Global outrage at the Wikileaks revelations - except in the U.S.

the rest of the world is sitting up and taking serious notice of the wikileaks document dump...

Robert Fisk: The shaming of America

Our writer delivers a searing dispatch after the WikiLeaks revelations that expose in detail the brutality of the war in Iraq - and the astonishing, disgraceful deceit of the US

Torture, killing, children shot – and how the US tried to keep it all quiet

The largest leak in history reveals the true extent of the bloodshed unleashed by the decision to go to war in Iraq – and adds at least 15,000 to its death toll

Iraq war logs: How civilians have paid heaviest price

Leaked military files analysed by the Guardian reveal secret US tally of Iraqi deaths

WikiLeaks and Assange Honored

You are not likely to learn this from the “mainstream media,” but WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange have received the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award for their resourcefulness in making available secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Poisonous US weapons in Iraq kill thousands and mar generations

According to Brian Becker, Director of the anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, WikiLeaks is revealing the horrible truth that has been known for years.

“The police forces and army that were trained by the Americans… engaged in systematic torture, abuse, rape and it was unreported and unpublished by their masters, by the US trainers,” he said.

Now, however hard Washington may want to hush WikiLeaks, it should think twice: following the report, the UN chief investigator for torture has already called on Barack Obama to investigate possible cases of torture in Iraq, Becker pointed out.

[See Brian Becker interview here]

meanwhile, in the very country that's guilty of perpetrating the whole friggin' mess, the former baghdad bureau chief for the wapo shares her opinions in the daily beast, opinions that would NEVER get published in the wapo...

WikiLeaks Exposes Rumsfeld's Lies

Thanks to Wikileaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.

glenn, meanwhile, decries the appalling lack of censure coming from the u.s. establishment news media...

NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage

[T]he U.N. chief investigator for torture called on the Obama administration to formally investigate this complicity in Iraqi abuse, pointing out that "if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration has a clear obligation to investigate them," and that "under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse." Today, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister called on the British Government to fulfill that obligation by formally investigating the role British troops might have played in "the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq."

But these calls for investigations -- and the U.N.'s explanation of the legal obligation to do so -- are virtually nonexistent in the American media. The only mention in the NYT of the U.N.'s statement is buried deep down in a laundry list of short items on one of its blogs. Along with most American media outlets, The Washington Post has no mention of this matter at all (while whitewashing American guilt, the NYT -- in the form of Judy Miller's former partner, Michael Gordon -- prominently trumpeted from the start of its coverage the "interference" in Iraq by Iran in aiding "Iraqi militias," a drum Gordon has been dutifully beating for years).

The notion that the Obama administration not only should -- but must -- investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place. It's not hard to see why. The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

accountability...? what a quaint notion...

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Iraqis take over security, violent deaths fall by 1/3

gee... how 'BOUT that...?

Violent deaths in Iraq fell by a third in July, the first month that Iraqi police and troops were in charge of security in urban areas since the 2003 US-led invasion, official figures showed Saturday.

A total of 275 Iraqis lost their lives last month, according to statistics compiled by the interior, defence and health ministries, compared to 437 deaths in June.

Two hundred and twenty-three Iraqi civilians, 40 police and 12 soldiers died in July, while 975 civilians, 93 police and 35 soldiers were wounded in attacks, according to the figures.

Overall, 400 insurgents and militiamen were arrested by Iraq's security forces, while 41 were killed, the figures showed.

In another sign that violence levels have ebbed, the number of US soldiers killed in July dropped to seven, the lowest monthly toll since the invasion, according to an AFP tally based on independent website icasualties.org.

The previous lowest monthly toll of US casualties was nine dead in March this year.

obviously it's dangerous to jump to conclusions, but it seems reasonable to speculate that at least SOME of the violence was related to having foreign troops occupying the country... also, let's face it, ONE-THIRD is a very impressive number...

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Take the magnetic yellow ribbon OFF your car

scott ritter...



brasscheck tv...

Yellow ribbons.

They're everywhere.

And they mean nothing.

Good, goose-stepping Americans put them on their cars to "support the troops."

How about supporting the troops by making sure they're not sent to die in illegal, ill-conceived wars waged by lying psychopaths?

If you're going to put a ribbon on your car, how about a black one to show that you mourn those killed and injured, you oppose the war, and you oppose having our military hijacked by a gang of treasonous thieves.

ritter "learned to hate war by going to war"...

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CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq

as a reprise to yesterday's post, this is the reality our media are choosing to ignore...





from the nyt...

Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

“Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,’ ” she said last week in an appearance on “The Daily Show,” referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. “ ‘It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.’ ”

Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

what the f%*& is WRONG with my country...?

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Iraqi deaths: "... bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh ... or Cincinnati ... & the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon"

this is the nightmarish reality of iraq...





juan cole chronicles the horrific results of our illegal war in iraq and laments that a death toll of well over one million rates nary a blip on our home television screens, yet we collectively wring our hands over the disasters in iowa, missouri, myanmar, and wisconsin...

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.

In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.

Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.

The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline. That is, if tribal feuds got out of hand and killed a lot of people because the Baath police were demobilized or disarmed and so no longer intervened, those deaths go into the mix. All the Sunnis killed in the north of Hilla Province (the 'triangle of death') when Shiite clans displaced from the area by Saddam came back up to reclaim their farms would be included. The kidnap victims killed when the ransom did not arrive in time would be included. And, of course, the sectarian, ethnic and militia violence, even if Iraqi on Iraqi, would count. And it hasn't been just hot spots like Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. The rate of excess violent death has been pretty standard across Arab Iraq.

As for the Iraqis killed by Americans, like the 24 civilians in Haditha, the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon. The US can always find politicians to come out and say nice things on a visit to the Rose Garden. But the people. I don't think the people are saying nice things in Arabic behind our backs.

The wars of Iraq-- the Iran-Iraq War, the repressions of the Kurds and the Shiites, the Gulf War, and the American Calamity, may have left behind as many as 3 million widows. Having lost their family's breadwinner, many are destitute.

[...]

ypically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years.

Equivalent to 33 million Americans wounded, that is, the entire state of California crippled or in bandages.

As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.

In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

[...]

40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

[...]

5 million displaced Iraqis would be like 55 million displaced Americans, or the equivalent of everybody in California and New York combined

American commentators peculiarly lack a social dimension to their analyses. So if PM Nuri al-Maliki sends some troops up to Mosul and the guerrillas there lie low for a while, that is "progress" and "good news." Well, maybe it is, I don't know.

I do know that the apocalypse that the United States has unleashed upon Iraq is among the greatest catastrophes to befall any country in the past 50 years. It is a much worse disaster over time than the Burmese cyclone or the Mississippi floods.

You won't see it on television very much these days.

as professor cole says in conclusion...

God have mercy on them (Allah yarhamhum).

indeed...

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Just another day in Iraq

as i sit here in kabul, feel the brilliant sunshine streaming in my window, (particularly welcome after several days of rain) and view this youtube clip, i am reminded that this kind of horror could literally take place at any time on the very street below my room... i hope and pray every day for an end to this insanity...

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Scenes from an Iraki childhood

warning... it will break your heart...

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Petraeus comes to town... Where are the clowns...? Send in the clowns...*

* Stephen Sondheim from "A little night music"

But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

the petraeus circus is coming to town and, golly gee, everybody is SO excited...!

karen deyoung at the wapo may not be a total clown, but she's pretty damn close...

In a reprise of their testimony last September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker plan to tell Congress today and tomorrow that security has improved in Iraq and that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken steps toward political reconciliation and economic stability.

[...]

Despite considerable U.S. expenditures on oil and electricity infrastructure, oil exports and the supply of electricity and other services have not risen significantly since 2004. In early April, according to State Department statistics, the electricity supply met 58 percent of demand, compared with 66 percent a year earlier. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported last month that "millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care."

[...]

Although the administration has put a positive face on the offensive -- describing it as evidence that Maliki's government and the Iraqi military are capable of independent, decisive action -- U.S. military and administration officials privately draw a more mixed picture. They judge Iraqi forces, despite five years of U.S. training, as ill prepared for the mission, which lacked cohesive planning and ultimately ended in a draw, at best, with the Sadrists. U.S. air power was called in to back flailing government forces three days into the operation.

A senior U.S. officer in Iraq described Maliki's action as "both bold and impulsive/hasty." While some Iraqi troops "fought well," he wrote in an e-mail, others were "largely ineffective." Up to 1,000 army and police personnel reportedly either deserted or refused to fight. In the National Police, which is known to be sympathetic to Sadr, "hundreds" of officers were fired, one administration official said.

reuters isn't totally in clown territory either, but they're pretty damn close too...

The top U.S. commander in Iraq presents a long-awaited progress report to Congress on Tuesday but will offer little hope for improved security before a new American president takes over in January.

All three contenders for the U.S. presidency will be among the senators questioning Gen. David Petraeus, who is expected to say he will interrupt a series of troop withdrawals in July to evaluate security conditions.

That decision, made as rising violence threatens to unwind gains made last year, could leave more than 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq though to the end of President George W. Bush's term.

In testimony over two days, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will assess the uneven progress made in a year-long "surge" of force meant to create the calm for Iraqi politicians to advance legislation and factions to reconcile.

The upturn in violence has thrust Iraq back to the forefront of campaigns for the November presidential election.

i watched cnn's michael ware interviewing ryan crocker this morning (tuesday morning in afghanistan, monday evening in the u.s.) and, even though i happen to have a lot of respect for michael ware, i was terribly disappointed in the softball questions he lobbed to the ambassador... (you can watch here...)

tom engelhardt at the nation is certainly not a clown...

[A]fter years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, US military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). Think irony. "From what we understand," goes the lame American explanation, "the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon."

This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad's ever redder, ever more dangerous "Green Zone," here are a few realities to keep in mind as he testifies before Congress:

1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse
2. The Bush administration has no learning curve.
3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme, for which payment will someday come due.
4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way.
5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass.

juan cole is DEFINITELY not a clown...

I am always astounded at the combination of unrealistic optimism and foolish gullibility that marks political discourse on the Right in Washington. We were being told by Glen Lowry at the National Review that Sadr was on the ropes and on the verge of disbanding the Mahdi Army because the other political factions had turned on him, and that the others had had their militias join the regular security forces.

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.

[...]

The Baghdad fighting is the worst in about a year.

imho, judy collins has the best rendition of "send in the clowns" ever recorded by anyone...


Judy Collins sings "Send in the Clowns"

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A mosiac of the 4000 who will never come home

nico pitney has done a mosiac of the 4000 americans who gave their lives for an illegal war in iraq...


Click on image for full (very large) size

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Posthumous citizenship for some of the 4000 dead in a war that was illegal in the first place

shameful...

The overall U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 4,000 after four soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, a grim milestone that is likely to fuel calls for the withdrawal of American forces as the war enters its sixth year.

to add to the boundless tragedy, we have this...

A young, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.

These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the U.S. military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.

Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by friendly fire in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.

[...]

And yet, his foster mother agonized as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?

[...]

Immigrant advocates have similar mixed feelings about military service. Non-citizens cannot become officers or serve in high-security jobs, they note, and yet the benefits of citizenship are regularly pitched by recruiters, and some recruitment programs specifically target colleges and high schools with predominantly Latino students.

"Immigrants are lured into service and then used as political pawns or cannon fodder," said Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a program of the National Lawyers Guild. "It is sad thing to see people so desperate to get status in this country that they are prepared to die for it."

this is my country - let the most disadvantaged, the lowest rungs of the societal and income ladder, and often the most desperate go out and die for the benefit of the super-rich elites, and for what...? crumbs from their banquet table...

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Last of Iraqis

i stumbled across the last of iraqis blog the other day... it's the product of an iraqi named mohammed...

i'm a 25 years old dentist i live in iraq (Baghdad) i was born and raised here but unfortunately i'm thinking that the iraqis are going to extinct so i made this blog wishing that i can make a difference or even share my greif with the whole world and give them an idea about what's happening here from the point of view of a civilian living in the war zone not from the politicians nor people who gets their benefits from the conditions.

it's so rare to read an honest, first-person account of life in baghdad, altho' i'm sure i could dig out more if i tried... riverbend, via her weblog, baghdad burning, was one of those voices until she and her family had had enough and escaped to syria...

mohammed offers this up close and personal view of a 25 november suicide car bomb explosion through the eyes of one of his friends, followed by an eye-opening first hand account of an experience with the iraqi police...

The incidents in the last couple of days was really frustrating for me and my hopes for a better future, because again I figured that I was so naïve to think things will improve, it's true that some areas changed from very troubled to "Iraqi normal" areas, that means it's dangerous but like the others not more……
Today there has been an explosion by a suicide car bomb in Bab AlMuatham providence near the square , where many important buildings lies; the ministry of health, a governmental clinic, the dentistry, medicine and pharmacy colleges, the dental technical institute and a very crowded transportation garage all of these near the are of the explosion.
I have many friends who works at that clinic, one of them was so close to the explosion on his way to work , in fact he was two cars away from it…. He was with his mother in the car when the explosion happened, the car was totally destroyed and his mother was seriously injured, he survived the incident with scratches only because the explosion was at his mother's side so she took the shock instead of him, the explosion was so sever that even his mobile phone was broken, his mother is in hospital now, they are doing operations for her.
My friends said that at least 15 people have died in this explosion till now, and many are seriously injured, most of my friend's cars have been damaged by this explosion they said that it was so sever.
Another huge explosion was near my house today, I don't know about it, but the explosion was so strong.
Before that, At Friday I was really sad and heart broken for the poor people who died in AlGhazil market, the sick bastard who planned the explosion placed an explosive pack in the middle of birds-filled cage, because this market is for pets, and they only open at Fridays, more than 15 people have died in this explosion.
What I feared from has occurred, the relative peace and quietness that we have witnessed in the past couple of weeks was just for terrorist's re-evaluation, it seems that the terrorists from all the sides were just planning what to do next, they were planning how to overcome the current changes and achievements, I don't know why but they always seem to succeed, why can't we have peace for at least a month?
Well, I think I know part of the answer, because today as the ministry of anterior has announced in a survey that they made that: 19,000 of it's members can't read or write!!!! 12% of the police force can't read or write!!! I just want to know how could they do their job when they can't even read the cars papers or even the IDs? That's a shocking part of the answer.
Now I know why these incidents happened with me in which I laughed my guts out, once a checkpoint stopped me and the policeman asked for my ID and the car papers, to my surprise, he hold the paper upside down and pretended that he is checking them, he looked at it for a moment and then told me I can go, what a farce.
And now I know why many times when they take the ID and the papers they stare at them like they were comparing a drawings to find the differences!!
I just want to know how could a force that 12% of it can't read or write bring peace and settlement back to a torn-up country like Iraq?

his 4 december post offered this heartbreaking video...

In this video I used a song called "The new country" for a very popular Iraqi singer who is Husam AlRasam, it's not a new song, and it was released when I started blogging.
This song is very popular between Iraqis, I can say that more than 80% of Iraqis have it either on their mobile phones or computers.
There is something strange in this song, whenever I hear it I twitch although I've heard it countless times, believe me in Arabic it's much more effective, because the emotions were lost in translation, but I think the images compensates for that loss.
There is one thing that I want to make it clear, you will notice in the video the name Khansa`, she is a well known Arabic historic character and a poet, her brother died in a battle and she was blind from crying him, then in AlQadesia battle her four sons died too.
I'd like to dedicate this video to all the innocent Iraqis who died for a reason or no reason at all, to all the Iraqis who had to leave their country or home, to all real Iraqis who had to suffer from the situation, for everyone who loves his country, to all the innocent men in the world who died for no mistake they have done and to anyone who cares for the human race.

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Blog awards: Army of Dude

edger put up this post on docudharma supporting a blog award for army of dude, a REAL military blog from a REAL iraq soldier... i'm offering it here not only because it's honest and touching, it's also genuine as hell, and causes me waves of deja vu from my own experience in vietnam...

It looks like Iraq veteran Alex, who wrote The Real Deal as his response to Rush Limbaugh calling veterans opposed to the war "phony soldiers", has a pretty good shot at winning the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Military Blog.

The Real Deal:

When I was a kid I watched Rush with my dad every morning when he was still on TV and always found him pretty funny and clever. Over the years I didn't have a very concrete opinion about him, I just knew him as the kooky conservative radio host who defended Bush at every turn (and hey, so did I). What did Rush and I have to lose when the war in Iraq started in 2003? I didn't have any family in the military, and all my friends were too young to even enlist. Why not go kick the sh*t out of a country, as long as someone else was doing it?

This was the last time Rush and I would agree on the war, so here's my opinion of you, Rush: you're as smart, selfless and courageous as I was as a 17 year old high school senior.

You make a good point that people who joined the military during the war knew they were going and shouldn't be against it. As I've seen since I joined in 2004, everyone in the military is gung ho to a certain extent, at least in the beginning of their career. I was part of a large group of new guys who got to a unit that just got back from a year long deployment. After our hazing sessions became less and less frequent in the following months, we listened to the stories all of them were telling, of vicious firefights and rescue missions. We all wanted to do our part, we all wanted to get some too. We were going to see what it was like to take a life. Too bad Rush missed his chance to do so, or maybe he'd be singing a different tune.
...

As a phony civilian hoping to be a phony soldier, I tried to enlist in the military after I graduated high school in 2003.
...

Speaking of phony soldiers, I wanted to show Rush a few that I know: {click link above for all of Alex's pictures}

This is Chevy in Baghdad. Brian Chevalier was going to reenlist but decided against it before he was killed on March 14 during our first mission in Baqubah. His phony life was celebrated in a phony memorial where everyone who knew him cried phony tears. A phony American flag draped over his phony coffin when his body came home. It was presented to his phony mother and phony daughter.

I would be in awe if I ever met a real life soldier, and not a phony one like Bill, Matt or Brian Chevalier. Thank you, Rush Limbaugh, for telling me the difference. I hope your ass is ok.

You can vote for Alex here. Help him win the award. He deserves it.  His blog is Army of Dude.

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Blackwater: bringing it back home

what goes around, comes around...

Seven people were arrested Saturday at Blackwater Worldwide’s front entrance after protesters re-enacted the Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving Blackwater in which 17 Iraqis died.

It was the first protest at the 10-year-old private military company’s headquarters, a reflection of its heightened profile since the Baghdad shootings stirred Iraqi anger and created a diplomatic crisis for Blackwater’s client, the U.S. State Department.

The protesters drove a small gray station wagon, covered with simulated bullet holes and smeared with red paint, onto Blackwater’s property. One lay back in the driver’s seat and five others got out and lay on the ground, as if they had been shot.

The scene was intended to mimic that in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where an Iraqi doctor and her son died in a fusillade of gunfire as their car approached a Blackwater diplomatic convoy.

The protesters also smeared red handprints on two Blackwater signs.

let's not kid ourselves here... the united states has a long history of training its young people to kill, and then placing them in situations where that particular skill is required and often must be used... the employees of blackwater are no different from the soldiers the u.s. has deployed around the globe for generations... many, if not most, of blackwater's employees are, in fact, former military... they represent a vast number of americans - either current or former members of the armed forces, as well as an equally large number who are not, never have been, nor ever will be in the military - who support war as a common tool of foreign policy, rather than as an extraordinary measure to be used only when all else fails...

as a vietnam army veteran, i, too, am a product of our warrior society... along with my fellow citizens, i have been schooled in countless ways that our wars are necessary and just, and that those we are sent to fight are cruel and barbaric... is it any wonder that we have incidents like nisour square in baghdad, haditha, abu ghraib and my lai...? is it any wonder that those higher up the food chain aren't held accountable...? after all, they're only carrying on with our rich heritage of death and destruction...

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Bush: one of the more monstrous figures in recent world history

juan cole...

Bush-Aznar Transcript: The War Crime of the Century

I made two claims about the transcript published by El Pais of Bush's conversations with Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar on 22 February, 2003, at Crawford, Texas.

The first is that the transcript shows that Bush intended to disregard a negative outcome in his quest for a UN Security Council resolution authorizing a war against Iraq.

[...]

Bush made it very clear that he was willing to trash the charter of the United Nations and to take the world back to the 1930s,to an era of mass politics when powerful states launched wars of choice at will on the basis of fevered rhetoric and fits of pique.

The second claim that I made was that Bush was aware of, and rejected, an offer by Saddam Hussein to flee Iraq, probably for Saudi Arabia, presuming he could take out with him a billion dollars and some documents on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

[...]

By refusing to allow Saddam to flee with guarantees, Bush ensured that a land war would have to be fought. This is one of the greatest crimes any US president ever committed, and it is all the more contemptible for being rooted in mere pride and petulance.

Note that even General Pervez Musharraf allowed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to go to Saudi Arabia with similar guarantees, even though Sharif was alleged to have attempted to cause Musharraf's death. A tinpot Pakistani general had more devotion to the good of his country, and more good sense, than did George W. Bush.

The passage in which Bush agrees with Aznar that it would be better if Baghdad fell without a fight refers to the possibility that the Iraqi officer corps would assassinate Saddam and decline to put up a fight. Bush would very much have liked such a fantasy to come true.

But he did not need to fantasize. He had a real offer in the hand, of Saddam's flight. He rejected it. By rejecting it, he will have killed at least a million persons and became one of the more monstrous figures in recent world history.

you can read the transcript here...

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The US Police State

I am finally released from my dial-up cage. So much has been happening and much of it goes unreported by the MSM. For instance, this article touches on the growing issue of police thuggery. Have you read about all of the protester arrests in DC for ridiculous reasons?
The situation is getting grim.
Paul Craig Roberts has some excellent links in this article, courtesy of Information Clearing House.

America’s Police Brutality Pandemic

By Paul Craig Roberts

09/26/07 "ICH" -- -- Bush’s “war on terror” quickly became Bush’s war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush’s invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared.

Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as necessary to ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet, Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush’s “war on terror” has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic.

The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for “police brutality videos” turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search on “You Tube” alone turned up 2,280 police brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a selection of the most outrageous recent cases. [http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/210907_b_brutality.htm]

Police brutality has crossed the line from using excessive force against a resisting Rodney King to unprovoked gratuitous violence against persons offering no resistance, such as the elderly, women, students, and elected officials. Americans are not safe anywhere from police. Police attack Americans in university libraries, in public meetings, and in their own homes [ http://vdare.com/roberts/070123_swat.htm ].

Last week we had the case of the University of Florida student who was repeatedly Tasered without cause for asking Senator Kerry some good questions in the question and answer period following Kerry’s speech. Two days after the Florida student was gratuitously brutalized, Senate Republicans defeated Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy’s bill to restore habeas corpus protection. [ http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12933.html ]

A UCLA student was Tasered by police without cause for studying in the university library without having having his student ID on his person. Following police orders to leave, the student was walking toward the door when police grabbed him and repeatedly Tasered him.

On September 19, 2007 a young woman was repeatedly Tasered without cause by a large brutal cop in a parking lot outside a night club in Warren Ohio.

On September 14, 2007, Roseland, Indiana, city council member David Snyder was ejected from a council meeting by dictatorial council chairman Charlie Shields. Snyder had protested being limited to one minute to speak. Police goon Jack Tiller escorted Snyder out, and as Synder exited the building, Tiller, following behind, pushed Snyder to the ground and without cause began beating Snyder in the head with a nightstick. Snyder was hospitalized.

Local TV news stations throughout the US offer an endless stream of police brutality videos, which are then posted on the stations’ web sites, often with an opportunity for citizens to express their opinion of the incidents.

There are many disturbing aspects to police brutality cases.

One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify the unprovoked police violence against citizens.
[...]
Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens will justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and how unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com’s poll of its viewers found that 64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of police brutality, but 27.8% thought that Snyder got what was coming to him. “Law and order conservatives” and other authoritarian personalities invariably defend acts of police brutality. Perhaps the police brutality pandemic will bring the day when we will be able to say that a civil libertarian is a law and order conservative who has been brutalized by police.

The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away with it.
[...]
The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed now with military weapons and trained to view the general public as the enemy, against whom “pain compliance” must be used, has placed every American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our “public protectors.”

In “free and democratic America,” citizens are in such great danger from police that there are websites devoted to police brutality with online forms to report the brutality.

Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled, “Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States.” The report stated:

“Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration, while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity.
[...]
“The brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in chapters on each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge in headlines and in survivors' complaints. It is important to note, however, that because it is difficult to obtain case information except where there is public scandal and/or prosecution, this report relies heavily on cases that have reached public attention; disciplinary action and criminal prosecution are even less common than the cases set out below would suggest. [...]
Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an 86-year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West Point. Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and nearly had his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security regarded the pin on the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old Marine general and former governor of South Dakota could use to hijack an airliner and commit a terrorist deed.

In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false arrests.

The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves from police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a felony with a long prison sentence to “assault a police officer.” Assaulting a police officer means that if a police thug intends to beat your brains out with his nightstick and you disarm your assailant, you have “assaulted a police officer.” If you are not shot on the spot by his backup, you will be convicted by a “law and order” jury and sent to prison.

No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a “free” American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if not of his life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must wish that he had such power over Americans(emphasis added).

I've been tasered, more than once. The first time was by my roomate in college, playing with his new toy.
He regretted it. So did the next guy.
Maybe that's why I ended up as an electrical engineer.
We need to raise awareness any way possible to these incidents. They speak directly to the loss of our Constitutional freedoms.
It's time to start fighting back.
Thanks to the Prof and the rest of the gang for all their hard work in the past weeks. I have felt very lame for not helping out.
Now I'm back, and I'm mad as hell!

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Victory vs. defeat in Iraq: the assumptions are wrong

a front page post at daily kos, entitled "who lost iraq," quotes extensively from an article by james dobbins in foreign affairs magazine... there are several terms that are used repeatedly in the post and in dobbins' article - success, failure, won, lost, mistake, victory, defeat... all of these words carry very strong connotations, and all of them are wrong...

asking who "lost" iraq only implies that it could have been "won"... talking about iraq as a "failure" only implies that it could have been a "success"... talking about "defeat" in iraq only implies that it could have been a "victory"... iraq is none of those... iraq cannot even be considered a mistake... rather, iraq is a deliberate, carefully pre-meditated lie, planned and executed to achieve precisely what it has achieved - an endless tableau of death and destruction that keeps money and power in the hands of those who most desire it... using those other words in connection with iraq only leads one to believe that, had we just had the right policies, the right people in place, the right tactics, the right planning, all would have turned out for the good...

as a country, we need to face the truth: the leaders of the united states require war as an integral part of their money and power agenda, period... unless and until we face that brutal reality, we have no hope of being the country we all believe we can be...

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Everything's going so well in Iraq

kevin drum compiles a few stats from the brookings institution iraq index... brookings, btw, is where michael o'hanlon and kenneth pollack, shameless bush surge defenders, work... (see here and here...)

Violence Metrics

	June/July 2006	June/July 2007	Change
Iraqi Military and Police Killed	349	429	Up 23%
Multiple Fatality Bombings	110	82	Down 25%
# Killed in Mult. Fatality Bombings	885	1,053	Up 19%
Iraqi Civilians Killed (All violent causes)	6,739	5,300	Hard to say1
U.S. Troop Fatalities	104	187	Up 80%
U.S. Troops Wounded	983	1,423	Up 45%
Size of Insurgency	20,000+	~70,0002	Up ~250%
Attacks on Oil and Gas Pipelines	8	143	Up 75%

¹Methodology changed dramatically between 2006 and 2007, so numbers are highly suspect.
²Number is for March 2007.
³Numbers are for June only. No July numbers are available.

Infrastructure Metrics

	June/July 2006	June/July 2007	Change
Diesel Fuel Available	26.7 Ml	20.7 Ml	Down 22%
Kerosene Available	7.08 Ml	6.3 Ml	Down 11%
Gasoline Available	29.4 Ml	22.2 Ml	Down 24%
LPG Available	4,936 tons	4,932 tons	Down 0.1%
Electricity Generated	8,800 Mwatts	8,420 Mwatts	Down 4%
Hours Electricity Per Day	11.7	10.14	Down ~14%

⁴No numbers available for June/July. Figure is extrapolated from May and August numbers.

things are going smashingly well, i'd say...

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Shilling for Bush via blatantly dishonest WaPo reporting

read this...

Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains
Criticism Shifts to Factional Unrest

By Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; Page A04

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions.

reading the above in the absence of any other information, one would have to conclude that "military gains" and "positive signs" in iraq are an established fact... however, in light of stories like the following, one might conclude differently...

Helicopter crash in Iraq kills 14 U.S. troops
A helicopter went down in northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard, the military said, the deadliest crash since January 2005.

Iraq's 'Alamo' simmers
Sunni militants have chosen to make a concerted stand in Dora against U.S. troops, who in turn have locked down the Baghdad district.

Bush and U.S. ambassador extend faint praise for Maliki
In an apparent distancing, the U.S. says the Iraqi government risks being replaced if it doesn't respond to the people's demands.

U.S. Uncovers Iraq Bribe Case
Authorities Look to Army Major, Family for Missing $9.6 Million

positive signs...? military gains...? oh, yeah... you bet...

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Keith Olbermann: "Go there and fight, your war…yourself."

another powerful special comment... however, rather than closing with the special comment, breaking with tradition, keith OPENED the show with the special comment...



(thanks to crooks and liars...)

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Watch this

(thanks to joe at americablog...)

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