Zuky

Five Years

Retrospective — Iraq War Series 1998-2005

A Soldier's Duty

Nez reminds us to stay up on the latest developments surrounding the case of Lt. Ehren Watada...

Here's some background...

Thank You, Again, Lt. Ehren Watada

Pre-trial motions are scheduled to begin next week in the second court martial of Lt. Ehren Watada; and since it's APA Heritage Month (for what that's worth), it strikes me as a good moment to revisit Lt. Watada's heroic stand against the Iraq war. Here's video of the powerful speech which Watada delivered at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in August 2006:

The American soldier must rise above the socialization that tells them authority should always be obeyed without question. Rank should be respected, but never blindly followed. Awareness of the history of atrocities and destruction committed in the name of America, either through direct military intervention or by proxy war, is crucial. They must realize that this is a war not out of self-defense, but by choice, for profit and imperialistic domination. [...]

I have broken no law but the code of silence and unquestioning loyalty. If I am guilty of any crime, it is that I learned too much and cared too deeply for the meaningless loss of my fellow soldiers and my fellow human beings.

Rising Walls, Crumbling Lives

In my view, the most oft-repeated annoying misimpression about Iraq that US elite-media dork-pundits like to promote, in their neverending quest to proudly brandish their arrogant ignorance, is the idea that Iraqi society is primarily animated by "ancient tribal rivalries". To be sure, divisions remain between Sunni and Shia, divisions which Saddam Hussein exploited during his cynical consolidation of dictatorial power while simultaneously promulgating secular Arab nationalism. But it seems to me that these divisions cannot really be described as "tribal". Rather, they revolve around modern power politics.

Anyone who has even briefly studied Iraq knows that the country's cosmopolitan centers — Baghdad in particular — have long been noted for tolerance and inter-mixing between diverse inhabitants. Incidentally, yesterday I walked through a well-to-do area of Hong Kong known as Kadoorie Hill, which was settled by Iraqi Jews who came to China as merchants and traders in the 19th century, a period during which the long tentacles of British imperialism were planted in both Iraq and China. Indeed Baghdad was once home to a large Jewish population, in addition to Muslims and Christians, all of whom lived together in relative peace.

In order to appreciate the complexity of Iraqi loyalty and identity, we need only consider the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when Iraqi Shias vigorously fought their fellow Shias from Iran at the behest of the ostensibly-hated Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. In that instance, national unity clearly overrode sectarian rivalry. Tellingly, Hussein did not rely on Kurds to fight Iran, because the division between Kurds and Arabs is indeed more "tribal" in the sense that it's based in deep-rooted ethnic identities and conflicting ideological agendas. But the division between Sunni and Shia is neither ethnic nor ideological; historically, it's a succession struggle for authority in matters of Islamic jurisprudence, though nowadays it appears to have become something of a cloak for various intra-national movements, inflamed and exacerbated by the politics of the current puppet regime.

When Hussein waged war against Iran, he depended heavily on Iraqi Shias fighting Iranian Shias, knowing that secular nationalism would outweigh religious factionalism. It would have been nice if the US government had demonstrated a similar grasp of Iraqi sensibilities when it decided to invade and occupy; although, in my view, the US government never intended to create stability or peace, but only to foster discord and turmoil in order to prevent or forestall the emergence of competing sources of regional power.

The reason I'm going through all this is that this morning I read Riverbend's latest post and was saddened to learn that her family has finally decided to leave their homeland. Of course it's a development we've all been expecting; in my case, with a certain sense of dread, as though the day that Riverbend's family gives up, all is lost; because if a well-to-do family that has proudly and stubbornly stuck it out for this long is giving up, I just don't know how far things are about to fall. As walls go up, buildings and families and lives crumble into ruins amid the nightmarish smoke and flames of this tragic war, this mass-murderous crime, this sea of bitter tears.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?

Writings on the War from March 2003

At the risk of being repetitive, but hey I'm just following Nezua's meme lead, here's what I wrote about the war in March 2003, in an essay entitled "The War Debate: Referendum on Empire":

In 1917, the British army led by Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude marched victoriously into Baghdad and assumed a colonial occupation of Iraq. In his speech to the Iraqi people, General Maude declared: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. It is our wish that you should prosper, even as in the past when your lands were fertile, when your ancestors gave to the world literature, science, and art, and when Baghdad city was one of the wonders of the world."

Did Iraqis raise British flags and welcome their benevolent liberators with gratitude? Of course not. They organized a resistance movement and fought back against foreign rule. The British responded by dropping poison gas on Iraq from airplanes (a first in military history), which of course further fueled militant resistance. Eventually, Western colonialism in the Middle East led directly to the rise of Arab nationalism -- which led to the rise of Saddam Hussein.

Armageddon in Mesopotamia?

Today the world teeters on the brink of a new US-led conflagration in the heart of the Middle East. Nobody knows what will happen. There might be a swift US victory with few casualties and no major mishaps, leading to the smooth installation of a US puppet regime to rule Iraq and project force across the Persian Gulf region. Or there might be a bloodbath of Iraqi civilians and US troops, a wave of terrorism against the US, an explosion of ethnic violence in and around Iraq, an unraveling of international law, and a long downward spiral into apocalyptic chaos. Will the forces of Armageddon be unleashed in the ancient land of Mesopotamia? We simply don't know.

What we do know is that the Bush administration, by planning to invade and occupy Iraq with or without UN backing, is placing an extraordinarily high-stakes bet on the riskiest roll of the geopolitical dice since John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev danced to the brink of nuclear holocaust in 1962.

The White House's willingness to gamble so much capital (both political and financial) on so little certainty suggests that there's more going on here than meets the eye. It seems to me that this is no longer just about Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction. The war debate has transcended Iraq and transformed into a fight over the meaning and shape of US power in the 21st century. Essentially, it has become a global referendum on US empire.

False Arguments in the War Propaganda

Advocates of war are eager to misframe the debate as one between action and inaction. It's a silly false dichotomy, since obviously there's such a thing as action other than war. For example, the US government could aggressively strengthen institutions of international law so that illegal weapons, not just in Iraq but all over the world, become increasingly difficult to manufacture or obtain. Such laws, enforced by robust surveillance and armed multinational peacekeepers, could provide a legitimate and consistent framework for forcibly disarming dictators like Saddam Hussein. This could lead to a long-term solution to the problem of weapons of mass destruction, far more satisfactory than an endless series of US wars against conveniently strategic targets.

Indeed, if Bush were serious about ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction, he would support current international treaties that ban such weapons (the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty); but he opposes those treaties. If Bush were serious about bringing war criminals to justice, he would support the International Criminal Court (which could prosecute Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity); but he has rejected that UN-backed court. If Bush were serious about enforcing UN resolutions, he would seek compliance not only from Iraq but also from other current violators of UN resolutions (such as Turkey, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Croatia, and Sudan, not to mention Israel); but he seeks only Iraqi compliance.

This isn't to say that Saddam Hussein should be let off the hook just because other corrupt regimes are getting away with it. But if the White House is to make a coherent argument for war, it must plausibly address these incongruities, or at least demonstrate that some rigorous thought has gone into these matters. Yet no logic has been offered. The White House prefers instead to bounce around a handful of cheap one-liners about Hussein's intransigence ("he gassed his own people", "he's violating UN resolutions", "he may have links to al Qaeda") and to stoke America's worst nightmares ("we can't wait for another September 11", "the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud") in order to steamroll rational questions with irrational fear and to ride that fear into war.

A Global Outpouring of Opposition to War

It's ironic that we've arrived at a point where war on Iraq seems inevitable, yet advocates of war are increasingly on the defensive against world opinion. The debate within the UN Security Council is not going well for Bush; a new resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq appears unlikely. Meanwhile, public antiwar sentiment continues to swell both within the US and abroad. The glaring disconnect between the Bush administration and most of humanity was put on full display on February 15, when massive antiwar protests erupted in over 500 cities in 60 countries, uniting some 10 million people in the largest political demonstration in human history.

The sheer numbers of protesters were staggering: 300,000 in New York. 400,000 in Berlin. 500,000 in Paris. One million in London. One-and-a-half million in Madrid. Two million in Rome. But it wasn't just the numbers, it was the reach: 10,000 in Kolkata, India. 10,000 in Johannesburg, South Africa. 20,000 in Tokyo, Japan. 50,000 in Mexico City. Anti-war protesters took to the streets in places as far-flung as Ukraine, Bosnia, Ireland, Greece, Bulgaria, Norway, Netherlands, Bangladesh, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, and elsewhere.

A central reason why millions of people were motivated to take to the streets on February 15 is that the war debate, as I mentioned, has transformed into a global referendum on US empire. The prospect of a US occcupation of Iraq has exposed a deep philosophical rift between two competing worldviews.

A Clash of Worldviews: US Empire or Global Community?

The worldview of those who support US empire finds its clearest expression in the White House's belligerent National Security Strategy of the United States (originally entitled "Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 Fiscal Years" by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz), and in the strident policy papers of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century (led and supported by people like William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Lewis Libby, and Jeb Bush). The National Security Strategy and the Project for the New American Century are careful to avoid the word "empire", calling instead for "a distinctly American internationalism" (a phrase which makes about as much sense as "a distinctly white form of racial equality"). But make no mistake: these advocates of US empire view the US government as the rightful, divinely-inspired ruler of the world, not only willing but duty-bound to aggressively flex its brute strength in pursuit of unrivaled domination of the planet's wealth and resources.

According to this worldview, the most important natural resource is oil, not only because of the money to be made, but because control of oil means control of military energy. Armies run on massive quantities of oil. For this reason, oil isn't just another capitalist commodity; it's an instrument of political power. Advocates of US empire seek to ensure that the US government has its hand firmly on the world's oil spigot, granting and denying access as it sees fit. Control of the Persian Gulf region is crucial to this objective. The looming occupation of Iraq fits all too neatly into this picture.

In contrast, many who oppose war on Iraq believe that the key to our future security and prosperity lies not in US world domination, but rather in building a genuine global community based on cooperation, dialogue, the rule of law, and the dignity of all people. Such a global community could be constructively led by, not arrogantly ruled by, America's economic, military, and -- most importantly -- intellectual power. This progressive worldview is expressed in documents such as the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It's also the underlying theme of the global justice movement that hit the international stage during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and that has found a more formal voice in the annual proceedings of the World Social Forum. And it's a driving force behind the work of progressive NGOs such as Global Exchange, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.

Proponents of US empire like to think of themselves as hard-nosed realists, but in fact they live in the delusional fantasy world of a rich sandbox bully who buys friends, beats up weaklings, calls people nasty names, throws tantrums when things don't go his way, and goes to sleep weeping that nobody really loves him. Sadly, this isn't much of an exaggeration. The Bush administration's foreign policy is built on intimidation, manipulation, coercion, and violence; genuine bridge-building and principled statesmanship are largely absent. Countries that do what Bush wants are showered with praise, prestige, trade deals, debt relief, loan guarantees, and contracts with US corporations. Countries that have the temerity to disagree with Bush are ridiculed, snubbed, accused of aiding terrorism, and punished with economic cutbacks and isolation. Countries that are seen as enemies too weak to defend themselves are bombed.

The White House has gone so far as to assert the US right to launch a unilateral, preemptive, nuclear first strike. The administration likes to call such policies "muscular"; I call them "insane". To seriously consider nuclear holocaust as an instrument of foreign policy is to veer into the mental terrain of genocidal mania.

The problem with the pursuit of US empire, aside from the obvious moral bankruptcy of ruling the world through violence, is that it simply won't work. The neoconservative vision of a US empire so powerful and ubiquitous that the world bows in submission before its majestic awesomeness is a juvenile pipe dream. There's no real security, stability, or peace in the unbridled pursuit of empire. Far more likely, there will be endless war, lawlessness, economic turmoil, ecological crisis, and growing ranks of enemies eager for revenge. The unique prestige and influence that America now enjoys on the international stage will be replaced by worldwide contempt.

Simply put, empire is a bad long-term investment. It was a bad investment back when colonial subjects rose up against their rulers with muskets and pitchforks -- a lesson which Old Europe learned the hard way, through destructive experiences such as the British occupation of Iraq. It's an even worse investment in an age of telecommunications, airplanes, global warming, and nuclear bombs.

The worldwide antiwar demonstrations on February 15 were significant not only because they delivered a stinging blow to the Bush administration's war drive, but also because they marked the mainstream emergence of a new global consciousness. It's a consciousness that recognizes the fundamental unity of humanity over the superficial divisions of ethnicity and nationality. It's a consciousness that courageously acknowledges our interdependence rather than arrogantly proclaiming our exceptionalism. It's a consciousness that could serve as the foundation for a less violent, more evolved era of human affairs in the 21st century.

VoteVets Ad — and Sun Tzu

MoveOn.org is attempting to raise enough money to run this ad in the Washington DC area during the SuperBowl. If you'd like to help them, you can donate here. Yes, the message is probably hyper-narrow. But at this point, it's so bad that anything that can at least partially reduce the bleeding seems worthwhile. On the other hand, avoiding an increase in troops level is hardly a major victory — victory is ending the war with as little bloodshed as possible.

From a strictly martial perspective, from what little I can discern from what little I know about Iraq at this point, a path to victory in Iraq (and for Iraq) would consist of US troops getting the hell out in a manner that would result in as little damage as possible on all sides, while political arrangements are made to transfer sovereignty to a transitional UN body. Yes, this means that the US-written constitution would need to be tossed and a fresh legitimate constitution written via a democratic process under UN auspices.

There will be no broadly legitimate government in Iraq as long as the country is under foreign occupation. As long as Iraq remains occupied, insurgency and civil war will not only persist but escalate over time. So what we need is not a troop increase, but a series of troop movements, one by one like chess pieces, getting the hell out of that tragic nightmare, allowing a new and separate political process to take hold of a society that has for too long been under the grip of the violent chaos of a civil war enabled by foreign occupation.

I'll leave you with some Sun Tzu (Samuel Griffith translation):

from Chapter VII: Employing Troops

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver is to make the devious route the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage.

Thus, march by an indirect route and divert the enemy by enticing him with a bait. So doing, you may set out after he does and arrive before him. One able to do this understands the strategy of the direct and indirect.

Now both advantage and danger are inherent in maneuver. One who sets the entire army in motion to chase an advantage will not attain it.

It follows that when one rolls up the armor and sets out speedily, stopping neither day nor night and marching at double time for a hundred li, the three commanders will be captured. For the vigorous troops will arrive first and the feeble straggle behind, so that if this method is used only one-tenth of the army will arrive.

In a forced march of fifty li the commander of the van will fall, and using this method but half the army will arrive. In a forced march of thirty li, but two-thirds will arrive.

[ Note from Kai: In the above two paragraphs, Sun Tzu may seem to be talking about battle conditions which are outdated and irrelevant to today's warfare, but actually his fundamental point is so relevant that it turns my gut. Because he's not really talking about the number of li marched and the number of troops killed; he's talking about a moving ratio between how far you push your troops and what percentage of them you should expect to lose. Think about how far the US troops in Iraq are being pushed with the backdoor drafts and triple tours and reduced training camps, then think about what Sun Tzu is saying.]

It follows that an army which lacks heavy equipment, fodder, food and stores will be lost.

Those who do not know the conditions of mountains and forests, hazardous defiles, marshes and swamps, cannot conduct the march of an army.

Those who do not use local guides are unable to obtain the advantages of the ground.

...those skilled in war avoid the enemy when his spirit is keen and attack him when it is sluggish and his soldiers homesick. This is control of the moral factor.

In good order they await a disorderly enemy; in serenity, a clamorous one. This is control of the mental factor.

Close to the field of battle, they await an enemy coming from afar; at rest, an exhausted enemy; with well-fed troops, hungry ones. This is control of the physical factor.

They do not engage an enemy advancing with well-ordered banners, nor one whose formations are in impressive array. This is control of the factor of changing circumstances.

Massive Antiwar Marches Hit The Streets

UPDATE (2007-01-27 22:00EST): Instead of listening to speeches on the mall, a group of 300 activists decided to take the protest to the Capitol steps, attempting to enter the building. Photos and video from DC IndyMedia.

From the LA Times:

Anti-war protesters from around the country converged on Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities today, galvanized by opposition to President Bush's plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq. [...]

Standing on her toes to reach the microphone, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold told the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar."

The sixth-grader from Harvard, Mass., the youngest speaker on the National Mall stage, organized a petition drive at her school against the war.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war. "George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing," he said, looking out at the masses. "He can't fire you." Referring to Congress, the Michigan Democrat added: "He can't fire us.

"The founders of our country gave our Congress the power of the purse because they envisioned a scenario exactly like we find ourselves in today. Now only is it in our power, it is our obligation to stop Bush."

On the stage rested a coffin covered with a U.S. flag and a pair of military boots, symbolizing American war dead. On the Mall stood a large bin filled with tags bearing the names of Iraqis who have died.

A small contingent of active-duty service members attended the rally, wearing civilian clothes because military rules forbid them from protesting in uniform.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Tassi McKee, 26, an intelligence specialist at Fort Meade, Md., said she joined the Air Force because of patriotism, travel and money for college. "After we went to Iraq, I began to see through the lies," she said.

From BBC News:

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of London to voice their opposition to military action against Iraq.

Police said it was the UK's biggest ever demonstration with at least 750,000 taking part, although organisers put the figure closer to two million.

There were also anti-war gatherings in Glasgow and Belfast -- all part of a worldwide weekend of protest with hundreds of rallies and marches in up to 60 countries.

Iraqi American Hip Hop — TIMZ

Over at HuffPo, Paul Rieckhoff points us to a video by Iraqi American hip hop artist TIMZ:

On his fiery and autobiographical debut CD, TIMZ--aka Tommy Hanna, an American born rapper of Chaldean and Iraqi descent--gets right up in our faces, mixing explosive, Middle Eastern tinged beats with incendiary rhymes in an effort to shatter those ugly stereotypes that have plagued people who look like him since 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war...

"They lump us into one big group of Bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins walking around. After 9/11, a few people came into my dad's liquor store and gave him a hard time. But we're hard working people who love our country. A lot of people hear my lyrics and hear the anti-Bush, antiwar sentiment and assume I'm a terrorist or I hate the U.S. But that's not the case. I was born here but my parents were born in Baghdad."

While TIMZ--a recent business administration graduate from the University of San Diego-- has been the pride of his hometown's 20,000 strong Chaldean community (San Diego boasts the second largest flock of them in America after Detroit) for years, the extraordinary reaction to "Iraq" across the country is giving him some well deserved cred as a national artist.

34,000

According to this report from CNN:

More than 34,000 civilians were "violently killed" across Iraq last year, with an average of 94 killed every day, according to a new United Nations report.

The grim figures came on a day when bombs, including a "massive" car bomb near a university, killed at least 38 Iraqis in Baghdad.

The bimonthly Human Rights Report of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, covering November and December, tallied the casualties of nearly a year of relentless sectarian strife, which skyrocketed after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra on February 22.

"According to information made available to UNAMI, 6,376 civilians were violently killed in November and December 2006, with no less than 4,731 in Baghdad, most of them as a result of gunshot wounds," the report said.

What's really disturbing is how unsurprising such figures have become. The news out of Iraq has gotten to the point of being utterly numbing. Each day seems to bring us another grim milestone, from fresh sets of tortured corpses to the latest suicide bombing to shady state beheadings.

You've heard it already, but I'll keep saying it: The only way to end the violence in Iraq is to end the occupation. Impeach Bush and Cheney. Stop funding the war. Bring the troops home now. It's the only way for this lost nation of ours to regain its footing in the world and in our own humanity.

Special Comment on Iraq

Another good "special comment" on Iraq from Keith Olbermann, the only guy on corporate talking-head TV who occasionally addresses his audience as though they're thinking adults (via belledame):

Ya gotta love Olbermann's spitting contempt for Bush, as well as his willingness to bring up the war profiteering which always underlies much of war's logic. Of course, I still think the analysis should go much further.

Personally, I don't think it makes sense any longer to act as though the words uttered by the president and his entourage have actual meaning. As I see it, the language coming from the Bush-Cheney regime is self-consciously and purposefully meaningless, a willful move toward a fragmented nihilism delivered with a knowing smirk, declaring in mocking tones: "These words are beautifully bogus and we all know it, and there's not a thing you can do to stop us doing whatever the hell we want."

To paraphrase Beatrix Kiddo, they want us to know, and they want us to know that they want us to know. They have gone so over the top that they are actually flaunting their ability to radically disconnect public discourse and perceived reality. See, higher notions like freedom and democracy and progress require the integrity of words and ideas and meanings, but the pursuit of one-dimensional tyrannical appetites requires only one-dimensional force and is indeed often constrained by the words and ideas flowing within and between communities.

So a fundamental project of tyranny, in the age of communication technology, is to undermine the very correspondence between word and actuality. It appears to me that the neocons in power seek to actively generate cognitive dissonance and internal incoherence, to force an actual fragmentation of cognition, and so to create space for destructive chaos. These neocon dorks and these lifestyle conservatives, with their plastic hair and hollow faces, are psychic servants to some of the ugliest impulses of the human animal. Pity their misery, but overthrow their works.

To End The War, End The War Racket

Here's what Rep. Dennis Kucinich has to say over at HuffPo:

There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds.

History and the law give a clear guide on how to end the war in Iraq. 

In Campbell v. Clinton, a case in US District Court in 1999, twenty six members of Congress, including myself, sued President Clinton for continuing to prosecute the war against Serbia without a declaration of war. The Court ruled in favor of the Administration because it could find no constitutional impasse existed between the Legislative and the Executive branch requiring judicial intervention. Congress had appropriated funds for the war and therefore chose not to remove US forces.  The 'Implied Consent' Theory of Presidential War Power Is Again Validated.  Military Law Review, Vol. 161, No. 202, September 1999 Geoffrey S. Corn.  South Texas College.

Congress can debate and pass legislation for redeployment, phased redeployment, or an over the horizon presence. Congress can vote for a resolution to end the war and a resolution to bring the troops home. However, none of this will have any legal effect. Each appropriations approval was a vote to continue the Iraq war.

The Administration does not have to pay any attention to Congress' attempt to guide the administrative conduct of the war. Once Congress gave its consent for military action, it literally did not have the authority to guide the conduct of the war. At this point, the only option Congress has to guide the conduct of the war is to withdraw approval for the war through a cut off. Even a substantial reduction of funds could leave open the door for a legal claim that Congress still intends to keep troops in Iraq. The Administration can rummage through the DOD budget and find money to keep its desired troop levels. Unless the Congress totally cuts off funds, it leaves itself open to an imposition of Presidential will through the Food and Forage Act of 1861 which gives the President the authority to directly spend money for troops in the field absent a congressional appropriation.

The Campbell case makes it clear that as long as Congress continues to fund the war, it cannot simultaneously argue that its will is being usurped with respect to the war powers. Each appropriations vote gives the President "implied consent" to continue the war. So it is clear that this war is not only the President's. This war belongs to Congress as well, to Democrats and Republicans alike, in the House and in the Senate. And, unless and until Congress decides to force a new direction by cutting off funds, the United States will continue to occupy Iraq and have a destabilizing presence in the Middle East region.

Inform your communities and your community leaders and your elected representatives that ending funding for the war effort isn't extremist and will not abandon our troops in any way. Rather, voting to cut funding is the only legal means for Congress to take authoritative control of the situation and start issuing orders (that are taken seriously) for the generals to begin logistical operations to prepare to move our troops out of Iraq. The exact political arrangements and official statements and photo-op ceremonies can all be worked out while logistical planning takes place — and believe me, once the Iraqis see U.S. troops packing their bags, a lot of political possibilities open up and most Iraqis will be eager to negotiate and compromise and restore their country to some semblance of normalcy. Americans have voted for a change of course in Iraq. We want action, not just rhetoric. It's time to end this madness.

[ Photos compiled from The Quaker Agitator ]

Friday Zuky Retrospective — Iraq War Series

This series of polemics on Iraq begins in 1998 just after Clinton's illegal bombing in Operation Desert Fox. That smart-bombing campaign was remarkable because it appears that UN weapons inspectors working for the US government exploited their access to Iraqi facilities to plant beacons or otherwise generate targets for US bombs. That tactic pretty much sums up the Democratic Party's approach to Iraq; the Republican Party's approach is better characterized by the bloodbath occupation happening now. In any case, it's too much to read all at once so pick one at random and see what you think.

1998.12.21 — Flames of the Iraqi Holocaust

2002.09.21 — Real Objectives of War in Iraq

2002.10.08 — Protesting a War of Cowards and Madmen

2003.03.13 — The War Debate: Referendum on Empire

2003.05.14 — Coward's Conquest: In Iraq and In Life

2004.02.11 — Empire of the Unaware: Fake Democracy in Iraq and America

2004.05.29 — American Heartland of Darkness

2005.02.10 — Iraq Imploding, Still

2005.09.15 — The Iraq War Debate: Galloway vs. Hitchens

2005.09.30 — Deep Low Rumbling of a Presidency Crumbling

"So this is where the revolution begins — at the intersection of progressive civil society and democratizing communication technology. And we badly need a revolution. You can hear the deep low rumbling. Let's make it a roar."

"So this is where the revolution begins — at the intersection of progressive civil society and democratizing communication technology. And we badly need a revolution. You can hear the deep low rumbling. Let's make it a roar."

Meanwhile in Iraq

[ From The Quaker Agitator ]

600,000

Insane.

UPDATE (2006-10-11 13:50EST): Over at Alas, a blog, Ampersand and company are taking a look at the way the New York Times framed the study:

The New York Times coverage of the new Lancet study of Iraqi deaths, while maintaining an objective tone, is heavily slanted against the study; many of the painfully bad right-wing arguments against the earlier survey are repeated by the Times, usually without rebuttal. [...]

The new Lancet survey is based on interviews with over 1000 Iraqis. The Times - and all major news organizations - routinely report numbers extrapolated from surveys which interview 1000, or sometimes just 500, people. Mainstream newspaper FAQs about polling methodology (example 1, example 2) suggest that a sample of just 500 is sufficient for surveys representing all Americans.

Of course, the Lancet survey - due to methodological issues having to do with collecting data in a war zone - has a wider confidence interval than most surveys. But that doesn’t mean that the study is unreliable, or its methods incorrect; it just means that the results have a wide confidence interval. We can be reasonably certain there have been between 426,369 and 793,663 excess Iraqi deaths since our invasion. That’s extraordinary, and appalling. If the occupation is intended to protect Iraqis, it is a dismal failure.

Battleground Baghdad

From the Los Angeles Times:

Two months after a security crackdown began in the capital, U.S. military deaths appear to be rising, even as fatalities among Iraqi security forces have fallen, U.S. military sources and analysts said.

The U.S. military Tuesday revised to eight its count of American deaths in the capital on Monday, the highest daily toll in a month. In September, 74 U.S. troops died nationwide, about a third of them in Baghdad, according to the military. [...]

The more than 15,400 U.S. troops in and around Baghdad are regularly exposed to sniper fire and roadside bombs, the military said.

As American fatalities increased, the number of deaths among Iraqi security forces fell in September to 150, the lowest number since June and among the lowest tallies in 18 months, according to the Brookings Institution Iraq Index.

Military experts said the divergent trends in fatalities among U.S. and Iraqi security forces could mean that Sunni Arab insurgents are targeting Americans more effectively while Iraqi forces have grown in strength.

But the tolls also could renew criticism over the Iraqi army's recent failure to provide 4,000 troops for the Baghdad security plan.

From Asia Times, "Twenty-one reasons Iraq is not working":

How many freelance militias are there in Baghdad?
The answer is "23" according to a "senior [US] military official" in Baghdad - so write Richard A Oppel Jr and Hosham Hussein in the New York Times; but according to US National Public Radio, the answer is "at least 23". Antonio Castaneda of the Associated Press says there are 23 "known" militias. However you figure it, that's a staggering number of militias, mainly Shi'ite, but some Sunni, for one large city.

How many civilians are dying in the Iraqi capital, because of those militias, numerous (often government-linked) death squads, the Sunni insurgency, and al-Qaeda in Iraq-style terrorism?
More than 5,100 people in July and August, according to a recently released United Nations report. The previous, still staggering but significantly lower figure of 3,391 offered for those months relied on body counts only from the city morgue. The UN report also includes deaths at the city's overtaxed hospitals. With the Bush administration bringing thousands of extra US and Iraqi soldiers into the capital in August, death tolls went down somewhat for a few weeks, but began rising again toward month's end. August figures on civilian wounded - 4,309 - rose 14% over July's figures and, by late September, suicide bombings were at their highest level since the invasion.

How many Iraqis are being tortured in Baghdad at present?
Precise numbers are obviously in short supply on this one, but large numbers of bodies are found in and around the capital every single day, a result of the roiling civil war already under way there. These bodies, as Oppel of the Times describes them, commonly display a variety of signs of torture, including "gouged-out eyeballs, wounds in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns ... acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin ... missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails". The UN's chief anti-torture expert, Manfred Nowak, believes that torture in Iraq is now not only "totally out of hand" but "worse" than under dictator Saddam Hussein.

How many Iraqi civilians are being killed countrywide?
The UN Report offers figures on this: 1,493 dead, over and above the dead of Baghdad. However, these figures are surely undercounts. Oppel points out, for instance, that officials in al-Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency "and one of the deadliest regions in Iraq, reported no deaths in July".

[ Read it all ]

From WorldChanging:

In a July 25 memo to the Pentagon, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Richard Zilmer made a “Priority 1” request for solar—and wind-powered generators to help with the fight in Iraq. “Without this solution, personnel loss rates are likely to continue at their current rate,” Zilmer writes. “Continued casualty accumulation exhibits [the] potential to jeopardize mission success.”

The “thermal signature” of diesel-powered generators currently in use can enable enemies to detect U.S. outposts, experts say. And missions to supply the generators with JP-8, the standard battlefield fuel, are vulnerable to ambush. Without “a self-sustainable energy solution,” Zilmer notes, the U.S. Army will “continue to accrue preventable… serious and grave casualties.”

Anti-War Protests and the Declaration of Peace

From the Inter Press Service News Agency:

Demonstrations, marches, rallies, vigils and prayer meetings continue to take place in dozens of cities across the United States this week as part of a nationwide campaign aiming to force the administration of President George W. Bush and Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Since last Thursday, when more than 500 anti-war groups and religious organisations signed on to the "Declaration of Peace", some 250 activists have been arrested in various cities for taking part in nonviolent actions. 

In addition to demanding a "prompt timetable" for the withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in Iraq, the declaration calls for the closure of bases, a peace process for security, reconstruction, and reconciliation; and a shift of funding from the military to meeting human needs.

Organisers conducted more than 375 actions of civil disobedience and protest in all parts of the country, including Lincoln, Nebraska; Houston, Texas; Des Moines, Idaho; Little Rock, Arkansas; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Fayetteville, North Carolina -- which is home to Fort Bragg, the largest U.S. army installation in the world.

Though the campaign is heavily dominated by faith-based groups, many lawmakers, former military veterans, women's groups and immigrant organisations are also actively participating in the ongoing protests, which were scheduled to wind down Thursday. [...]

"As citizens and people of faith, we must be our country's conscience," said Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, one of 34 activists arrested for taking part in the White House action.

Meanwhile, over 100 Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders have planned other actions to prevent a possible attack on Iran. They said they will be calling on the U.S. Congress this week to assert its "oversight function" to prevent such an eventuality.

As part of the campaign, many activists are staging sit-ins outside the residences of their elected representatives who have not voiced opposition to the Bush policy on the war in Iraq.

"We are spending billions of dollars a week on the occupation of Iraq. This money can be spent on health and education," said Molly Nolan, a 62-year-old activist who joined others in a protest outside the home of New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer.

"New Yorkers need schools and jobs, not this endless war," the crowd shouted in front of Schumer's house.

[ All photos from The Declaration of Peace photo gallery ]

Support Our Troops: Magnetic Ribbons For $1.93 (Made In China)

From the Asylum Street Spankers (via Pharyngula and Creek Running North):

War Is A Racket

From Get In Their Faces!:

WAR I$ $ELL is a terrific one-hour documentary by Brian Standing that answers very important questions in this day and age. How do you sell a war? How do the techniques of government propagandists, public relations consultants and commercial advertisers work, and why are they so effective? How did the United States become a master of domestic war propaganda over the course of the twentieth century?

This is a fantastic bit of documentary movie making that takes the "selling of war" to a gullible public and breaks it down step by step and piece by piece.

[ Check it out ]

From War Is A Racket (1935) by Major General Smedley Butler:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

[ Read it all ]

From Bob Geiger:

In the first three weeks of September alone, 44 of our troops have been killed in the Iraq war. [...] Here's all 44 and the sterile, Defense Department explanation for how they died.

Lance Cpl. Cliff K. Golla, 21, of Charlotte, N.C., died September 1 from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Angel D. Mercado-Velazquez, 24, died in Yusifiyah, Iraq, on September 1 of injuries suffered from mortar fire during dismounted combat operations.

Sgt. Ralph N. Porras, 36, of Merrill, Mich. died in Yusifiyah, Iraq, on September 2 of injuries suffered from mortar fire during dismounted combat operations.

Pfc. Justin W. Dreese, 21, of Northumberland, Pa. died in Yusifiyah, Iraq, on September 2 of injuries suffered from mortar fire during dismounted combat operations.

Staff Sgt. Eugene H.E. Alex, 32, of Bay City, Mich., died on September 2 in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries suffered on Aug 30 in Baghdad, Iraq, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire.

Lance Cpl. Shane P. Harris, 23, of Las Vegas, N.M., died September 3 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Lance Cpl. Philip A. Johnson, 19, of Hartford, Conn., died September 3 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Henkes II, 32, of Portland Ore., died on September 3 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Pfc. Nicholas A. Madaras, 19, of Wilton, Conn., died on September 3, in Baqubah, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.

Sgt. Jason L. Merrill, 22, of Mesa, Ariz. died on September 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Pfc. Edwin A. Andino II, 23, of Culpeper, Va. died on September 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Pvt. Ryan E. Miller, 21, of Gahanna, Ohio, died September 3 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Cpl. Jared M. Shoemaker, 29, of Tulsa, Okla., died September 4 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Lance Cpl. Eric P. Valdepenas, 21, of Seekonk, Mass., died September 4 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Lt. Col. Marshall A. Gutierrez, 41, of New Mexico, died on September 4 in Camp Virginia, Kuwait, from non-combat related injuries.

Sgt. Germaine L. Debro, 33, of Omaha, Neb., died on September 4 in Balad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher G. Walsh, 30, of St. Louis, Mo. died September 4 while his unit was conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Pfc. Hannah L. Gunterman, 20, of Redlands, Calif., died on September 4 in Taji, Iraq, from injuries suffered when she was struck by a vehicle.

Pfc. Jeremy R. Shank, 18, of Jackson, Mo., died on September 6 in Balad, Iraq, of injuries suffered in Hawijah, Iraq, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire during a dismounted security patrol.

Sgt. John A. Carroll, 26, of Ponca City, Okla., died on September 6 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, of injuries sustained when he came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during a dismounted security patrol.

Pfc. Vincent M. Frassetto, 21, of Toms River, N.J., died September 7 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Sgt. Luis A. Montes, 22, of El Centro, Calif., died on September 7 in Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, of injuries suffered on September 1 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Sgt. David W. Gordon, 23, of Williamsfield, Ohio, died on September 8, in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.

fc. Anthony P. Seig, 19, of Sunman, Ind., died on September 9, in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained when he encountered indirect fire from enemy forces while on base.

Cpl. Johnathan L. Benson, 21, of North Branch, Minn., died September 9 from wounds suffered on June 17 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Cpl. Alexander Jordan, 31, of Miami, Fla., died on September 10 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.

Spc. Harley D. Andrews, 22, of Weimar, Calif., died on September 11 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

2nd Lt. Emily J.T. Perez, 23, of Texas, died on September 12 of injuries sustained in Al Kifl, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near her HMMWV during combat operations.

Capt. Matthew C. Mattingly, 30, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, died on September 13 in Mosul, Iraq, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.

Pfc. Jeffrey P. Shaffer, 21, of Harrison, Ark., died of injuries sustained in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on September 13 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle during combat operations.

Sgt. David T. Weir, 23, of Cleveland, Tenn., died on September 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered on September 13 when he encountered enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire during combat operations.

Sgt. Jennifer M. Hartman, 21, of New Ringgold, Pa. died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 14 of injuries suffered when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of a West Baghdad Substation where she was located.

Lance Cpl. Ryan A. Miller, 19, of Pearland, Texas, died September 14 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Sgt. Aaron A. Smith, 31, of Killeen, Texas died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 14 of injuries suffered when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of a West Baghdad Substation where he was located.

Spc. Russell M. Makowski, 23, of Union, Mo., died of injuries suffered in Taji, Iraq, on September 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.

Sgt. Clint E.Williams, 24, of Kingston, Okla., died on September 14 of injuries suffered in Baghdad, Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.

Cpl. Marcus A. Cain, 20, of Crowley, La. died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 14 of injuries suffered when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated in the vicinity of a West Baghdad Substation where he was located.

Petty Officer 2nd Class David S. Roddy, 32, of Aberdeen, Md., died September 16 while his unit was conducting combat operations against enemy forces in the Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Sgt. Adam L. Knox, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, died on September 17 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when his patrol encountered enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.

Sgt. David J. Davis, 32, of Mount Airy, Md., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 17, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Stryker Armored Vehicle during combat operations in Sadr City, Iraq.

Sgt. James R. Worster, 24, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, died from a non-combat related incident on September 18 in Baghdad, Iraq.

Sgt. Christopher M. Zimmerman, 28, of Stephenville, Texas, died September 20 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Master Sgt. Robb G. Needham, 51, of Vancouver, Wash., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 20, of injuries suffered when his patrol came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.

Cpl. Yull Estrada Rodriguez, 21, of Alegre Lajas, Puerto Rico, died September 20 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

The Impotent Lunacy of Donald Rumsfeld

A couple weeks ago I described the right-wing's latest wave of flaccid attacks against its critics as "The Politics of Impotent Lunacy", "not only because it's coming from prozac-popping viagra-drips like Cheney, Lieberman, Mehlman, and Limbaugh, but also because everything that's happening in the world right now — from the blood-drenched streets of Iraq and Lebanon, to the humiliating spectacle of shoeless waterless airport lines, to the kindergarten-level ramblings on all this by the parade of morons in the corporate media — dramatically underscores both the impotence and the lunacy of current US foreign policy."

Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld offered his own limp contribution to this sad circus.

Progressive Democrats, and indeed all rational observers of the world (which obviously excludes the corporate media and DLC types), should make sure that Rumsfeld continues to be perceived as a useless old stooge whose total inner corruption has hollowed out his very bones; a complete joke, worthy of no respect whatsoever, awaiting only the next garbage pick-up; a figure whom, if you passed in the street, you'd point at and laugh and then maybe poke him in the eye just because it seems right.

From The Carpetbagger Report:

If you missed Donald Rumsfeld's remarks today at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, you missed the Defense Secretary at his least sensible. This guy was on a roll, lashing out at "quitters," who "cannot stomach a tough fight" and are inclined to "blame America first." Throw in a few straw-man attacks and some sycophantic praise for the president and you get the idea. It was quite a string of bumper-sticker slogans.

And, as Matt Yglesias noted, it was also a hint of what's to come.

For his latest trick, in a speech to the American Legion, Don Rumsfeld gives the full wingnut monte. America faces an undifferentiated fascist menace. Bush's critics are appeasers who don't understand the lessons of history who blame America first and hate freedom. The media is treasonous and a free press is a luxury we can ill-afford in this time of crisis. Etc.

This, I think we can assume, is the fall campaign. The idea is to psyche the Democrats out. To make them think they can't win an argument about foreign policy. To make them act like they can't win an argument about foreign policy. And to thereby demonstrate to the American people that even the Democrats themselves lack confidence in their own ability to handle these issues.

It's essential that the debate be joined, and joined with confidence. Rumsfeld is a buffoon. A punchline. A well-known liar. He and his bosses — Bush and Cheney — are running around the country trying to cite the failures of their own policies as a reason to entrust them with additional authority in order to continue and intensify those same failings.

Quite right. Rumsfeld's almost-ugly tirade today wasn't delivered from a position of strength; it was offered in fear. With neither facts nor narratives on his side, Rumsfeld was left to simply pound the table, and hope that no one snickered at the sad rants of the poor man who doesn't know what he's talking about. [...]

E. J. Dionne Jr. noted today that a growing number of Republicans — especially those who, unlike Bush, have to face voters again — want nothing to do with the administration's Iraq policy.

By Election Day, how many Republican candidates will have come out against the Iraq war or distanced themselves from the administration's policies?

Here's today's (in my opinion, tepid) response from Democrats:

A House Democratic candidate accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of lying about the progress in Iraq, a day after the Pentagon chief lashed out at critics of the Bush administration.

"After 21 months of trying to find something I can agree with Secretary Rumsfeld on, it is true: the American people are being lied to and I totally agree with Secretary Rumsfeld," Eric Massa, a Navy veteran, said Wednesday. "What I disagree with is the fact that he's the one doing the lying." [...]

Massa, who is challenging one-term Republican Rep. Randy Kuhl, said he was outraged by Rumsfeld's comments and faulted him for blaming the media for his own misstatements and missteps. [...]

Walz, a Minnesota schoolteacher and veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard, said the Bush administration has no effective plan to secure the country.

"This thing has disintegrated," Walz said of Iraq. "On the macro level, there's an absolute failure."

Also today, Richard Arkin writes in his Washington Post column:

Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he's gone crazy.

I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before.

Rumsfeld is so wrong about America.  His use of World War I history and the specter of fascism and appeasement, and his argument about moral weakness or even treason in any who oppose him, is not only polarizing but ineffective in provoking debate and discussion about the proper course this country must take to "fight" terrorism.

This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America.  Rumsfeld as secretary of defense has displayed a contempt from long before 9/11 for anyone who disagrees with him, particularly in his initial wars against those in the uniformed military.

UPDATE (2006-08-30 19:15EST): Arianna has weighed in with this:

Forget the escalating sectarian violence. Forget the rising influence of Iran. Forget the 100-Iraqi-deaths-per-day. Forget the 2,638 American dead.

For Don Rumsfeld the problem isn't that we are not winning the war in Iraq, the problem is that we are not properly spinning the war in Iraq. [...]

"The enemy is so much better at communicating," he whined to a gathering of Veterans of Foreign Wars. "I wish we were better at countering that because the constant drumbeat of things they say -- all of which are not true -- is harmful."

And during a question-and-answer session with Navy personnel, he bemoaned the ability of terrorist groups -- who, according to Rummy, have "media committees" -- to "manipulate the media," saying, "That's the thing that keeps me up at night."

That's all you need to know about Don Rumsfeld. He's not losing sleep over the bloody reality in Iraq (and his role in creating it); he's tossing and turning over the fact that he hasn't been able to package that bloody reality more effectively. It's all about appearances. [...]

"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he said. "They are actively manipulating the media in this country... They can lie with impunity."

It wasn't hard to detect a hint of envy in his voice and a wistful look in his eye as he said this.

Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story

The Christian Science Monitor's coverage of Jill Carroll's kidnapping and release has been nothing short of sensational; and I mean that in a good way. The Monitor has treated the story with a straightforward, fact-driven sobriety and tasteful respect that's totally lacking in today's tabloid-style newstainment. Yet the Monitor has also treated its audience to a riveting series of rich-media internet offerings that mines every angle of Jill's ordeal, showing a technology IQ and business acumen that continues to elude big pompous rags like the New York Times.

As the lone figure at the center of the whole tumultuous affair, Jill herself strikes me as a very cool, mentally-sturdy gal. In various video clips and interviews, Carroll comes across as likable, intelligent, genuine yet professional. She holds herself together well, but it's pretty clear that her mindstate remains fragile, which is to be expected after spending 82 very intense days at the edge of death. In a manner of speaking, she's still coming back to the land of the living. It's amazing to realize that this unassuming Gen-Xer got deeper into the private worlds of Iraqi insurgents than any Western journalist to date; and handled it. She's a gutsy, resilient lady, that's for sure. Her recollections offer a fascinating and instructive glimpse.

Check out the (soon-to-be-award-winning) 10-part series "Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story". We're currently on Part 2:

Abu Rasha packed my stuff for me, but forgot to put in the toothpaste and shampoo they'd given me the night before. I thought, maybe there's a reason he didn't put them in - desperately overanalyzing everything. I asked about them, and he put them in the bag.

Abu Rasha removed my glasses (I'd found the missing lens in the car) and put two black scarves over my head and face so I wouldn't be able to see where they were taking me. Hanging onto his arm, I stumbled blindly out of the house and into a car, trying to suck fresh air through the suffocating layers of black polyester.

After a short drive we switched cars, and I cowered, motionless in the strange, new back seat. Soon I realized that there were children next to me, and men in the front seat.

A cassette blared a recitation of the Koran and every few minutes the nervous men would mutter "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," as we drove through the darkness.

Then one of them said in Arabic, "What are you? What are you?"

A tiny voice next to me replied, "I'm a mujahid," a holy warrior.

It was a boy - I'd learn that his name was Ismael, and he was 5 years old. Just a child, already indoctrinated.

After some 20 minutes, the car stopped and a woman's gloved hand grasped mine, guiding me out of the car and into a house. My heart was racing; the adrenaline hadn't stopped in 24 hours. Barely a day had passed and I was a broken, quivering, fearful shell.

She lifted the scarves. In a rush of air and light I saw her face, smiling and welcoming in a sitting room lined with cushions. Abu Rasha entered, and the woman flipped down a black scarf on her head, covering all but her eyes.

"This is  Um Ali and this is Abu Ali," Abu Rasha told me, smiling. Um is Arabic for mother, Abu is father. But all my captors' names were fake, as each adopted a nom de guerre in my presence.

I looked to the left to a rotund man with a stubbly salt-and-pepper beard and grandfatherly eyes. He was smiling, too, and looked friendly.

"Do you know Abu Ali?" said Abu Rasha. "Do you know him from yesterday?"

"No," I said.

I looked at him again - and then I did know who he was. He was the man that held the gun on Adnan, my driver, during my abduction - the fat guy with the beard.

"Oh no," I thought to myself. This was not OK.

UPDATE (2006-08-15 20:53EST): Part 3 is up, as well as Jill's responses to reader questions. Now that Jill has responded directly to the silly right-wing attacks calling her a Muslim-loving traitor, I wonder if the loudmouth armchair sissies who slandered her will apologize? Just kidding.

The Monitor's work on this high-profile syndicated feature continues to impress me. It's slick and well-designed; updates are frequent; the journalism itself feels transparent and well-organized. Moroever: Editor & Publisher reports that "the upcoming 11-part series by Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll, which will recount her 82-day ordeal at the hands of Iraqi kidnappers, has already become the best-selling syndicated story for the paper's news service since it was brought in-house four years ago."

UPDATE 2 (2006-08-15 21:27EST): Here's a nice overview from Kossack clammyc's diary (via Slate):

Of course, this [information from Jill Carroll] is probably all fluff as compared to the expert opinions of the 101'st Fighting Keyboardists, or the vastly knowledgeable talking meatsticks over in cableland. But nonetheless, this "crazy lib'rul blogger" thinks it may be important enough to give the rest of us some additional information straight from the mouth of someone who was (1) actually in Iraq, (2) was actually kidnapped by jihadists and (3) found a way to get released by her captors. [...]

In any event, Carroll talks about her captors - indicating that she was able to stay alive by telling them that she would, as a reporter, tell their story if she is freed.  She talks about how they were "inspired" by Zarqawi.  She talks about the family and children who were in the houses with her (she says she was moved to around 7 different homes during her captivity), how she passed the time and the circumstances surrounding her ultimate release after over 80 days in captivity. [...]

She mentioned how the captors forced her to eat and seemed eager to impress her.  She also indicated that they were "obsessed" with the cartoon Tom & Jerry and what they watched on TV to pass the time:

Carroll said everything she did in captivity was a survival strategy, even what she chose to watch on TV.

"I was like, 'News is out. Politics is out. Anything with Iraq was out, 'cause I didn't know what was going to make him mad."

"Anything that is inappropriate, for a pious, pious person, no scantily clad women. I don't want any of that stuff. I don't want to see any violence. I didn't want to give him any ideas," she said. [...]

One night in the kitchen, one of the men explained proudly that his wife wanted to be a suicide bomber; she blushed from his praises.

"And she had three little kids sitting there playing ... and they're making dinner and she's four months pregnant. I was stunned, I didn't know what to say," Carroll said. [...]

Lastly, she discusses the events leading up to her release, as well as her reaction to the total jackasses who ridiculed her upon her release by indicating that she wasn't "happy enough".  Of course, I'd like to see what kind of whiny blubbering puddle of soiled pants that the tough talking morons over in freeperville or how well Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin or Sean Hannity would do if they were captured for even one day.

Carroll discusses how, at first, one of her captors indicated that they were going to kill her and when she responded with a laugh and a comment to the effect of "I've watched you for months - you wouldn't want to kill me - you are too nice of a person", she was told "yes, you are right - we are not going to kill you, we will be releasing you". [...]

Certainly we will learn more from this than we will from any of the garbage that is being force-fed to us on a daily basis by those whose arrogance and stupidity is only exceeded by their general ignorance, true cowardice and insecurity.

Harold Pinter: 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature

From the New York Times:

The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," Mr. Pinter said. "You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Sitting in a wheelchair, his lap covered by a blanket, his voice hoarse but unwavering, Mr. Pinter, 75, delivered his speech via a video recording that was played on Wednesday at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Doctors told him several years ago that he had cancer of the esophagus and recently ordered him not to travel to Stockholm for the speech, his publisher said. [...]

Mr. Pinter attacked American foreign policy since World War II, saying that while the crimes of the Soviet Union had been well documented, those of the United States had not. "I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road," he said. "Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love."

He returned to the theme of language as an obscurer of reality, saying that American leaders use it to anesthetize the public. "It's a scintillating stratagem," Mr. Pinter said. "Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable."

Accusing the United States of torturing terrorist suspects in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Mr. Pinter called the invasion of Iraq - for which he said Britain was also responsible - "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law." He called for Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried before an international criminal court.

Mr. Pinter said it was the duty of the writer to hold an image up to scrutiny, and the duty of citizens "to define the real truth of our lives and our societies."

"If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision, we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man," he said.

"Crude Designs": The Great Game of Iraqi Oil

From Charlie Cray over at the Huffington Post:

Although there hasn't been much coverage in the U.S., last week the UK-based PLATFORM revealed the strategy to take over Iraq's oil in a new report, "Crude Designs."

According to the authors, it's not quite the ownership of oil reserves that western interests are after, but an arrangement that will allow governments and companies to deny that “privatization” is taking place at all.

The plan, which was developed by the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, and supported by key figures in the Oil Ministry, is to use highly complex contracts known as production sharing agreements (PSAs), which have existed in the oil industry since the late 1960s.

PSAs are an ingenious arrangement that leaves intact state ownership of the untapped oil, while inverting the flow of payments between the state and companies. Whereas in a concession system, foreign companies have rights to the oil in the ground, and compensate host states for extracting their resources (e.g. via royalties or taxes), under a PSA foreign companies are compensated for their investment in oil production infrastructure and the risks they take in extracting the oil. Under PSAs, the private companies will continue to operate as "contractors" -- a label that is misleading because it gives companies control over oil development and access to extensive profits.

"PSAs are effectively immune from public scrutiny and lock governments into economic terms that cannot be altered for decades," the authors contend. As Helmut Merklein, a former senior official of the Department of energy once explained, PSA's inevitably tend to give foreign oil companies excessive profits at the country's expense (the authors estimate those profits will be between 42% and 162%).

PSAs are also designed to deprive governments of control over the development of their oil industry. PSAs would, for example, exempt foreign oil companies from any new laws that might affect their profits, a principle that goes far beyond certain CPA orders which already grant U.S. companies immunity from civil lawsuits in Iraq. Under terms that are reminiscent of certain trade agreement provisions, for example, any disputes would be heard not in the country’s own courts but in international investment tribunals, which would rule on commercial grounds without considering the national interest or other national laws.

For that and other reasons, oil experts agree that the purpose of using PSAs is largely political. In Iraq’s case, the PSA contracts could be inked while the country still under military occupation. The use of PSAs has been endorsed by the current Transitional Government, while the new Iraqi Constitution includes vague provisions that would allow foreign companies in. [...]

Although no one can predict what will happen, the pressure put on Iraq to adopt PSAs is substantial and has a lot to do with the coded language that talks about "spreading democracy" throughout the oil-rich region. The current government is fast-tracking the process and is already negotiating contracts with oil companies in parallel with the constitutional process, elections and passage of a Petroleum Law.

Soft Fantasy of Rhetoric vs. Hard Reality of War

From the Washington Post:

Thirty-two months after U.S. forces invaded Iraq, President Bush's advisers concluded that his message of "stay the course" has been translated by a weary American public as "stay forever." And so yesterday the president tried to reassure the nation that he has a comprehensive vision for beating the insurgency and eventually bringing U.S. troops home.

The message was hardly subtle as the White House posted a 35-page "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" on its Web site and hung dozens of "Plan for Victory" signs behind Bush as he addressed midshipmen in Annapolis. But it was intended to reshape the argument against critics who have been gaining traction with congressional calls to withdraw troops immediately or at least set a timetable for pulling out..

From Operation Truth:

The President's speech this morning seemed like nothing new to me. It was the embodiment of his problem with Iraq now - a focus on politicking and his perception and the ignorance of what is happening on the ground, the effects on Soldiers, the nation, and Iraq; and a stubborn demand to 'stay the course' without actually defining it. Even the Sailors once again used as props behind him looked bored. The lack of specifics in the documents issued might be understandable if those details were being concealed for operational security - but seem to be unstated because they haven't been developed yet. There is still no true yardstick of success in Iraq. If there were, and if it were the 'standing up' of the Iraqi forces, and we have been as wildly successful as the administration says, why isn't anyone coming home? Why are the attack levels going up? Most of the speech sounds like he is running again in 2006 and doesn't sound like he has much of a clue what is going on.

From the Financial Times:

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. [...]

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group’s Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets. [...]

Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University, said that he does not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media is wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.

“I don’t think that there’s anything evil or morally wrong with it,” he said. “I just question whether it’s effective.” [...]

Employees at Al Mada said that a low-key man arrived at the newspaper’s offices in downtown Baghdad on July 30 with a large wad of U.S. dollars. He told the editors that he wanted to publish an article titled “Terrorists Attack Sunni Volunteers” in the newspaper. He paid cash and left no calling card, employees said. He did not want a receipt. The name he gave employees was the same as that of a Lincoln Group worker in the records obtained by The Times. Although editors at Al Mada said he paid $900 to place the article, records show that the man told Lincoln Group that he gave more than $1,200 to the paper.

Al Mada is widely considered the most cerebral and professional of Iraqi newspapers, publishing investigative reports as well as poetry.

[Managing editor Abdul Zahra] Zaki said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have “charged much, much more” to publish them.

From the New York Times:

As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Some of the young men have turned up alive in prison. In a secret bunker discovered earlier this month in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that some of the mostly Sunni inmates appeared to have been tortured.

From the London Observer:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq

From the New York Times:

Representative John Murtha called the Iraq campaign "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion" today as he called for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops.

"It is time for a change in direction," said Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the leading Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee. "Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk."

Mr. Murtha, a conservative who voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing use of force in Iraq and who supported the Persian Gulf war in 1991, called for "the immediate redeployment of American forces."

"It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region," Mr. Murtha said during an emotional news conference on Capitol Hill. His remarks were quickly denounced by House Republicans as defeatist and wrongheaded.

Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. "The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president's remarks, saying that "people with five deferments" had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war. [...]

At his Capitol news conference, Mr. Murtha became emotional as he spoke of hospital visits to wounded troops. "What demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace," he said.

"Our troops have become the primary target for the insurgency," Mr. Murtha said. Insurgents, he said, "are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence." He went on to say that, before the Iraqi elections in December, the country's people and its emerging government "must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy."

"All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free," he said. "Free from United States occupation."

From the veterans of the Iraq war at Operation Truth:

We applaud Congressman Murtha for having the courage to stand up in front of the nation and offer his honest assessment of the war in Iraq, including the shortcomings he sees with in the execution of the war. Having served honorably as a Marine for decades, and with war experience in Vietnam, we know he did not take his statement lightly. His decision today to ask the tough questions is a tribute to his patriotism.

Congressman Murtha hit the nail on the head on a wide array of issues – issues that Operation Truth has pointed out for over a year. The fact is that our Troops are overextended, that they are facing a growing and increasingly dangerous threat from insurgents, that military recruitment is severely hurting, and that there was not at the outset, and there is not now, a solid plan to secure Iraq, and get out.

We, the Veterans of this war, continue to believe that the debate over whether to stay the course or pull-out immediately is a false choice. At this point, there is no silver bullet solution to fix Iraq. We seek a better way to help ensure the long-term stability of Iraq that focuses on attainable goals for our Troops, while establishing a responsible timeline to bring them home. Only in this way can we serve the wellbeing of the Troops and preserve America’s standing in the world. The formulation of that more responsible and practical course must begin now, and must take into account the views of those who have the most credibility on this war – the Troops who have fought it.

From AFP:

The US military announced the death of a US soldier killed in Iraq, the 10th serviceman to die in two days at a time when US opinion is turning against the war.

The latest victim, who died Wednesday of wounds sustained in a Baghdad bomb explosion, brings to at least 2,080 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

Five marines also died Wednesday in a firefight in Ubaydi near the Syrian border in western Iraq, the military said.

White Phosphorus: Showers of Fire in Fallujah

Last week, a shockingly graphic Italian documentary showed the world what appeared to be the nauseating results of the US military's use of white phosphorus on men, women and children in Iraq.

Apparently known in the American battlefield as "whiskey pete", white phosphorus is an incendiary chemical which can burn skin and flesh right off a person's bones without even destroying that person's clothes. The story has been raging through the international press, but has been largely downplayed by the US corporate media.

From the Independent:

The Pentagon has admitted US forces used white phosphorus as "an incendiary weapon" during the assault last year on Fallujah.

A Pentagon spokesman's comments last night appeared to contradict the US ambassador to London who said that American forces did not use white phosphorus as a weapon.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable said that white phosphorus - which is normally used to lay smokescreens - was not covered by international conventions on chemical weapons.

But Professor Paul Rodgers of the University of Bradford department of peace studies said it probably would fall into the category of chemical weapons if it was used directly against people.

A recent documentary by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, claimed that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of burns caused by white phosphorus during the assault on Fallujah.

The report has been strenuously denied by the US, however Col Venable disclosed that it had been used to dislodge enemy fighters from entrenched positions in the city.

"White phosphorus is a conventional munition. It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal," he said on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme.

"We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases. However it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants."

Asked directly if it was used as an offensive weapon during the siege of Fallujah, he replied: "Yes, it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants".

UPDATE (2005-11-17 14:58EDT): Riverbend's always-compelling voice brings the matter more clearly into focus, over at Baghdad Burning:

Few Iraqis ever doubted the American use of chemical weapons in Falloojeh. We’ve been hearing the terrifying stories of people burnt to the bone for well over a year now. I just didn’t want it confirmed.

I didn’t want it confirmed because confirming the atrocities that occurred in Falloojeh means verifying how really lost we are as Iraqis under American occupation and how incredibly useless the world is in general- the UN, Kofi Annan, humanitarian organizations, clerics, the Pope, journalists… you name it- we’ve lost faith in it.

I finally worked up enough courage to watch it and it has lived up to my worst fears. Watching it was almost an invasive experience, because I felt like someone had crawled into my mind and brought my nightmares to life. Image after image of men, women and children so burnt and scarred that the only way you could tell the males apart from the females, and the children apart from the adults, was by the clothes they are wearing… the clothes which were eerily intact- like each corpse had been burnt to the bone, and then dressed up lovingly in their everyday attire- the polka dot nightgown with a lace collar… the baby girl in her cotton pajamas- little earrings dangling from little ears.

Some of them look like they died almost peacefully, in their sleep… others look like they suffered a great deal- skin burnt completely black and falling away from scorched bones.

I imagine what it must have been like for some of them. They were probably huddled in their houses- some of them- tens of thousands of them- couldn’t leave the city. They didn’t have transport or they simply didn’t have a place to go. They sat in their homes, hoping that what people said about Americans was actually true- that in spite of their huge machines and endless weapons, they were human too.

And then the rain of bombs would begin… the wooooosh of the missiles as they fell and the sound of the explosion as it hit its target… and no matter how prepared you think you are for that explosion- it always makes you flinch. I imagine their children covering their ears and some of them crying, trying to cover up the mechanical sounds of war with their more human wails. I imagine that as the tanks got closer, and the planes got lower- the fear increased- and parents searched each other’s faces for a solution, for a way out of the horror. Some of them probably decided to wait it out in their homes, and others must have been desperate to get out- fearing the rain of concrete and steel and thinking their chances were better in the open air, than confined in the homes that could at any moment turn into their tombs.

That’s what we were told before the Americans came- it’s safer to be outside of the house during an air strike than it is to be inside of the house. Inside of the house, a missile nearby would turn the windows into millions of little daggers and walls might come crashing down. In the garden, or even the street, you’d only have to worry about shrapnel and debris if the bomb was very close- but what were the chances of that?

That was before 2003… and certainly before Falloojeh.

That was before men, women and children left their homes only to be engulfed in a rain of fire.

Deep Low Rumbling of a Presidency Crumbling

Outside the fortress walls of the Bush-Cheney administration's imagination, reality is a-ragin' with fires not easily quelled. From the bullet-ridden bomb-blasted streets of Baghdad and Fallujah, to the burnt-out twisted-up train cars in Madrid and London, to the neglected flooded streets of New Orleans — tragedy has followed this White House like a bad omen.

Within the palace walls, the king's court is in turmoil as charges of corruption among high ministers gather steam. Tom DeLay's indictment on Tuesday hit DC right-wingers like an organ-draining body blow. On top of the recent indictments of Jack Abramoff and David Safavian, the disgraced resignation of crony-appointee Michael Brown, and the ongoing investigations of Bill Frist (for shady stock deals) and the Rove-Libby gang (for leaking an undercover agent's name), the neo-conservative juggernaut is at risk of sinking in a deepening pool of legal and political trouble.

The White House's aura of brusque intimidation is vanishing amid the wreckage of its own colossal failures. Like the USA men's basketball team at the 2004 Olympics, the Bush-Cheney administration loves preening for triumphant blinged-out photo-ops, but doesn't have what it takes to win on the court. In Katrina's sobering wake, the 9/11-fueled mass-hypnotic spell of faux-patriotism is finally wearing off. Long-hypnotized citizens are blinking in the sunlight, realizing that the Enron-Halliburton White House is not only incapable of solving pressing public problems, but is in fact part of the problem. Indeed, this ridiculous corporate White House is the perfect emblem of the ridiculous corporate culture from which it has emerged as from a radioactive petroleum snake-oil swamp.

Almost as ridiculous as this White House is this Democratic Party, whose leaders appear to be doing their best to show that they're just as lost as the GOP, simply refusing to assume national leadership of an American society badly adrift. A shaken US populace is practically begging for genuine voices and fresh ideas — most Americans know that the country's in trouble and are more willing than usual to consider bold new directions — but all the Dems know how to do anymore is crunch focus-group data and craft mechanical soundbites. The majority of American citizens now oppose the war in Iraq, but neither party in power does, making a mockery of 2-party representative democracy.

Notwithstanding the "opposition" party's exemplary submissiveness, more than 150,000 citizens stepped around the Democrats last weekend and turned out for the biggest anti-war march in Washington DC since the days of the war we need not mention.

Personally, I'm a fan of street protests. As I see it, every progressive change in American history — from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage to civil rights — has benefited from some form of street protest: small rallies, staged acts of civil disobedience, mass marches. There's a reason why the Founding Fathers explicitly guaranteed freedom of assembly in the Bill of Rights: bringing people together for political change is a powerful, potentially subversive act.

When 150,000 people physically assemble in one place because they're all against an unjust war, it's a powerful act. The mere gathering of so many bodies generates tremendous energy and excitement. There's something exhilarating about it. There's a buzz that encourages discussion and raises the awareness of participants and observers. People who show up at a national march as virtual protest virgins go back to their communities as veteran activists, ready and inspired to start organizing locally. Moreover, I'm willing to wager that 150,000 angry people marching right outside the White House windows gives those nervous hair-sprayed types in the West Wing far more pause than they're willing to admit. It certainly speaks more loudly than the blogosphere; people who back up words with action are usually taken more seriously than people who just talk.

Perhaps most relevant to our current age, street protests are massive grassroots networking and knowledge-sharing sessions among people who ordinarily only interact online, occurring in a non-commercial non-governmental civic space, outside the domain of advertisers and newsroom editors. From what I understand, this is where the revolution begins — at the intersection of progressive civil society and democratizing communication technology.

It's worth noting that the grassroots groups that mobilized the most people for last Saturday's march in DC first emerged in 1999 while organizing and covering the anti-WTO protests known as the Battle in Seattle. Long before the Howard Dean phenomenon and the mainstream blogosphere, progressive activists in the anti-corporate globalization movement had become aware of the transformative potential of the latest technology: cell phones, text messaging, small digital cameras, collaborative software, the internet.

All of these tools were brought to bear on the Battle in Seattle, where thousands of citizens engaged in a spectacular act of mass civil disobedience, putting their bodies on the line to block all intersections leading to the WTO conference center. Riot police had to break up the human road-blocks with tear gas and clubs; and it wasn't easy. Protesters (organized into autonomous "affinity groups" of 5 to 15 people) kept one another informed of police movement via cell phones and text messages, enabling groups to move fluidly about the city and block vulnerable intersections. They had learned on the internet to cover their faces with a vinegar-soaked bandana in order to help deal with tear gas. These weren't your usual polite liberals; these people were serious.

Activists all around the world saw what happened in Seattle (via internet), and were electrified. Sweatshop organizers and debt-relief campaigners in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were deeply moved that American citizens would actually care enough to take a beating from riot cops in order to stand in solidarity with Third World workers. Environmentalists and socialists in Europe and Canada rejoiced that their American counterparts had woken up. The Global Justice movement was born.

Anyone who thinks street protests don't make a difference should review the history of the WTO before and after Seattle. More importantly, the momentum generated in Seattle carried all the way to the first annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. The WSF continues to be the most formal, unified expression of the Global Justice movement to date, far ahead of America's mainstream blogosphere in its analysis of world events and global trends. If you ask me, that's where the smart money's hangin' out.

So this is where the revolution begins — at the intersection of progressive civil society and democratizing communication technology. And we badly need a revolution. You can hear the deep low rumbling. Let's make it a roar.

Mass Movement

From Reuters:

More than 100,000 protesters flooded Washington on Saturday to stage dual demonstrations against the U.S.-led war in Iraq and economic globalization, before coming together to demand President George W. Bush bring troops home.

"We need a people's movement to end this war," said Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war protester whose son was killed in fighting in Iraq. Camping out in Crawford, Texas, during much of August while Bush was vacationing there, Sheehan's rallies drew crowds there that sometimes numbered in the hundreds as she demanded a meeting with Bush.

Bush, who met with Sheehan in 2004 after her son was killed, refused to meet with her again.

"We'll be the checks and balances on this out-of-control criminal government," Sheehan, who has become the anti-war movement's best-known face, told the group gathered at the Ellipse, a park behind the White House.

In Los Angeles, about 15,000 people protested peacefully, while thousands more marched in San Francisco and in London urging an end to military action in Iraq nearly 30 months after an invasion ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. [...]

"We're here to bring a dose of reality to the American public," said Chad Hetman, a member of an anti-war veterans' group. "This war was based on lies."

Also from Reuters in London:

Thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday demanding that Prime Minister Tony Blair withdraw British troops from Iraq.

Three streams of marchers carrying banners, chanting and blowing horns set off from various parts of London aiming to pass parliament and converge on Hyde Park to hear anti-war speeches.

There was a large police presence and barricades were placed around key government buildings in case of violence.

Protesters carried banners with slogans such as "Blair Liar", "Bush world No. 1 terrorist", "No war, no nukes" and "Blair's taking liberties, troops home now".

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has never been popular in Britain and Blair's personal rating slumped after charges that his government had exaggerated the case for war.

The march took place on the eve of the annual conference of Blair's ruling Labour Party, which is divided over the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Britain has 8,500 soldiers in Iraq and Blair says they will be withdrawn only when stability has been restored, the Iraqi army is capable of maintaining order and a democratically elected Iraqi government says the time is right.

The insurgency in the central part of the country in an around Baghdad and the rising number of British deaths in southern Iraq -- now standing at 95 -- has further eroded public support.

The marches, organised by the Stop The War campaign, took place less than a week after British troops stormed a police station in the southern city of Basra to free two undercover soldiers who had been detained by Iaqi police.

Some other links:

DC Indymedia

Google News

Bring Them Home Now Tour

Operation Ceasefire

Military Families Speak Out

Troops Out Now!

Gold Star Families for Peace

Saturday, September 24: March on Washington

From United for Peace and Justice:

END THE WAR ON IRAQ!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
Leave no military bases behind
End the looting of Iraq
Stop the torture
Stop bankrupting our communities
No military recruitment in our schools

More than two years after the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion of Iraq, the nightmare continues. More than [1,900] U.S. soldiers have died, at least another 15,000 have been wounded; even the most conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths number in the tens of thousands. Iraq, a once sovereign nation, now lies in ruins under the military and corporate occupation of the United States; U.S. promises to rebuild have not been kept and Iraqis still lack food, water, electricity, and other basic needs.

A majority of Americans believe that this war never should have happened, but our elected representatives in Washington continue to rubber-stamp the Bush Administration's disastrous Iraq policies. They have given military recruiters nearly unrestricted access to our schools -- and the Pentagon nearly unrestricted access to our tax dollars. At a time when our vital social programs are eroding or completely decimated, an overwhelming majority in Congress recently approved Bush's request for an additional $82 billion in war funding, and there's already talk of another $50 billion appropriation this fall.

It's time to hold all pro-war politicians accountable for the deaths, the destruction, the lies, and the toll on our communities! Join United for Peace and Justice in Washington, D.C. for three massive days of action against the war: a major march, rally, and festival on Saturday, September 24; an interfaith religious service and day of grassroots trainings on Sunday, September 25; and a large-scale grassroots lobbying day and mass nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience on Monday, September 26.

The Iraq War Debate: Galloway vs. Hitchens

At 7pm on Wednesday night, I settled down in front of my computer monitor with a cup of tea and a bag of chips, and prepared to watch a live webcast of what promised to be a bruising battle between two certified heavyweights — not a boxing match, but close: a moderated debate on the merits of the Iraq war between two harrowingly outspoken orators, British MP George Galloway and Anglo-American polemicist Christopher Hitchens.

Hosted by Baruch College in New York City, "The Grapple in the Big Apple" was the most eagerly anticipated battle of wits to hit the progressive scene since Canadian author Naomi Klein took on The Economist correspondent Sameena Ahmad on the merits of corporate globalization, in 2002's "Pro Logo vs. No Logo". (Klein won by knockout.)

Tickets for the Galloway-Hitchens bout, to be held in a 1,500-seat auditorium, went on sale 3 weeks before the appointed date ($12 for adults, $8 for students) and promptly sold out in just a few days. As the event drew near and the internet buzz grew to a feverish digital roar, technicians scrambled to assemble adequate infrastructure to provide live video and audio streams to a huge online audience.

Meaty political debates are something of a treat for progressive intellectuals in America, mostly because our commercial mass-media culture is so devoid of substantive content that the mere prospect of articulate, historically-informed, well-structured, rigorously-engaged discourse is cause for tremendous excitement — a sad commentary in and of itself.

Adding to the somewhat guilty pleasures of this particular confrontation is a juicy back-story.

When George Galloway, accused by US politicians of corrupt oil dealings with Saddam Hussein, testified before the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee in April of this year, the feisty Scotsman electrified his American audience by unleashing an eloquent torrent of rebuttals and denunciations that stunned, silenced, and finally made fools of presiding senators Norm Coleman and Carl Levin. You could practically hear the very walls of the Senate chamber gasping in disbelief as the steely-eyed Galloway proclaimed with withering conviction:

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1,600 of them American soldiers, sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies. [...]

Have a look at the real oil-for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months, when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. [...]

Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee, that the biggest sanctions-busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions-busters were your own companies, with the connivance of your own government.

Many observers described the session as a smashing victory for the British parliamentary style of debate over the deferential norms of US Congress. Perhaps for this reason, it took an Englishman to strike back at the marauding Galloway: in the hallway outside the hearing room, as Galloway held forth before the assembled media, Christopher Hitchens shouted out over the camera crews, "Tell us about the suicide-murderers, Mr. Galloway, that your friend Saddam was paying for." Galloway shot back at the famously-thirsty ex-communist-turned-militarist, "Christopher, your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink. You're a drink-sodden, former-Trotskyist popinjay." (In case you're wondering, Merriam-Webster defines a "popinjay" as "a strutting supercilious person", though Hitchens claims with his usual condescending erudition that "its original Webster's definition means a target for arrows", which apparently pleases his faux-martyr's self-image.)

Hitchens has been a belligerent supporter of American wars for the past 7 or 8 years, after a couple of decades of inexplicably-disavowed anti-imperial peace activism. In a representative call for war published in The Boston Globe in September 2002, he wrote:

I should say briefly that on that day [September 11] I shared the general register of feeling, from disgust to rage, but was also aware of something that would not quite disclose itself. It only became fully evident quite late that evening. And to my surprise (and pleasure), it was exhilaration. I am not particularly a war lover, and on the occasions when I have seen warfare as a traveling writer, I have tended to shudder. But here was a direct, unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated. [...] I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials. And because it is so interesting.

And in a television appearance on MSNBC's Hardball in November 2003, Hitchens oozed:

The thing is to realize that the other side is going to lose. The point is that the United States is on the right side of history in the region ... When Bush said 'Bring em on' I completely agreed with him. They will be doing the dying in the long run. They will rue the day they tried.

You get the idea. Hitchens is one of these ex-leftist intellectuals whose compulsive episodes of ball-grabbing machismo bear the unmistakable whiff of overcompensation (David Horowitz much?). Perhaps all those years of tippling have indeed yielded a private softness for which hard public chest-beating is the reinvigorating balm. Perhaps when you no longer find "exhilaration" where you once did in more energetic days gone by, you reach to find it wherever else you can.

In any case, since that famous exchange on Capitol Hill, Galloway has turned his Senate subcommittee experience into a book-length gloat entitled "Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington", which he's currently promoting in a national speaking tour (including the debate at hand). Meanwhile, Hitchens recently published an article on Slate entitled "George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous" in which he writes of Galloway: "Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs."

And that's right about where we picked up the action on Wednesday night's debate.

Moderated by Amy Goodman (one of America's best journalists and host of Democracy Now!), the proposition in dispute was: "The war in Iraq was necessary and just." Long lines formed outside the hall as guests trickled through metal detectors and the stage crew scurried to complete last-minute preparations. By the time the two combatants took their positions behind podiums on either side of the stage, with the moderator and a timekeeper in between, the atmosphere in the auditorium was impatient, fervid, and tense.

Christopher Hitchens, sporting his typically disheveled look with a rumpled blue shirt and greasy hair, kicked things off by calling for a moment of silence in honor of the many innocent Iraqis who had been killed in a flurry of bloody attacks in Baghdad that day. This might have been his way of acknowledging that the war wasn't going all that well, and of demonstrating that he stood in solidarity with Iraqi civilians. After a few fidgety seconds, he switched focus to the positive consequences of the war; namely, overthrowing Saddam Hussein. In contrast, he described the anarchic world that would have resulted if the anti-war movement had its way: tyrants and terrorists would be thriving and abounding across the globe, throwing the burqa of Islamo-fascism over the kind curves of Lady Liberty. Then he turned his attention to Galloway himself, and the fireworks began:

I believe it is a disgrace that a member of the British House of Commons should go before the United States Senate subcommittee, and not testify, but decline to testify, and to insult all those who try to ask him questions with the most vile and cheap gutter snipe abuse. I think that's a disgrace ... The man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends! The Soviet Union's let him down, Albania's gone, the Red Army's out of Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia; the hunt persists! Saddam has been overthrown and his criminal connections with him have been exposed. Onto the next, on the 30th of July in Damascus, in Syria ... appearing with Mr. Assad, whose death squads are cutting down the leaders of democracy in Lebanon as this is going on, to tell the Syrian people they're fortunate to have such a leader. The slobbering dofan who they got because he's the son of the slobbering tyrant who came before him! How anyone with a tincture of socialist principle can actually speak in this way is far beyond me, and I hope, ladies and gentlemen, far beneath your contempt.

Dressed in a tan suit and tie, George Galloway opened his remarks with proportionate vitriol:

Well, ladies and gentlemen, "slobbering" was the note that Mr. Hitchens chose to end on; I'm not sure that was wise. But I want to thank Mr. Hitchens for the brave stand that he made against the war on Iraq in 1991 ... What you have witnessed since, is something unique in natural history: the first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug. And the one thing a slug leaves behind it is a trail of slime. Now I was brought up by my father on the principle never to wrestle with a chimney sweep, because whatever you do, you can't come out clean. But you, Mr. Hitchens, are no chimney sweep. That's not coal dust in which you are covered. You are covered in the stuff you like to smear onto others, not just me, but people far more gentle than me. People like Cindy Sheehan, who Mr. Hitchens called "a flake" and a "Larouchie" after she gave the life of her son to the war he has come here to glory in ... People like Mr. Hitchens are ready to fight to the last drop of other people's blood. And it's utterly and completely contemptible.

Galloway's central argument, in a nutshell, was simply that the war in Iraq has been a demonstrable disaster, and that it was undertaken on a demonstrable pack of lies. Thus, with regard to the proposition being debated, the war in Iraq was both unnecessary and unjust.

As expected in New York City, the audience cheered, jeered, laughed, hooted, hissed, and hollered throughout the proceedings. Awkwardly, Hitchens repeatedly berated those who booed him with smarmy little snippets like, "If you could only see how you look, comrades, when you make those zoo noises" and "Remember, you're on the tele, your mothers and aunts are watching". Galloway, for his part, was loudly booed when he declared, "You may think that the airplanes that brought down the Word Trade Center came out of a clear blue sky; but I believe that they came out of the swamps of hatred that we ourselves created." On that occasion, Hitchens noted the boos with approval.

As the evening progressed, both debaters attempted — without much success — to frame their arguments in broader historical terms, while personally discrediting and insulting their opponent. Hitchens maintained that the threat posed by Islamo-fascist terrorism is so dangerous and pressing that only aggressive military action by the world's lone superpower can stop its quest for world domination. He attacked Galloway as a supporter of thugs who behead innocent Americans and blow themselves up in crowded cafes. Meanwhile, Galloway asserted that the United States and Great Britain are the world's two biggest rogue nations pursuing economic and military empire, and that nationalist resistance movements and deranged acts of terrorism are predictable consequences of such policies. He attacked Hitchens as a supporter of thugs in the neo-conservative movement spearheading those murderous policies.

Hitchens noted, with obvious satisfaction, that Galloway had once praised him as "the greatest English man of letters". Galloway thundered back:

It's true, I praised you. You were a butterfly; you're now a slug. You did write like an angel, but you're now working for the devil. Damn you and all your works!

At that point, you kind of realized that the event had probably gone about as far as it could usefully go. Indeed, as the two combatants limped toward their closing arguments, both men actually flirted with the idea of resorting to physical fisticuffs: Galloway mused, "As Mr. Hitchens has noted, I'm no pacifist, and we have likely generated as much light as we can and as much heat as we should." Hitchens snapped back with clear understanding of what was being discussed, "Don't worry about that!"

As you can see, the blustery personal insults on this night easily outnumbered the substantive points. I learned more about rhetorical mud-wrestling than I did about the war in Iraq; I learned more about the histories of George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens than I did about the history of the Middle East. So maybe it wasn't all that one might have hoped for; but that's okay. I'm glad the debate happened and glad I watched it. Even if it had descended into a fistfight, I would have deemed it a healthy and worthwhile grassroots exercise. On matters of war and peace, life and death, self-preservation and self-annihilation, I think it's entirely appropriate that passions overflow. If you actually care, things get heated. I only wish there were more events like it — public debates on matters of public interest, maybe even some in which the debaters were Americans. I only wish there were more room for non-commercial civil society in our commercialized uncivilized world. I only wish there were more democracy in our "democracy".

Actually, come to think of it, I might have enjoyed the evening even more if a brief fistfight had broken out — I'm fairly certain the former boxer Galloway would have made quick work of the "popinjay" (Galloway concluded with that arcane word, bringing the story full-circle to that encounter on Capitol Hill). Maybe that would have made for that vaguely nauseating experience often called "good television". It's said that "good" reality TV depends on 3 ingredients: conflict, conflict, and conflict. Maybe this debating/fighting thing could be a candidate for the next hit series? I can see it now: The Debater.

Any takers? Who wants a little? Who wants some of this, biotch?

UPDATE: The debate is scheduled to be broadcast on C-SPAN2's Book TV on Saturday, September 17, and Sunday, September 18, 2005. In addition, you can listen to the entire debate in MP3 format: Part 1 and Part 2.

[See previous post: The War Debate: Referendum on Empire]

Portrait of Cindy

Via Common Dreams, Robert Shetterly is a Maine-based writer and artist whose acrylic-on-panel series Americans Who Tell the Truth combines, with simple elegance, the human portraits and powerful words of great Americans. His most recent subject is Cindy Sheehan, and here's what he has to say about it in an essay called "Painting Cindy":

Several weeks ago Cindy Sheehan came to Maine to speak at the WERU Full Circle Fair. My partner Gail & I had the privilege & honor of having Cindy stay with us. I had been in touch with her by email for months about painting her portrait. So, I was not expecting some of her characteristics: the high sweet voice contrasting with the toughness of her words – like sugary icing on a cake of steel; her gentle, calm, humorous manner encasing an absolute determination to hammer meaning and justice out of the unnecessary death of her son Casey in Iraq. She was self-conscious & apprehensive about my desire to paint her portrait, though, saying she’s never seen a good picture of herself. But she told me that when she looked at the other people in the Americans Who Tell The Truth portrait series, saw what company she was joining, she wept with humility and gratitude.

Painting a portrait is a curious business. You might think that getting the likeness is the hard thing. It’s not. After one has been painting for awhile, it’s not really that difficult to reproduce the correct slope of the eyes, the idiosyncratic architecture of a nose, the subtle topography of that crevice between the nose & the upper lip or at the corners of the mouth. The challenge is not to accept a likeness that coarsens the individual or caricatures her, that merely is emblematic of the person the way the word "tree" is emblematic of a real, living, particular oak. An artist wants to capture something of the complex emotions and real character of the subject. That "something" which conveys respect for and honors her struggles, determination, and courage. Grief and anger and love.

After Cindy left Maine, she drove to Rhode Island and back to Massachusetts for speaking engagements, then headed for Dallas to speak at the Veterans for Peace Conference. I was already at work on her portrait, working from photos I had taken of her as she stood by a window in our living room, the left side of her face lighted, the right in shadow. From the road she emailed me when she heard the news that 20 U.S. soldiers from Cleveland had been killed in two days in Iraq. Her anguish was intense. Something had to be done. Something to stop this war. Something to stop families from having to go through what she was going through. It was at that point that she decided to go to Crawford & demand that Bush talk with her. I already had painted her sharp, blue eyes to the point that they were looking back at me from the canvas, talking to me about the fierceness of her quest, the eyelids red from weeping, grey-blue and ochre circles underneath from exhaustion, and an inchoate knowledge taking shape – the knowledge that Cindy already had, but that I was learning as I painted and tried to understand the look in those eyes: the knowledge that she could not be intimidated or diverted, that the spin doctors and hate-mongers could belittle and disparage her to no avail. The eyes had no fear. They had a clarity of purpose that was at once sad, defiant, and calm. It reminded me of the look in Fannie Lou Hamer’s eyes when she said, "But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet, four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off."

George W.'s "Balanced Life"

From Cox Newspapers, here's the latest illustration of George W. Bush's incomparable logic and worldview. Explaining why he's refusing to meet with grieving mother and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan during his 5-week vacation in Crawford, Texas:

Mr Bush said he was aware of the anti-war sentiments of Cindy Sheehan and others who have joined her protest near his Texas ranch. "But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the President, that's part of the job," he said on Saturday. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

Judith Miller, War Propagandist

Here's an intriguing piece from everyone's favorite chic Greek intellectual redhead, Arianna Huffington, posted on her recently launched blog The Huffington Post:

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.

This version of events has divided the Times into two camps: those who want to learn everything about this story, and those who want to learn everything as long as it doesn't downgrade the heroic status of their "colleague" Judy Miller. And then there are the schizophrenics. Frank Rich is spending his summer in the second camp, while at the same time writing some of the most powerful and brilliant stuff about the scandal: "This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit… is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped up grounds… That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war." [...]

Any discussion of Miller's actions in the Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal must not leave out the key role she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her pre-war reporting today, it's hard not to be disgusted by how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be. For chapter and verse, check out Slate's Jack Shafer. For the money quote on her mindset, look to her April 2003 appearance on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where, following up on her blockbuster front page story about an Iraqi scientist and his claims that Iraq had destroyed all its WMD just before the war started, Miller said the scientist was more than a "smoking gun," he was the "silver bullet" in the hunt for WMD. The "silver bullet" later turned out to be another blank -- and the scientist turned out to be a military intelligence official.

Amazingly, however, even as her reporting has been debunked -- and her sources discredited -- Miller has steadfastly refused to apologize for her role in misleading the public in the lead up to the war. Indeed, in an interview with the author of Bush's Brain, James Moore, she, in the words of Moore, "remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed in the grandest of fashions", telling him: "I was proved fucking right."

The Real Objectives in Iraq

From Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times:

The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging the international reputation of the United States, serving as a world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.

A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."

You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.

All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.

It's the oil, stupid.

What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's.

Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.

Actually, a few of us were paying attention. In September 2002 I wrote a piece called "Real Objectives of War in Iraq" which said:

Let's see if we can cut through the crap: It seems to me that deposing Saddam Hussein in a "pre-emptive" war is a central component of an overarching geopolitical strategy within the National Security Council and the ruling political establishment. This war serves notice to the rest of the world that the American empire has reached a point of such military superiority that it will initiate attacks on potential threats without even having to appear concerned with concrete evidence or international law. It's a radical military and legal doctrine, and the U.S. government is announcing this doctrine by demonstrating its willingness to apply it with extreme prejudice.

Equally important, the specific removal of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent installation of a U.S. puppet regime will presumably enable American corporations to take control of Iraqi oil and compete with Saudi Arabia in the regional oil market, thus eroding Saudi Arabia's leverage in the geopolitical game and increasing America's grip on global energy. [...]

Furthermore, a U.S. puppet regime in Iraq will open up a vast new staging area for U.S. military actions, consolidating beyond all measure America's dominance of the Middle East and its subsequent ability to extract wealth, control politics, and crush uprisings throughout the region. This neo-imperial outpost will surely come in handy as U.S. involvement in African oil politics increases in the coming years, beginning with such areas as Gabon and the Niger Delta, where Secretary of State Colin Powell recently spent time paving the way for U.S. corporations.

Does all this sound crazy? Well it is crazy. Such craziness has long been the norm for US strategic planners.

And a follow-up piece in October 2002 called "Protesting a War of Cowards and Madmen":

It's a coward's war because its most vocal supporters hide in high offices and fortified bunkers as they send working-class kids across the ocean to kill and die. It's a coward's war because its leaders lack the decency to confront the American people with the hard geopolitical realities of oil and power behind the war's logic, choosing instead to cower behind a weak veil of decoys and straw men. It's a coward's war because it pits the most high-tech military force in the world against a bombed-out impoverished land where 5,000 children die of malnutrition every month. Most of all, it's a coward's war because the need to lash out with belligerent violence against weaker parties is a sign not of strength and power, but of inner weakness and insecurity, typical of abusive men on the verge of nervous breakdown and empires on the verge of collapse.

As much as it's a coward's war, it's also a madman's war, and there's a dangerous intersection between cowardice and madness where many acts of horror originate.

It's a madman's war because the Middle East is already in an angry uproar over the daily bloodshed of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a war in Iraq will destabilize the entire region and breed millions of new anti-American terrorists. It's a madman's war because it will cost American taxpayers at least $100 billion even as millions of Americans lack basic necessities such as food, shelter, healthcare, and education. It's a madman's war because it recklessly trashes a half-century of international law, which will probably lead to a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and an explosion of military conflicts. Most of all, it's a madman's war because it will unleash a spiral of violence that could spread throughout the Middle East and beyond.

It's Not About Niger, It's About Iraq

From Frank Rich's weekend column in the New York Times:

Well, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way ... The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him — or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see, was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three appearances before the grand jury. [...]

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. [Note from Kai: I'd say that the Iraqi people are real victims too] The real culprit — the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes — is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

The Wilson-Plame-Miller-Rove Affair

From Greg Palast via Common Dreams:

The only thing more evil, small-minded and treacherous than the Bush Administration's jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration "source."

Judy, Karl Rove ain't no "source." A confidential source -- and I've worked with many -- is an insider ready to put himself on the line to blow the whistle on an official lie or hidden danger. I would protect a source's name with my life and fortune as would any journalist who's not a craven jerk (the Managing Editor of Time Magazine comes to mind).

But the weasel who whispered "Valerie Plame" in Miller's ear was no source. Whether it was Karl Rove or some other Rove-tron inside the Bush regime (and no one outside Bush's band would have had this information), this was an official using his official info to commit a crime for the sole purpose of punishing a REAL whistleblower, Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, for questioning our President's mythological premise for war in Iraq.

New York Times reporter Miller and her paper would rather she go to prison for four months than identify their "source." Why?

Part of her oddball defense is that The Times never ran the story about Wilson's wife. They get no points for that. The Times SHOULD have run the story with the headline: BUSH OPERATIVE COMMITS FELONY TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWER. The lead paragraph should have been, "Today, Mr. K--- R--- [or other slime ball as appropriate] attempted to plant sensitive intelligence information on The New York Times, a felony offense, in an attempt to harm former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the President's claim regarding Iraq's nuclear program."

A Karl Rove or Rove-like creature peddling a back-door smear doesn't make him a source. Miller's real crime is not concealing a source, but burying the story. A reporter should never, ever give notes to a grand jury, but this information is something The Times owes the PUBLIC, not the prosecutors.

Why didn't The Times run this story? Why not now? Who are they covering for and why?

"Military action won't end insurgency, growing number of U.S. officers believe"

From Knight Ridder Newspapers (via Cursor):

A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years.

Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerilla war is through Iraqi politics - an arena that so far has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated the January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq but form the base of support for the insurgency.

"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. "It's going to be settled in the political process."

Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed similar sentiments, calling the military's efforts "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea" - pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere.

"Like in Baghdad," Casey said during an interview with two newspaper reporters, including one from Knight Ridder, last week. "We push in Baghdad - they're down to about less than a car bomb a day in Baghdad over the last week - but in north-center (Iraq) ... they've gone up," he said. "The political process will be the decisive element."

The recognition that a military solution is not in the offing has led U.S. and Iraqi officials to signal they are willing to negotiate with insurgent groups, or their intermediaries.

"It has evolved in the course of normal business," said a senior U.S. diplomatic official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of U.S. policy to defer to the Iraqi government on Iraqi political matters. "We have now encountered people who at least claim to have some form of a relationship with the insurgency."

The message is markedly different from previous statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing "dead enders" loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Vice President Dick Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its "last throes."

But the violence has continued unabated, even though 44 of the 55 Iraqis portrayed in the military's famous "deck of cards" have been killed or captured, including Saddam.

Lt. Col. Frederick P. Wellman, who works with the task force overseeing the training of Iraqi security troops, said the insurgency doesn't seem to be running out of new recruits, a dynamic fueled by tribal members seeking revenge for relatives killed in fighting.

"We can't kill them all," Wellman said. "When I kill one I create three."

Last month was one of the deadliest since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in May 2003, a month that saw six American troops killed by hostile fire. In May 2005, 67 U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed by hostile fire, the fourth-highest tally since the war began, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an Internet site that uses official casualty reports to organize deaths by a variety of criteria.

At least 26 troops have been killed by insurgents so far in June, bringing to 1,311 the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile action. Another 391 service members have died as a result of accidents or illness.

From Reuters:

A Republican congressman called for a deadline to pull U.S. troops from Iraq, while some other members of President Bush's party urged on Sunday that his administration come to grips with a persistent insurgency and revamp Iraq policy.

Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina conservative, said on ABC's "This Week" that he would offer legislation next week setting a timetable for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

"I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we've done about as much as we can do," said Jones, who had coined the phrase "freedom fries" to lash out at the French for opposing the Iraq invasion.

Other Republicans on Sunday talk shows joined Democrats in criticizing the administration for playing down the insurgency, while overestimating the ability of Iraq's fledgling forces to fight without U.S. soldiers in the lead and failing to plan for the post-invasion occupation.

"The insurgency is alive and well. We underestimated the viability of the insurgency," Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CBS' Face the Nation. He said the administration has "been slow to adjust when it comes to troop strength and supporting our troops."

Graham said the Army is contending with a serious shortfall in recruiting "because this war is going sour in terms of word of mouth from parents and grandparents." He said "if we don't adjust, public opinion is going to keep slipping away."

Jones, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said "primarily the neoconservatives" in the administration were to blame for flawed war planning.

"The reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there," he said.

Jones joins some of Congress' most liberal Democrats in demanding a deadline to withdraw troops from a conflict they said has been too costly in U.S. lives and money.

The Bush administration contends that setting a withdrawal date would fuel an insurgency that Vice President Dick Cheney recently said was in "the last throes."

To End the Insurgency, End the Occupation

Here's the executive summary of the Project for Defense Alternatives' recent research report, "Vicious Circle: The Dynamics of Occupation and Resistance in Iraq":

An examination of Iraqi public opinion data and interviews suggests that coalition military activity may be substantially contributing to Iraqi discontent and opposition. A "vicious circle" is indicated, whereby actions to curtail the insurgency feed the insurgency.

Public discontent is the water in which the insurgents swim. Polls show that a large majority of Iraqis have little faith in coalition troops and view them as occupiers, not liberators. There is significant support for attacks on foreign troops and a large majority of Iraqis want them to leave within a year. But attitudes about the occupation vary significantly among communities.

Kurds are uniquely positive about the occupation and postwar order. Sunnis express the strongest opposition. Shiites often represents a midway position. Like the Kurds, Shiites felt very positive about the 2005 election. However, regarding foreign troops: Shiite opinion is closer to Sunni, although it varies in accord with coalition military action.

A mix of nationalism and the desire to avenge some wrong or humiliation is apparent in interviews with Iraqis who oppose the occupation. One relevant factor is the war's death toll. Since March 2003, approximately 30,000 Iraqis have died due to military and terrorist activity. An additional 30,000 may have died due to the war's indirect effects, including increased criminal violence. Twenty-two percent of households report having been "directly affected by violence". The incidence of such reports is three times higher among Sunnis than Kurds and almost twice as high among Shiites as Kurds.

Ten percent of Iraqis report having had "very negative" encounters with coalition forces. Fifty-eight percent claim that US forces behave badly. But US troops face a difficult dilemma. Their mission involves intrusive and coercive measures, which stimulate opposition. Occupation duty, like war, is beset by "fog" and "friction" that contribute to errors. In this circumstance, the goal of "force protection" gains precedence over "winning hearts and minds", which further increases tensions and mishaps.

Overall: there is a correlation between Iraqis' experiences of violence, negative appraisals of US troops, and support for insurgent attacks. The geographic pattern of coalition military activity corresponds with the distribution of these attitudes, which peak in Sunni areas and Baghdad. As much as 80 percent of US military activity during the occupation has focused on Baghdad and Sunni areas.

Initially, postwar military activity aimed to assert US control locally, capture regime personnel, and curtail possible supporters of the former regime, including tribal leaders. But there were significant collateral effects. Support for the coalition subsequently plummeted and insurgent activity surged, increasing three- or four-fold during the first year. Polls in June 2004 showed that the chief reasons for the sharp negative turn in Iraqi opinion were (in order): Abu Ghraib, the Falluja attack, "bad" or violent behavior by troops, and the failure to provide security.

A series of deadly incidents and accidents in spring and summer 2003 may have been pivotal in consolidating anti-coalition sentiment among Sunnis. More important: several incidents involving Sunni tribal leaders and former Iraqi soldiers protesting for back pay may have been key in boosting insurgent activity and organization.

The Downing Street Memo

Looks like the "Downing Street memo" story, which broke in the Times of London on May 1st, is finally starting to get some attention in the US mainstream media. Now obviously, this story isn't important to the point of being all-consuming national television news in the manner of, say, celebrity trials or missing white girls; but at least it did receive a mention in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and (finally!) the New York Times; here's an excerpt from Paul Krugman's latest column:

There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" -- actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.

Here's a sample: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." [...]

Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world.

But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport?

From Editor & Publisher:

In a letter to President Bush on May 6, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' approval.

Both Bush and Blair have denied that a decision on war was made in 2002, and maintain that they were preparing for military operations only as an option. A Blair spokesman said the report added nothing significant to the record of the run-up to the war.

A recent Gallup Poll showed that 50% of the American public believe that President Bush "deliberately misled" them on Iraq and WMDs.

Marla Ruzicka (1976-2005)

[Tributes to Marla in the New York Times and the Socialist Worker]

UPDATE (21-Apr-2005 14:30EDT): From USA Today (via Common Dreams), here's one of Marla's last pieces of writing:

In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: "How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?" The American public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the start of the war and as hostilities continue.

In a news conference at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in March 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don't do body counts." His words outraged the Arab world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties.

During the Iraq war, as U.S. troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. However, since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and the U.S. military moved into a phase referred to as "stability operations," most units began to keep track of Iraqi civilians killed at checkpoints or during foot patrols by U.S. soldiers.

Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general commander explained to me that it is standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military's interest to release these statistics. [...]

A good place to search for Iraqi civilian death counts is the Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad and the General Information Centers set up by the U.S. military across Iraq. Iraqis who have been harmed by Americans have the right to file claims for compensation at these locations, and some claims have been paid. But others have been denied, even when the U.S. forces were in the wrong.

The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf. These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both cities.

These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq.

A further step should be taken. In my dealings with U.S. military officials here, they have shown regret and remorse for the deaths and injuries of civilians. Systematically recording and publicly releasing civilian casualty numbers would assist in helping the victims who survive to piece their lives back together.

A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a reminder of those whose dreams will never be realized in a free and democratic Iraq.

And finally, a tribute in the US Senate from Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy:

I met Marla three years ago, when she first came to Washington at the young age of 26. She had been in Afghanistan, where she had seen the effects of U.S. bombing mistakes that had destroyed the homes and lives of innocent Afghan civilians.

In one or two incidents, wedding parties had been bombed. In others, bombs had missed their targets and destroyed homes and neighborhoods. I remember one incident where every member of a family of 16 people was killed, except a young child and her grandfather. These were the cases Marla spoke about, and she felt passionately that the United States should help those families piece their lives back together.

It didn’t take long to convince me because she was so obviously right. We not only had a moral responsibility to those people who had suffered because of our mistakes, we also had an interest in mitigating the hatred and resentment towards Americans that those incidents had caused.

And it was Marla’s initiative – going to Afghanistan, meeting those families, getting the media’s attention, coming back here and meeting with me and my staff – that led to the creation of a program that has contributed more than $8 million for medical assistance, to rebuild homes, to provide loans to start businesses, and for other aid to innocent Afghan victims of the military operations.

From Afghanistan Marla went to Iraq, where she arrived a day or two after Saddam’s statue fell. She and an Iraqi colleague, Faiez Ali Salem, who died at the same time as Marla, organized dozens of Iraqi volunteers to conduct surveys around the country of civilian casualties.

She returned to Washington, and again, her efforts led to the creation of a program – now known as the Civilian Assistance Program – which has provided $10 million to the families and communities of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. and other Coalition forces. Another $10 million was allocated for this program just last week. [...]

Mr. President, in my 31 years as a United States Senator I have met lots of interesting and accomplished people from all over the world. We all have. Nobel prize winners, heads of State, people who have achieved remarkable and even heroic things in their lives.

I have never met anyone like Marla Ruzicka. There are many stories about Marla, and some of them are being recounted in the hundreds of press articles that have appeared in just the past 48 hours. [...]

It took time to realize that Marla wasn’t just a blond, bundle of energy and charisma – she was in fact a person of great intellect and courage who realized that if she wanted to help war victims it wasn’t enough to protest. She needed to work with people who could help her do it.

And that meant the Congress, the U.S. military, the U.S. Embassy, and the press. She quickly understood that, and she made the choice to put politics aside and focus on the victims.

It did not take long before the U.S. military saw the importance of what she was doing, and started to help her. There were several Civil Affairs officers with whom Marla worked like a team, she finding the cases, and they arranging for the plane to airlift a wounded child to a hospital, or some other type of assistance.

Marla became one of our most beloved Ambassadors.

I think one of the reasons so many people around the world feel Marla's loss so deeply is because we saw how important her work was and that it meant taking risks that the rest of us are unwilling to take. In a way she was not only helping the families of Iraqi war victims, she was also helping us.

Until she finally became an innocent victim of war herself.

Marla has been called many things. An angel of mercy. A ray of sunshine in an often dangerous and dark world. One person who knew her well described Marla as being as close to a living saint as they come, and I suspect that’s how many of us feel.

Speaking for myself, I have never met, nor do I ever expect to meet again, someone so young who gave so much of herself to so many people, and who made such a difference doing it.

Dissent and Defiance

From NYC Indymedia:

The New York City region blossomed with dozens of de-centralized anti-war actions on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Last night, United for Peace and Justice dispatched a bus to Ft. Bragg, culminating hours later with the largest rally ever outside the North Carolina army base.

Back in the city, a variety of other groups seized the anti-war initiative. A Troops Out Now! march from Harlem to Central Park attracted thousands and culminated in a march Mayor Bloomberg's townhouse.

Meanwhile, the War Resister's League engaged in civil disobedience ouside recruiting stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, staging die-ins and blockading entrances.

The morning saw a bicycle anti-war solidarity ride and, despite a significant police presence, no arrests. Anarchists staged their own last minute march, banners were dropped in New Jersey, and New Paltz saw 1500 protest. 

From the Guardian:

Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrated across Europe on Saturday to mark the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, with 45,000 marching from London's Hyde Park past the American Embassy.

In Istanbul, Turkey, about 15,000 people protested in the Kadikoy neighborhood against the U.S. presence in Iraq.

From CBC News:

Anti-war activists marched in the streets of U.S. and European cities Saturday, stopping traffic and lying down alongside flag-draped cardboard coffins to mark the second anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

Some demonstrators were arrested in New York City as they demanded U.S. troops be brought home. [Pictured to the left: anti-war rally in Central Park]

"This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience," said David McReynolds, 75, of New York, as he marched along 42nd Street.

"We have an obligation to make our resistance public and to say as clearly as we can that the war is illegal."

In San Francisco, hundreds of protesters rallied in Dolores Park in the city's Mission district, holding up posters with photographs of dead U.S. soldiers. The protesters then marched to San Francisco City Hall for another rally. [...]

"This is a war of aggression," said Ed McManus, 54, a Marin County, Calif., resident who served in the U.S. navy during the Vietnam War.

"Bush has admitted by his actions and his deeds that he is a war criminal."

Death at American Checkpoints

From the New York Times:

When an Italian journalist was driven up Baghdad's airport road toward an American military checkpoint on Friday night, she was driving into a situation fraught with hazards thousands of Iraqis face every day. [...]

Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq has caused such widespread dismay and anger among Iraqis, judging by their frequent outbursts on the subject. Daily reports compiled by Western security companies chronicle many incidents in which Iraqis with no apparent connection to the insurgency are killed or wounded by American troops who have opened fire on suspicion that the Iraqis were engaged in a terrorist attack. [...]

One of the starkest incidents in recent weeks occurred on the evening of Jan. 18 in the town of Tal Afar, a trouble spot west of the city of Mosul, where a platoon from the 25th Infantry Division was on a foot patrol. Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, an American photo agency, said that soldiers of the Apache company were walking in near darkness toward an intersection along a deserted commercial street when they saw the headlights of a sedan turning into the street about 100 yards ahead.

An officer ordered the troops over their headsets to halt the vehicle, and all raised weapons. One soldier fired a three-shot burst into the air, but the car kept coming, Mr. Hondros said, and then half a dozen troops fired at least 50 rounds, until the car was peppered with bullets and rolled gently to a stop against a curb.

"I could hear sobbing and crying coming from the car, children's voices," Mr. Hondros said.

Next he said, one of the rear doors opened, and six children, four girls and two boys, one only 8 years old, tumbled into the street. They were splattered with blood.

Mr. Hondros, whose photographs of the incident were published around the world, said that the parents of four of the children lay dead in the front seat. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, and the man's skull had smashed.

Back at a base in Tal Afar, the soldiers and Mr. Hondros filled out forms with their observations on the incident. The company commander told the soldiers that there would be an investigation, but that they had followed the rules of engagement and that they should tell the truth, Mr. Hondros said. "I'll stick up for you," the captain told the soldiers, Mr. Hondros recalled. He said the platoon involved in the incident had been engaged in an intense firefight with insurgents in Tal Afar two days before the incident. "It was a jangling experience," he said.

BBC has some of Hondros's disturbing photos of the incident in Tal Afar, which sent shockwaves around the world, except for in America where the story has been more or less ignored. Until now, at least.

UPDATE (16-Mar-2005 15:42EDT): US troops have shot dead an Iraqi general at a checkpoint in western al-Anbar province in Iraq.

March 19: Global Day of Protest

From United For Peace and Justice:

March 19-20 marks the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq. After all of the death and destruction, and with the Bush administration claiming a mandate to continue their war, there's a new urgency and a stronger determination within the global antiwar movement to bring the troops home now. [...]

On the first anniversary of the war, at least 319 cities and towns across the United States organized protests. This year there is the potential to organize even more demonstrations, and to bring more people than ever out into the streets. The Bush Administration will soon ask Congress to pump as much as $100 billion more into the war; March 19 is an opportunity to call for an end to this disaster, and to demand that the billions be allocated instead for rebuilding our communities at home and paying for the damage in Iraq. [...]

In addition to the many protests already being planned in the United States, people all around the world will be taking action on March 19 as well. Responding to a call from the European Social Forum's Assembly of Social Movements, European activists are organizing national mobilizations across Europe. Brussels will be the site of a central demonstration on the eve of a meeting of the European Council, where demonstrators will march against war, racism, and a corporate-dominated Europe. India's national Anti-War Assembly recently committed to major protests on the second anniversary of the war. And we anticipate that the World Social Forum will join this call when it meets later this month in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

From Bring Them Home Now:

On March 19, the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, military families, veterans, communities, congregations and activists from around the U.S. will march in Fayetteville, North Carolina to voice their opposition to the war in Iraq. Fayetteville is home to Ft. Bragg, one of the largest military bases in the U.S, headquarters of the US Army 82nd Airborne Division and the Special Forces Command (Green Berets), and is adjacent to Pope Air Force Base.

Last year's mobilization, the biggest demonstration in Fayetteville since the Viet Nam War, drew 1500 people to the small central North Carolina city, and gained national media attention. "This year," said Lou Plummer of Bring Them Home Now! and Fayetteville Peace With Justice, "we're upping the ante." The march this year is expected to be one of the largest on the East Coast and will draw participants from across the country. "Already, we have been contacted by grandparents who are driving from Texas with their three grandchildren to help end the war," said Plummer. "Family members of deployed soldiers are coming from as far away as Vermont, Ohio and Hawaii to be in Fayetteville on the 19th." Information about the event is posted at www.ncpeacejustice.org.

The heavy involvement of veterans and military families makes the Fayetteville march and rally unique among the more than 300 demonstrations that will take place around the country on March 19. Originating sponsors for this year's march include Bring Them Home Now!, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace. Other sponsors include Fayetteville Peace With Justice, North Carolina Council of Churches, North Carolina Peace & Justice Coalition, Quaker House, and United for Peace and Justice.

"Organizations of veterans and military families opposed to the war in Iraq continue to grow," Plummer added. "More than 50 people from our community have been killed in Iraq. Many more than that have been wounded. Nearly one out of five soldiers deployed in Iraq comes from North Carolina, many from Fort Bragg and the Fayetteville area. Our government continues to kill Americans and Iraqis in the name of peace. We're holding the march here in Fayetteville to show that military families and veterans know what others know: that we are all negatively affected by the war and occupation in Iraq, and by its consequences at home."

Iraq Imploding, Still

The election in Iraq was, in the end, a pleasant exercise that seemed to give Iraqis a few good days, which is a welcome thing lately. I even think that the quasi-parliamentary body that has been pseudo-elected stands a chance of gradually evolving into a legitimate government. Still, for now you've gotta admit that its legitimacy is slightly undercut by the fact that it was the US government that put in place its constitutional foundation enshrining the rights of foreign corporations to own Iraqi resources and pull money out of the country. That's what the White House calls "freedom", and Iraq has it now.

In any case, it seems to me that corporate privatization and pseudo-elections aren't really the main issues on the ground in Iraq right now. I think the problem on the ground in Iraq right now is that the war has turned daily life into a nightmare.

The country is a shattered battlefield where entire cities have been flattened and people are getting shot and blown up every day. Tanks roll across the rubble; fighter jets and helicopter gunships chop up the air overhead. Suicide car bombs plow into checkpoints and police stations. There isn't enough clean water or electricity or medicine. Children are dying in unfunded hospitals. Foreign soldiers come busting into your house in the middle of the night, shouting a foreign language and pointing guns, and take away your father. Even in parts of the country that are relatively unscarred by war, resources have become scarce and poverty is a serious problem in the formerly rich, educated, proud nation.

Behind concrete slabs and bristling walls of weaponry, homesick stressed-out Americans put on female mud-wrestling shows and play golf in Saddam's palaces. And I don't blame them, because I'm sure the war is hell for them too. The insurgency continues to thrive, taking a heavy toll on Iraqis and Americans alike.

No photo op in DC or Baghdad can solve these problems. What's more, no purveyor of photo ops in the Bush-Cheney administration wants to. Fixing Iraq isn't really part of the plan.

There's only one thing that can make things better in Iraq: Ending the occupation. Turning everything over to the United Nations and allowing Iraqis themselves to determine how they'd like to put together their government. They can keep the structures that the Americans have put in place and build on top of it, or they can modify what's already been done, or they can start from scratch. It would be up to them.

Of course, there's no way that's going to happen. The whole point of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq is to carve out an imperial outpost in the heart of the Middle East, in addition to Israel. Obviously, America's gotta keep its hand on the spigot of the global oil supply and that means controlling oil-rich regions around the world. That way, the US gets to decide who gets oil for industry and war, and who doesn't.

Simultaneously, the war gives the right-wing government the perfect cover for redistributing billions of dollars of American taxpayer money from social and environmental programs to the corporate-military complex. And that's on top of the under-the-table taxpayer money that's surely flowing to well-placed friends in the establishment's old boy network: $8.8 billion can't even be fakely accounted for. You've gotta hand it to the fiendish strategists of the American right-wing; they've crafted a nifty hustle, and they're so confident they can pull it off that they don't even bother getting the details right.

In the meantime, Iraq continues to burn.

[See also previous post: Iraq Imploding]

Coward's Conquest: In Iraq and In Life

Archive: May 14, 2003

The US won a just war. Iraq is liberated. Bush is a great leader. And these are not the droids you're looking for.

America is becoming an awfully strange and deluded place as a barrage of 21st century Jedi mind tricks, invoked by the Bush administration and hypnotically repeated by the mass media, appear to be taking effect on quite a few of the more gullible minds in our country. In the self-censored corporate-controlled news which none dare call propaganda, images, anecdotes, and soundbites are cut into fragments and re-assembled like a collage to support official storylines. Americans whose perception of the world is shaped predominantly by the mainstream media are easy prey for the dark wizardry of Karl Rove and the Bush White House.

To be frank, it's pretty clear by now that the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives are capable of outmuscling their political opponents with more campaign cash, heavier propaganda, more cunning tactics, and dirtier political tricks. It's also clear that the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives are not only willing but eager to exploit US military might and to send bombs and armies to crush weak countries like Iraq and Afghanistan with a one-sidedness just shy of Godzilla versus Bambi. But these are coward's conquests. These aren't triumphs of the human spirit. These aren't courageous or noble victories, guided by wisdom or humanity or integrity. These are coward's conquests because they're undertaken to gratify short-sighted political and economic greed, and they're achieved through brute force, cleverness, and deception. Scared of the truth, scared of substantive dialogue, scared of truly democratic decision-making, the Bush administration's tactics debase our country with a meanness of spirit and a pettiness of ambition that lead us, and the world, down a path of division, violence, and self-destruction.

The Hollow Statue

The US invasion of Iraq was short and bloody. The occupation is likely to be long and bloody, not to mention quite a bit more expensive than the initial $80 billion that the White House casually requested for war (even as it continued dishing out tax cuts to the rich, slashing budgets for education and healthcare, and slicing veterans' benefits). Many pundits and politicians, however, have been too busy gloating (what kind of imbecile gloats about war anyway?) and thumping their chests like Tarzan wannabes on cable news shows to realize that the violent spectacle of the $400-billion-per-year US military blowing up and overrunning an impoverished, decimated country is nothing to brag about. Obviously American fighting forces are the best in the world and will do whatever it takes to carry out their orders, but it's a grim and solemn duty, not cheap fodder for the juvenile trash talk of armchair war fans.

As it turns out, the battle of Baghdad wasn't a firefight but a photo op. Here's how it went down: on April 9, US tanks enter Baghdad and surround a public square across the street from the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists are based. A hundred or so Iraqis, including US-trained exiles flown in for the occasion, gather in the square in front of a statue of Saddam Hussein, along with an almost equal number of hungry satellite-linked journalists. In a long-awaited media moment, US marines pull down the hollow statue of Saddam, which falls on its face and breaks its upheld arm. A few dozen Iraqis jump up and down on the fallen statue and a few hundred dance in the streets like football fans after a big win. The corporate pundits and politicians deliriously ejaculate (verb. to utter suddenly and passionately, to exclaim) at the long-sought capture of the war's most telegenic image, We got it! We got it! We won!

In a propaganda daze, the statue photo op was immediately compared with the fall of the Berlin Wall and wielded as climactic evidence that the antiwar folks were wrong and advocates of war had been right all along about everything they'd ever talked about. But what exactly were war fans right about? That the US military knows how to stage a photo op? (We already knew that.) That the war has nothing to do with oil? (It still has to do with oil; note the condition of the oil industry as opposed to schools, hospitals, museums, and libraries.) That most Iraqi people would be happy about US occupation? (They aren't.) That young Americans would die for the policies of the Bush administration? (They are.)

No Reality

In order to avoid having to discuss such awkward issues, the White House followed up the statue photo op with the Top Gun photo op, in which Bush stretched the presidential theater of the absurd to new lengths by staging a flashy jet landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln and, decked out in a heroic flight suit, strutting around the ship like an adolescent boy living out a macho fantasy of being in a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie (Don't I look, like, manly?). The news media filled the air with adoring oohs and aahs, touting Bush's training as a pilot with the National Guard but forgetting to mention that Bush actually went AWOL from his National Guard duty for almost a year before being mysteriously discharged from military service.

During Bush's primetime speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, in which he slyly declared victory in Iraq without relinquishing his wartime powers (We won "the battle of Iraq" but we're still at war and always will be, so stand forever behind your commander in chief!), the aircraft carrier had to be repositioned so that TV cameras would see only the Pacific Ocean stretching to the horizon, not the San Diego coastline a few miles away. This way we could all pretend that Bush was actually at sea.

Welcome to the out-of-touch world of George W. Bush and his cronies, where you can live a fabulous life of aristocratic pretensions while asking working-class kids to suffer, kill, and die so that you can wield more power and make more money. And when people actually do suffer, kill, and die in the wars that you start, you can demand that pictures of those things don't appear on TV, so that you and your citizens can remain comfortably unaware of reality, suspended in a wispy make-believe world of American pop-war mythology.

Who wants to know the awful truth about Iraq (or Afghanistan or America or the world) when you can spend your days cruising around on Air Force One between the presidential mansion, the faux ranch, the golf course, and the latest photo op? All you need to know is: We're the good guys, and we're fighting the bad guys to defend freedom and democracy. Anyone who disturbs this pleasant fantasy with unwelcome shards of reality should be tarred and feathered, branded a traitor, and banished from public view.

In a mind-shrinking spiral of thought-conformity, our society is going McCarthyistic, with bans and boycotts and venomous outrage aimed at those who dare criticize the government. Journalists who question the White House's lies are getting snubbed, demoted, and fired. Celebrities who speak out against the war are subject to death threats and infantile ridicule. High school teachers have sent students home for sporting peace signs. Security guards have kicked shoppers out of malls for wearing antiwar slogans. Cars with antiwar bumper stickers have been sabotaged. The intimidation against dissent hangs in the air like Hollywood smog.

The Fallen and Soon Forgotten

Of course we're all glad that Saddam Hussein is out. That's one positive development amid much confusion (a reversal of US policy in the 1970s when the CIA supported the coup that brought Saddam to power and in the 1980s when Reagan provided Saddam with chemical weapons and satellite intelligence to use against Iran, with an understanding wink about the Kurds). I'm relieved that Hussein's government came apart as quickly as it did, sparing us for the moment from further destruction.

More than 170 American and British soldiers have lost their lives. Some shrug at that number as though the lives of soldiers are expendable. But 170 dead soldiers means 170 tragedy-stricken families and 170 unique lights suddenly extinguished from this world.

Nobody even knows just how many Iraqi civilians died in the bombing and ground assault on their country. The Pentagon says it doesn't want to know. How many civilians were torn to shreds by the cascading shrapnel of cluster bombs? How many were crushed by rubble or incinerated by depleted uranium? How many didn't survive the shortage of water and food that followed the onset of war? And how many Iraqi soldiers, mostly young conscripts, were killed in the bombing and fighting? Yes, even Iraqi soldiers are human beings whose deaths are worth noting with decorum.

All told, many thousands - maybe even tens of thousands - of people have been killed in this war. As Lao Tzu teaches, weapons of war are instruments of ill omen, and times of war are times of mourning; wise leaders mark military victory not with a parade but with funeral rites for the fallen.

A Wrecked Country

Of course nobody ever doubted that the US military could defeat Saddam Hussein. Many peace activists have argued for years that Iraq's military was so ravaged by the Gulf War and sanctions that it no longer posed a threat. In 1998 I wrote an essay called "Flames of the Iraqi Holocaust" which dealt with the human catastrophe unfolding in Iraq. The country's civilian infrastructure - transportation, food, electricity, water - had been destroyed during the war; its rebuilding had been prevented by both the US-led embargo and the corruption of Saddam's regime. Drinking water was unsafe. Hospitals were out of medicine. Depleted uranium from American bombs was spreading cancer and birth defects. Thousands of children were dying every month from malnutrition and preventable diseases. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians had died since the war. It was a nightmare.

Activists at that time urged the US and the UN to lighten and refine sanctions to give Iraq's civilians a chance. They also urged the US Treasury and the World Bank to waive Iraq's burdensome debt payments and instead provide humanitarian relief to allow Iraqi civil society to rebuild itself, to get its economy going, to organize democratic opposition against Saddam Hussein. In effect, sanctions were strengthening Saddam Hussein domestically by weakening civil society.

At the time, neither Republicans nor Democrats were much interested in the suffering of Iraqi civilians. Nobody wanted to talk about Iraq. The cigar-licking details of Bill and Monica's Oval Office escapades were more important. Plus, Iraq was run by the evil dictator Saddam, so whatever happened to the people of Iraq was to be blamed on Saddam. The really hawkish circles of ball-grabbing white males whispered in bars and on golf courses that we should just nuke Iraq, teach them all a lesson once and for all.

On the day the statue fell in Baghdad, cheerleaders of war put on their best Sunday faces and pretended to care about the Iraqi people: Iraq is liberated! The lowly natives are free! Hip hip, hoorah! After years of bigoted contempt in the face of Iraq's human catastrophe, the act was pretty unconvincing.

Moreover, now that Iraq is facing a new humanitarian crisis under US occupation - overflowing hospitals in Baghdad, a shortage of food and clean water, outbreaks of cholera and typhoid in Basra, the country wallowing in lawless looting and shooting - are cheerleaders of statue-toppling still concerned about the Iraqi people? Of course not; their attention has wandered to the Top Gun photo op and the Laci Peterson murder mystery. Who wants to know the awful truth about Iraq (or Afghanistan or America or the world) when you can spend your days numbing your mind with patriotic blather and reality TV?

Empire of the Unaware

America, it seems, has lost control of its own destructive might. Under the mass hypnotic spell of the mass media's commercial, nationalistic, militaristic propaganda - a 21st century Jedi mind trick - the American citizenry has let go of the steering wheel of its democracy and allowed a power-hungry clique of corporate war fans to seize the government and wield the US military as an unabashed instrument of economic empire.

The lucrative contracts summarily awarded to Bechtel and Halliburton by the Bush-Cheney administration are typical of the flagrant cronyism that will likely characterize Iraq's reconstruction. Sure, the US government will eventually hand over political power to an Iraqi puppet regime, but not before Iraq's resources and markets have been irreversibly privatized and exposed to the global corporate economy, subject to WTO rules and IMF mandates. Who benefits from that? The Iraqi people or US corporations? It's a nifty arrangement. Bush gets the power, his buddies get the cash. They pay his campaign bill, he flows them some action. They all make a killing.

They're already busy working on Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, which in some ways began with the Top Gun photo op. Don't be surprised if, in the months leading up to the 2004 election, the Department of Homeland Security puts the nation on code orange alert, thrusting terrorism and national security to the forefront of public attention. Don't be surprised if, around that same time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ratchets up the belligerence of his rhetoric and begins setting up a potential conflict with terrorists in Syria or Libya, or maybe some other small Third World nation that would serve as an appropriate backdrop to the next battle in the war on terrorism. More lies, more war, more photo ops, more profiteering, more coward's conquests.

Is this really what America wants to be?

Don't answer that question. Don't answer any of the questions raised in these pages. All you need to know is: We're the good guys, and we're fighting the bad guys to defend freedom and democracy. And these are not the droids you're looking for.

Somehow This Madness Must Cease

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, here's a speech delivered on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City:

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Here's more on the revolutionary anti-war Dr. King spurned and forgotten by mainstream America.

Iraq Imploding

The White House doesn't want to talk about Iraq, which everyone now knows is a blood-bathed disaster. Plus, there's the whole awkward thing about torturing people over there:

"They threw us in a pile, and then I heard footsteps running," one of the detainees, Hussein Mutar, testified by videotape on Tuesday at the military trial here for Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., the Army reservist accused of being the ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. "Then I heard someone diving on me."

The diving soldiers had hurt Mr. Mutar's knee and shoulder. He was crying, he testified, the men around him were crying, and the soldiers were "screaming and laughing." The soldiers ordered the detainees to strip, he said, and anyone who could not take his clothes off fast enough had them cut off with a knife.

The detainees were forced to masturbate, he said, and pile into the pyramid of naked bodies so infamously photographed by the soldiers. [...]

The other detainee, Ameen Said Al-Sheikh, a Syrian who said he had come to Iraq to fight the American forces in 2003, testified, "Graner was the primary torturer." Mr. Womack asked him if Specialist Graner had been acting under orders. "Perhaps," Mr. Al-Sheikh said, "but it is his nature. He is an aggressive man." [...]

He said Specialist Graner once jumped on his leg, already wounded by gunshot, so hard that it failed to heal straight. The soldier then beat it with a collapsible metal baton, Mr. Al-Sheikh testified.

"He handcuffed me to the door for eight hours and the next day I had a dislocated shoulder and they took me to the hospital," he said. Specialist Graner watched as another soldier urinated on Mr. Al-Sheikh, the detainee testified, and Specialist Graner made another detainee eat from a toilet. He threatened to rape them and their wives, and made them eat pork and make statements against their Muslim faith, Mr. Al-Sheikh said.

What's up with right-wingers and torture anyway? It's like Bush is Prince Humperdink and Cheney is the six-fingered man Tyrone who tortures people in the Pit of Despair. These people have some serious issues with pent-up anger.

So let's just say that for PR reasons, the Bush administration would rather change the topic and spew some ridiculous fearmongering claptrap about pilot-blinding lasers mounted on sharks or something like that. (Oops, I just switched movie references midstream.) But make no mistake: Iraq is imploding. Elections are, and always were, a joke. Despite the US military's ongoing pounding of Iraq into rubble, the occupation forces are taking it to the chin. More than 1,355 American soldiers have died over there. That's a lot of kids killed for a lie. Or rather, a tangled web of lies.

In response, the Bush administration is apparently preparing to unleash CIA-trained death squads on the Iraqi insurgency, in a heavy-handed (not to mention, historically unsuccessful) strategy that is being called "the Salvador option". If you know anything about what happened in El Salvador in the bad ol' days of Operation Condor and all that Latin jazz, you know that's a very bad sign.

Meanwhile, The Guardian asks the reasonable question, "Why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?"

Of course it's wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it's the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it's a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.

According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.

I haven't seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they've never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn't appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn't gone silent in their memory.

UPDATE (13-Jan-2005 14:05EDT): See also previous post, A Buddhist Perspective on Abu Ghraib which links to an interview with Thich Nhat Hahn.

The New York Times Lies About Fallujah

From FAIR:

In three recent reports about the military invasion of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the New York Times has misreported the facts about the April 2004 invasion of the city and the toll it took on Iraqi civilians.

On November 8, the Times reported: "In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw. American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed."

The next day, the Times made the same point, reporting that the U.S. "had to withdraw during a previous fight for the city in April after unconfirmed reports of heavy civilian casualties sparked outrage among both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis."  And on November 15, the Times noted that the current operation "redressed a disastrous assault on Fallujah last April that was called off when unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties drove the political cost too high."

It's unclear why the Times considers those civilian deaths "unconfirmed." While there is some debate over precise figures, this wording leaves the impression that nothing can be reasonably known about deaths in Fallujah.

The head of Fallujah's hospital, Dr. Rafie al-Issawi, has consistently maintained that more than 600 people were killed in the initial U.S. siege of Fallujah in April 2004, a figure that rose to more than 800 as the siege was lifted and people pinned down by the fighting were able to register their families' deaths (Knight-Ridder, 5/9/04).  More than 300 of the dead, according to al-Issawi, were women and children.  The Iraqi Health Ministry in Baghdad, part of the U.S.-installed government, gave a lower figure of about 271 killed, with 52 of the dead being women and children.  On October 26, the independent British-based group Iraq Body Count reported that the civilian death toll in Fallujah in April was about 600, based on their extensive evaluation of the numbers reported by local hospital officials and the Health Ministry, as well as mainstream media accounts.

Other journalistic investigations depict the reality of widespread civilian death in Fallujah: An Associated Press tally of the dead in Iraq (4/30/04) discovered that in Fallujah "two football fields were turned into cemeteries, with hundreds of freshly dug graves, marked with wooden planks scrawled with names -- some with names of women, some marked specifically as children. At one of the fields, an AP reporter was told by volunteer gravediggers on April 11 that more than 300 people had been buried there."  A Reuters report (4/13/04) quoted researchers from Human Rights Watch calling for an investigation based on reports they received from residents fleeing the violence in Fallujah.

Even the lower estimates provided by the Health Ministry debunk the Times' repeated assertion that reports of "large civilian casualties" are "unconfirmed"-- unless the paper wants to maintain that 52 women and children killed in an attempt to "liberate" their city are inconsequential.

War Crimes in Fallujah

From Al Jazeera:

The United Nations senior human rights official condemned the killing of civilians and wounded people in Fallujah, saying that violators of international humanitarian law should be brought to justice.

Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, spoke generally and didn’t specifically mention the U.S. army report that it is probing the videotaped fatal shooting of an injured man by a U.S. Marine in a mosque in Fallujah.

Arbour also called for investigating abuses in Fallujah, including disproportionate use of force and attacking civilians. "There have been a number of reports during the current confrontation alleging violations of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants," Arbour said in a statement.

"All violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law must be investigated and those responsible for breaches — including the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields — must be brought to justice, be they members of the multinational force or insurgents," the former UN war crimes prosecutor said in a statement.

Arbour said that she was especially concerned about civilians trapped in Fallujah, who might lack access to aid. She also expressed her concern over the incomplete information on the number of civilian fatalities.

Iraq's government says that civilian casualties during the U.S.-led offensive on the city have been minimal and that reports of a humanitarian crisis in the city are exaggerated.

But a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) insisted in Geneva on Tuesday there were civilians still trapped in the city, in need of food, water and medicine.

"The ICRC is very worried about the humanitarian situation in Fallujah, because we are receiving information from families that are still there that the injured have no access to medical care," Rana Sidani said.

The ICRC did not know how many people were left in the city of 300,000, but the Iraqi Red Crescent estimated that about 150 families are still in the shattered city, she added.

"We are sure that there are civilians in Fallujah," Sidani said. "There are injured without access to medical care."

She said the Red Cross, whose mission is to protect victims of war, knew there were civilians inside the city because there have been telephone contacts with them.

"They tried to leave but were prevented from doing so," she said, adding that she didn’t know whether the civilians left behind were men or whether there were also women and children.

"Whether they are women and children or men, they are protected under international humanitarian law. Even if they are men and participating in the conflict and are injured. Once they are injured, they are protected," she said.

American Apologies

From Common Dreams:

It started the day after the US presidential election with one student posting a picture of himself on the internet holding up a sign reading: "Sorry world (we tried) - half of America".

Within just a few days, the website www.sorryeverybody.com, set up by James Zetlen, had 27 million hits, he said.

The site features more than 2,200 pictures of contrite Americans holding up placards expressing their sorrow at the victory of George W. Bush. There are 1,000 more pictures waiting to be posted.

"It was mind-boggling the amount of emotion the website has triggered," said the 20-year-old neuroscience student at the University of Southern California. [...]

All the pictures share a common theme, asking forgiveness for the re-election of Mr Bush.

"Sorry everybody, the inmates are running the asylum. AGAIN! Please don't hate half of us."

"Dear World. We are so sorry! It makes no sense to us either."

One man's sign reads: "This one of the 55,902,001 Americans that voted against Mr Bush would like to apologize for the 59,422,689 idiots who did."

Several talk of leaving the United States. "We are so sorry that we are moving to your country."

NOTE: See also www.apologiesaccepted.com

Fallujah Witness Vigil

From NYC IndyMedia:

The Fallujah Witness Vigil is calling for all those who object to the ongoing massacre of Iraqi civilians - recently reported to have reached 100,000 dead - to join together at Washington Square Park and express their opposition. [...]

The deliberate and routine targeting of civilians and the use of collective punishment in the US effort to subjugate the population of Iraq is unacceptable. We must make it clear to our leaders, our fellow citizens, and the rest of the world that the inhuman tactics of the US military do not reflect the values of the people of this country. We must publicly pressure our leaders at every opportunity to stop the threatened carnage in Fallujah. [...]

The vigil will be held at the Washington Square Park arch, beginning at 5:30 the evening the full-scale assault on the city begins. The vigil will continue nightly at the same location and time for the duration of the attack.

Please forward this call.

FALLUJAH WITNESS VIGIL
Rev. Frank Morales
Rev. Julio Torres
St. Mark's Church in the Bowery