain? GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah, people have been trying to get me to say a figure now for about a month. And the reason I won't do it is because it's going to be different every single day, and it'll be based on how much training, how much advising, how much coordination is required. That will change each and every day. So I won't put a number on it. It is a smaller number, a significantly smaller number than what we've had in the cities now. But it has very specific missions: train the Iraqi security forces, advise them as we continue to move forward, enable them in order to -- potentially if they need some help with aviation, logistics, et cetera. But more -- almost as important, coordinate and help us to continue our situational awareness of all situations within Iraq. And that will help us to better support the Iraqi security forces.
Q General, just to follow up briefly, I am disappointed you didn't give us the scoop after a month of holding out, but I wonder if you could at least give us a -- you know, is it an -- a few thousand? If you could give us a kind of ballpark -- are we talking about several thousand? Would that be a reasonable ballpark to use? GEN. ODIERNO: Again -- again, there's hundreds of cities around, and we have hundreds of -- you know, and I've let the local commanders work this out. So for me to give a number would frankly be inaccurate, and I just don't want to do it. There'll be trainers, advisers, helping throughout all of the Iraqi cities where we continue to support and advise Iraqi security forces. Q Whatever the number is, how are you going to convince them basically, the U.S. forces remaining, not to jump in and be helpful, where perhaps you would prefer that the Iraqis take the lead? What will be different about what they're told to do, in a situation where they might think, their first instinct is, gosh, we can do that better.
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, again this is -- I call it -- we are working on changing our mindsets in the city. And I equate it to when we first started the surge, where we had to change our mindset. So pushing our soldiers back out, getting back into the communities, really partnering with the Iraqi security forces and today, it's the same kind of thing. We have to change our mindset. When we're in the cities, there's very specific things that we'll do. Actually we've been out of the cities, a large majority of the cities now, for the last eight months. So it's really only Mosul and the last remnants that we've had, in Baghdad, that have pulled out over the last few weeks. So we've actually been implementing this in many parts of Baghdad for a long time. And they understand what their mission is. They understand what we expect them to do. And you know, we have worked this very closely with all of the leaders in Iraq. We've worked -- I've worked very closely with the minister of defense, the minister of interior, the operations commanders, the operational commanders in order to work this out. And I feel very comfortable with where we're at.
Q General, it's Tom Bowman with NPR. I mean, you're reluctant to talk about how many trainers and mentors are in the cities. And it raises a question about whether or not this is just a show or not whether, you know, this is just semantics. There are essentially U.S. soldiers with guns in the cities. You can call them trainers or mentors. But how different is it from what we saw maybe two-three weeks ago? And if you have U.S. soldiers just outside the cities, I mean, what is this? Is this just a show for the American people?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I would say, you probably didn't listen to what I just said. Because what I just said was, having battalions and brigades inside a city is significantly different than having trainers, advisers and MiTT teams. And I said, we'll be operating in the belts around Baghdad. I've been very clear about this, just like we did in the surge. We had -- the reason we had to surge forces is, we had to get people in the cities. And then we had to eliminate safe havens and sanctuaries in the belts around Baghdad. It's the same thing, except the Iraqis will take responsibility for security in the cities. We will continue to do full-spectrum operations, outside of the cities, to work the safe havens and sanctuaries around the cities. And we will continue to do that. And it's legitimate, legitimate operations that we'll continue to conduct outside of the cities. If you're here in Baghdad, you would know. There is a significant change inside of the cities. There are thousands among thousands of soldiers that have pulled out of Baghdad. There -- and there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in southern Iraq, there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in Ramadi, there hasn't been any soldiers in the cities in Fallujah for months now. And we've been executing this very well. So again, if you're here in Iraq, you would see it for yourself there is a significant change.
As we noted yesterday, he apologized for his outburst (and referred to it as his "temper"). But that's a key moment of the press conference and not just because some reporters are now talking of starting a pool to see how quickly they can get Odierno to explode in the next press briefing, but also because that's not normal behavior from him. He's under huge pressure from the White House to walk their line and stick to their script and his feelings are rather well known about that at this late date. The troops haven't left Mosul and are not leaving Baghdad and no one knows what else and no one knows how many. Except Ray Odierno. He knows exactly what is going on with US troops in Iraq. And he's not allowed to reveal that. That's where his frustration comes in. He felt like the biggest idiot in the world because he couldn't answer the question that he knew the answer to but which the White House won't let him speak on. That, Thomas E. Ricks, is an important detail.
Now let's sit down at the piano, it's time for "Miss Kenneth Laments" -- the lost Cole Porter song. "Sure, well, first, of course," hemmed and hawed War Hawk and Cheerleader Kenny Pollack, "as listeners of your show are aware, 'cause I've been on the show any number of times to talk about, this, I did believe that an, uh, invasion would be necessary but not the invasion that we got. Not in the time that we did it, not in the way that we did it, not how we did it or with whom we did it. As for what have we accomplished? I think the jury is still out." Brookings Boy Kenny sure was nervous and, please note, his 'answer' was to a question about whether or not the Iraq War was worth it. Monday on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Diane explained, "And here's a question for you, Ken Pollack, you were among those who favored US invasion of Iraq. What do you believe we have gained if anything?" The question wasn't did he support the illegal war before it started.
And yet, he nervously stated, before getting to the question he'd been asked, ""Sure, well, first, of course, as listeners of your show are aware, 'cause I've been on the show any number of times to talk about, this, I did believe that an, uh, invasion would be necessary but not the invasion that we got. Not in the time that we did it, not in the way that we did it, not how we did it or with whom we did it." First, let's again note, this is the talking point and War Hawks pushed it after Vietnam as well. It goes like this: "The problem wasn't the war and its illegality, the problem was the way it was fought." No, the problem was the war. As for what he advocated for? His 2002 book Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq made it pretty clear in the title but in it he argues for the US "to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam's regime, and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction." Saddam had no WMDs. Kenny boy forgot to include that on NPR Monday. He forgot to admit that or own any of his mistakes. Instead, he wanted to complain that the war he dreamed of arrived in the wrong size and color.
The Wall St. Journal's Gina Chon appears briefly at the start of the program, reporting from Iraq, but technical difficulties sideline her.
Diane Rehm: Okay, let's talk about what the Iraqi people can and cannot do.
Paul Pillar: As part of the bargaining that Prime Minister Maliki had to get agreement with his cabinet and Parliament for the security agreement, he agreed that there would be a referendum to approve or disapprove the agreement. Your caller is correct that July 30th was the date that had been previously set but it appears that it is most likely going to be delayed until January to coincide with the Parliamentary election. So that will be an important outcome -- whether or not the Iraqi people approve it. If they disapprove it, then what -- as I understand the agreement -- what comes into play is the withdrawal clause which basically says 'either party has a year to terminate the agreement' which means that would move up the deadline for all US forces to -- to get out by almost a year -- to 2010 rather than 2011. But, again, that does not preclude some new agreement being negotiated between the governments of the day in Baghdad and Washington.
Kenneth Pollack: This is a really important point because what you're seeing now is the Iraqis using the politics to deal with the security situation in potentially very difficult ways, dangerous ways. We talked a lot about how the Iraqis, the Iraqi people, are ambivalent about the agreement. We haven't talked about Prime Minister Maliki and his own ambivalence. At one level, he knows that he can't allow the country to fall apart and he's nervous that his own security forces can't hold it together. By the same token though, he sees the United States as an impediment to his consolidation of power and I think that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he's moving it to January in hope that it will either discredit all of his political adversaries or cause a termination of the agreement prematurely exactly as Paul was suggesting.
[. . .]
Diane Rehm: Just before the break, one of our callers, Lily in Syracuse, New York, had asked about the referendum that's going to take place -- the decision of the Iraqi [. . .] [people] to stay or not to stay. That's a really important point, Paul.
Paul: It's very important and I'm glad we got the call, that raised the issue but I would simply agree with what we heard from Ken before the break. It's partly Maliki continuing to play a political game. But if -- if the referendum, it's voted down, uh, in January, uh, there are going to be extremely difficult decisions for the Obama administration to make about its policy and posture in Iraq over the course of the next year. To some extent, it might be seen as a political blessing for much of his constituency, it means getting out earlier, but he is going to have to sit down with his commanders, with General Petraeus, General Odeireno, or who ever is occupying their jobs at that time and have some very hard talk about the security situation in Iraq as of the end, not of 2011, but of 2010.
Diane: Elise?
Elise Labott: And let's not forget that President Obama won, in part, the presidency on his campaign to withdraw US forces from Iraq. He said that the war in Afghanistan was the more important war, the war that was the greater threat to US national security with the emergent -- the reemergence of the Taliban and al Qaeda and he wanted to pay more attention to that war and by all accounts you can't do that with 130,000 troops in Iraq. But the question is if the sectarian violence gets worse, if Iraq continues to spiral, the question is: Does Barack Obama have blood on his hands if -- if he withdraws all of his troops from Iraq and a lot of people -- it's a moral dilemma for him.
Diane Rehm: Ken Pollack?
Kenneth Pollack: Well I think that there's also a strategic consideration which is that the truth is that Iraq is ultimately of far greater strategic consequence to the United States than Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a problem because of the terrorism problem and because of relationship to Pakistan but you can't solve the problem of Afghanistan through Pakistan.
That last Pollack 'gem' is included to dissuade his cult from e-mailing and saying, "His 2002 book said!" Don't give me that crap. Don't spit out the Slate book review claiming Kenny's 2002 book said Afghanistan was more important. Kenny's all over the map, always has been, there's never been a cohesive argument from him. Only baseless charges followed by meaningless laments. The full hour was devoted to Iraq (here for that segment itself) for those who missed it. (I did. An NPR friend passed it on.) The guests were (very briefly) Gina Chon, CNN's Elise Labott, Brookings Kenneth Pollack and Georgetown's Paul Pilar.
Earlier mid-June US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill claimed that fatalies were down in the month of June. Silly Chris and silly reporters who fell for that garbage. Reuters reports that there was a spike and that the official numbers from the Iraqi Health Ministry is 373 for the month of June. Those are the Iraqi government figures. The actual figures are likely far higher. In some of today's violence, Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Iraqi forces shot dead a man in Mosul (a 'suspect') and that a Mosul roadside bombing injured a police officer.
Sir! No Sir! Exposing and Debunking Military Lies from Vietnam to Iraq notes a national anti-war conference put on by National Assembly to End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pittsburg End The War to be held at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Veterans for Peace's Michael T. McPherson, Arab American Union's Marily Levin, Black Voices for Peace's Gail Austin, Arab American Union's Monadel Herzallah and Iraqi poet-activist Zaineb Alani are among those participating. Cindy Sheehan will be participating as well and we'll note her in just a moment. Diane Rejman is also with Veterans for Peace and she tackles recruitment at CounterPunch noting:
The recruiting system leaves out the second part of this. Recruiters talk about travel, adventure, skill-training, and getting your college education paid for. They don't mention that the travel and adventure may involve being in 110 degree+ temperatures, loaded up with gear, sleeping in tents, having your life threatened on a daily basis, and maybe not even having enough clean water to drink. They don't mention that the skill-training is usually not transferable to a civilian job, or that some of the skills taught include how to be a prejudiced, hate-filled, bigot, who can be capable of killing another human being without feeling. They don't explain that the military will teach a person to hate when he or she enlists, but doesn't teach love when the soldier returns. And they certainly don't mention that only 14 percent of soldiers who sign up for the GI Bill use the benefit.
The lies of omission often go further. A recruiter may promise a job as a pilot, knowing the soldier won't qualify and will possibly end up as a truck driver in Iraq – one of the most dangerous jobs. A prospective Navy medic may not understand that he or she may end up in a combat zone since they are the ones who take care of Marines. Or the biggest lie of all – they convince the soldier he or she is signing up for three years, and don't point out that these days, with the stop-loss program in place, the enlistment agreement (note I don't use the word "contract") currently commits the soldier potentially to a life sentence.
But you know what, these are only a few of the lies involved in keeping a war machine going. The bigger ones come from society itself. That war is a good thing. That movies and video games represent reality. You get killed in a video game, press a button, and start over. You don't lose a friend, body parts, or your mind.
Click here to see Diane Rejman performing Bob Dylan's "Joe Brown."
As noted in yesterday's snapshot, US presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and others on The Spirty of Humanity being detained by the Israeli government and prevented from delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan is calling out the detention:
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Human Rights' Activist and Gold Star Mother, Cindy Sheehan, calls on the Israeli government to immediately release the members and crew of the boat The Spirit of Humanity that was attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the devastated peoples of Gaza.Speaking from Newton, Mass, Ms. Sheehan commented: "The detention of the crew and human rights' workers on The Spirit of Humanity is a clear violation of international law, as the blockade of Gaza is a clear violation of not only international law but the human rights of the people of Gaza. Not only must the Israeli government immediately release and recompense the captives, but it must allow the humanitarian aid to penetrate the blockade."
She continued: "I not only call on the Israeli government to do the right thing, but I call on our own President, who has claimed that he is an advocate for human rights, to condemn this act of international piracy by the rogue state of Israel and also demand the release of the kidnapped aid workers. This condemnation must be as strong and clear as the condemnation for the Somali 'pirates' was. A very courageous and dear friend of mine, Cynthia McKinney, was on that boat and the captives must all be treated with dignity and respect and speedily released."
Cindy Sheehan's Myth America Tour continues this month. The dates for the start of the month include:
July 8th Wednesday 2 to 4 p.m. Cleveland Book Signing
Mac Bac's Books
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Hts. OH
Akron Main Public Library
July 8th 7 to 9 p.m.
60 S. High St.
Akron, OH 44326
Cleveland Community pot luck with Cindy
July 9th four to six p.m.
10220 Clifton Ave.
Lakewood, OH
St. Coleman's Parish Hall
July 9th seven to nine p.m.
West 65th and Madison
Drum Circle
July 10th noon to two p.m.
National Assembly to End the War
July 11th to 12th
Pittsburgh
Al Franken in a US Senator. See, the US can do recounts and can be patient. Al Franken and Norm Coleman (his Republican opponent who lost) proved (probably not intentionally on Coleman's part) that the Supreme Court did not need to stop the process in Bush v. Gore. The votes could have been counted. And would have been easily before Christmas 2000. Al Franken is interviewed by former US Senator Fred Thompson here. The only one put out by the long drawn out process was Senator Amy Klobuchar and even she and her staff managed. The US can do recounts, no matter what the Supreme Court thinks.
iraqmike mcandrewmark weinerjoe garofolithe san francisco chroniclealexa james
jeremy scahillthe washington postdan balzthe new york timesalissa j. rubinsahar issamcclatchy newspapersdemocracy now
nprthe diane rehm show
cindy sheehan
elise labott
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