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Nov 5, 2010
i may be shutting down this site. for some reason, blogdrive has seen fit to delete cedric's account. now it's no loss for the community, like me, cedric uses blogdrive as a back-up account. but he just found out he'd been deleted by this crap ass, racist blogdrive. yeah, i said, it, kiss my ass. let me be really clear, if cedric's account is not restored, i won't be using this anymore and i doubt any of the rest of us will. in other words, we don't support racism. if blogdrive wants to practice racism, it will do so on its own. i will continue my main site at my main address. but this may be my last post on blog drive. that will depend upon whether or not they restore cedric's account and whether or not they apologize for their blatant racism. go read last post ever?, it's amazing. cedric was attempting to cross-post when he discovered that his account had been disabled because he is black.
Posted at 07:05 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
Nov 4, 2010
wikileaks and pig terry gross
 up above it's Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts " The Aftermath"
and i was surprised to discover a wednesday night comic. but that's
isaiah for you. he works really hard. and it shows. that's a great
comic. ap reports
that wikileaks founder julian assange's call for the u.s. to
investigate torture claims but the u.s. doesn't even have an interest in
responding to the call. so i think we know where that's going. it's really a shame and it's a shame that the wikileaks release wasn't handled better. but
you do not NOT release something on a friday and not as the workday is
winding down. you will get the least amount of attention than you would
on any other work day. that's a basic. here's what else is a basic: terry gross is a pig. oink, oink, oink. ' The face of sexism (Ava, C.I. and Ann)'
is a piece that ann, ava and c.i. worked very hard on and the takeaway
is that, in the last 5 months, only 20.58% of terry gross' guests have
been women. i told you terry gross was a pig. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Thursday
November 4, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the stalemate
continues, Allawi states Iranian officials do not want him to be prime
minister (of Iraq), Barack mouths on about Don't Ask, Don't Tell but
can't speak of Iraqi Christians (and it's been noticed), Julian Assange
holds a press conference calling for an investigation into the
incidents recorded in the documents WikiLeaks, the body of a fallen US
soldier makes it home, a case is filed questioning the legality of the
Iraq War, and more. Friday October 22nd, WikiLeaks
released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. The documents
-- US military field reports -- reveal torture and abuse and the
ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed from the Bush
administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both
administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions
on torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever
admitted to. Laura Oliver (Journalism.co.UK) reports on Global Investigative Journalism Network's petition in support of WikiLeaks and quotes from the petition: We,
journalists and journalist organisations from many countries, express
our support for Mr Assange and Wikileaks. We believe that Mr Assange
has made an outstanding contribution to transparency and accountability
on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, subjects where transparency and
accountability has been severely restricted by government secrecy and
accountability has been severely restricted by government secrecy and
media control. He is being attacked for releasing information that
should never have been withheld from the public. We
believe Wikileaks had the right to post confidential military
documents because it was in the interest of the public to know what was
happening. The documents show evidence that the US Government has
misled the public about activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and that war
crimes may have been committed. Today in Geneva, Julian Assange spoke to the press. CBS and AP report
that he's calling for an investigation into the incidents documented
in all the papers WikiLeaks has released on Iraq and Afghanistan. Stephanie Nebehay (Reuters) quotes
him stating, "It is time the United States opened up instead of
covering up." Assange was in Geneva as the US prepares to face a UN
Human Rights Council review tomorrow in Geneva. AFP notes that "human rights campaigners" are making public their disappointment with the White House and the ACLU's
Jamal Dakwar is quoted stating of Barack, "We all thought that was a
terrific beginning. However, we are now seeing that this administration
is becoming an obstacle to achieving accountability in human rights."
The
Rutgers School of Law-Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinci today
filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in the United States Supreme
Court in a case challenging the invasion of Iraq by President Bush in
the absence of a Declaration of War by Congress. The
Plaintiffs in the case are New Jersey Peace Action, a 50-year-old
anti-war organization; William Joseph Wheeler, an Iraq war veteran; and
two morthers whose sons had been deployed in Iraq -- Anna Berlinrut of
Nutley, New Jersey and Paula Rogovin of Teaneck, New Jersey. The
case was dismissed by both the Federal District Court in Newark and
the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on procedural grounds,
without reaching the merits of the constitutional claim. The
plaintiffs are represented by Rutgers Professor Frank Askin, Directof
or the Constitutional Litigation Clinic, and Newark attorney Bennet
Zuofsky, and students in the Rutgers Law School clinic, who have worked
on the case for the past three years. Plaintiffs'
case is based on the original intent of the Framers of the
Constitution to take the power of peace and war out of the hands of a
single executive and place it in the hands of Congress. Plaintiffs'
arguments rely heavily on the records of the Constitutional Convention
on June 1, 1787, and the rulings of the Supreme Court in the first half
of the 19th century. The
petition notes that since the end of World War II, U.S. presidents
have regularly ignored the intent of the Framers and instituted foreign
hostilities without obtaining a Declaration of War from Congress.
However, the petition also says that in none of the prior wars did the
President take the initiative to invade a sovereign nation without
provocation. According to the petition, in the first half of the 19th
century, the Supreme Court emphasized that the plain language of the
Constitution meant that the President could not launch an all-out war
in the absence of a Congressional Declaration. The
petition also notes that no federal court has ever examined the
debates at the Constitutional Convention on June 1, 1787, when the
decision as to the constitutional allocation of the war powers was
decided, and asks the Supreme Court to at last take up the issue. Since
World War II, the lower federal courts have dismissed suits challening
the President's authority to wage war on technical procedural
grounds. The
case raises fundamental issues concerning the intent of the Framers of
the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court as the ultimate
interpreter of our national charter. The petition reminds the Court of
the famous words of Thomas Jefferson that in Article I Section 8 of the
Constitution the Framers had provided "an effectual check to the Dog
of War by transferring the power of letting it loose from Executive to
Legislative body, from those are to spend to those who are to pay." Media Contact: Professor Frank Askin 973-353-3239 Contact: Janet Donohue 973-353-5553 Sunday an attack on a church in Baghdad left at least 58 dead. Tuesday Al Jazeera's Inside Story addressed the assault.
Dareen
Aboughaida: An al Qaeda-linked group called the Islamic State of Iraq
claims responsibility for attacking the Catholic Church in Baghdad on
Sunday. Situated close to the Green Zone, the gunmen held more than a
hundred people hostage for hours before security forces stormed the
church. The kidnappers were demanding the release of al Qaeda prisoners
from Iraqi and Egyptian jails. They also threatened the Coptic Church
of Egypt for allegedly detaining female Muslims against their will. The
attack is being described as the bloodiest against Iraq's dwindling
Christian community since the 2003 US-led invasion. Joining us to
discuss this, our guests: In Erbil, Aziz Emmanuel Zedari -- he's a
member of the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Council -- that's an NGO seeking
to enhance the rights of Christians in Iraq; in London, we have Iraq
Affairs Analyst Abdulmunaem Almula; and in Washington DC, Daveed
Gartenstein-Ross, he's the director for the Center of Terrorist
Radicalization at the Foundation For Defence of Democracies. Gentlemen,
welcome all to the program, thank you very much for your time on
Inside Story. Abdulmunaem Almula, let me begin with you and discuss the
actual mechanics of the attacks. Now the assailants first battled
security at the stock exchange building then it's reported the men fled
to the nearby church where they took those people hostage. So what do
you make of this? Was the target the stock exchange or was it the
Church to avenge for those al Qaeda members held in prisons in Iraq
that we were talking about in the introduction?
Abdulmunaem
Almula: Well to be honest with you, if anything this operation will
demonstrate -- it will demonstrate the lack of professionalism and the
training of the Iraqi security forces. Also it will further demonstrate
that the-the-the lack of ability of this Iraqi government to handle
such a situation. For me, I can look at the attack as it came from a
common -- common murderers, common criminals that were trying to-to
attack the-the Iraqi Exchange Centre or one of the Iraqi business
centers next to the Salvation Church and then they scaled on the wall
of the-the Church and they start to-to shoot the civilians there. For
me, I think it is -- whoever the group behind this attack -- either al
Qaeda or any other terrorists groups -- it is a terrorist act and the
only destination that we can blame is the -- is the Iraqi government
and the Iraqi security forces.
Dareen Aboughaida: Aziz Emmanuel Zedari --
Abdulmunaem Almula: So many
Dareen
Aboughaida: Aziz Emmanuel Zedari, let me bring you in right now. How
should we read this attack in your opinion? What significance is it
that a Church was attacked?
Aziz Emmanuel Zedari: First of all,
I would like to express my condolences for the victims of the largest
terrorist attack on the Christian community on the Church in Baghdad.
Well the reason the attack is the last in a series of regular and well
organized attacks on the Christian community in Iraq with an aim to
drive the Christian community from Iraq.
Dareen Aboughaida:
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross in Washington, al Qaeda is claiming
responsibility for this attack so does the operation carry the hallmarks
of al Qaeda in your opinion?
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: It's
difficult to say in this case. There's certain al Qaeda hallmarks that
you can attach to well coordinated terrorist attacks. For example,
bombings that are near simultaneous in multiple parts of the city. That
has the hallmark of al Qaeda. In this case, storming a church?
Tactically, strategically, it's something that al Qaeda certainly has
done, it's something that they're capable of but one can't tell just by
the signature of this attack -- at least not without getting much
deeper into tactics, techniques and procedures than has been reported
publicly.
We started with the above for a reason. If you believe
al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is responsible for the attacks -- I'm not
saying you should believe that or shouldn't, make up your own mind --
than you take the statement they issued. You don't get to go 'buffet
style' and claim that al Qaeda is responsible but they did it for
reasons other than what they listed in their note. A reporter reported
on one of the dead priests. We ignored the story. I'm not blasting the
reporter for what he filed and am all for reporters filing often and
filing completely. But I didn't find it of value and knew how it would
be used. Unless you're giving the priest the gift of prophecy -- in
which case, start the canonization -- you're giving too much weight to
his 'vision' (fear). And a number of articles are being filed claiming
that the priest's fear is what happened. Again, if you accept al Qaeda
in Iraq as the culprit, they have posted a statement online. They stated
their reasons in that posting. If it's not in their posting, there's a
reason it's not.
Jim Kouri (NWV) is not being referred to with the above, however, his piece has a headline that the "Christian bloodbath [is] ignored by Obama White House."
I'm aware of the NSC making a statement. I'm not aware of the White
House -- or Barack himself -- making a statement. And I'm including
Kouri's story because this is why there is a perception about Barack. A
slaughter took place. Has he commented? If not, then he doesn't need to
be surprised when American Christians, so used to him weighing in on
Muslim issues, have questions about his devotion or identification to
his proclaimed faith.
Barack has no made no comment. November 1st, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs issued the following: The
United States strongly condemns this senseless act of hostage taking
and violence by terrorists linked to al Qaeda in Iraq that occurred
Sunday in Baghdad killing so many innocent Iraqis. Our hearts go out to
the people of Iraq who have suffered so much from these attacks. We
offer sincerest condolences to the families of the victims and to all
the people of Iraq who are targeted by these cowardly acts of
terrorism. We know the overwhelming majority of Iraqis from all its
communities reject violence and we stand with them as we work together
to combat terrorism and protect the people of our two nations. The
United States strongly condemns the vicious violence witnessed today,
November 2, as a result of multiple terrorist attacks in Baghdad that
killed scores of innocent Iraqis and wounded hundreds more. We extend
our deepest sympathies to the victims' families and to all Iraqis who
suffer from terrorism. We have confidence that the people of Iraq will
remain steadfast in their rejection of efforts by extremists to spark
sectarian tension. These attacks will not stop Iraq's progress. The
United States stands with the people of Iraq and remains committeed to
our strong and long-term partnership. And
that's it. And notice, I keep saying to pay attention to this, NSC --
you need to pay attention to the national security council types.
That's who's controlling Iraq for the US. It's not out of the State
Dept -- despite the lies -- it's the NSC and it's been Samantha Power's
baby for some time. AFP reports
that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay,
"criticised the Iraqi government on Thursday for failing to protect
religious communities" and they quote her stating, "I believe much more
could have been done to protect groups which are clearly targets and
who are particularly vulnerable. It is imperative that the Iraqi
government intervenes decisively and impartially at the first sign of
incitement to hostility and violence against any religious groups or
minorities. The authorities should ensure that religious sites and
other likely targets are adequately protected, and reach out and
demonstrate to different communities that their safety is of paramount
concern to the government." And yet Barack remains silent. That's fine
if that's what he wants to do but he can then turn around and whine
that no one believes him about his religion and expect any sympathy
beyond the Cult of St. Barack. Today Reuters notes
that there is a movement in Iraq to take newly elected MPs to court in
order "to recover salaries and benefits of almost $250,000 paid to
politicians who have barely worked since an inconclusive March election
that has yet to produce a new government." Inconclusive? March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty-eight days and still counting.
Kelly McEvers (NPR's All Things Considered) reports
some believe the violence may force the parties to sit down and form a
government and quotes an Iraqi wondering pointing out that Nouri might
remain prime minister and yet he can't even secure Iraq currently. And
Nouri's not the only one claiming he won't leave. Rudaw is reporting
Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, is stating that he will remain
president and not surrender his post to a non-Kurd. This statement
would appear to squelch US government hopes that they could slide
Allawi into that position -- beefed up or not -- as a consolation prize
for Allawi getting more votes but the US government determined to have
Nouri remain prime minister. Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) interviews
Allawi today who tells him Tehran officials/leaders will not allow him
to be the leader and who is quoted stating, "It's very sad. I always
maintained that the security improvement was only fragile. . . . Unless
the political landscape is changed, then all the surges and awakenings
are not going to bring sustainable results. That's why we have been
witnessing an escalation of violence. . . . What we have seen and what
we know is only the tip of the iceberg. We haven't yet seen the whole
iceberg. Assassinations are now a flourishing business throughout the
country. There are explosions and violence. But now I think it will
continue to take a sharper bend toward the worst." Turning to today's violence . . .
Bombings?
Reuters notes
3 Hit roadside bombings which left six people (four Iraqi soldiers,
two police officers) injured, a Mosul bombing which wounded three
children, a Shirqtat bombing claimed the lives of 3 police officers
with six more injured, 2 Hit roadside bombings claimed the lives of the
May of Kubaisa, Ziyad Rzayij, and his driver and a Baghdad sticky
bombing left two employees of the Ministry of the Interiror injured as
well as three bystanders. Shootings? Reuters notes
an attack on a Falluja police checkpoint which left three police
officers wounded and, due to a bombing that went off when the Iraqi
military attempted to provide backup, three soldiers were also injured. Corpses? Moving
to the United States. Yesterday, Barack held forth at the White
House. This is part of his exchange with CNN's Ed Henry. Ed
Henry: And just on the policy front, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is
something that you promised to end. And when you had 60 votes and 59
votes in the Senate -- it's a tough issue -- you haven't been able to
do it. Do you now have to tell your liberal base that with maybe 52 or
53 votes in the Senate, you're just not going to be able to get it done
in the next two years? Barack
Obama: Well let me take the second issue first. I've been a strong
believer in the notion that if somebody is willing to serve in our
military, in uniform, putting their lives on the line for our security,
that they should not be prevented from doing so because of their
sexual orientation. And since there's been a lot of discussion about
polls over the last 48 hours, I think it's worth noting that the
overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way. It's the right
thing to do. Now, as commander in chief, I've said that making this
change needs to be done in an orderly fashion. I've worked with the
Pentagon, worked with Secretary [of Defense Robert] gates, worked with
Adm [Mike] Mullen [Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] to make sure
that we are looking at this in a systematic way that maintains good
order and discipline but that we need to change this policy. There's
going to be a review that comes out at the beginning of the month [of
December] that will have surveyed attitudes and opinions within the
armed forces. I will expect that Secretary of Defense Gates and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mullen will have something to
say about that review. I will look at it very carefully. But that will
give us time to act in -- potentially during the lame duck session to
change this policy. Keep in mind we've got a bunch of court cases that
are out as well. And something that would be very disruptive to good
order and discipline and unit cohesion is if we've got this issue
bouncing around in teh courts, as it already has over the last several
weeks, where the Pentagon and the chain of command doesn't know at any
given what rules they're working under. That's
a damn lie. The Pentagon, as a result of Judge Virginia Phillips,
stopped discharges under Don't Ask, Don't Tell and had to go through
the recruitment proces of those who stated they were gay. There was no
confusion, the sun didn't crash into the earth and the whole world
didn't turn upside down. The change came from Barack -- oh look it, he
actually delivered a change! -- when he made the decision that the
administration would fight -- not just appeal, but fight -- Judge
Phillip's decision. That's when confusion set in. Didn't he want gays
to have the ability to serve openly?
No,
not really. He wanted to get Don't Ask, Don't Tell off the law books
(hold on) and then leave it up to the military. That's not what he
promised. And because he wanted that, what the House passed was
basically what had been drafted three previous times but had always
included that it was discrimination. Not now. And that was the real
problem the White House had with Judge Phillip's decision. It didn't
just end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it ruled it was unconstitutional as
well. Again, the plan is just to get Don't Ask, Don't Tell off the
Congressional side and then allow the military to decide what to do.
And by ignoring the discrimination issue, by refusing to address that,
it is just a policy and a policy can be changed. So nothing's addressed
or dealt with.
Nancy A. Youssef and David Lightman (McClatchy Newspapers) report
someone's notion -- unidentified -- that any repeal of Don't Ask,
Don't Tell is now dead in Congress. I'm not disputing that possibility
-- we noted that was likely to happen after the midterms back in April
of 2009 because we didn't snort or inject the Hopium and believe the
whole world had changed (or even the tenor of the White House)
following the 2008 elections. I am disputing what appears to be Youssef
and Lightman's reasoning: Among the losers in the House of
Representatives were at least 10 Democrats on the Armed Services
Committee, including Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri. Two-term Rep.
Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., an Iraq war veteran who added an amendment to
the defense appropriations bill that would have repealed "don't ask,
don't tell," also lost. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., 72, a
nine-term veteran, is expected to replace Skelton as committee
chairman. Wednesday, McKeon called for leaving military spending
largely intact. Previously, he said he favored leaving "don't ask,
don't tell" on the books. What's the point? Ike was
against repeal, Patrick was for it. I don't see that in the above. Nor
do I see any understanding that a lame duck Congress will sit between
now and January. I don't doubt the possibility that it's dead -- that's
why we were repeatedly warning against all the crap that all the Cult
of St. Barack groupies were promoting. That's why we wrote the piece we
did at Third on Sunday noting that Barack was not planning on ending
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell." He was going to have Congress overturn it but
what to do was going to be left to the military. If anything was done,
it would be the military and not the Congress (or the courts) and
refusal to address this in terms of legalities is how Don't Ask, Don't
Tell popped up to begin with and that's why those of us who had some
legal knowledge of the history of this issue never fell for Barack's
song and dance. I like Patrick Murphy (I consider Ike Skelton's defeat a
huge loss for the Congress) but all the obits on him are floating off
the earth and not bound by gravity or reality. In part that's due to the
fact that a lot of idiots covered DADT. Patrick did not do a great
job. He built on the hard work of Ellen Tauscher and gym bunnies
wanting to be part of the movement were thrilled because they found
Patrick cute and they loathed Ellen. (Apparently just because she was a
woman.) Patrick was really good at repeating White House talking
points, he just didn't grasp he was being played for a fool. The whole
-- quickly dropped when a large number of us began objecting -- "Let's
tour the US for months and we'll built support for the repeal!" was
nothing but a distraction, a delaying tactic and he realized that far
too late. Just like he was out of the loop when he was being told that
Ted Kennedy would lead in the Senate (we called that out in real time
and noted the reality that no one wanted to speak at that moment, Ted
was terminal and was showing up for hearings or doing any Congressional
business). I can give 20 times off the top of my head where Patrick
Murphy repeated publicly what the White House told him -- repeated it
as fact -- when it was an outright lie. He had energy and he had
dedication but he lacked perspective and he lacked knowledge.For more
on the smoke and mirror games the White House has played on DADT see
Third's " Barack, Pelosi and the other damn, dirty liars." 21-year-old Pfc David R. Jones died on October 24th while serving in Iraq. How? As we've noted before: No one in the government knows or is willing to tell. Tuesday the Utica Observer-Dispatch editorial board weighed in:
The
Bennetts initially were told the death was a suicide, but a family
member told the Albany Times Union last week that Theresa Bennett
received a copy of a text message from a soldier who worked with Jones
in Iraq stating that her nephew was one of five people killed or
wounded in a shooting "rampage" on a U.S. military base in Baghdad.
[. . .]
A
full accounting of Jones' death must be provided. The death of a
soldier in the service of his country is a tragedy under any
circumstance, and it must not be made worse by shrouding it in mystery.
The family and the larger community who knew and loved David Jones
deserve answers.
Albany's CBS 6 (link has text and video) reported
the soldier's body is expected to arrive today at Griffiss
International Airport and that "police and Patriot Guard riders will
escort Jones back to Johnsville." And WNYT reports that the airport arrival and escort back to Johnsville has taken place. Dennis Yusko (Albany Times Union) adds,
"Several hundred people from the area braved falling rain and cold
temperatures for more than an hour to line the main street in the
village to glimpse the white hearse that brought Jones home for the
last time. Schools closed and workers and families came from all over
to witness the procession." Subrina Dhammi (WNYT) sketches out
the details, "The weather Thursday fit the mood of the small,
close-knit village of St. Johnsville. Residents braved the cold and
steady rain to line the street waiting to welcome home a fallen
soldier. School children proudly displayed signs saying 'we will never
forget you'." There will be a viewing held tomorrow
at St. John's Reformed Church (one to three p.m. and five to seven
p.m.) with funeral services to be held Saturday (also at St. John's
Reformed Church, starting at 11:00 a.m.). From the young man's obituary:
David
enjoyed many activities and sports including soccer, running, and
making music with his friends. David loved hanging out with family and
friends and watching sports with his loved ones. He was very proud of
being in the military and to have the opportunity to serve and honor
his country. He will be missed by his family members and many friends.
David was extremely close with all of the members of his St. Johnsville
High School graduating class of 2008. Family came first in David's
life and he leaves his loved ones and friends with countless memories.
He was a fun-loving individual and was kind, caring and energetic.
Survivors
include his beloved family; his mother: Theresa Ann Bennett of St.
Johnsville; his father, George Arthur Bennett, Jr., of St. Johnsville ;
his fiance: Britany Winton of Gloversville; his biological father,
David Richard Jones; brothers: Timothy Bennett, Nick Bennett, Georgie
Bennett III, Chris Bennett, Bernie Bennett and Alexander Jones; his
grandmother: Alice Jones, and many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews,
cousins and friends. He was predeceased by his paternal grandfather,
George Bennett; maternal grandfather: Henry Jones; paternal
grandmother: Arthella Bennett and by his uncles: Garry and Arthur
Bennett and Timothy Jones.
It's amazing Barack Obama's had time
to fly all over the country campaigning but not to demand that the
military under him provide the family of David Jones with an answer. Closing with community sites:
Posted at 08:02 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
Nov 3, 2010
oh peter daou, you hopeless little child. barack's not going to listen. did you not hear his speech? he's never going to listen. the reality is the barack america now sees is the real barack. he was the blank canvas they could project on once upon a time. now he's shown who he is. he's
stabbed reproductive rights in the back repeatedly. he's refused to
move on don't ask, don't tell (and his 'plan' actually undercuts what
was being sought in congress before he was president). he's out for himself. that's the only 1 he's ever cared about and you can determine that by counting up all the 'i's and 'my's in his statements. he's
always been handed everything and he's got a huge ego that does not
admit defeat and you can be sure he's drunker right now than he's ever
been as he curses out the left. that's barack. that's who he is. there will be no great left change from barack. he was never a lefty. and, peter, you know that. so why are you jerking off in front of all of us today? let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' | Wednesday,
November 3, 2010. Chaos and violence, a threat is issued against
Iraqi Christians, Nouri's lack of protection for them is noted, the
stalemate continues and -- guess what -- some are saying Nouri's about
to be prime minister (we've been there before, yes), WikiLeaks gets
further attention (and student press tends to do better than Big or
Little Media in the US), and more. The
question now is: what were the government's measures since 2008 to
preserve one of Iraq's components from opression and violence? Unfortunately,
nothing has been done. It is easy to accuse al Qa'eda of brutal
massacres, but the country's Christians are publicly targeted and are
beseeching the government to provide their security, but what did Nouri
al Maliki's government offer them? The
targeting of minorities could lead to the fragmentation of Iraq and the
disruption of its cultural and political fabric. No one can guarantee
that the Lebanese Christians won't be targeted in the future. This comes as Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports
that al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has postead a statement online that it
will launch more attacks on Iraqi Christians, referring to Pope
Benedict XVI as "the hallucinating tyrant of the Vatican" and declaring
Iraqi Christians will be "extirpated and dispersed." They state: "All
Christin centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and
followers, are legitimate targets for the muhadjideen wherever they can
reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers
of blood." Richard Spencer (Telegraph of London) observes,
"While Iraqi Christians have been under siege since the fall of Saddam
Hussein, the sudden public threats mark a new development." AFP reports
al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is insisting that Camilia Shehata and Wafa
Constantine -- married to two priests in Egypt -- are being imprisoned
in Egypt because they "willingly converted to Islam." Really? Now
they're concerned about forced conversions? In
the past 20 years to present, especially since the internet has become
the easiest way to find information regarding whatever a person wish
to search for. We have seen that more than 99% of the
writers accusing the innocent Yezidi as devil worshipers, this is
absolutely pure fiction. During the Saddam's era the Yezidis were misclassified as Arab in ethnicity by force. Although
Saddam has gone, but the Kurds have come to power in Northern Iraq
since 1991, and they are forcing the innocent Yezidis to be
misclassified as Kurdish, again this time under KRG's brutal and
dictatorial system. All these are misleading, untruth, and pure fiction
about the innocent Yezidis (Ezdae). Because of all these
misunderstanding the truth about the Yezidis, we have been attacked
hundreds of times in the past 1000 years to present, therefore we
(Ezdae) have lost millions of innocent Yezidis in brutal and inhumane
attacks against this most indigenous and peaceful nation in the world
today. We have and will
continue to note Yezidis as Krudish if they self-identify as Kurdish to
the press (some do). We've also noted -- especially in the 2008 wave
of attacks -- when Yezidis did not identify as Kurdish. (Some who did
not identify as such voiced their opinion that the KRG was behind the
attacks on them in an effort to force them to accept 'protection.')
There are many religious minorities in Iraq. The Baha'i Faith still
has an estimated 2,000 members in Iraq and that may not be a choice.
Under Saddam Hussein, they were not allowed passports or various other
papers and documents which meant they couldn't leave Iraq. Nouri's
government made a big-to-do about how they were going to be issuing
identity and residency papers to them finally (back in May 2007) but
that hasn't come to pass in reality. Mideast Youth notes
that since the announcement "only about six or seven Baha'i identity
papers" have been issued. As with all the problems facing Iraq's
religious minorities, Nouri's done nothing. He's sometimes made a show
of pretending to do something, but he's not done a damn thing. Related:
Iraq's been using 'wands' purchased from England to 'find' bombs --
they require you 'start' them by basically high stepping in place for a
half-minute or more. They are a joke and ineffective and that's been
known for some time (the UK has banned their sale) but only now can the
'government' in Iraq catch on. Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) reports
today that this 'new' finding by Iraq's Minister of the Interior "was
unsurprising. But in today's Iraq, it had the potential to be
politically explosive. What the ministry did in response to the
inspector general's conclusion speaks volumes about how the Iraqi
government works these days - and why so often it doesn't." Dropping
back to the January 22nd snapshot: And before that, November 3, 2009, Rod Nordland (New York Times) would report
that retired Lt Col Hal Bidlack was explaining these 'magic wands'
operate "on the same principle as a Ouija board" meaning "the power of
suggestion" and that Nouri's government or 'government' was wasting
between $16,500 to $60,000 a piece on these wands (of which they
"purchased more than 1,500"). Bidlack's best discussion of the wands
may have been to Richard Roth (CBS Evening News with Katie Couric -- link has text and video) where he explained,
"They're fine for fooling a 4-year-old at a birthday party, but
they're immoral if they're trying to save lives at a checkpoint." All
this time and only now is Iraq admitting the wands don't work.
Accountability and transparency don't exist in Nouri's Iraq. But he
thinks he should continue as prime minister? March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty-seven days and still counting. Suadad al-Salhy (Reuters) notes
that Iraq's Parliament is currently set to meet on Monday -- that may
or may not take place (court order not withstanding) -- and that it's
possilbe a motion could be put forward favoring Nouri. Should that be
attempted, it's equally possible that enough members could storm out of
the session leaving the Parliament without a quorum. BBC News quotes
acting speaker Fouad Masum stating that Monday will see the election
of "the president of the parliament and his two associates" -- which
would not refer to the presidency (currently Jalal Talabani) and the
vice presidencies (currently Shi'ite Adil Abdul-Mahdi and Sunni Tariq
al-Hashimi) but would refer to the post of Speaker and two associates
-- and BBC correspondent Jim Muir expresses his belief that the signs
lean towards Nouri remaining prime minister -- but, to be clear, the
Speaker said nothing about taking up that matter on Monday. Equally
true, if Nouri was named prime minister every time the press declared
he was about to be named prime minister, March 8th would have seen him
crowned (Quil Lawrence was pimping Nouri the day after the elections). Jomana Karadsheh and Arwa Damon (CNN -- link has text and video) report
on the statements and announcements and they make no claims that the
prime minister will be chosen Monday: "While the speaker election may be
a step toward getting the political process back in motion, there is
little if any indication that talks to form an inclusive government
have made any progress." On CNN, Errol Barnett spoke with the International Institute For Stragic Studies'
Mamoun Fandy about yesterday's attack and wondered whether it might
either result in further delays for the political process or whether it
might in fact speed things up? Mamoun
Fandy: Well there are two things here. First of all, as Arwa [Damon]
pointed out, we have a process that's deadlocked for the last eight
months and there's an insistence on the part of Prime Minister Maliki
and his group on forming a sectarian government and there's a general
perception in Iraq -- as well as outside of Iraq -- that this
government has been sectarian and that violence is a response to the
dominance of extreme Shia trends within the government that's
marginalizing the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Christians and everybody
else. Now this violence could very much focus the attention of the
politicians that the price is really high and it is urgent for them to
heed the call of [KRG President] Masoud Barzani and his group in
Kurdistan to form a government or to heed the call of King Abdullah
[II] of Saudi Arabia who invited all the Iraqis to come to Riyadh --
and have a discussion of how to form a government -- in two weeks after
the Hajj [pilgrimage]. AFP reports
that the country's Foriegn Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, declared today
that he was receptive to talks in Saui Arabia and quoted him saying,
"It is a good initiative and we welcome it because it comes to serve
the people." Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) offers this take on the reactions (prior to Zebari) to the Saudi offer: That's not to say that all parties will welcome Saudi
Arabia's involvement. Most of all, Saudi Arabia favors the Sunnis,
who've rallied behind former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya bloc,
and they don't like Prime Minister Maliki one bit. The State of Law
party, the hilariously misnamed party set up by Maliki, has already
delivered its to-be-expected rejection of King Abdullah's initiative, and Kurds don't like it either, apparently. But Abdullah is not easily deterred.
"Everyone believes that you are at a crossroads that requires the
utmost to unite, get over traumas, and get rid of sectarianism," said
the Saudi king. By "sectarianism," of course, Abdullah means Shiite
triumphalism. But the Saudi king is smart enough to know that if Iraq
is going to have a stable government, it's going to mean that Maliki,
Allawi, and other factions—notably the boisterous Kurds—are going to
have to divide power three ways. That, the Saudi
monarch undoubtedly knows, means that Saudi Arabia and Iran (along with
Turkey as a minority shareholder) will have to strike a deal of their
own to support a broad-based, compromise government. The idea that
Saudi Arabia and Iran can make that kind of deal isn't unprecedented.
Over the past several years, they've done precisely that in Lebanon,
where Saudi Arabia and its Sunni partners, along with the Christian
allies, stuck a deal with Iran and its Shiite partners, including
Hezbollah and its own Christian allies, and so far it's worked. That
deal didn't make the United States happy, but it's stabilized Lebanon,
as much as that sect-ridden nation can be called stable. A
former senior analyst with the CIA and now senior fellow at the
National Defence University in Washington DC, Doctor Judith Yaphe, says
the political instability is a perfect storm for militants wanting to
wreak havoc.
Dr Yaphe says militants may be trying to encourage a
civil war while incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki leads a weak
government.
"One thing they're probably testing is to see how strong are the security forces. Will they stand behind Maliki?" she said.
Dr Yaphe says she believes Iraq will not be able to form a government before the end of the year.
The
latest reports in the Guardian newspaper quote Mr Allawi as
threatening to pull out of a US-backed power sharing deal with Mr
Maliki and the Kurdish bloc.
"I
have come to accept that opposition is a real option for us," Allawi
said in an interview with the Guardian. "We are in the final days of
making a final decision on this issue."
Until recently, Allawi had
been clinging to hopes that a compromise would be reached between his
bloc, known as Iraqiya, and the coalition of the prime minister, Nouri
al-Maliki, whom Allawi's bloc narrowly edged by 91 seats to 89 in the 7
March election.
However, interminable rounds of shuttle diplomacy,
mostly conducted in neighbouring capitals, appear to have convinced him
that a US-backed power-sharing government is not viable.
"We are not
ready to be a false witness to history by signing up to something that
we don't believe can work," Allawi said, in reference to a mooted plan
to create for him an office with executive powers equal to those of
the prime minister.
The
primary force in the latest leaks is that of detainee abuse and
torture. Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama promised
to return America to a "moral high ground" by vowing to ensure that
terror suspects weren't tortured or abused and ensuring American
personnel comply with the Geneva Convention.
Additionally, the
implication was that US forces would make sure that the authorities to
whom the detainees were handed over to for detention or interrogation
were not torturing or abusing them.
One document filed on April 2,
2009, details the claims of a prisoner who says he was hog tied and
beaten with a shovel as a part of a day-long torture ordeal. The report
makes note of "minor injuries" including rope burns and a busted ear
drum.
While there is no proof in any of the files of direct detainee
mistreatment at the hands of US forces, there are allegations of abuse
even after President Obama signed the order to put an end to torture. He's done what the bulk of the US media hasn't: mentioned turning over detainees to known torturers and under who's watch. Barry Grey (WSWS) critiques
Arthur S. Brisbane (New York Times) and the paper itself and notes,
"Unlike the non-US media, which emphasized the killings of civilians,
torture and other war crimes and the systematic government lying
exposed by the documents, the Times downplayed these facts,
declaring that the war logs added nothing new to what was already known
about the war and occupation. It buried, for example, the news that
the United Nations chief investigator for torture had publicly called
on President Obama to launch an investigation into evidence that the
American military handed over prisoners to Iraqi jailers for torture
and execution. Indeed, the Times assiduously avoided using the word "torture" in its coverage of the documents." At Huffington Post, Human Rights First's international legal director Gabor Rona writes: The trove of Iraq war documents recently made public by Wikileaks underscores several important truths. One,
the American people have a right to know when Americans or their
allies commit violations of the laws of war. Two, the American
government has been woefully nontransparent. Transparency is key to
accountability, to minimizing violations and to preventing the civilian
population from turning against US forces. This, in turn, protects,
rather than endangers, US troops. Yesterday Baghdad was slammed with bombings. Ned Parker and Jaber Zeki (Los Angeles Times) report:
Militants
unleashed a wave of deadly attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at
least 113 people in Shiite neighborhoods in an apparent bid to provoke a
new sectarian war in the country.
Seventeen car bombs and other
blasts shook the city at sunset in one of the bloodiest days this year.
The coordinated attacks, which bore the earmark of the Sunni Arab
militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, came just 48 hours after 58 people were
killed after armed men seized a Baghdad church.
Of yesterday's events, Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) adds,
"In Fallujah, west of Baghdad, mosque loudspeakers announced a
lock-down, with no vehicle traffic allowed. The Anbar provincial
council said it was prepared to send police to Baghdad, and appealed to
citizens to donate blood to the wounded." Alsumaria TV adds,
"In the wake of Baghdad bombings on Tuesday, Anbar Police Chief
Brigadier Bahaa Al Karkhi told Alsumaria News that a comprehensive
curfew was imposed in the province until further to avert possible
attacks. In Waset, intensified security measures were taken in the
province to avoid possible attacks as well, Police Chief Brigadier
Khalaf Shafi Jaber told Alsumaria News." Arraf quotes
Baghdad council member Mohamed al-Rubeiy stating, "For the last four
months we have seen attacks around Baghdad but now they are inside (the
city). Karrada is the center of Baghdad and Baghdad is the center of
the government. That means the terrorists are sending a message to the
world: 'We are back and we are here'."
Reuters notes
that today's violence includes a 17-year-old male shot dead in front
of his Mosul home, a Ramadi motorcycle bombing which injured two
people, a Ramadi roadside bombing which injured two people, a Hammam
al-Alil car bombing which injured three Iraqi soldiers and a Mosul
grenade attack which injured one woman.
Now in spite of the continued violence and the last days spectacular violence, Thaindian News reports,
"The Dutch government on Tuesday said that the situation in Iraq is
not so unsafe that failed asylum seekers cannot be deported back to
Iraq. Dutch Minister for Immigration and Asylum Affairs Gerd Leers
announced his stance on Tuesday after a call for action from Amnesty
International. Leers argued that this year alone, more than 400 Iraqi
asylum seeks have already voluntarily returned to their country." Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports
that Gerd Leers, the country's Minister of Immigration and Asylum,
swore to Parliament "that the situation in the country is not so unsafe
that people cannot return" but he has apparently backed down (at least
temporarily) as a result "of a letter from the European Court of Human
Rights banning the deporation". Dutch News also notes the letter as the reason Leers wasn't able to force through the deportations thus far.
Changing topics . . . Azzam
Alwash: My memory of those boat trips is that we're passing through
these passage ways that are surrounded with reeds that -- to my mind's
eye -- extended to the sky, these were towering reeds. I remember
leaning over the outside of the boat and looking into this clear water
and seeing fish and I remember heat. And every now and then, we'd go
out of these meandering rivers to these wide lakes and suddenly there's
this breeze that comes into you that cools you down. What I remember
is a sense of serentiy, a sense of warmth, a sense of love, a sense of
being with my father enjoying a uniqure place. Azzam
Alwash is an engineer, like his father. His family left Iraq long ago
but he returned after the US invasion and was saddened to see the state
of the marshes. The story is told on PBS' Nature in the " Braving Iraq" episode. Last week Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reported
on Moutn Permagrone in the Kurdistan Regional Government. The
mountain "is home to one-sixth of the roughly 3,300 plant varieties
intended to be collected and preserved in a new national herbarium -- a
catalog of the country's plant specimens that was looted and destroyed
in Baghdad after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003." In the article,
Azzam Alwash stressed, "Those who want the marshes restored understand
that there is an intrinsic connection between the mountains of
Kurdistan and the marshes of Iraq. If I want the marshes restored and
managed properly, I have to not only protect the marshes but protect
the integrity of the environment in Kurdistan because it's all one
habitat." | Call for Nominations: 2011 "Champions of Diversity" | southport, CT., June 16, 2010 / -- DiversityBusiness.com
announced its call for 2011 nominations for "Champions of Diversity"
award. This distinguished group of individuals is recognized for their
outstanding achievements in various diversity initiatives.
"The
List represent individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to
solutions in diversity issues on a global and "national scale. The
honorees have made a significant impact on diversity issues in
education, procurement, housing and employment. These unsung champions
have not waved a diversity flag but rather have quietly made a
difference in the lives of people by positively impacting their lives,
and improving the economic conditions for their families and
communities.
| "I
was extremely excited about the 2010 honoree list" said Kenton Clarke,
CEO of DiversityBusiness. "This recognition brings attention to
comprehensible results provided by many different people representing
all sectors of diversity, who can quantify success made by their
efforts".
The 2011 nomination application can be found online at: www.diversitybusiness.com/NominationFormChampions.doc Nominations are due: November 30, 2010
Winners will be honored at our Awards Ceremony: "11th
Annual National Multicultural Business Conference" on April 20 – 22,
2011 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in
Washington, D.C.
About DiversityBusiness.com
Launched
in 1999, DiversityBusiness, with over 50,000 members, is the largest
organization of diversity owned businesses throughout the United States
that provide goods and services to Fortune 1000
companies, government agencies, and colleges and universities.
DiversityBusiness provides research and data collection services for
diversity including the "Top 50 Organizations for Multicultural
Business Opportunities", "Top 500 Diversity Owned Companies in
America", and others. Its research has been recognized and published by
Forbes Magazine, Business Week and thousands of other print and
internet publications. The site has gained national recognition and has
won numerous awards for its content and design. DiversityBusiness
reaches more diverse suppliers and communicates more information to them
on a more frequent basis then all other organizations combined. We
also communicate with mainstream businesses, government agencies and
educational institutions with information related to diversity. Our
magazine reaches over 300,000 readers, a monthly e-newsletter that
reaches 2.4 million, and website visitors of 1.2 million a month. It is
a leading provider of Supplier Diversity management
tools and has the most widely distributed Diversity magazine in the
United States. DiversityBusiness.com is produced by Computer Consulting
Associates International Inc. (CCAii.com) of Southport, CT. Founded in 1980. | the nationrobert dreyfuss | | |
Posted at 09:23 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
First, we have more than a communications
problem — the public heard us but disagreed with our approach.
Democrats need not reassess our goals for America, but we need to
seriously rethink how to reach them. Second,
don’t blame the voters. They aren’t stupid or addled by fear. They are
skeptical about government efficacy, worried about the deficit and
angry that Democrats placed other priorities above their main concern:
economic growth.
that's evan bayh in tomorrow's new york times. i don't agree with every thing in the column but it was nice to see some 1 admit some reality. and
i agree with the above. don't blame the voters. amen. and it's not
that people can't hear barack, it's that they don't like what he's done.
if he'd really presented a left program, it might have been different.
but
he's a corporatist war hawk and that's what he showed every 1. and it
didn't jazz up the left. but it did energize the right. i
believe it was bill clinton - who looks more and more like a prophet
these days - who stated that given the choice between a republican or a
democrat that acts like a republican, americans will always choose the
republican. and he's right. people bought the hype of barack
and thought he was a lefty. and then they either lived in denial for 2
years or had to face reality that he was the 3rd term of george w. bush. kate
zernike wrote a book i just finished reading 'boiling mad: inside tea
party america.' i really recommend that book. zernike did real work -
as opposed to matthew rothschild who sunk so low he's now lying about a
survey. but the reason i bring up kate is she's just posted an article at nyt and it's on the tea party: As
it tries to make the transition from a protest movement to a power on
Capitol Hill, the Tea Party faces the challenge of channeling the energy
it brought to the election into a governing agenda when it has no
clear mandate, a stated distaste for the inevitable compromises of
legislating and a wary relationship with Republican leaders in
Congress. Republicans benefited from
Tea Party enthusiasm, with 4 in 10 voters in exit polls expressing
support for the movement. Tea Party strength propelled victories in
Senate races by Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul
in Kentucky. Still, the Tea Party cost the Republicans some seats they
once counted as solid, including one in Delaware, where Christine O’Donnell, who beat an establishment candidate thanks to strong Tea Party support in the primary, lost to Chris Coons, a Democrat once considered a long shot. “Tonight
there’s a Tea Party tidal wave, and we’re sending a message to them,”
Mr. Paul said, facing a cheering throng in Bowling Green, Ky. To many in
the movement, the singular goal now is to stop an expanding government
in its tracks, to “hold the line at all hazards,” as Jennifer Stefano,
a Tea Party leader in Pennsylvania, put it. read the article in full. are you surprised? by the election results? you
shouldn't be. when the crap started - following the november 2008
election - that the gop was dead and it was over and a permanent shift
had taken place and blah, blah, blah - back then, ava and c.i. told you
that wasn't the case. they were the 1st 1s to realize scott brown would
win the senate race and realized that days after martha coakley won her
primary battle. all of this was forseeable and ava and c.i. will not
toot their own horn so i'll do it for them. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Tuesday,
November 2, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Iraq buries Sunday's
dead today as Baghdad's slammed with multiple bombings, the political
stalemate continues, Nouri al-Maliki makes like Randy Travis singing " It's Just A Matter Of Time"
as he insists he will be crowned Iraq's next prime minister, Nouri
cracks down on the press yet again, Congress has NO plans to outlaw
Don't Ask, Don't Tell (read the actual bill the House passed) cand
more. Sammy Ketz (AFP) reports,
"Fear could not stop hundreds of grieving Christians from packing a
Baghdad church on Tuesday to mourn two priests [23-year-old Wassim
Sabih and 32-year-old Saadallah Boutros] and dozens of others killed
during a hostage drama by Al-Qaeda gunmen that ended in a bloodbath." Alsumaria TV reports
today that the Iraq's Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhael, fears
Sunday's assault on Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church
will result in even more Christians leaving the country. The concern is
expressed as CNN reports the death toll has now risen to 58. Jane Arraf and Sahar Issa (Christian Science Monitor and McClatchy Newspapers) note
the the total number of wounded stands at seventy-five and that
"Church leaders blamed inadequate security by the Iraqi government for
the deadliest attack in Baghdad since before March elections. [. . .]
The Iraqi federal police and Army have been deployed outside churches
during Sunday mass since a series of coordinated attacks on churches
more than two years ago. On Sunday though, witnesses said there was no
military or police vehicles deployed outside the church during the
service." Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) speaks
to survivors and reports survivor Bassam Sami says the assailants
entered the church and began killing people: "They were well trained.
They didn't say anything. It was like someone had cut out their
tongues." Martin Chulov (Guardian) quotes
another survivor, Ghassan Salah, declaring the assailants stated, "All
of youare infidels. We are here to avenge the burning of the Qur'ans
and the jailing of Muslim women in Egypt." Reality website
summarizes a BBC News report: "Throughout Monday, mourners carried
coffins from the church, loading them onto vehicles bound for the
morgue ahead of funerals on Tuesday. Raed Hadi, who tied the coffin of
his cousin to the roof of a car, said the raid had resulted in a
'massacre'. "We Christians don't have enough protection,' he said.
'What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?'" Anthony Shadid (New York Times) notes,
"Iraq was once a remarkable melange of beliefs, customs and
traditions; the killings on Sunday drew another border in a nation
defined more by war, occupation and deprivation. Identities have
hardened; diversity has faded. Nearly all of Iraq's Jews left long
ago, many harassed by a xenophobic government. Iraq's Christians have
dwindled; once numbering anywhere between 800,000 and 1.4 million at
least half are thought to have emigrtaed since 2003, their leaders
say." Possibly due to the large number of reported dead and wounded,
the US military is maintaining they had a tiny role in the whole thing.
Sunday Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) quoted
a US military spokesperson insisting, "The U.S. only provided UAV
(unmanned aerial vehicle) support with video imagery. As always we have
advisers with the ISF (Iraqi security forces) command teams." However,
Kelly McEvers (NPR's Morning Edition -- link has text and audio) reported
Monday, "Witnesses said they saw American troops taking part in the
raid. American officials would only confrim to us that they provided
aerial surveillance. Under a security agreement between Iraq and the
U.S., Americans can only provide such support if they're asked to do so
by Iraqi commanders. But, that said, American Special Forces, who
number about 5,000 here in Iraq, have more flexible rules of
engagement." BBC offers survivor Dr. Thanaa Nassir's account which includes: The
terrorists came into the church, closed the door and took us hostage. I
was terrified. There were five or six of them - I do not know exactly
because we were all on the floor and could not lift up our heads. They
brought in a bomb. I was lying on the floor and every now and then
there would be an explosion or gunshots over our heads, over the
lights, over the fixtures, over the Crucifix, over the Madonna,
everywhere. After that, they started to say "Allahu akbar" [Arabic for
God is great], and they blew themselves up. And those living near the church shares stories with BBC including Julie who offers: I heard shots and then explosions. I hurried back home as soon as possible. One
of my daughters has a Christian friend whom she feared would be at the
church. She rang her mobile and the friend answered in hysterics - she
was actually being held hostage at the time. My daughter went to
pieces at this point. There was not much we could do. We knew the army
would be on the way after the explosions. We got in touch with the young lady's family to let them know. By
midnight we heard that she had survived, but was in hospital with
shrapnel injury. Her mother had also been held hostage and was also
safe. But another of my daughters has just now returned home from a
funeral. Her friend's father was not so lucky - he died in the attack. As a Muslim I am totally devastated and disgusted about what has happened. This is not what Islam is about. The
church is one of the biggest in Baghdad. Christians come from all over
the city to worship there. It must be devastating for the community. The
defense minister has called the operation to end the church hostage
crisis in Baghdad "quick and successful." "Successful" evidently has a
different meaning for him than it does for rest of humanity. It
may be that this was a botched operation. Or it may be that there was
never going to be any other outcome to the siege other than extreme
bloodshed. The militants who took over the church were clearly in a
murderous state of mind from the start. All the indications are that
they started killing before the police attacked. Had the latter not
moved in when they did, the militants might have slaughtered all the
hostages. The statement from Al-Qaeda in Iraq claiming responsibility
for the attack and threatening to exterminate all Iraqi Christians
suggests that the church was the principal target, not the stock
exchange, the first building they attacked. In
normally accepted parlance, 52 deaths -- 46 of them hostages, the rest
police -- is anything but successful. It is a disaster. For the
minister to use such language says he is living in a fantasy world. As Baghdad was burying the dead, a new wave of bombings slammed the capital. BBC News notes,
"The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad said the funerals for the victims of
Sunday's attack had only just been carried out as the explosions went
off." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) quotes
an unnamed official with the Ministry of the Interior stating, "We
don't know what's happening right now. There are so many explosions and
so many reports we're overwhelmed." Ali Almashakheel (ABC News) reports that "10 blasts ripped through several Baghdad neighborhoods, killing at least 62 and injuring more than 180 people." Kate Sullivan (Sky News Online) also counts
at least 62 dead but notes a police source is stating the death toll
"could pass 100" and that over 300 were injured in the bombings. Richard Spencer (Telegraph of London) reports the death toll has climberd to 76. Rebecca Santana (AP) quotes 26-year-old Hussein al-Saiedi, "They murdered us today and on Sunday, they killed our brother, the Christians." Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) counts
"14 explosions. Ten were car bombs, three were roadside bombs, and
another was what's called a sticky bomb: a device that's placed on an
object, many times a vehicle." Martin Chulov (Guardian) adds,
"Tonight's bombs all detonated within 90 minutes of each other.
Hospitals were appealing for blood donors, and the city's main A&E
centres were reporting large numbers of casualties amid chaotic
scenes." Jack Healy (New York Times) quotes
eyewitness Mustafa Mohammed Saleh stating, "I tried to escape, but
there was chaos. You see what happens: The most secure part of Baghdad,
they hit. Tension is in the air." Maher Abbas tells Xinhua,
"I was walking in Baghdad's western Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah
when four mortar rounds landed on a market, killing and wounding many
people. I heard the security forces forced the shops to close for
safety, as more attacks may take place." Much
is at stake in the never-ending negotiations to form Iraq's
government, but perhaps nothing more important than the future of its
security forces. In the seven years since the U.S.-led invasion, these
have become more effective and professional and appear capable of
taming what remains of the insurgency. But what they seem to possess in
capacity they lack in cohesion. A symptom of Iraq's fractured polity
and deep ethno-sectarian divides, the army and police remain overly
fragmented, their loyalties uncertain, their capacity to withstand a
prolonged and more intensive power struggle at the top unclear. Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken worrying steps to assert authority
over the security apparatus, notably by creating new bodies accountable
to none but himself. A vital task confronting the nation's political
leaders is to reach agreement on an accountable, non-political security
apparatus subject to effective oversight. A priority for the new
cabinet and parliament will be to implement the decision. And a core
responsibility facing the international community is to use all its
tools to encourage this to happen.
Iraq's security forces are the
outcome of a seven-year, U.S.-led effort, which began after it
comprehensively uprooted and dismantled remnants of the previous
regime. This start-from-scratch approach entailed heavy costs. It left a
dangerous security vacuum, produced a large constituency of
demoralised, unemployed former soldiers, and fuelled the insurgency.
The corollary -- a hurried attempt to rebuild forces through rapid
recruitment, often without sufficient regard to background or
qualifications -- brought its own share of problems. Iraq's
increasingly fractured, ethno-sectarian post-2003 politics likewise
coloured recruitment and promotions. Facing a spiralling insurgency,
the U.S. felt it had no choice but to emphasise speed above much else;
today, some one in seven Iraqi adult males is under arms. And so, even
as they have gained strength in numbers and materiel, the army, police
and other security agencies remain burdened by this legacy of
expediency. There
is no legitimate government in Iraq, not even a puppet government with
the appearance of legitimacy. The US government endusred that would be
the case when they rejected calls for a caretaker government to be put
in place while the election results were sorted out. Instead, they
insisted that keeping Nouri al-Maliki on as prime minister -- while he
launched attacks on opponents using his post as prime minister -- was
'fair' and 'reasonable.' Ernesto Londono and Aziz Alwan (Washington Post) quote
Iraqi Hamid Ahmed al-Azawi stating, "There is no government. If the
Americans leave tomorrow, we will assemble a team of 500 armed men to
topple the Green Zone. How much longer are the Americans going to
protect them?"
March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty-six days and still counting.
John Drake (A Take On Iraq) notes it is now 34 weeks since elections were held. Hoshyar Zebari is the country's Foreign Minister and Rudaw interviews him. Excerpt:
RUDAW:The
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) seems to prefer Maliki's State of
Law and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is trying to make sure
that Iraqiya is included in the new government. Can you tell us where
does the Kurdish position exactly stand now?
Zebari: There are
now two ways to form a government. The Parliament way , after the
[Iraqi] Federal Court issued a verdict for the parliament to
convene in two weeks time. This way is going towards imposing a
solution based on a majority voting. Even a government is not created;
the speaker of parliament can at least be elected. The president can
also be elected to appoint a candidate to form a government. The other
way is an initiative made by His Excellency President of the Kurdistan
Region [Massoud Barzani] calling on all wining lists and coalitions to
meet altogether. Obviously, they have not met thus far and the meetings
have all been bilateral 8 months after the elections. A possible
government has to be nationally inclusive. Everybody should be part of
the government. The initiative has two phases. The first phase is about
allowing wise leaders of each coalition to meet with others to find
common grounds. Clearly, each party or coalition has its own demands.
They should be matched in order to come up with a common thing.
Whatever is subject to disputes shall be put aside. The issue of posts
and this sort of things will be left for the next phase. There should
be a leading meeting where all the leaders sit together and decide
about a government. Both of these ways have started and kept going
along each other. If these two ways match, they would be helpful to
each other. It means that they are not two different ways.
Alsumaria TV reports
today that Al Fadhila Party has announced it will back Nouri. Of
course, with Al Fahila Party there is generally the announcement
followed by an announcement that the previous announcement should be
discarded. (As was most recently demonstrated in September when they
announced they had left the National Coalition only to turn around and
issue a statement denying they had left the National Coalition.)
Equally true is that the group holds 6 seats in Parliament -- should it
stay with Nouri, it gets him closer, it does not get him to 163. The Dinar Trade reports that Nouri has declared it a foregone conclusion that he will be prime minister. In other news, Iraq continues its crackdown on a free press. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports:
On
Monday, the Iraqi Communication and Media Commission accused
al-Baghdadiya television of having a link to the church kidnappers and
ordered the station to close, state television reported. Iraqi security
forces surrounded the bureau of al-Baghdadiya TV in Baghdad.
Two of
the station's employees were detained, according to a statement posted
on the al-Baghdadiya TV website. It said the two employees had
received a call from the church kidnappers demanding the release of
female prisoners in Egypt in return for the hostages' freedom. The
demand was later broadcast on al-Baghdadiya TV.
The station, which which is an Iraqi-owned, Egypt-based network, subsequently reported that its employees had been released.
Daily News World adds:
Al-Baghdadia,
the TV station in Baghdad that said it was contacted by gunmen during
Sunday's church hostage drama, has been taken off air. It stopped transmitting shortly after its building was taken over, reportedly by a large number of government troops. The station says its director and another employee have been charged with terrorism-related offences. [. . .] Al-Baghdadia
– an independent station based in Egypt – says its public hotline
number was phoned by the gunmen who requested it broadcast the news
that they wanted to negotiate. As the station was being taken over,
it broadcast pictures of security forces surrounding the building,
before the screen went blank. Transmission then resumed from
al-Baghdadia's Cairo studio. The station says its office in Basra has
also been taken over by security forces. It has called a sit-in at the building and appealed to local and foreign media to attend in soldidarity. Nouri's
long pattern of attacks on the press and what appears to be at best
weak 'evidence' would indicate that the station's biggest 'crime' was
broadcasting news of an event that was internationally embarrassing to
Nouri. Reporters Without Borders issued a statement today which includes: Reporters
Without Borders condemns yesterday's decision by the Iraqi authorities
to close the Baghdad, Kerbala and Basra bureaux of Cairo-based
satellite TV station Al-Baghdadia in connection with its coverage of the
previous day's hostage-taking in a Baghdad church, which ended in a
bloodbath. Two
of the station's employees, producer Haidar Salam and video editor
Mohammed Al-Johair, were arrested under article 1/2/4 of the
anti-terrorism law. Al-Johair was released today, after being held
overnight, but Salam is still being held in an unknown location,
Reporters Without Borders has learned from Al-Baghdadia representatives
in Egypt. On Monday, security forces sealed the
station's Baghdad and Basra offices. No one was allowed to enter the
buildings, according to Al-Baghdadia bureau chief in Cairo, Abdelhamid
al-Saih. The Communications and Media Commission (CMC), a media
regulatory body, issued a statement on its website announcing the
decision to shut Al-Baghdadia's offices. Al-Saih
told CPJ that the shutdown was illegal since there was no judicial
order, just an order from the CMC. He said he believed the authorities
were using the broadcast as a smokescreen for the real reason why they
wanted to shut down Al-Baghdadia. "We have received complaints before
from the CMC regarding a TV program called 'Al-Baghdadia wa al-nas'
(Al-Bagdadia and the People) in which we interview Iraqi citizens
on-air and give them the opportunity to voice their criticism of the
government and officials," he said. Ziad
al-Ajili, director of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a local
press freedom organization, told CPJ that he also thought there were
other reasons behind the closure, including the same critical program. "We
are concerned by the closure of Al-Baghdadia TV and demand that the
CMC explain under what authority it has stormed the station's offices
and censored it," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North
Africa program coordinator. "We call on the authorities to allow the
station to resume its operations immediately." The CMC said
in its statement that the attackers had "contacted the station and
selected it to be the exclusive platform for their inhumane practices
with the purpose of disrupting Iraq's national unity and to inflame
religious discord." The statement said the station's broadcast of
demands "amounts to incitement to violence" and that Al-Baghdadia's
coverage was not objective, creating a threat to the military operation
by providing attackers with information about ongoing operations to
rescue the hostages. In February, CPJ described the CMC's regulations as falling "well short of international standards for freedom of expression." CPJ also noted the
inadequacy of the regulations' vague definition of incitement to
violence, stating that such broad and unspecified standards are used by
authoritarian governments to silence critical coverage. Turning to the United States, sometimes a headline does say it all: " Obama Wins, DADT Back In Place Permanently." Carlos Santoscoy's article (for On Top Magazine) covers
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handing "the Obama administration on
Monday . . . a permanent hold on a trial judge's order to stop
enforcing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' the 1993 law that bans gay and
bisexual troops from serving openly" and that "Monday's order means
that the law that has ended the military careers of more than 13,000
gay, lesbian or bisexual service members will remain in effect for the
months -- possibly years -- it could take to decide an appeal." Bob Egelko (San Francisco Chronicle) explains,
"The 2-1 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco extends a temporary stay that the court granted Oct. 20 after a
federal judge declare the law unconstitutional." BMAZ (Empty Wheel, Firedoglake) notes
the recent Barack And Five Bloggers On A Match meet up and how Barack
refused to refer to DADT as unconstitutional or offer anything
meaningful on the topic but continued to whine that he must have 60
votes in the Senate and tells the bloggers to chat with "all those Log
Cabin Republicans:" Asked
to describe his plan to pass critical legislation he has long promised
one of his core constituencies, this is the pathetic drivel Barack
Obama comes up with? The President of the United States and leader of
the entire Democratic Party pleads powerlessness to accomplish the
goal, but demands the Log Cabin Republicans go forth and deliver him
intransigent GOP Senators on a golden platter? Seriously, that is his
plan? Perhaps Mr. Obama has mistaken the LCRs for the NRA or
something, but if there is any entity with less sway over the
entrenched and gilded GOP Senate leadership than Obama, it is the Log
Cabin Republicans. Absurd and lame is too kind of a description for such
tripe. I honestly don't know what is worse, that this is Obama;s
response or that he has the politically incompetence to state it on the
record. Barack
Obama campaigned for the US presidency promising to repeal Don't Ask,
Don't Tell and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
People familiar with the long struggle are often confused because when
Ellen Tauscher was in Congress, she put forward a bill three times that
would repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and would make it illegal to
discriminate based on sexual orientation. Ellen Tauscher left Congress
in 2009 and became the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security Affairs.
[. . .]
Due
to the fact that Tauscher worked hard on the issue, a lot of people
assumed that it was still the same bill. And those who didn't? We're
talking about a 1028 page bill. There ought to be a law against that.
Page 184 is where Section 536 ("Department Of Defense Policy Concerning
Homosexuality In The Armed Forces") begins.
If you read over it (PDF format warning, click here), you'll learn some reality.
What
the Congress put forward was not the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
and outlawing discrimination. All they'd do is overturn Don't Ask,
Don't Tell.
But that's what we all want, right?
If you're
historically ignorant, you probably think so. If you know the history
of how Don't Ask, Don't Tell comes about, you know the courts were
advancing LGBT rights -- including for service members -- when the
military imposed their ban on gay service members. This was the ban
that Bill Clinton wanted to overturn but, as president, he faced open
rebellion (it wasn't at all hidden) from the likes of War Criminal Colin
Powell and others. So Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the compromise pushed
through. It was supposed to prevent the military from asking (witch
hunts) and supposed to mean that if service members stayed in the
closet, they could continue serving.
Judge Viriginia Phillips
ruled on Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the White House has appealed her
decision. She found that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was unconstitutional.
She then went further and issued an injunction barring all discharges
under DADT while her ruling was on appeal. The White House also
appealed that and won. They can continue to discharge under DADT while
they await their chance to appeal Phillips' verdict.
[. . .]
Phillips
did what Barack promised on the campaign trail. But Barack and the
Congress are not trying to live up to that. What Phillips did was to
repeal DADT and to rule it unconstitutional. There were a number of
lies about why Barack 'had to' appeal but the one the administration
fell back on whispering was that if they didn't appeal, it was a
verdict. From a lower court! And they needed to follow their plan to
get rid of it because otherwise a future president could again impose
it!
That really didn't make sense because Judge Phillips' ruling
didn't prevent Congress from passing the bill currently before them.
So it never made sense and that was because it was a lie.
The
White House isn't happy with Judge Phillips for doing what Barack
promised because that's not what was ever going to be delivered.
Instead,
DADT gets repealed and then? Discrimination can continue or not.
Congress isn't weighing in on that. With Ellen's bill -- all three
times it was introduced -- Congress was weighing in and declaring the
discrimination illegal. Not now.
The current bill repeals DADT but allows the Pentagon to decide what should happen.
Should
the bill pass in the next two years, the Pentagon may want to go along
with Barack (or may not) and might institute a policy to allow gays
and lesbians to serve openly.
In other words, it could happen. It's conceivable.
But
by watering down Ellen's bill, by refusing to call the discrimination
out, what the Congress and Barack are doing is allowing DADT to return
in the future.
By not passing a law declaring the discrimination
illegal, there's nothing to prevent DADT being reinstated under the
next president.At
some point in the near future, Nancy Pelosi and others need to explain
how declaring Don't Ask, Don't Tell to be discrimination was removed
from this bill that has been introduced repeatedly. After they explain
how, they need to explain why.
Posted at 03:41 am by politicsscree
Permalink
Nov 1, 2010
 that Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts " Presidential Dress Up" and if you've never really worked - and barack hasn't - you wouldn't have a lot of appreciation for workers which is why jackie calmes (nyt) is reporting: The bipartisan debt-reduction commission that President Obama
created eight months ago will begin meeting privately soon after
Tuesday’s elections, with just three weeks to try to agree on cutbacks
to Americans’ favorite tax breaks and benefit programs. this
is the cat food commission. for those who missed it, congress refused
to start the commission, so barack went around them. despite (publicly)
opposing it, nancy pelosi agreed to allow a vote on the
recommendations. that's how whoring works. a few things to consider, why are these meetings taking place in private when hopey-changey told us he would be transparent? and why didn't the commission release something before the elections? because if they had, the bloodletting would be even worse than it's going to be tomorrow. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Monday,
November 1, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, a church in Baghdad is
assaulted, the political stalemate continues, Saudi Arabia suggests a
meet-up, WikiLeaks continues to be poorly covered in the US, and more. Today the Wheeling News-Register's editorial board notes
Barack Obama declared the Iraq War "at an end on Aug. 31st" and that,
"In fact, US troops continue to be wounded and killed in Iraq. As we
have pointed out, Obama may say the war is over, but those being killed
are still just as dead." The Iraq War continues and it may continue
well beyond 2011. As noted in last Monday's " Iraq snapshot," at the US State Dept, spokesperson Philip J. Crowley declared: "Well,
we have a Status of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The
Status of Forces Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are
working towards complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces
Agreement, which would include the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from
Iraq by the end of next year. The nature of our partnership beyond next
year will have to be negotiated. On the civilian side, we are committed
to Iraq over the long term. We will have civilians there continuing to
work with the government on a range of areas – economic development,
rule of law, civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that Iraq
desires to have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the
United States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that
would be something that I would expect a new government to consider.
[. . .] Should Iraq wish to continue the kind of military partnership
that we currently have with Iraq, we're open to have that discussion."
That should have been big news but we don't get news, we get whoring. Example, Saturday
two corporate monkies -- failed actors who, late in life, lucked into
jobs they are now desperate to hold onto, held a rally in DC. As David Swanson (War Is A Crimes) observed
early last month, "Stewart opposes activist messages and their
messengers. The problem seems to be, not so much accuracy as
inappropriateness and volume. You should not shout anything or say
'war criminal,' but you especially should not shout 'war criminal!'"
When old comedians -- middle aged ones desparate to be hip -- starting
trying to police taste and run the "morality" beat, they not only stop
being funny, they stop having any value. They're now the tired whores
who sucked up to Nixon and completely cut off from the people. At Huffington Post, Will Bunch sees
the country's tipping point as when the Iraq War were sold by a media
that refused to question or probe the claims (lies) put forward by the
Bush administration: That's
why I thought Iraq and its central role in American insanity was in
many ways that dog that did not bark in Stewart and Stephen Colbert's
big rally on Saturday. Watching it play out on TV, it felt like the two
comedians and the 200,000 strong who gathered in their names had
drifted so far from the original roots of the "sanity movement" in
American politics that the ultimate message -- that the only answers
lie in toning things down a notch and in looking for a brand of
moderation that finds equal fault with vaguely defined "extremism" on
either side -- was a perhaps unintended 180-degree U-turn. From
the stage we saw a tacit endorsement of the dangerous notion of false
equivalencies -- the very concept that in a phony quest for
journalistic balance caused the news media to give equal weight or
greater weight to unsupported spin, not just for the war in Iraq but
its cheerleading financial coverage before the 2008 crisis that Stewart demolished on his own show. "The press is our immune system," Stewart said in his closing speech on Saturday.
"If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker--and, perhaps,
eczema." But that's only part of the puzzle -- on way too many
critical issues the last 10 years, neither the press nor the public has
reacted enough, particularly to ideas that are lacking in reason. It's
stunning that Stewart of all people -- who became a national comedic
icon in that 2003-04 era, in large part by calling attention to that
"Mess O' Potania" that the mainstream media was largely content to
ignore -- would forget where the road to insanity started. The
scary part is that central to Stewart's message on Saturday was what
one of best media critics around -- the New York University professor
Jay Rosen -- calls "the view from nowhere,"
the same kind of high-minded pooh-pooing of the messy fray of actual
democracy, including passion and commitment that involves fighting in
the muck of ideas, that the kind of people who gathered on the National
Mall once detested from the likes of the punditocracy's
naysayer-in-chief, David Broder. Bunch
declares that it's difficult to criticize Stewart. No, it's not at
all unless you've dressed him up as a god. Stewart is a basic cable
fixture. MTV made him one repeatedly and his ratings at Comedy
Centeral really aren't significantly higher than when he was doing his
Free Willy parodies on MTV (or, for that matter, when he failed with
his late night Fox talk show). It's just Comedy Central will treat
"two million viewers!" as a success when it's failure. Jon Stewart is a
failed actor. Years ago, he and Parker Posey played roller bladers in
Mixed Nuts. Parker's gone on to deliver many amazing
performances. Stewart knows he's the closest to a success he's ever
going to be and he's not going to let anything risk that. So he's
corporate monkey who dances for his bosses. And
Viacom - home of suppression and fear -- attacked Tom Cruise for
publicly speaking of love, fired Ed Gernon for comparing Bush to Hitler,
kicked the Reagan mini-series over to cable (Showtime) because they
are such cowards, If that's who signs your paycheck, if that's who
holds your contract, you're not going to such much bravery but you are
going to preach rigid conformity -- advocate for a return to the
Eisnehower era while distracting from real issues which is what took
place Saturday. It was the sort of event where Lily Tomlin's reactionary character Suzie Sorority would have felt at home. Sunday's
network talk shows barely raised the issue of the largest intelligence
leak in U.S. history. When asked, they say the midterm elections are
their main focus. Fine, but war is an election issue. It should be
raised in every debate, discussed on every talk show. I
see the media as a huge kitchen table, stretching across the globe,
that we all sit around, debating and discussing the most important
issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Anything less than
that is a disservice to the servicemen and -women of this country. They
can't have these debates on military bases. They rely on us in
civilian society to have the discussions that determine whether they
live or die, whether they are sent to kill or be killed. Anything less
than that is a disservice to a democratic society. Amy Goodman is a brave truth-teller . . . if you're uneducated and uninformed. As Ava and I noted of Goodman on Sunday, surveying Panhandle Media's 'coverage' of WikiLeaks: What
she offered was pure crap. With the hope that she might improve later
in the week, a link was offered. But she was never excerpted in the
snapshot because her hour long garbage was pure garbage, pure crap that
purposely misinformed.
Nir Rosen, Pratap Chatterjee and David
Leigh joined her to talk about . . . Iraq and Bush. With the exception
of noting that "the Obama administration has lashed out at WikiLeaks,"
the program couldn't include Barack in the discussion.
It was the same cowardice that Nicole Colson demonstrated in US Socialist Worker's sole report on WikiLeaks
last week. One article on WikiLeaks. They published 23 articles last
week. Only one addressed the biggest document release in history. Only
one. And even it pulled the punches.
Before last week started, Angus Stickler's "Obama administration handed over detainees despite reports of torture" (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) was already online, though you'd never know it by the way Beggar Media ignored it:
Human
rights organisations have expressed outrage at the revelations.
Professor Novak, the UN Rapporteur on Torture told the Bureau: "If the
United States forces handed over detainees to Iraqi jurisdiction,
despite the fact that they were at serious
risk of being subjected to torture, that is a violation of Article 3C
of the Convention Against Torture of which the US is a signatory."
He said there should be a full and thorough investigation to ascertain whether any of the detainees handed over to the Iraqi authorities by the US have been abused.
"The burden of proof is on the US to prove that they can categorically state that the
detainees they are handing over are not at risk of torture.There
should be an investigation to look into the fate of those individuals
to see whether they have been abused."
This
was picked up by human rights groups, by politicians outside the US,
the details were covered by TV and radio programs and newspapers around
the world. It was just the Beggar Media that couldn't inform you of
it.
If you're
going to lecture other outlets, Amy Goodman, then you better have been
upfront on your program, which you weren't, you intentionally and
repeatedly avoided the issue of turning prisoners over to Iraqi forces
known/suspected of torture (it was known) and that took place under
Barack Obama -- a fact you also avoided because you refuse to call him
out for his War Crimes. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty both issue
statements on this aspect of the release but Amy Goodman can't find it? Really?
Well it wasn't all that long ago, now was it, when she was using the
inauguration as a fundraiser selling off tickets for over $1,000 to a DC
inuagural ball. Don't forget she whored and she still does. She's
not a trusted source, she's unable to call out the powerful. She
should be used sparingly and not as the go-to reference because her
record of whoring is now well known. Over the weekend, the New York Times' public editor Arthur Brisbane attempted
to 'take on' the WikiLeaks coverage. But a public editor needs to
disclose. So when Brisbane quotes Thomas E. Ricks as a voice against
WikiLeaks -- just like the government! -- and identifies him, he needs
to offer more than a book Ricks wrote or a magazine he blogs at. Ricks
is in agreement with the government? Well he belongs to a think-tank
and Brisbane 'forgot' to include that fact. Ricks
belongs to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) -- home to
the homegrown terrorists in charge of counter-insurgency. Therefore,
Ricks repeating the Pentagon spin isn't at all surprising. Michele
Flournoy does what in the administration? She's the Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy (and being pushed as one of the leading nominees to
replace Robert Gates when he leaves the post of Secretary of Defense).
What did Michele start? Oh, that's right, she started CNAS. With Kurt
Cambell, you know, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacifica Affairs. CNAS, Thomas Ricks? Those are details a public editor
needs to cover. Friday October 22nd, WikiLeaks
released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. The documents
-- US military field reports -- reveal torture and abuse and the
ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed from the Bush
administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both
administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions
on torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever
admitted to. The Pueblo Chieftain notes,
"The documents show a weak, fractured national government in Baghdad
despite a dramatic reduction of violence. This points out the need to
keep forces there long after the time when President Barack Obama would
want all of them removed by Dec. 31, 2011." Fractured government? March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty-five days and still counting.
Saturday CNN reported
that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is calling for Iraqi politicians to
meet up in Saudia Arabia ("after the Hajj pilgrimage in November") to
attempt to end the political stalemate. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) quoted
the king stating, "It is well-known to everyone that you are at a
crossroads, a fact that necessitates your uniting the ranks, rising
above your wounds, distancing the shadows of differences, and
extinguishing the fire of abhorrent sectarianism," said the king, as
reported by SPA. Our hands are outstretched to you. Let us work
together for the security, integrity and stability of the land and
brotherly people of Iraq." Arab News added,
"He said the talks would be held under the auspices of the Arab League
in order to seek solutions for all outstanding problems that stand in
the way of forming a unity government in Baghdad, adding that it would
be a good opportunity for reconciliation to restore Iraq's security,
peace and stability." Today RTT News informs,
"Iraq's Shiite alliance has turned down an offer extended by Saudi
Arabia to host an all-party talks involving Iraqi political leaders for
ending the months-long political deadlock that has prevented formation
of a coalition government in that war-ravaged country after the
indecisive March elections." Zee News notes
a contrasting reaction, King Abdullah's offer "has been hailed across
the gulf region". MD Rasooldeen (Arab News) quotes Ekmeleddin
Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, stating, "It showed the king's keenness to preserve the
unity of Iraq and to support the Iraqi people to live in an atmosphere
of peace and security."
Nawzad Mahmoud and Rawa Abdulla (Rudaw) reports,
"One of the major Kurdish political parties broke away from the larger
Kurdish alliance on Friday evening, ending and undermining the united
political representation of Kurds whose role is decisive to shape
Iraq's future government. By taking this decision, Gorran, the greatest
and most influential opposition party in the northern region of Iraqi
Kurdistan, deepens its political divergence with the two ruling parties
over almost everything here in the most stable region of Iraq." Gorran
-- "Change" -- is backed by the US and has received a huge amount of
money from the US government. That detail is left out of the report but
it is probably the most pertinent detail. UPI reports that Iraqiya states they're ready for negotiation talks. Since the March elections, the Parliament has met only once and for approximately 20 minutes. The Daily Mail reports,
"Politicians in Iraq have raked in more than $1,000 a minute for
working just TWENTY minutes this year. They picked up a fee of $90,000
and a monthly salary of $22,500 a month for doing next to nothing and
staying free in Baghdad's finest hotel." Yesterday in Baghdad, Iraqi forces swarmed Our Lady of Salvation Church where people were being held hostage by assailants. Ernesto Londono and Aziz Alwan (Washington Post) report,
"The bulk of the bloodletting happened shortly after 9 p.m. when Iraqi
Special Operations troops stormed Our Lady of Salvation church in the
upscale Karradah neighborhood to try and free worshipers who had been
taken hostage. Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy's Miami Herald) reports,
"Insurgents seized control of a church in central Baghdad on Sunday,
taking hostages during evening mass after attacking a checkpoint at the
Baghdad Stock Exchange." Graham Fitzgerald (Sky News) observes, "Apparently no attempt was made to negotiate with them and bring the siege to a peaceful conclusion." John Leland (New York Times) quotes
police officer Hussain Nahidh stating, "It's a horrible scene. More
than 50 people were killed. The suicide vests were filled with ball
bearings to kill as many people as possible. You can see human flesh
everywhere. Flesh was stuck to the top roof of the hall. Many people
went to hospitals without legs and hands." Lara Jakes (AP) reports there were 120 hostages in the church. Ned Parker and Jaber Zeki (Los Angeles Times via Sacremento Bee) add,
"The Iraqi police immediately sealed off the surrounding area in the
busy Karada commercial district. The American military was called in to
help. As U.S. Army helicopters buzzed overheads, American officers
accompanied Iraqi commanders and shared satellite imagery, according to
Iraqi police and the U.S. military. A caller to the Baghdad satellite
channel Baghdadiya, who insisted he was one of the attackers, said the
group was demanding the release of al-Qaida prisoners in Egypt and
threatened to execute the hostages if the authorities failed to meet
their demands." ran inside and took shelter in a locked room as we waited for the security forces to arrive." The Telegraph of London quotes
a young male hostage (unnamed) stating of the hostage takers, "They
entered the church with their weapons, wearing military uniforms. They
came into the prayer hall, and immediately killed the priest." Martin Chulov (Guardian) adds,
"The priest they call Father Rafael is believed to have survived, but
his colleague, Father Wissam, is believed to have been killed." Jim Muir (BBC News) offers a video report
and an Iraqi female hostage states, "Gunmen entered the church and
started to beat people. Some of the people were released but others were
wounded and some died and one of the priests was killed." Muir points
out that churches in Iraq have been attacked before "but there's never
been anything like this."
Jonathan Adams (Christian Science Monitor) observes,
"The incident, which began Sunday afternoon, highlights the continued
threat to Christians in Iraq, whose number has shrunk from 800,000 to
550,000 since 2003 as members have fled abroad or been killed. Radical
groups continue to launch attacks on religious and non-religious sites
as political leaders struggle to form a new government some eight
months after controversial elections." Alsumaria TV quotes
France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner stating, "France firmly
condemns this terrorist action, the latest in a deadly campaign of
targeted violence which has already led to more than 40 deaths among
the Christians of Iraq. France repeats its attachment to the respect of
fundamental liberties such as religious freedom and supports the Iraqi
authorities in their struggle against terrorism." Vatican Radio quotes
Pope Benedict XVI stating, "Last night, in a very serious attack on
the Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad, dozens of people were killed
and wounded, including two priests and a group of faithful gathered for
Sunday Mass. I pray for the victims of this senseless violence, all
the more ferocious as it affected defenceless civilians." Vatican Radio also reports: "No-where
is safe anymore, not even the House of God", says auxiliary Bishop of
Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Shlemon Warduni, the day after an
unprecedented attack on the Christian community of the Iraqi capital.
Together with Patriarch Delly he visited survivors and wounded of the
Sunday massacre, in which over 50 hostages and police officers were
killed when security forces raided a Baghdad church to free more than
100 Iraqi Catholics held hostage by al Qaeda-linked gunmen. Between 70
and 80 people were seriously wounded, many of them women and children.
Ammon News reports
that Jordan's King Abdullah II cabled Jalal Talabani, president of
Iraq, and "expressed his sympathy and heartfelt condolences to the
Iraqi President over the victims of the attack and wished the injured a
speedy recovery." The Daily Star notes,
"Lebanese Muslim and Christian figures condemned Monday the killing of
hostage parishoners at the Karda church in Iraq the previous day.
Clerics and political parties slammed the deadly violence during a
hostage rescue mission in Karada in Baghad Sundy, when at least 52
people were killed as US and Iraqi forces stormed a Catholic church to
free dozens of hostages." In today's reported violence, Reuters notes
a Qaiyara sticky bombing claimed the lives of police Lt Col Khalid
Auda and his driver and that 1 suspect was shot dead in Arbil by
Kurdish forces. And back to WikiLeaks, we'll close with Sian Ruddick's "Iraq war logs expose murder, abuse and torture" (Great Britain's Socialist Worker):Thousands
of leaked US military documents have revealed the grisly reality of
the murder, torture and abuse of prisoners by US, British and local
pro-occupation forces in Iraq. The
Wikileaks website released nearly 400,000 army field reports itemising
death and abuse by US military action and the bitter sectarian
division the occupation caused. The
reports run from January 2004 to January 2010. They reveal torture
carried out by police officers, army personnel, prison staff and border
guards. The majority of victims are
young men. But there are also occurrences of abuse towards
women—including serious sexual assault—and of attacks on disabled and
old people. The reports show that much of the abuse by Iraqi forces was either witnessed by US soldiers or reported to them. Batteries
with exposed wires and hoses appear often. Prisoners are kicked,
beaten, sexually abused and humiliated, burnt with flame and chemicals
and put in stress positions. Burnt Despite
the widespread evidence of torture, the US government issued order
"Frago 242" in June 2004, ordering coalition troops not to investigate
any breach of the laws of armed conflict unless it directly involved
members of the US's coalition side. Where
the alleged abuse is committed by an Iraqi towards an Iraqi, "only an
initial report will be made… No further investigation will be required
unless directed by HQ". One example
from the log reports film footage showing: "Ten Iraqi army soldiers
were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. "The
detainee had his hands bound. The footage shows the IA soldiers moving
the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him
and shooting him." The logs conclude, "No investigation is necessary."
In reality, things were no different
when abuse was carried out by US or British soldiers—the history of the
occupation has been one of cover-up and corruption. The leaks contain the reports of over 100,000 civilian deaths. But
even this is a gross underestimate. Surveys by ORB and the Lancet
estimate that well over a million Iraqis have been killed. The war and
occupation have displaced millions more. Some
incidents are documented in forensic detail. For instance the
"Crazyhorse 18" Apache helicopter gunship crew were following a truck
driven by two men they suspected of carrying explosives. The men got out of their vehicle to surrender. The Apache crew radioed base and were told by a lawyer that it was not possible to "surrender to an aircraft". The helicopter unleashed missiles killing both men. More civilians were injured. Threatened Another report states how US interrogators threatened to hand detainees over to the Wolf Brigade if they wouldn't talk. Iraqi prisoners accused the brigade of torturing prisoners with electric drills and sometimes executing suspects. It
was set up by the US military and directed by Colonel James Steele,
who had acted as a US advisor to death squads in El Salvador in the
1980s. These reports confirm again that the invasion was never about liberating the Iraq, only asserting US power.
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.
iraq
the christian science monitor
jonathan adams
abc
anne barker
the telegraph of london
bbc news
alsumaria tv
vatican radio
the washington post
ernesto londono
aziz alwan
the miami herald
laith hammoudi
the new york times
john leland
the independent of london
lewis smith
the associated press
lara jakes
the los angeles times
ned parker
jaber zeki
the telegraph of london
the guardian
martin chulov
sky news
graham fitzgerald
the new york times
arthur s. brisbane
cnn
mohammed tawfeeq
arab news
Posted at 09:11 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
Oct 30, 2010
grading terry o'neill and now
NOW to Media: Stop Reducing Women Candidates to Sex Objects
Statement of NOW President Terry O'Neill October 28, 2010 Sexist,
misogynist attacks against women have no place in the electoral
process, regardless of a particular candidate's political ideology. Today
the tabloid website Gawker published an anonymous piece titled "I Had A
One-Night Stand With Christine O'Donnell" that takes the routine
sexual degradation of women candidates to a disgusting new low. NOW
repudiates Gawker's decision to run this piece. It operates as public
sexual harassment. And like all sexual harassment, it targets not only
O'Donnell, but all women contemplating stepping into the public sphere.
NOW/PAC has proudly endorsed women's rights champion Chris
Coons, O'Donnell's opponent in the Delaware Senate race, and finds
O'Donnell's political positions dangerous for women. That does not mean
it's acceptable to use slut-shaming against her, or any woman. NOW
has repeatedly called out misogyny against women candidates, and this
election season is no different. Let me be honest: I look forward to
seeing Christine O'Donnell defeated at the polls, but this kind of
sexist attack is an affront to all women, and I won't stand for it. ### For Immediate ReleaseContact: Mai Shiozaki w. 202-628-8669, ext. 116, c. 202-595-4473 Sign up to receive press releases by email | by RSS
that's from now and, again, what a difference a president makes. i
don't know if you've caught her act, but kim gandy (former now
president) is insisting to the press that she defended all women and
that she called out the sexism against sarah palin and others. when, kim, when? she didn't. she mocked women in non-feminist terms because she happened to be rooting for her lover man barack. she's part of that contingent that i can't stand: kim gandy, naomi wolf and so many more. terry
o'neill is now that president of now and she's shown more strength and
courage in her brief time as president than i believe kim gandy showed
in her last 2 years in office. terry o'neill does a much, much better job. my opinion. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Friday,
October 29, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Balad Ruz is slammed
with a bombing, the New York Times launches a new attack on WikiLeaks
and tries to pollute the minds of America's children, the political
stalemate continues and more. AFP reports
a Balad Ruz bombing has claimed the lives of at least 25 people with
seventy more listed as injured according police Chief Ahmed al-Tamimi.
Press TV notes
that the bombing was in a coffee house and that "[s]ome reports
suggest that the attack targeted a gathering of local residents inside
the building." BBC News notes that "area is said to be home to many Shias of Kurdish origin." Al Jazeera adds,
"Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Baghad, said authorities
imposed a curfew in Balad Ruz, and that five people have been
arrested." Muhanad Mohammed, Wathiq Ibrahim, Waleed Ibrahim, Michael Christie and Alison Williams (Reuters) report,
"The cafe, a popular venue for playing dominoes, smoking sisha pipes
and drinking sweet tea, was desroyed, said Colonel Kadhim bashir Saleh,
a spokesman in Baghdad of Iraq's civil defence force." And they quote
eye witness Sadeq Abbas stating, "I was near the cafe and suddenly a
big explosion happened inside and there was chaos in the area.
Security forces started shooting in the air to disperse the crowd and
prevent people from going near the cafe." Mazin Yahya (AP) notes that the it is said to have been a suicide bomber. Earlier this week on Antiwar Radio (Wednesday), Scott Horton interviewed journalist and historian Gareth Porter. We'll note this at the very end of the interview. Gareth
Porter: The one thing that I would underline that I was shakiest on
was the belief that the SOFA, the agreement that was reached in November
of 2008, was something that could be expected -- could be counted on
to stick. I'm no longer confident that that's the case. Scott
Horton: Wow. Well now, talk about opening a can of worms up. What
you're saying is that the war will start again because Moqtada al-Sadr
isn't backing down on that? You're just saying the Pentagon is going
to insist on staying? Gareth
Porter: I'm saying, I'm saying that I'm not at all confident the US
troops are going to get out. That's right. I think there's a grave
danger that we're going to get stuck there. Scott Horton: Which means fighting against the government we just spent all this time installing. But you know -- Gareth
Porter: Well I don't know. Maybe we're going to be fighting Kurds,
maybe we're going to be fighting Turks? You know, who knows? Who knows
who we'll be fighting? But I do think -- I have very good reason to
believe that this is a serious danger at this point. That the Obama
administration is going to try to pull another "Oh yeah, we're pulling
all of our combat troops out, see? These are not combat troops.
Nothing to see here move on." Gen George Casey is Chief of Staff of the Army and he gave a speech earlier this week. What's interesting is the way the army elected to write it up. Here's the opening paragraph from the army's press release (that they would call a "news article"):
Soldiers
can look forward to increased time at home station when the Army has
all but completely pulled out of Iraq, leaving a larger pool of units
free to do rotations in Afghanistan. But those rotations will continue
for a some time, said the Army's top Soldier.
"Can look forward
to" casts this sometime in the near future and, according to the army's
press release, at that point the US will not be out of Iraq, it will
have "all but completely pulled out of Iraq". It's an interesting word
choice. Especially coming on the heels of the US State Dept's
acknowledgment that the White House is "open" to extending the SOFA and
keeping 50,000 US troops in Iraq beyond 2011. From Monday's snapshot: Today Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) reports
that former US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spoke last week to the
National Council on US - Arab Relations and " that when the dust clears
in the formation of a new government in Iraq that Baghdad would come
to the United States to ask for an extension of the US military
presence beyond the end of 2011. By that date, according to the accord
signed in 2008 by the Bush administration, all US troops are to leave
Iraq. But Crocker said that it is 'quite likely that the Iraqi
government is going to ask for an extension of our deployed presence'."
(He also expressed that Nouri would remaing prime minister. Why?
The US government backed Nouri as the 'continuing' prime minister after
Nouri promised he's allow the US military to remain in Iraq past
2011.) Today at the US State Dept, spokesperson Philip J. Crowley was
asked about Crocker's remarks. He responded, "Well, we have a Status
of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The Status of Forces
Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are working towards
complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces Agreement, which would
include the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next
year. The nature of our partnership beyond next year will have to be
negotiated. On the civilian side, we are committed to Iraq over the
long term. We will have civilians there continuing to work with the
government on a range of areas – economic development, rule of law,
civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that Iraq desires to
have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the United
States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that would
be something that I would expect a new government to consider. [. . .]
Should Iraq wish to continue the kind of military partnership that we
currently have with Iraq, we're open to have that discussion." During the Antiwar Radio interview, Gareth Porter discussed the WikiLeaks release and the "Report Shows Drones Strikes Based on Scant Evidence" (IPS via Information Clearing House) -- which is his reporting on the leaks. Last Friday, WikiLeaks
released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. The documents
-- US military field reports -- reveal torture and abuse and the
ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed from the Bush
administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both
administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions on
torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever
admitted to. On
the topic of WikiLeaks, a correction for yesterday when I was grossly
wrong. A friend was the first to reach me and say, "Was it a joke?" No,
I honestly thought ZNet was published (and I thought it had its servers) in Canada. I was wrong, 100% wrong, completely wrong. (See today's snapshot.)
My mistake. No one else's. I will be wrong many times again as I was
in the snapshot today. I'll include this in tomorrow's snapshot to
correct my error. My apologies for my error. We were noting ZNet
because they stood alone among independent media in actually covering
the WikiLeaks release. They are an American publication (again, I was
wrong) and this is some of their WikiLeaks coverage: JAY:
So let's talk a little bit about WikiLeaks. There are various pieces
of the documents that jumped out, but the one a lot of people have been
talking about is the numbers of civilian deaths, over 100,000. How
have Iraqis reacted to all of this? ISSA: Iraqis know this. Iraqis know that they have lost hundreds of thousands.
JAY: So people think the number is low. ISSA: Iraqis know this. Iraqis know that they have lost hundreds of thousands.
JAY: So people think the number is low. "To
the disgust of many, both Iraq's new leaders and the world as a whole
lent a deaf ear to such crimes, shutting their eyes to accounts of
atrocities and refusing to investigate reports of intimidation, abuse
and killings," Salah Hemeid (Al-Ahram Weekly) observes,
noting, as Issa does, what Iraqis knew and what the media and
governments didn't want discussed. "However, by giving a fuller picture
of the US legacy in Iraq through its leaking of secret American
military documents detailing torture, summary execution and war crimes,
Wikileaks has both done truth a great service and has proved, once
again, that truth is the first casualty of war." Watching America translates an editorial on the topic from Spain's El Pais: The
new leaks from WikiLeaks furnish conclusive proof concerning the
cesspool of a war like Iraq, undertaken for motives increasingly seen
to have been foolish in the extreme and carried out with a brutality
that was in complete contradiction to the propagation of democracy
invoked by Bush and his Azorean colleagues* as a justification for war.
If the strongest argument against the invasion was that democracy
could not be imposed on another country by force of arms, the new leaks
from WikiLeaks make it necessary to add a corollary which, until now,
might have seemed obvious: even less by means of torture, rape or
indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. An end, such as democracy, does
not justify such execrable means. For
example, the WikiLeaks documents released last week made clear, said
the Vice President of the European Parliament, Dr. Alejo Vidal Quadras,
that the Obama Administration knew that Iran was rapidly "gaining
control of Iraq at many levels" even while it overruled objections not
to turn over to Iraqi forces control of Camp Ashraf, an enclave 40km.
north of Baghdad where approximately 3500 Iranian dissidents are
quartered. Hundreds of parliamentarians in the US, Europe and the
Middle East had pointed out that transfer to Iraqi control might lead
to mass executions were the Camp Ashraf dissidents forcefully
repatriated to Iran by Iraqi leaders anxious to placate Iran. Nevertheless,
the Obama Administration turned Camp Ashraf over to Iraqi forces
without ever revealing a material fact: that the rush for "engagement"
with Iran was bought at the price of psychological torture of Camp
Ashraf's residents, repeated forays, and shooting sprees that killed and
maimed hundreds of dissidents. Despite the outrage voiced in many
quarters, the intimidation, coercion and atrocities have only been put
on hold, in abeyance, ready to be resurrected in full at a more
propitious moment. To rectify the situation and avert another tragedy,
the US should resume protecting Ashraf or at least ensure that a UN
monitoring team is stationed there. Countless
American citizens and their representatives in Congress acquiesced to
"engagement" with Iran on false premises. The Obama Administration's
readiness to turn a blind eye to the fate of Camp Ashraf's 3500
residents is now public information, in large measure through the
release of the WikiLeaks documents. As the price of "engagement" with
Iran has been revealed, it is up to the American populace and its
representatives in Congress to determine if they are willing to
acquiesce in the politics of appeasement -- not least, through the
abandonment of Iran's most stalwart opponents. The
other tactic employed by opinion shapers, coming to the foreground in
light of the extensive redactions of the Iraq documents, is to smear
the messenger. The reader of the American press cannot help but be
struck by one thought while reading the various reports discussing
Assange's reputed authoritarianism and psychological health, the
molestation charges he faces, and the factional strife at WikiLeaks: the
allegations are of virtually no public policy significance. They
amount to scarcely more than gossip fodder. One attacker has been Miss Susan Hayward of 2010, John F. Burns. And we addressed him at length last night. And while it may seem hard to top a man who co-writes a 2014 word article and then requires 1287 to defend it, the New York Times
found some others ready to 'play.' For the record, my kids are out of
school (they're adults now) but had they come home with the 'lesson' 'plan' that Shannon Doyne and Holly Epstein Ojalova pen for the New York Times,
those two 'teachers' would not be employed at the school anymore. I'd
start by noting that neither appears to have majored in education
(they're English majors -- English majors -- at last, a group even
drama majors can laugh at). Were they emergency certified or did they
have a waiver because they're training -- such as it is -- does not
qualify them for the subect (the release of government documents) or
for preparing a lesson plan or unit. They're not qualified. (Holly has
an MA in English lit education. No, it's not the same thing but a
friend at the paper insisted that be noted.) Then
there's the crap they churned out. As a parent, I was never bothered
if a side of an argument is presented . . . provided more than one side
was presented. There's only one side presented in Shannon and Holly's
bad lesson: Government right. These
two . . . women would have been out of jobs, I'm not joking. Teachers
are expected to be fair and there is nothing fair about what Shannon
and Holly designed. Here's there basics: * have kids brainstorm documents a government might keep on war * have them focus on the Pentagon, DoD, CIA, etc. And
on it goes. As you scan through, you may wonder when they take the
position of human rights attorneys, of peace activists, of a soldier
struggling with the issues, etc.? The answer is never. They are asked
to think about "What percentage of the documents do you think could
pose a threat if they fell into an enemy's hands? What could happen if
these documents were made public?" When do they get asked to think
about the public's right to know? NEVER. When do they get asked to
think about open government and how it is needed in a democracy?
NEVER. The
exercises put the students -- intentionally -- into roles at DoD, the
CIA and the Pentagon. That's intentional not accidental. I would not
tolerate this S**T if my child brought it home. It would offend my
politics, yes, but it would offend me most of all for being so damn
one-sided and for my children being held hostage to some illegimate and
unqualifed teacher's doctrine. The
exercise insists students 'learn' of Julian Assange -- late in the
lesson plan -- by reading the hit-job John F. Burns co-wrote. Why?
What is the purpose of that? It's not about Julian Assange. Look at the questions the children will address: - How many secret documents about the war in Iraq did WikiLeaks release? The war in Afghanistan?
- Why are some of Mr. Assange's comrades abandoning him?
- Who is Daniel Ellsberg, and why does he consider Julian Assange a "kindred spirit"?
- Why did Mr. Assange initially go to Sweden, and why did he flee shortly thereafter?
- How does Mr. Assange describe the United States in regard to democracy? Do you agree or disagree?
Look
at questions two, four and five and explain to me what an American
child 'learning' about Julian from the smear piece by Burnsie isn't
going to be likely to side against Julian? These questions are chosen
to plant the seeds of distrust in and hostility towards Julian. They
are the education equivalent of push-polling. They show a motive on
the part of the design and that -- along with the lack of educational
training -- would ensure that the teachers would be hitting the road
and looking for employment in another field (judging by the piece they
wrote, they'd probably inquire as to whether there were any openings
for torturers at Guantanamo). And then the point of the lesson: Is
WikiLeaks heroic or villainous for releasing these documents?
(Alternatively, you might temper such a stark question by softening the
wording slightly, like so: "Is WikiLeaks a force for good or an
instigator of trouble?") Where
are the questions about the government? Where are the questions about
the actions in the paper themselves? They've created quite a little
fact-free world where there are no values and are no ethics there is
just an excercise that has them pretend (over and over) that they are
the government, briefly 'informs' them of a one Whistleblower via an
attack piece, pays a passing nod to Daniel Ellsberg (the lesson plan
contains no real unit on Daniel) and then wants to ask for a judgment
that will be cast in good or evil. This
isn't teaching, this indoctrination. Should your children's school
use it, raise bloody hell. No school should use this crap. It's
one-sided and the educational equivalent of smut. The New York Times
should be ashamed of themselves. While they regularly pull their stunts
on readers, now they want to contaminate the minds of children? John
F. Burns is a piece of trash. But his attack on Julian? It was the
equivalent of the town drunk hurling charges in the public square.
What the New York Times is attempting now is far more damage and the
sort of thing you'd be more likely to encounter in a lesson plan
catering to Hitler Youth. Meanwhile Duraid Al Baik (Gulf News) reports
that Iraqi "human rights activists are worried that a rising number of
crimes against humanity in Iraq will not be documented unless the
current government of Nouri Al Maliki steps down." March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty-two days and still counting. Meanwhile Najba Mohammed (Rudaw) notes,
"Although Iraq's budget for the 2011 fiscal year is estimated at
nearly $86 billion, the anticipated delay in approving it by parliament
is expected to negatively affect reconstruction projects across the
country including the autonomous Kurdistan Region in the north. Around
$10 billion of the estimated budget is expected to go to the coffers of
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)." When your newly elected
Parliament's only met once -- and for less than 20 minutes at that -- it
can be difficult getting a budget approved. Commenting on the stalemate, the San Angelo Standard-Times' editorial board states,
"There was some thought that the leak of nearly 400,000 classified
U.S. documents bearing on Iraq might galvanize the parliament into
action with its revelations of the torture and killing of civilians,
especially Sunnis, by the security services and of meddling in Iraq's
internal affairs by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Al-Maliki, who was in
titular charge of the security services during the worst of the
sectarian violence, said that the release was an attempt to discredit
his bid for a second term. And the Sunnis renewed demands that the
implicated services be disbanded. But most lawmakers, like most Iraqis,
perhaps inured to violence, seemed unfazed by the revelations."
Back
to the US and Gen Casey's remarks we were dealing with at the top. In
his speech, Casey waxed on about the "longterm" war "we" are in with
"violent extremism." Someone needs to ask Casey, when did the American
people make the decision that they wanted that? Or that they could
financially afford it? Or that bombing and killing doesn't breed violent
response? When did they decide to throw out every bit of political
science and every study on the nature of violence and 'think' up a
'plan' of bullying and cowing the world? No one will ask that anymore
than they will challenge Adm Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when again refers to the Iraq War as a "success" for the US military.
By what standards? By the fact that unlike England as summer faded in
2006, they didn't have to abandon a base that was stripped to the
ground by Iraqis within 12 hours of the British military fleeing? As Michael Hughes (Examiner -- link has text and video) reports
today, Noam Chomsky doesn't see US having 'success' in Iraq by any
means that an empire could point to and say, "See there!" Hughes
quotes Chomsky: Iraq
is an interesting case because it was a defeat. U.S. goals were
defeated in Iraq, very important fact. At the beginning there were of
course all sorts of pretexts, "they're tied with Al Qaeda", "weapons of
mass destruction", when that collapsed there was a new pretext "we're
bringing democracy". The U.S. in fact fought democracy every step of
the way. It tried to prevent elections, and when it couldn't prevent
them it tried to manipulate them. By 2008
when it was pretty clear the U.S. was not going to achieve its goals,
the Bush administration made strong significant declarations in which
they discussed what the outcome must be, and what they said it must
include was the U.S. right to use military bases in Iraq indefinitely
as a base for combat and other operations and privileged access to
Iraqi energy resources for U.S. corporations. At that point it was said
pretty explicitly because they were getting pretty desperate. Well
they didn't get either of those because the United States had not been
able to suppress Iraqi nationalism. The U.S. could kill any number of
insurgents that wasn't a big problem but what they couldn't deal with
was the mass popular non-violent resistance. The U.S. was defeated.
But it's clear what the war aims were, they were sensible aims.
TV notes. On PBS' Washington Week,
Dan Balz (Washington Post), Jeanne Cummings (Politico), Major Garrett
(National Journal) and Jeff Zeleny (New York Times) join Gwen around
the table. Gwen now has a weekly column at Washington Week and the
current one is "The End of Prognostication: 5 Questions for Election Night." This week, Bonnie Erbe
will sit down with Avis Jones-DeWeever, Angela McGlowan, Sabrina
Schaeffer and Amanda Terket to discuss the week's news on the latest
broadcast of PBS' To The Contrary. And this week's To The Contrary online extra is on attempts to win over women voters. Need To Know is PBS' new program covering current events. This week's hour long broadcast airs Fridays on most PBS stations: "The
security of the voting system; modern gerrymandering; California's
Proposition 23, which would suspend the state's Global Warming
Solutions Act of 2006. Also: Rebecca Traister and Melissa Harris-Perry
discuss the number of female candidates in 2010." And for those
confused, Lie Face Harris-Lacewell got married and, like a complete
idiot, has again tacked on a spouse's last name to her own. (I'm long
on record in believing that you NEVER change your professional name and
have noted a very good friend whose marriage ended decades ago and has
happily remarried but is still stuck with her ex-husband's last name
due to the fact that she changed her professional name after marriage
number one.) Turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:
Newton, Iowa
Scott
Pelley reports from Newton, Iowa, where the closing of an appliance
factory is causing a negative effect on the community's economy. Tax The Rich
David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director who once preached tax cuts, is
now in favor of putting a one-time surtax on the rich. Lesley Stahl
reports and finds just such a proposal on the ballot in the state of
Washington. | Watch Video Zenyatta
If Zenyatta wins the Breeder's Cup Classic next week to cap an undefeated career
of 20 straight victories, some say the 6-yr.-old mare might just be
the greatest thoroughbred race horse in history. Bob Simon reports. | Watch Video 60 Minutes, Sunday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Earlier
this week, we noted a portion of an HRW release and I promised we'd
try to get it in a snapshot in full so we'll close with this release Human Rights Watch issued Sunday:
The
Iraqi government should investigate credible reports that its forces
engaged in torture and systematic abuse of detainees, Human Rights Watch
said today. Hundreds of documents released on October 22, 2010, by
Wikileaks reveal beatings, burnings, and lashings of detainees by their
Iraqi captors. Iraq should prosecute those responsible for torture and
other crimes, Human Rights Watch said. The US government
should also investigate whether its forces breached international law
by transferring thousands of Iraqi detainees from US to Iraqi custody
despite the clear risk of torture. Field reports and other documents
released by Wikileaks reveal that US forces often failed to intervene to
prevent torture and continued to transfer detainees to Iraqi custody
despite the fact that they knew or should have known that torture was
routine. "These new disclosures show torture at the hands of
Iraqi security forces is rampant and goes completely unpunished," said
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "It's
clear that US authorities knew of systematic abuse by Iraqi troops, but
they handed thousands of detainees over anyway." The
391,831 documents released by Wikileaks, mostly authored by low-ranking
US officers in the field between 2004 and 2009, refer to the deaths of
at least six detainees in Iraqi custody. The reports also reveal many
previously unreported instances in which US soldiers killed civilians,
including at checkpoints on Iraq's roads and during raids on people's
homes. The documents indicate that US commanders frequently
failed to follow up on credible evidence that Iraqi forces killed,
tortured, and mistreated their captives. According to the documents, US
authorities investigated some abuse cases, but much of the time they
either ignored the abuse or asked Iraqis to investigate and closed the
file. In one incident on January 2, 2007, Iraqi security forces took
detainees to an abandoned house and beat them, resulting in a death.
The report stated, "As Coalition Forces were not involved in the
alleged abuse, no further investigation is necessary." Even
when US officials reported abuse to Iraqi authorities, the Iraqis often
did not act. In one report, an Iraqi police chief told US military
inspectors that his officers engaged in abuse "and supported it as a
method of conducting investigations." Another report said that an Iraqi
police chief refused to file charges "as long as the abuse produced no
marks." The documents reveal extensive abuse of detainees by Iraqi security forces over the six-year period. In
a November 2005 document, US military personnel described Iraqi abuse
at a Baghdad facility that held 95 blindfolded detainees in a single
room: "Many of them bear marks of abuse to include cigarette burns,
bruising consistent with beatings and open sores... according to one of
the detainees questioned on site, 12 detainees have died of disease in
recent weeks." On June 16, 2007, US soldiers reported that
Iraqi forces interrogated and tortured a terrorism suspect by burning
him with chemicals or acid and cutting off his fingers. According to
the Wikileaks file, "Victim received extensive medical care at the
Mosul General Hospital resulting in amputation of his right leg below
the knee[,] several toes on his left foot, as well as amputation of
several fingers on both hands. Extensive scars resulted from the
chemical/acid burns, which were diagnosed as 3rd degree chemical burns
along with skin decay." In a case reported on December 14,
2009, the US military received a video showing Iraqi Army officers
executing a bound detainee in the northern town of Talafar: "The
footage shows [Iraqi] soldiers moving the detainee into the street,
pushing him to the ground, punching him, and shooting him." In
at least two cases, postmortems revealed evidence of death by torture.
On December 3, 2008, a sheikh who a police chief claimed had died from
"bad kidneys" in fact was found to have "evidence of some type of
unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen. The incision was closed by
3-4 stitches. There was also evidence of bruises on the face, chest,
ankle, and back of the body." On August 27, 2009, a US
medical officer found "bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to
the head, arm, torso, legs and neck" on the body of another detainee.
Police claimed the detainee had committed suicide while in custody. The
disclosures by Wikileaks come almost six months after Human Rights
Watch interviewed 42 detainees who had been tortured over a period of
months by security forces at a secret prison in the old Muthanna
airport in West Baghdad. The facility held about 430 detainees who had
no access to their families or lawyers. The prisoners said their
torturers kicked, whipped, and beat them, tried to suffocate them, gave
them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out
their fingernails and teeth. They said that interrogators sodomized
some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they
were forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards and that
interrogators forced detainees to molest one another. Iraqi authorities
have still not prosecuted any officials responsible. Between
early 2009 and July 2010, US forces transferred thousands of Iraqi
detainees to Iraqi custody. International law prohibits the transfer of
detained individuals to the authorities of another state where they
face a serious risk of torture and ill-treatment. "US
authorities hav
Posted at 05:56 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
Oct 28, 2010
2 e-mails on movies. cecil writes that he's
in agreement and we need more anjelica huston movies. he also notes that his
favorite film with her is 'the grifters.' elliot e-mailed wondering about
directors. he likes alfred hitchcock (i do as well) and wonders if i
think there's any 1 with a signature style today? i think there are many
and 2 of the strongest would be david lynch and brian de palma. i can see any of
their films, just a second of it, and instantly identify them as the
directors. and he wanted to know what my favorite film with angela
landsbury is because his is 'the manchurian candidate.' mine is a
surprise, i'm sure. 'the lady vanishes.' that stars cybill shepherd and elliott
gould and angela landsbury. it's a remake of a hitchock film. angela is the
lady of the title. she goes missing and no 1 believes cybill that she was ever
there. it's a lot like 'flight plan' if you've seen that jodie foster
film. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq
snapshot:'
|
Thursday, October 28, 2010. Chaos and violence
continue, WikiLeaks continues to be in the news, the call for an investigation
into abuse and torture grows, the political stalemate continues and more.
Late Friday, WikiLeaks released 391,832 US military
documents on the Iraq War. The documents -- US military field reports -- reveal
torture and abuse and the ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed
from the Bush administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both
administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions on
torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever admitted
to. Calls are coming in from officials in many countries for an investigation --
including from the UK, Norway and Israel -- and from the United Nations High
Commissoner for Human Rights and the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on
Torture. Russia's RIA Novsoti reports, "Moscow has
called on Washington to hold an investigation into mass human rights violations
committed by U.S. servicemen during the military campaign in Iraq between 2004
and 2009, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on
Thursday." Robert Fisk: First of all, the individual
items like, you know, there are witnesses, American witnesses to torture, they
didn't do anything, that the Iraqis -- security authorities were torturing
Iraqis, that American air strikes were killing many civilians. We knew about
this, but it was always denied by the Americans. I was doing stories years ago
about Iraqis torturing Iraqis and the stories were coming from American officers
who were leaking them to me. But of course every time I wrote them in the paper,
the Americans denied that it was true. I went to the scenes of US air strikes.
They were obviously limbs, hands, arms of children, babies, women, civilians, as
well sometimes as armed men, and we wrote about this. What the WikiLeaks does is
it proves beyond any doubt that what we reported was correct and that what we
were told by the American authorities was mendacious, it was a lie. Just
remember, the Americans now are saying, "Shame upon WikiLeaks. It's endangering
lives in Iraq." I mean, invading Iraq endangered an awful lot of lives, didn't
it? But, you know, if these leaks, if these 400,000 documents had confirmed that
the Americans did stop torture, that they didn't kill civilians and air strikes,
you know, US generals' be hadning this stuff out free of charge to journalists
on the front steps of the Pentagon. It's the fact that it proves how shameful
our invasion and occupation of Iraq was that this has come as such a blow to the
United States -- and only, I might add, to the West. You know, the reaction in
the Arab world, when they looked through all stuff in the Arabic language press,
particularly in Baghdad, was, "Well, so what's new? We knew all this. We were
the people being tortured. We were the people being bombed by the Americans."
It's in the West that we're saying, "My goodness! Is that the case? So the
generals lied." That's the big signifance at this particular point of this. One
bigger significance, I think -- and it was Al Jazeera who actually picked this
up -- was that this famous 242 message, which tells US troops from higher
headquarters, presumably Ricardo Sanchez when he was a general in Baghdad, which
syas, "If you see abuse taking place, not by Americans, report it, but
basically, just do nothing."
In the US, media coverage has tended to fall into
two camps "no big deal" and non-existant. For so-called 'independent' media, it
has pretty much been non-existant. Danny Schechter -- at ZNet, Canadian media
-- examines US MSM coverage and finds it lacking. But readers may find it
lacking that, in Danny's criticism, no one appears to do anything. We never get
the names of the ones called out. CNN does a crappy interview and we're not told
who with CNN did the interview. We noted her Sunday: TV personality Atika
Shubert disgraced herself but don't look for CNN to discipline her, she did what
government officials wanted, attacked Julian Assange and turned a supposed
interview about WikiLeaks into a smear against his person with
unfounded rumors. There's no whore like a corporate whore. Danny Shea ( Huffington Post) has video of the character
attack here. Katherina-Marie Yancy
(AP) notes the WikiLeaks
documents demonstrate that the body count was far higher than the US government
admitted to -- the documents, remember, are US military documents. That would
mean, to say what the AP won't, the US government lied. [. . .] Atika Shubert
could have addressed that, instead she wanted to go smutty, she wanted to go
whory. It won't be forgotten. News Whore Atika was too damn lazy to do the work
required for a real character assassination. Not only is she a whore, she's a
damn lazy whore. If someone's denied charges (that were dropped), you either get
the records or you get the witnesses. That's how you do a character
assassination. But apparently whores are very limited in the number of tricks
they can be taught. Atika Shubert just destroyed her image today. There will be
no rebuilding of it. She will not be trusted by large numbers of the public. CNN
will have to use her 'sparingly'. Not because they doubt she'll whore for them,
she so obviously will. But she's now a known whore. We've all seen her whoring.
She can't play journalist now and be believed by many. Danny's far too kind to
call her a media whore but he still could name her. Danny calls out a story in
the New York Times which . . . apparently wrote itself? The bylines Danny fails
to provide: John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya. A CJR piece he calls out is easier to understand
(the lack of billing) because it has multiple authors; however, the section
Danny's calling out was written by Lauren Kirchner and a lot more from that
article needs to be called out. Is CJR receiving government funds or taking in
government embeds? That's especially a required question when we're dealing with
someone (Joel Meares) whoring for I-Hate-Iran Michael Gordon. The report cannot
accurately assert, as Gordo and Andrew W. Lehren claim, where kidnapped victims
were kidnapped unless they witnessed the kidnapping. That's a basic of
journalism and CJR should have caught that. Instead they joined Gordo in his War
On Iran by presenting a claim as fact -- and they can't back it up. And if we're going to criticize CJR (I know three
with CJR, I've never shied from criticizing it and they've never shied from
hurling zingers back this way) and specifically that piece, let's criticize for
their MASSIVE FAILURE. That piece ends how? The last section is a British news
channel being evaluated. Justin Peters writes that section and ends it -- and
the piece -- with this statement: "We'll be watching for the station's full
program on Monday." Well, --
Did Channel 4 air it?
Or -- did they go off the air?
Because Monday came and went and where was CJR?
In fact on Thursday, we still don't have a press coverage package as promised.
Where is it? Go through Campaign Desk (yes, they're using that whorish name again
after retiring it in 2004) and you'll never find it. Now their inattention to
the Iraq War is appalling. However, in this case, it's appalling that they can't
even deliver what they promise at their own site. No one forced them to write
that they would catch Channel 4. They said they would. Why are they unable to
keep their word and why should we believe them if they can't keep it? (They will
argue this Joel Meares blog post -- in praise of that
hideous article written by Burnsie & Snowball attacking Julian Assange --
and this Clint Hendler piece calling out the
Washington Post editorial board cover it. No, that's not what was promised. On
Monday, we were led to believe that they would address the coverage. Instead,
they napped all week basically but managed to toss out two tiny blog
posts.) Danny's article is at ZNet where you can
also find this listing:
Look in vain at US 'independent media' because
our publications can't be bothered. Not The Progressive, not In
These Times, not The Nation. Elaine wrote Tuesday: Matthew Rothschild wants to maintain --
in his minute long radio
spot -- that the WikiLeaks revelations reveal "just
how immoral the Iraq War has been." First, I don't use "moral" or "immoral."
I'll use "ethical" and "criminal" as terms but I'm not part of the morality
police. Second, if Rothschild thinks it's "immoral," here's what twice as
"immoral" the refusal of him and everyone at his magazine to write a damn thing
on the WikiLeaks.
He's the one tossing around "immoral." So why can't he
write about it? Why can't he have everyone write about it, everyone at the
magazine?
That would tear away from The
Progressive's efforts to turn out the vote for the Democratic Party in
next Tuesday's elections.
I'm sick of The Whoring of America and sick of The
Progressive and The Nation dropping the ball over and over because they're too
damn busy whoring for the Democratic Party.
Elaine's absolutely right. I don't use the
"immoral" term either. For the same reasons as Elaine. But if you're going to
use it, if you're going to judge in that way and deem something or someone
"immoral," you really need to explore the topic for more than fifty seconds or
you are the one who will appear "immoral" for refusing to address a subject you
pretend to take so damn seriously. Matthew's added another audio commentary. If you put them both
together, you almost have two minutes -- minus bumper music -- of coverage of
WikiLeaks. That's supposed to cut it? Although, to his credit, Matthew's not
wearing garish make up including lipstick that's about 15 years (I'm being kind)
too young for him. For that, you have to check out The Nation's website -- or as
most refer to it, "Katrina's Bulletin Board." Katrina, marrying your professor
may make you feel like the eternal student but you are not, however, still 21.
When it comes to appearances, she's quickly becoming the Ayn Rand of the left.
At The Nation, you will find a piece by Laura Flanders that has "WikiLeaks" in
the title and tosses out the term a few times in the article and led a friend at
the magazine to call yesterday evening wanting a quote in the snapshot. But, as
it was read to me -- one potential pull-quote after another -- it became obvious
the piece is not, in fact, about WikiLeaks. We addressed that this morning and we'll again note: You can't read
her today without grasping how consumed with disappointment and envy she is. And
maybe that's what whoring brings? She's still whoring. Laura our supposedly
pro-choice Socialist is praising anti-choice Tim Kaine as "savvy" in her
so-called WikiLeaks column. There's no ass she won't kiss. Meanwhile In
These Times is apparently gunning for an "outstanding civilians" award from
the Pentagon. How else to explain that WikiLeaks' revelations have never been
written about at the site? James Weinstein is groaning from the grave but, hey,
they might win a Publications Improvements award from DoD! Apparently the bulk of Panhandle Media doesn't read anything heavier
than (Democratic Party) campaign pamphlets. If that is indeed the problem,
please adopt-an-independent-media 'reporter' long enough to read them the following from IPA: JOSH
STIEBERStieber is a veteran of
the Bravo Company documented in the video " Collateral Murder,"
released earlier this year by WikiLeaks. The
British Telegraph reports: "An American military legal
adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not
surrender to aircraft, the documents show. "The Apache helicopter killed
the two insurgents after being told that they were still legitimate targets even
though they were offering to lay down their arms. "It is thought that the
aircraft, Crazyhorse 18, was the same helicopter involved in the killing of two
Reuters journalists later in the war." Stieber said today: "We've been
trying even before the initial WikiLeaks video came out to say that this kind of
behavior is not out of the ordinary. The fact that the helicopter unit got the
go-ahead to kill Iraqis attempting to surrender shows that it's
policy." He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the
War, which just released a statement on the Iraq War Logs, " A Call for
Accountability". Last week Stieber wrote the piece " Iraq Vet to Congress:
Don't Cover Up Wikileaks' Iraq Revelations." RAED
JARRARThe Guardian reports: "U.S. and UK officials have insisted
that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities." Jarrar, recently back from Iraq, is an
Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst and architect. He was in Iraq during
the 2003 invasion where he established and directed the first door-to-door
civilian casualties survey in Iraq. He said today: "These documents provide us
with candid snapshots of what foreign military occupations look like where
Iraqis are killed, injured and tortured. Contrary to the spin many are
attempting to put on the disclosure, the take-away point is not that the U.S.
just stood there while Iraqis harmed other Iraqis, but that this military
occupation has been brutal and destructive, and that it must end
now." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public
Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Brian Lehrer: Is the most important new
thing the numbes of dead from the war which seems to be higher than previously
reported.
Simon Rogers: I think it's the fact that
we suddenly have all this incredible detail on the huge numbers of people who
died and how they died and what happened? within the limitations of this
enormous data base because big as it is it's not complete.
Reflecting on the revelations to be found in the
documents, Osama Al Sharif (Pakistan Observer)
offers: IT is not a leak but a deluge. This is how the release
of 391,832 classified intelligence documents on the whistle-blower website
WikiLeaks, last week, on America's war in Iraq looked like. The information dump
is the biggest of its kind in history. It will take many months for researchers
and investigative journalists to sift through this and successive releases in
order to piece together missing clues on what exactly happened in Iraq since the
US-Anglo invasion of 2003. But the revelations have been stunning concerning the
actual civilian death toll, cover-ups of torture in Iraqi prisons, Iran's
sinister role in arming Shiite militias, the transgressions of private
contractors, the implication of incumbent Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki in
running death squads and inflaming sectarian violence, among others. The
implications will be far-fetched and will last for many years to come. It is no
wonder that the Pentagon and the State Department have denounced the release of
this information as they did in previous cases. Their allegation that making
such information public will endanger American lives and help the insurgents is
preposterous. If anything the WikiLeaks war diaries will become the foundation
for future investigations into one of the most controversial, unjustified and
unethical wars in modern times. The revelations do only deal with what was
actually taking place in Iraq at the height of the war, but bring to light
distortions and lies concerning American motives, military conduct, political
cover-ups, flawed administration policies, corruption and others. The wealth
of information of day-to-day observations and actions in the field by US
military officers will make the Iraq War along with the ongoing one in
Afghanistan one of the most documented military adventures in history. The wars
are not seen through the eyes of embedded reporters, investigative journalists
and future historians, but through hundreds of thousands of written
communications produced by combatants in the battlefield. Never before has the
big picture been so available through the reconstruction of minute details. The
saying that truth is the first casualty of war aptly applies to Iraq. Public
opinion and world governments have been led astray by US politicians who lied,
fabricated facts and amplified fears about Iraq's alleged WMD capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Guardian examines worldwide media action
with Martin Chulov covering Baghdad:
Iraq's media continues to probe two key
themes from the WikiLeaks
disclosures. Newspapers and television networks have focused heavily on the
claim that prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, directed a counter-terrorism unit
answerable only to him, which targeted predominantly Sunni areas. They have also
examined disclosures that the numbers of civilian deaths throughout the
eight-year war are 15,000 higher than previously stated.
The Iraqi News Network was typical of the
tone: "The WikiLeaks documents revealed very important secrets," it said. "But
the most painful among them are not those that focus on the occupier, but those
that reveal what the Iraqi forces, Iraqi government and politicians did against
their citizens. Those leaders who returned to remove Iraq from oppression
toppled the dictator but then carried out acts that were worse than Saddam
himself.
"If these documents make the US apologise
to Iraqis, they should compel Mr Maliki to leave the political arena altogether
and apologise to everyone."
The revelations have led to an
uncomfortable week for Maliki, who has been battling to cobble together a
coalition government that would allow him to lead the country for a second term.
Members of Maliki's coalition have taken to the airwaves in an attempt to defuse
fears that the leaked documents would make it harder for him to win
cross-sectarian support.
March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary
elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in
August, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a
success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism
in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins
163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament
added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could
increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government),
power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or
individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to
minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad
Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the
biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki,
the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of
lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition
with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not
give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the
government. In 2005, Iraq
took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven
months and twenty-one days and still counting.
Sunday Richard Spencer (Telegraph of London) reported that
Nouri insisted the release of the documents was politically motivated in an
attempt to undercut him -- it's been a while since Nouri's trotted his vast
paranoia across the world stage but longterm observers will remember it. Spencer
noted that "part of the success he has claimed in bringing down the level of
violence since he came to power has rested on his projection of a 'strongman'
image. He has fought militias, including the Sadrists to whom he is now allied,
and formed special security units to target suspected insurgents." Iraqiya
points to the documents of proof that Nouri is a despot and Iraqiya spokesperson
Maysoun al-Damluji is quoted stating, "Maliki wants to have all powers in his
hands. Putting all the security powers in the hands of one person who is the
general commander of the armed forces has led to these abuses and torture
practices in Iraqi prisons." Iraqiya is calling for an investigation. On
Sunday's Weekend Edition (NPR, link has text and
audio), Kelly McEvers reported, "The documents also detail wrongdoing
by units that claimed they were directly connected to current Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki. During the sectarian fighting the gripped Iraq from 2006 to
2008, it was widely believed that death squads sponsored by Maliki's
Shiite-dominated government carried out killings against Sunnis. In a statement
Maliki's office said there's nothing wrong with maintaining special
counterterrorism forces, and the documents don't prove anything." Maher Chmayteli and
Nayla Razzouk (Bloomberg News)
reported that Allawi is calling out the "oil and natural gas
development contracts" Nouri has handed out on the grounds that Nouri's cabinet
is outgoing and that, therefore, the contracts are illegal. Nouri's term expired
some time ago. He's not supposed to be running anything. The US refused to allow
the UN to set up a caretaker government while the election issues were resolved
which is why Nouri's remained in his post. Not only is his term up, so is his
cabinet. He doesn't even have a full cabinet at present and, in fact, the posts
of Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Electricity -- two posts -- are being filled
by one person -- without the approval of Parliament which also isn't supposed to
take place. All cabinet posts are supposed to be approved by Parliament. Iraqiys
presents numerous reasons for the contracts being illegal including Nouri
signing off on them "with no reference to current laws such as Law 97 of 1967,
which requires the consent of the Iraqi Parliament in the absence of a Federal
Oil and Gas Law." Reuters adds, "Some lawmakers say
the contracts all need to be approved by parliament, a view opposed by the oil
ministry." But it forgets to weigh in on who's right? According to the
Constitution, Parliament's approval is needed.
First, the article's author Jack Healy
says that Aziz was "sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on Tuesday, convicted
of crimes against members of rival Shiite political parties." Now to me this
sounds like Healy is indicating that Aziz is himself Shia. He's not. He's
Chaldean Christian. Alternately, Healy could be saying that Aziz was sentenced
for crimes against various Shiite groups who are now at odds with each other.
However, this too is false. Aziz was sentenced to death for crimes against
members of only one Shiite group, Maliki's Dawa party.
And therein lies the story that the Times
does not tell. Maliki himself along with most of the Dawa leadership fled to
Iran in 1979. The following year about six months before the outbreak of the
Iraq-Iran war, Dawa party members tried to assassinate Aziz. 1980 was also the
year in which Maliki was sentenced in absentia to death by the Saddam regime.
Maliki has scores to settle and he is settling them.
Unrelated except it's also Corrente, Libbyliberal has a piece on Ethan McCord sharing
what he experienced in Iraq. Today Iraq continued to experience violence with Reuters reporting a Basra sticky bombing injuring one
person, a Baghdad sticky bombing claiming the life of a police officer, a second
Baghdad sticky bombing injuring a police brigadier general, a third Baghad
sticky bombing which injured an employee of the Ministry of Housing and
Construction, a Mosul suicide car bomber who took his own life as well as that
of 1 police officer and left eight more people injured and, dropping back to
last night, a Baghdad bombing which claimed 1 life and left two more people
injured. To be sure, the parallels should not be
overstated. Anderson's documents totaled just a fraction of the tens of
thousands of records posted on the Internet by WikiLeaks, whose Web site
instantly makes its files available to anyone on the globe with the click of a
mouse. In addition, Anderson was a seasoned reporter who took more care to
disguise the identities of informants and to gather valuable corroborating
information from interviews in the field.
Still, pioneers like Anderson and Assange
are rarely respected in their own time by their establishment competitors. Just
as the founder of WikiLeaks has been dismissed as a hacker/activist, so Anderson
was "not a journalist," another columnist declared back in the day, but "a sewer
pipe" whose reporting "goes beyond disloyalty; it sails close to the windward
edge of treason." Such contempt was reciprocated by Anderson and Assange, who
disparaged the press as mere stenographers for those in power.
| | |
Posted at 08:59 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
i watched 'the crossing guard' tonight. i hadn't seen it in some time.
we were just in the mood for a movie and ended up picking it at random.
i'd forgotten just how powerful a movie it was. sean penn directed
it. it stars jack nicholson, anjelica huston, robin wright and david
morse. i wish anjelica's part was bigger and, watching it, it just reminded me of how much i miss her onscreen. she was great on 'medium' and she and patricia arquette had amazing chemistry. but i miss her in big roles. i even saw 'daddy day care' just for her small part. it's
really sad that films can't find strong roles for women. anjelica is
at the height of her creative powers and i'd like to see her in film
after film. but it's not like i'm seeing jack nicholson in much
either (although c.i. says jack is amazing in the new james brooks film
that comes out later this year - i think paul rudd's in it too). can't get jack and angelica on the big screen lately but can't escape ed rendall who wants to lie and swear obamacare is great! he's the tony tiger of the dem set. you know what's great, ed? universal health care, single-payer for all. i'm sorry we can't be as stupid as you want us to be and look upon the big giveaway to insurance companies as good for us. it wasn't. and
you can keep lying and pretending, and you can claiming we're stupid
for not getting it, but, ed, you're the 1 trying to get us to vote and
you're calling us stupid. so, really, who's the stupid 1? i'll be so glad when this mid-term election is over. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Wednesday,
October 27, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, DoD confirms the death
of one soldier (while rumors swirl more than one was killed), Drama
Queen John F. Burns continues to insist the WikiLeaks story is all
about him (and his 'suffering'), an editorial argues Barack should
ready Congress for the US military staying in Iraq past 2011, and more. Today the Christian Science Monitor's editorial board weighs in
on Iraq noting that "many experts predict Iraq will soon ask Mr. Obama
to extend the time for US forces to stay, not only to protect the
nation's fledgling democracy but to help Iraq survive as a nation in a
hostile neighborhood. Iraq is far behind the schedule set in the 2008
security pact with the United States to bolster its military and
police. Its ability to defend its borders and its oil fields -- both of
which are critical to US interests -- is years away. And there is
much doubt in Washington about the US State Department's ability to
take over the American military's role in managing key security aspects
of Iraq, such as Kurdish-Arab friction or forming new police forces."
The editorial appears to be advocating for a continued US military
presence in Iraq so it's a little strange that they don't attempt to
bolster their editorial by noting what went down at the State Dept
press briefing on Monday. From Monday's snapshot: Today Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) reports
that former US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spoke last week to the
National Council on US - Arab Relations and " that when the dust clears
in the formation of a new government in Iraq that Baghdad would come
to the United States to ask for an extension of the US military
presence beyond the end of 2011. By that date, according to the accord
signed in 2008 by the Bush administration, all US troops are to leave
Iraq. But Crocker said that it is 'quite likely that the Iraqi
government is going to ask for an extension of our deployed presence'."
(He also expressed that Nouri would remaing prime minister. Why?
The US government backed Nouri as the 'continuing' prime minister after
Nouri promised he's allow the US military to remain in Iraq past
2011.) Today at the US State Dept, spokesperson Philip J. Crowley was
asked about Crocker's remarks. He responded, "Well, we have a Status
of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The Status of Forces
Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are working towards
complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces Agreement, which would
include the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next
year. The nature of our partnership beyond next year will have to be
negotiated. On the civilian side, we are committed to Iraq over the
long term. We will have civilians there continuing to work with the
government on a range of areas – economic development, rule of law,
civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that Iraq desires to
have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the United
States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that would
be something that I would expect a new government to consider. [. . .]
Should Iraq wish to continue the kind of military partnership that we
currently have with Iraq, we're open to have that discussion." The Christian Science Monitor's
editorial board argues that Barack needs to prepare Congress for the
possibility of an extended military stay in Iraq for, among other
reasons, the money that would be required. With Joseph Stiglitz, Linda
J. Bilmes has long been charting the financial costs of the Iraq War
and the Afghanistan War. At The Daily Beast today, she writes: Already,
we've spent more than $1 trillion in Iraq, not counting the $700
billion consumed each year by the Pentagon budget. And spending in Iraq
and Afghanistan now comes to more than $3 billion weekly, making the
wars a major reason for record-level budget deficits. Two
years ago, Joseph Stiglitz and I published TheThreeTrillion Dollar War
in which we estimated that the budgetary and economic costs of the war
would reach $3 trillion. Taking
new numbers into account, however, we not believe that our initial
estimate was far too conservative -- the costs of the wars will reach
between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. Turning now to the WikiLeaks revelations or, as John F. Burns believes, The John F. Burns Story. I believe the theme song is Joni Mitchell's
"Roses Blue" or at least the line "Inside your own self-pity, there
you swim." Though some people focus on the torture revelations, for Big
Boned John, it's all about him. Yesterday we were noting his appearance on The Takeaway and Rebecca covered
it even more in depth. John F. Burns whine and whined about the
suffering . . . he'd been through. Apparently unable to afford
therapy, he also showed up on PRI's To The Point yesterday.
He repeated how hard life was for him because people leave comments
on his New York Times' article and he gets e-mails and mean bloggers
and whine, whine. But he had a new whine: Academia is attacking him!
Academia is unreasonable. A lot of these e-mails he's getting, their
e-mail address ends with "edu" and, in fact, some are from Harvard!!!!!
Stephen Walt, who is a professor at Harvard and who was on the
broadcast, offered, "To suggest that it's a group of academics who have
it in for him is not useful." Late Friday, WikiLeaks
released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. The documents
-- US military field reports -- reveal torture and abuse and the
ignoring of both. They reveal ongoing policies passed from the Bush
administration onto the Obama one. They reveal that both
administrations ignored and ignore international laws and conventions on
torture. They reveal a much higher civilian death toll than was ever
admitted to. There are many more revelations to be found in the
documents. The World Socialist Web Site editorializes: The
US-led conquest of Iraq stands as one of the most barbaric war crimes
of the modern era. Writing in April 2003, one month after the invasion,
the World Socialist Web Site noted that during the buildup to
World War II "it was common to speak of the Nazis' 'rape of
Czechoslovakia,' or 'rape of Poland." What characterized Germany's
modus operandi in these countries was the use of overwhelming military
force and the complete elimination of their governments and all civic
institutions, followed by the takeover of their economies for the
benefit of German capitalism. It is high time that what the US is doing
is called by its real name. A criminal regime in Washington is carrying
out the rape of Iraq." (See, "The rape of Iraq" ) The
devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people has only intensified over
the past seven-and-a-half years. The US has engaged in sociocide -- the
systematic destruction of an entire civilization. In addition to the
hundreds of thousands killed, millions more have been turned into
refugees. There has been a staggering growth of disease, infant
mortality and malnutrition. The US military has destroyed the country's
infrastructure, leaving an economy in ruins, with an unemployment rate
of 70 percent. To
the horror of the world's population, the Iraqi people have been made
to suffer an unimaginable tragedy at the hands of the most powerful
military force on the planet. And for what? To establish US domination
over the oil-rich and geostrategically critical country. Every
major institution in the United States is complicit in this crime. In
the face of broad popular opposition within the US, both Democrats and
Republicans authorized the war and have supported it ever since,
expending hundreds of billions of dollars in the process. The American
people have sought repeatedly to end the war through elections, only to
be confronted with the fact that the war continues regardless of which
corporate-controlled party is in office. Obama,
elected as a result of popular hostility to Bush and the Republicans
and their policies of war and handouts to the rich, has continued the
same policies. Running as a critic of the Iraq War, he now praises the
US military occupiers as "liberators." Gil Hoffman (Jerusalem Post) reports,
"National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari urged UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon on Monday to investigate actions by the American military in
Iraq that may constitute war crimes as alleged by the WikiLeaks
website." Hoffman quotes from Ben-Ari's letter, "The latest revelation
of US military documents regarding the war in Iraq detailing torture,
summary executions, rape and war crimes by US and US lead security
forces in Iraq, paint a terrifying portrait of US abuse and contempt of
international treaties. [. . .] That the Pentagon is looking to cover
up these crimes from the world shows the US government has much more to
hide." BBC News notes
that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi
Pillay, calls for the US and Iraq to conduct an investigation and
quotes her stating, "The US and Iraqi authorities should take necessary
measures to investigate all allegations made in these reports and to
bring to justice those responsible for unlawful killings, summary
executions, torture and other serious human rights abuses," she said in
a statement." AFP adds,
"Pillay, based in Geneva, said the United States and Iraq should
investigate all allegations in the Wikileak documents and 'bring to
justice those responsible for unlawful killings, summary executions,
torture and other serious human rights abuses.' She said documents
released by the whistleblowing website added to her concerns that
serious human rights breaches had occurred in Iraq, including 'summary
executions of a large number of civilians and torture and ill-treatment
of detainees'." The
mercenaries, some of whom earn more than $500 per day, are accountable
to no one. Soon after the US invasion of Iraq, Paul Bremer issued
"Order No. 17," giving security firm employees total immunity from Iraqi
laws. Nor has any US court punished the contractors, even for known
instances of murder. They are also not under the jurisdiction of the US
military, freeing them from the court martial and even the
often-flouted rules of engagement laid out in the US Army Field Manual. WikiLeaks
documents analyzed by Al Jazeera, the Arab-language media service,
reveal at least 14 previously unknown cases in which employees of the
most infamous private security firm, Blackwater International, fired on
civilians. These attacks resulted in 10 confirmed deaths and seven
serious injuries. Blackwater,
now known as Xe Services, is most notorious for a 2007 attack it
carried out in Baghdad's crowded Nissour Square, killing 17 civilians
and seriously wounding 18 more. Five Blackwater mercenaries were charged
with murder, but a US judge ruled the prosecution had engaged in
misconduct and threw the case out. "With
all the attention focused on WikiLeaks' most recent release -- a
trove of documents that paints a bleak picture of the war in Iraq," notes Razzaq al-Saiedi (Global Post),
"it's easy to forget that the Iraq of today still has no government."
al-Saiedi reminds that Sunday Iraq's Supreme Court ordered Parliament
to reconvene and hold sessions. At present, they've only held one
session since the election -- they took roll, took their oaths and
adjounred -- all in less than 20 minutes.. March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form
the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and twenty days and still counting.
Alsumaria TV is covering the latest developments. They report,
"During his meeting with Kurdistan leader Massoud Barazani in Arbil,
head of Al Iraqiya List Iyad Allawi cautioned that the government
formation has grew into a serious and critical issue." And that:
"Iraqi National Alliance announced after a meeting held at the house
of Ibrahim Al Jaafari that it will send a delegation to take part in
the meeting between the political blocs expected to be held on
Wednesday in order to activate the initiative of the head of Kurdistan
region Massoud Barazani who called for dialogue between the different
political parties."
The statlemate continues and so does the violence.
Bombings? Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports
a Baghdad roadside bombing claimed 2 lives and left four people
injured and a Baghdad sticky bombing claimed 1 life and left four
people injured. Alsumaria TV also reports an Abu Ghraib bombing which left two Iraqi soldiers injured. Reuters notes
a civilian was also wounded in that bombing and that a Baghdad bombing
-- possibly targeting the Sunni Endowment -- injured two guards of the
Endowment and four by-standers, a Jalawla roadside bombing claimed the
lives of Mohammed al-Tememi and 3 bodyguards (al-Tememi headed the
criminal investigation unit), Jalawla sticky bombing which injured two
police officers, and, dropping back to last night, a Kirkuk bombing
which injured three people. Shootings? This
morning, DoD was still unable to issue a release on the death of
21-year-old David Jones in Iraq Sunday -- despite the family having gone
public. And despite new details emerging. Steve Flamisch (WRGB) reports
the family of David Jones has been told by "a service member" that
Jones and another soldier were killed Sunday by a third US soldier on a
rampage. David Jones' mother Theresa Bennett (biological aunt, raised
him as her own -- last time we're making that reference, she was his
mother) is quoted stating, "Two died, and three others were in urgent
care." Pat Bailey (WKTV -- link has text and video) reports that Pfc David Jones "leaves behind 7 brothers" and that the family is stating they will get to the bottom of how he died. Julie Tremmel (Fox23 News -- link has text and video) reports
that US House Rep Paul Tonko states there will be "a thorough
investigation" and his brother Bernie Bennett states, "If he was out in
the battlefield when he died that would be something else. But he was
in his room and they say that he got murdered by just a gunshot to his
head, and it's just so hard to explain." Dennis Yusko (Albany Times Union) reports, "The aunt of Army Pfc. David Jones
received a copy of a text message Tuesday from a soldier in Iraq
saying that the Montgomery County soldier was one of five people killed
or wounded Sunday in a shooting "rampage" on a U.S military base in
the Iraqi capital, Jones' cousin George Bennett said Wednesday."
Paul Grondahl (Albany Times Union) quotes
Theresa Bennett stating, "We were told he was shot by one of those
very long rifles and there's no way he could have done it himself.
There's no way this was a suicide." Grondahl also speaks with Colleen
Murphy, mother of Staff Sgt Amy Seyboth Tirador who was killed in Iraq a
year ago (November 4, 2009) and who has never been able to get answers
about her daughter's death that made sense (the military insists --
despite many details to the contrary -- that Amy Seyboth Tirador took
her own life). Colleen Murphy states, "I'd gently encourage whoever is
strong enough in the Jones family, when they're ready, not to take what
the military says at face value and to challenge it. To allow the Army
to get away with closing these cases as suicides is not fair to our
soldiers." If the family's being told is true about an "enraged" US
soldier killing David Jones and another as yet unnamed US soldier (and
wounding three otehrs), it also echoes last month's shooting in which
John Carrillo and Gebrah Noonan were shot dead and a third soldier was
wounded. The suspect charged in that shooting is US Spc Neftaly
Platero. If it does turn out to be similar, the Army's going to have to
do a lot of explaining on how, the second month in a row, this took
place. Today DoD released a statement:
"The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who
was supporting Operation New Dawn. Pfc. David R. Jones Jr., 21, of
Saint Johnsville, N.Y., died Oct. 24 at Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries
sustained in a non-combat incident. He was assigned to the 2nd
Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas. For more
information, the media may contact the Fort Hood public affairs office
at 254-897-9993 or 254-287-0106." Turning to the US, on this week's Law and Disorder Radio, hosts and attorneys Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael S. Smith discussed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Heidi Boghosian: Michael, what do you think of the new Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy? Michael
Ratner: Well there was a recent federal court decision, Heidi, that
was terrific. A federal court judge said that the law, the regulations
and essentially memorandum supporting it what we call Don't Ask, Don't
Tell was unconstitutional. That it was a violation of Due Process, that
you couldn't let go of people in the military or get rid of them or
give them discharges just because they were gay, lesbian, etc. So it's a
remarkably good ruling and we're all excited about it. The problem
with the ruling is, of course, Obama -- who has claimed repeatedly that
the policy is disriminatory, he said it again, he said it again and
again -- has decided to ask the court and then the appeals court for a
stay of the ruling so it isn't implemented right away and then he's
thinking about appealing the ruling. So let's think about that. A
federal judge basically issues an order saying a particular statute is
unconstitutional, the Obama administration which says 'this statute is
discriminatory' and also in which the House of Representatives has voted
to repeal the statute, the Senate hasn't taken any vote yet -- hasn't
gotten to the floor, the Obama administration says, 'We're not only
going to appeal, we're going to ask for a stay.' The positive thing
that has happened since then is that the Pentagon, because there's no
stay given and the federal judge refused to give a stay, it will have
to go to the Court of Appeals now, they now have a policy they've just
changed it as of this week to say that will no longer toss people from
the military or refuse to recruit them into the military because
they're gay. One interesting thing about the statute, I finally went
back and read the statute, and it's the long usual b.s. statute with
all kinds of clauses about how important military readiness is and all
this junk. But I never realized what the statute said. The statue
basically allows someone to be let say "caught" in a homosexual, as
they refer to it in the statute, act but still allows them to be kept
in the military if -- and this is what I can't get over -- if you're
caught like that, if you've engaged in or attempted to engage in or
solicited others to engage in a homosexual act you can still be kept if
"(a) such conduct is a departure from the member's usual and customary
behavior." If you just do an occassional homosexual act, you can still
be kept. Or, it looks like an "or" to me, "such conduct is unlikely
to recur" -- maybe all of them have to recurr? -- "such conduct was not
accomplished under the use of forth and under the particular
circumstances, the member does not have a propensity or intent to
engage in homosexual acts." So it's completely bizarre. I just can't -- Michael S. Smith: It has nothing do with human sexuality or psychology to start with. It's bizarre. Heidi Boghosian: So one night stands are allowed. Michael
Ratner: One night stands are allowed. How many? I don't know. You
could even conceivably have a week-stand and still stay in there. But
when you see what Obama did -- I read both New York Times
pieces on this. The Times reporter says the government is appealing --
in the first article, he said because they're required to because
they're defending a law of Congress. Michael S. Smith: That's what -- Think about that. Michael
Ratner: So one of the reasons for Obama's request for presume both the
stay as well as an appeal here is that it's the obligation or the
necessity or somehow the Justice Dept is supposed to defend acts of
Congress when they're held unconstitutional because they are an act of
the political branches that are signed by the president. The first New
York Times coverage of this said that the government was required to
appeal these cases. Obviously they got letters about that because
they're not required to. There's many circumstances where they aren't
required to -- or there's no requirement at all, but where
traditionally they haven't. The article that I've just read about it
now says that they've traditionally appealed cases in which a statute is
held unconstitional. But even that to me would be very subject to
what this case is actually about. First, you have 70% of the country
saying they think this policy is just b.s. Secondly, you have the
president who says it's discriminatory -- essentially saying it's
unconstitutional, the House rather, now saying it should be appealed,
the Senate it hasn't been brought to a floor vote. So you have a
situation now that is different than a normal case in which there's a
statute of Congress held unconstitutional, the president doesn't think
it's unconstitutional, both houses of Congress say, this is our statute
go with it. In this case, this is really Obama. That's what it is. And
someone told me -- and I'd be interested in the reaction of my two
hosts here -- when I criticized this policy the other day, someone
said, "Well, lookit, this is the deal, Michael, Obama wants to get us
out of Afghanistan, the Pentagon does not want to have Don't Ask, Don't
Tell [repeal] implemented and the deal here is that Obama will
continue to fight for Don't Ask, Don't Tell even though he doesn't like
the policy as a deal for the Petraeus to get out of Afghanistan. I'll
take reactions from either of you and we'll end this little update. Michael S. Smith: How do you know what's inside his head? All you can do is judge him by what he's doing which is not good. I
agree with Michael Smith but since Heidi didn't answer, we'll stop
there to point out something. I'm not fond of these "what he really
meant was" stories. Any woman who's worked any time at all on the
issue of battering damn well knows just how f**king useless "what he
really meant" stories are. But I find the homophobia in the person who
passed that story on to Michael Ratner appalling. The "what he really
meant" game here is that Barack wants out of Afghanistan (where's the
proof on that?) and he's going to pretend to care about repealing Don't
Ask, Don't Tell while refusing to actually repeal it. He's going to
do that to please the Pentagon, the tall tale goes. And the person
telling this to Michael is doing so to justify Barack. There's no
justification for that and you have to have a whole lot of homophobia
-- and disrespect for the people's right to know and the will of the
people -- to see this as 'three dimensional chess' and something good
about Barack. Obviously,
since they taped the update, there's been another flip. The appeals
court issued a stay on the no-discharges policy Judge Virginia Phillips
had put in place during the appeals process (appeal of her ruling that
Don't Ask, Don't Tell is unconstitutional). War News Radio covered that on their latest program (began airing Friday). Excerpt: Sam
Hirshman: US Court Judge Virginia Phillips ruled the Don't Ask, Don't
Tell policy unconstitutional in September. About a month later, she
issued a world-wide injunction on the policy. According to Diane
Mazur, a professor at the University of Florida, an expert on the
Constitution and the military -- Diane
Mazur: What it means is that she's issued an order barring the
military from enforcing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in any place that the
military operates at any time, in any way. It is as a broad as an
order can be on this -- on this subject. Sam
Hirshman: Suddenly, it was okay to be gay in the US military -- at
least in the eyes of the law. A flurry of legal activity followed the
injunction: motions, replies, appeals, stays and orders. For now it
looks like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the 1993 policiy banning gays and
lesbians from serving openly in the military will stay in place. The
injunction was in effect all of eight days. During that time, the Dept
of Defense allowed gay people to enlist in the military, service
members could come out during the injunction and continue serving but
the DoD warned that such statements may have adverse consequences. Choi
is unapologetic. He says he resents it when anyone, especially those
in the gay-rights movement, discourages him from exploring—well,
sexually—his newly revealed homosexuality. "I
think our movement hits on so many nerves," he says, "not just for
reasons of anti-discrimination and all the platitudes of the civil
rights movement. I believe that it's also because it has elements of
sexual liberation. And it shows people that through what we're trying
to do, they can be fully respectful of themselves, without accepting
the shame society wants to throw upon them." "Sexual
liberation" -- that probably won't play well on Capitol Hill. And
therein lies the conflict between Choi and the establishment. His bold
public actions --from chaining himself to the White House
fence (twice) to going on a hunger strike for seven days -- as well as
his almost complete lack of inhibition about making his private
behavior public, unnerve the old guard of both the military and the gay-rights movement. Everyone,
he says, is "happy to send out e-mails when a good court case comes
out, but no one is willing to take a risk for fear of taking blame. If
people want to blame me for being the reason 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' isn't repealed, I say fine. Bring it on, motherf**kers." Nicole
Colson: In terms of the response to the FBI raids, I know there were
several demonstrations in cities in the days following the raids, and
when the first grand jury appearance was scheduled, even though all the
activists refused to testify, people came out for that as well. Do you
think that kind of public pressure is important? Michael
Ratner: I think those have been very helpful. I was really excited to
see that there were 27 cities that had demonstrations around the raids
and the grand jury appearances. And the fact that everybody decided to
take the Fifth Amendment and not testify I think surprised the
government. The government didn't come back immediately and give
certain people immunity, or maybe it realized they overreached a bit,
and that it was a fishing expedition. I think the demonstrations made a
difference in that. That's not saying that something more won't
happen, because you know they don't do these things and then just walk
away. But I think demonstrations did help, and protests really limit
the scope that the government can act on in these kind of raids. I think
they are absolutely a crucial part of opposition. I think that if
there weren't those protests, for all I know the government would have
enforced those subpoenas right away and dragged those people right in
to the grand jury. But now, maybe they're rethinking it. They may
still do it selectively -- I don't have any idea -- but I certainly
believe that making this into the civil liberties fight that it really
is, is crucial. On
September 24, 2010, in various localities in the United Stated the
Federal Bureau of Investigation executed search warra nts on the homes
of, and served grand jury subpoenas on, several anti-war and solidarity
activists involved in solidarity work with Palestinian and Colombian
people. The United States has demanded that these peaceful activists
produce, to a Federal Grand Jury, emails, pictures, bank records and
other personal records relating to travel to Colombia, Jordan, Syria,
the Palestinian Territories, and Israel. THEREFORE
BE IT RESOLVED that the National Lawyers Guild strongly denounces the
attacks on free speech, freedom of association, right to dissent, and
expressions of solidarity represented by these raids and grand jury
subpoenas. We further resolve that the National Lawyers Guild shall
continue to zealously defend the right to dissent, the right to act in
solidarity with oppressed peoples, and resist the chilling effect of Holder v. Humanitarian Laws Project at al.
Consistent with the NLG approach to opposing this type of attack we
support all efforts to enjoin the grand jury and prosecution, as the
NLG did in the case of Dombrowski v. Pfister. Indeed,
most Americans who were marching in the streets, denouncing what they
called "Bush's war," voted for Barack Obama for President. They
supported him enthusiastically, a number of the activist types campaigned for him, and now that we're living through what Bob Woodward calls "Obama's Wars," these former peaceniks have buttoned their lips. When
Obama was elected, the main peace coalition, which called itself
United for Peace and Justice, congratulated him in a front page article
on their web site – and then promptly dissolved! Oh, they still claim
to oppose the wars we are fighting – in theory – but in practice they
just aren't all that interested in doing anything about it. And we're
not just talking about the limousine liberal set here: hard-line
Marxists, who have always been involved in the various peace movements,
are also going squishy. At a recent "antiwar conference" held in
Buffalo, New York, which was dominated and largely organized by a
Trotskyist group known as Socialist Action, the participants voted to
pour their energy into building the October 2nd pro-Obama demonstration
recently held in Washington, D.C., which dubbed itself "One Nation
Working Together." Yeah, right, One Nation Working Together for the Democratic Party. The
rally, a left-wing version of the Glenn Beck pray in, was basically a
get out the vote effort on behalf of the beleaguered Democrats. From
the platform, speaker after speaker told the rather thin crowd that
their moral duty was to go out and vote Democrat. That's the ticket! And
what did they get in exchange for acting as water boys for the union
bureaucrats? Nothing – not a single speaker, not a single slogan, not a
single antiwar placard onstage. Nothing, nada, zilch. There was no
official antiwar speaker precisely because the rally was organized and
controlled by the Obama-crats, who all support their commander-in-chief
as he wages a war of conquest in Afghanistan and extends it into
Pakistan. However, the party hacks lost control of the stage, at one
point, when Harry Belafonte shattered the silence. Charging
that "the wars that we wage today in far away lands are immoral,
unconscionable and unwinnable," the famous musician delivered a
stunning denunciation of the war – a moment you can bet was not
supposed to happen. Belafonte then started railing about how we're
headed for "a totalitarian state in America," which kind of made him
seem like a tea partier – except that in the next breath he accused the
tea party of being the "villainous" force behind this sinister trend.
Go figure. According
to more than one eye witness, the reception to Belafonte's antiwar
message was "muted," at best. But of course it was. The Democrats don't
want to bring up the war issue, because it's just another reason for
their base to stay home on Election Day. The only other reference to
the military — aside from some patriotic comments to the troops — was
Jesse Jackson's call to "Cut the military budget." A few moments out of
hours. Big deal.
wgrbsteve flamischwktvpat baileyfox23 newsjulie tremmelthe albany times unionpaul grondahljustin raimondo
Posted at 05:28 am by politicsscree
Permalink
Oct 26, 2010
john f. burns drama queen
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, a former
Pentagon analyst best known for leaking key memos about the Vietnam War
40 years ago, led a packed forum at London's Frontline Club last night
to discuss the fallout over the non-profit group's disclosure of
approximately 400,000 US Army files documenting the Iraq War. While the
two men predictably levelled forceful criticism at the Pentagon, their
main target for most of the evening was actually the New York Times. Assange fumed openly about John Burns and Ravi Somaiya's expose from this past Sunday's Times
that characterized the WikiLeaks mastermind as increasingly paranoid,
erratic, and dangerously egotistical. "It's a smear piece, and more
tabloid behavior by the Times," Assange said of the article. "Is it that only journalists with bad character work for the Times?"
he added, before quickly shifting gears to argue that that the paper is
beholden to the US military-industrial complex and, as a result, too
often confuses a false sense of balance with accuracy. WikiLeaks,
Assange maintained, is free from the political constraints that tie the
hands of a mainstream media organization like the Times, and so does not have to make editorial concessions to the Pentagon that could compromise its accuracy. For Assange, the Times's
allegedly compromised sense of accuracy clearly extends to the
"terrible" article by Burns and Somaiya that seeks to analyze -- though,
he would say impugn -- his character and motives. "Mr. Assange has come
a long way from an unsettled childhood in Australia as a
self-acknowledged social misfit who narrowly avoided prison after being
convicted on 25 charges of computer hacking in 1995," reads the
beginning of one damning passage. that's from christopher alessi's 'wikileaks founder lashes out at new york times' ( huffington post).
reading the snapshot and encountering idiot john f. burns, i called
c.i. and said i was going to listen to the takeaway for that and she
suggested i also read this piece by alessi which would have been noted
in the snapshot if it had been published before c.i. finished dictating
the snapshot. i listened to the takeaway segment for humor reasons only. reading the snapshot, i knew from what c.i. wrote that this was 1 of those don't-miss segments. john
f. burns is the new york times correspondent who ran with dexy filkins
all over baghdad. rumors of their visiting whorehouses in baghdad ran
rampant. the 2 did conduct lengthy affairs and when their wives were
informed, they went whining to their bosses to get a woman fired. yeah, they cheat and get exposed and it's some 1 else's problem. they're such pigs. and you know john f. burns was paying for sex because he's butt ugly. dexy could be good looking but john f. burns -with that ridiculous santa clause-like beard - is butt ugly. so
dexy's wife divorces him and makes off with the condo and much more (as
she should) but john f. burns' wife (who also works for the paper)
looks the other way. he seems to think he's married to the world and we're all required to look the other way. he's such a drama queen. you really need to hear the segment as he whines that people don't like his writing. he blames it on bloggers. maybe it should be blamed on his bad writing? his sexist writing? maybe john f. burns needs to accept the fact that he's just not all that. and that as a known war hawk, people now watch him more closely. it
was hilarious to hear him whine about the meanness of the e-mails he's
received and the comments that were so mean and left at his article. any 1! any 1! can e-mail him, he whined. yes they can. would you like to? use this link. Send an E-Mail to John F. Burnsany 1 can e-mail me, john f. burns. i get threatening e-mails. i don't whine, little boy. i suck it up and act like a grown woman. john f. burns is disgusting. he takes his slams at people and then whines when e-mails object to it. he's a disgusting piece of trash. a human propagandist. and,
c.i. was right, you really have to hear mister fancy pants, in his
british accent, accuse his detractors of being unamerican. it's really
something to hear. what a drama queen. let's close with c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:' Tuesday,
October 26, 2010. Chaos and violence contiue, another US soldier dies
in Iraq, WikiLeaks gets media attention (from some), The Whoring of
America, and more.Sunday
another US soldier died while serving in Iraq. Neither DoD nor USF has
issued a statement on the death on his death but his family has gone
public. WTEN reports,
"21-year old Pvt. David Jones joined the Army less than one year ago,
and was serving his first tour of duty in Iraq as a prison guard. The
2008 St. Johnsville High School graduate was in good spirits when he
spoke to his mother last week, but his girlfriend received a cryptic
message from him minutes before his death." Theresa Bennett explains her
son (biological nephew but she raised him) would have been back in the
US "on leave next week. He had bought tickets to a New York Giants
football game and planned to propose to his girlfriend at halftime." In
Iraq, David Jones was a prison guard. The Albany Times Union reports
that his body was discovered "with a gunshot wound to his head. His
girlfriend, Brittany Winton, said that shortly before he was found, he
sent her a Facebook message that said 'By the time you get this I'll
probably be gone'." Stephanie Sorrell-White (Observer-Dispatch) quotes
his baseball coach Jason Brundage stating, "David was a good kid. He
was outgoing, had a lot of energy, always talking but never saying
anything bad about anyone." Julie Tremmel (Fox 23 News) speaks
with the family and his brother Bernie Bennett states, "I talked to him
the other day and he was gonna be back for my birthday and we were
going to celebrate together." Theresa Bennet adds, "He sent Brittany an
engagement ring and gave it to her mother to hold on to. And he sent us
tickets to the Dallas Cowboys and Giants game on November 8th and he was
gonna propose to her at half time."
The family wants answers
about David Jones' death and they deserve them. A much more minor issue,
but still an issue, is why USF is unable to issue announcements on
deaths. Issuing announcements is their job. Of course, to do so, would
be to draw attention to a death and everyone's working overtime to
pretend that there are no US soldiers in Iraq anymore and Barack uttered
a few words on August 31st and 'peace' prevailed. It's a disservice to
those stationed there, it's a disservice to those like David Jones who
are losing their lives.
Today on the first hour of The Diane Rehm Show
(NPR), professional liar Paul Pillar told more lies than anyone could
possibly ever fact check. While it might appear that Pillar should be
an expert on dumps, we're referring to the releasing of documents --
called a "document dump" by the Pentagon and its supporters -- and
that's really not Pillar's expertise. He should stick to things that,
like him, float around a toilet. And suggestion for NPR, stop booking
guests who snicker. It's childish and it needs to stop. Late Friday, WikiLeaks
released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. Today Diane was
joined by Stephen Walt and Daniel Ellsberg after Pentagon spokesperson
Geoff Morrell spoke (he handed off to Pillar who spun for the Pentagon
throughout). Excerpt:Stephen
Walt: They suggest that some parts of the story we were told over the
last few years weren't entirely correct and may have actually been
misrepresented. And given that the American tax payer is paying for
this and the Americans are going to be held responsible for this and
Americans are going to have to judge how others see us based on what
they know about what our own government is doing I think the net effect
of some of this is acutally positive and we have to be very careful in
trying to squelch it. If I may make one other point, if I thought that
the Congress and the press were doing an energetic job of investigating
what our past behavior has been and holding people accountable then I
would think there was less value in having an organization like
WikiLeaks spreading this kind of information. Diane Rehm: Stephen --Stephen
Walt: Given that I haven't seen very much of that in recent years, I
guess the net effect, this may actually be positive for the sort of
longterm understanding of American foreign and defense policy.Diane
Rehm: Stephen Walt. He's professor of international affairs at Harvard
University. And turning to you now, Daniel Ellsberg, first of all, I
know you're in London. Why?Daniel
Ellsberg: I was here to stand with WikiLeaks in this release which I
think serves a very definite public interest here -- Diane
Rehm: You say -- You say you've been waiting a long time for
information that actually makes a difference. Yet, you've heard Stephen
Walt say, Paul Pillar say, what's been released really does not amount
to all that much.Daniel
Ellsberg: Well that does not -- First of all, I do agree with what
Stephen Walt has said and I thought, Diane, your question was very
prudent, probing and appropriate. I have to say I have been waiting a
long time for someone to take risks of acting at risk as the source of
this has done. Anyone who released this information had to know that
they were risking being where Bradley Manning
is sitting right now: Accused -- whether rightly or not -- and facing
life imprisonment [. . .] or be executed in order to share this
information with the American public I recognize the same state of mind I
had 40 years ago and which did not then represent the feelings of a
disgrunteled individual with an axe to grind other than I thought it was
in the interest of my country to stop killing Vietnamese and to end the
Vietnamese war. And I have a feeling, very strongly, of identification
with whoever this source was. If it was Bradley Manning,
if that's proved to be the case, I admire him. But I have to say,
Diane, that I'm feeling more emotion than I expected to feel in this. I
recognize by that my still feelings of identification with the
executive branch that I served for quite awhile and my feelings of shame
and disgust at hearing current officials like [Pentagon spokesperson
Geoff] Morrell blow smoke about matters of human life here and war and
peace in the way that he did --Diane Rehm: Daniel Ellsberg, tell me what you believe these documents reveal --Daniel Ellsberg: Yes, well --Diane Rehm: -- that the American public needs to know?Daniel
Ellsberg: It's, it's a matter of simply reading the documents. Morrell
said the other night on The Larry King Show I was on that he saw no War
Crimes in these documents, these 400,000, he saw no evidence of War
Crimes. I was -- I found myself just disgusted at that statement. If
he wants better information on that, he can find it within his own
building, he can go to his Judge Advocate's General of the --Diane Rehm: Tell me what War Crimes you believe have been committed?Daniel
Ellsberg: Yes. You don't have to be a lawyer to know that drilling
with electric drills, pulling out finger nails and cutting fingers, this
is consensually understood to be torture which is to say a crime under
international and domestic law -- as is the failure to investigate or
to stop the practice of this by allies --Diane Rehm: Alright.Daniel
Ellsberg: -- and to refuse to hand over suspects as these clearly
reveal. They're just as much crimes of torture itself.Diane Rehm: Stephen Walt --Daniel
Ellsberg: And to make that very clear, he could get that from Colin
Powell who as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- and former
Secretary of State at the time in the Bush administration when this was
going on strongly objected to the redefinition of these as not being
torture --Diane Rehm: Alright.Daniel Ellsberg: -- and that these were illegal.As noted, Morrell joined the show early on. The Morrell media moment in the last days remains Good Morning America
Saturday when co-anchor Dan Harris attempted to get Morrell to answer
the question of whether or not US service members were asked not to
investigate torture and Morrell repeatedly danced around the issue
leading Harris to conclude after the third dance, "Sounds like: Yes,
perhaps they were told not to investigate." (Ava and I covered that Sunday
and, as noted, did so at the request of friends with ABC News.) The
documents reveal that the US soldiers were reporting reports and
evidence of abuse by Iraqi forces, they were reporting them up the chain
of command; however, nothing was done about it and the US soldiers were
under orders not to do anything other than report it. Justin Raimondo (Antiwar.com) notes:
The biggest US security breach in our history, carried off by WikiLeaks, reveals a wealth of information – hundreds of thousands of field reports,
the raw material collected by the US military on the ground in Iraq. It
will be quite a while before the "gems" are mined from this treasure trove, but initially the one that stands out as the jewel in the crown is the revelation of "Frago 242"
– an order from high up in the US military command instructing officers
not to investigate reports of torture and other human rights violations
by their Iraqi allies. As the Guardian, one of the media outlets given privileged access to the database prior to its general release, reports: "A frago is a 'fragmentary order' which summarizes
a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year
after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate
any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of
detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where
the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, 'only an initial
report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless
directed by HQ.'" We invaded Iraq, according to George W. Bush, because Saddam Hussein was "killing his own people." Yet the same can be said about the regime we installed after the Iraqi dictator was deposed – and it was being done with our knowledge. Yesterday on The Takeaway, Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry spoke with the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak.Celeste
Headlee: First of all, can you tell me -- you probably haven't read
400,000 pages -- but can you tell me what in the documents strike you
the most? There were reportings that Iraq's officers and soldiers were
beating prisoners, burning them, lashing them -- in one case Americans
suspected that a prisoner was burnt with acid. What in there is perhaps
surprising to you?Manfred
Nowak: It is that the amount and the brutality of the torture methods
that have been used but, in principle, these new documents do confirm
all the various allegations that we have heard about torture and ill
treatment by Iraqi security forces and militias during all those years. Celeste
Headless: So the United Nations has been receiving reports or
accusations of torture, for years now, at the hands of Iraqi soldiers?Manfred Nowak: Yes, we have.Celeste
Headlee: And this confirms them so what is the next step here and what
is the United States' legal responsibility? If it is in fact the case
that the United States was aware that this torture was going on or
suspected it and still handed prisoners over, is the United States
legally responsible?Manfred
Nowak: I mean, first of all, of course, it's the responsibility of the
Iraqi government. They have to investigate what happened and bring the
perpetrators to justice. But secondly, the United States is responsible
under the Convention Against Torture not to hand over any detainees to
Iraqi security forces when they know that there's a serious risk of
being subjected to torture. So also this practice should be
investigated by the United States.Nowak
goes on to reveal that he attempted a fact-finding mission in Iraq in
2006; however, despite Iraq inviting him in and the British agreeing and
saying he could have access to their prisons in Iraq however the US
refused and that was the end of any possible mission.In
another Takeaway segment on Monday, John F. Burns told Celeste and John
that he examined the documents to see (a) what the paper might have
missed (he didn't feel they'd missed anything) and (b) that following
his profile of Julian Assange, he has gotten nasty responses. In other
words, John F. Burns used his seven minutes of time to pat himself on
the back and to the whine about response to his writing. (For any
wondering, we ignored John's article -- didn't link to it, didn't
comment on it.) As usual, he made it all about him and then he got to
the most laughable or offensive (depending upon your view) when he
attacked "bloggers" who were "anti-war" and their response declaring, "I
find it very unamerican," Burns is British. What a moron. And he did
a lousy job in Iraq. Burns
was one of the go-go boys -- he and Dexy held each other's penises
while typing and playing apparently (Dexy ended up divorced, Burnsie got
lucky) -- and, as such, he did more than
any other NYT-er to render Iraqi women invisible in print. He wants to
talk about what his paper covered under his lead? It didn't cover
women. Iraqi women were not sought out, were not quoted. It took the
ones came after Burnsie and Dexy to do the mop up. And Burnsie, for the
record, has been unable or unwilling to report on the British response
to the revelations. Nor did he remark on them on The Takeaway --
despite being on the phone from London. For those who need a reminder,
back in 2005, Lloyd Groves' "Times' Iraq bureau grief" (New York Daily News) reported:
The
Gray Lady's management has just fired Sachs, a widely respected and
experienced journalist who has tangled bitterly with Burns and Filkins,
over allegations that she sent anonymous letters and an E-mail to their
wives alleging bad behavior with women in the war zone.
Sachs - who
didn't respond to a message left for her in France yesterday - has
stoutly denied the charges, and the Newspaper Guild is defending her in
arbitration proceedings against The Times.
[. . .]
According
to my sources, Filkins' wife, novelist Ana Menendez, and Burns' wife,
Jane Scott-Long, received the mystery missives in the past few months,
purporting to rat out their husbands' alleged infidelities.
I hear that The Times
conducted an investigation and linked postmarks on the envelopes to
Sachs' purported whereabouts on the dates the letters were apparently
sent - and also claimed to have linked an E-mail to Sachs.
Susan
Sachs denied any involvement. Dexy's ex made sure the little cheater
paid (as she should have) and went on to a wonderful life. Dexy's . . .
left being Dexy which is its own hell. And for those who don't know,
despite refusing to speak on the topic, the go-go boys have gone on to
paint every US female correspondent as 'loose' (to put it mildly) and,
when they were scooped (as they so often were), respond that the woman
was sleeping with Gen David Petreaus. (To be very clear, those were
unfounded charges. There is not now nor has there ever been any
indication that Petraeus had any affairs with reporters. I don't care
for him but I'm not interested in falsely smearing him, I'll leave that
to the go-go boys, and the women reporting from Iraq earned their scoops
the hard way, by doing the work required.) What John Burns couldn't
talk about on The Takeaway? Rachael Brown (Australia's ABC) reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron has "promised to investigate" the torture allegations in the WikiLeaks release. AFP quotes
Cameron's spokesperson stating yesterday, "Clearly our position is that
there is no place for mistreatment of detainees and we do as a matter
of course investigate allegations." Staying on England a second more,
the Daily Mail reports
that the Iraq Inquiry will be calling War Hawk, Poodle and former prime
minister Tony Brown back before the committee to address "gaps" in his
testimony. Meanwhile UPI reports European Parliament VP Alejo Vidal Quadras states that "WikiLeaks indicate the Iraqi regime is guilty of war crimes." And Daily Nation reports that Lars Loekke Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister, has called for an investigation into his troops actions in Iraq. Sami Moubayed (Gulf News) outlines some of the the documented violence and abuse:
Another
document shows that an eight-year-old Iraqi girl was killed at a
checkpoint in Baghdad. Throughout the new documents, which are being
described as the largest governmental leak in history, page after page
shows that the US troops knew exactly what kind of malpractices were
taking place in Iraqi prisons; turning a blind eye to all of them.
In
one log, documents reveal that the Americans suspected Iraqis cutting
off the fingers of Iraqi prisoners, and burning them with acid. One of
the most notorious documents says that 17 men in uniform were confronted
by troops from the Iraqi Army in October 2006.
When asked to
identify themselves, they said they were a special unit reporting
directly to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. That special unit, Iraqis
are now saying in retrospect, might have been one of the numerous death
squads that mushroomed in the Iraqi capital that winter, striking at
mosques, neighbourhoods, and individuals within the Sunni community.
Last night, Betty noted coverage of The Daily Telegraph by way of TODAY online:American
troops in Iraq handed over captives to an infamous torture squad,
according to newly-released files from the WikiLeaks war logs. The
documents appear to show that United States commanders passed detainees
over to the Wolf Brigade, a feared unit controlled by the Ministry of
the Interior. In files seen
by The New York Times, a US interrogator told the prisoner that: "He
would be subject to all the pain and agony that the Wolf battalion is
known to exact upon its detainees." New
York Times writer Peter Maass, who was in Samarra in 2004 and 2005,
told The Guardian that "US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside
and doing nothing," while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured
prisoners. Last night, Kat noted a revelation Press TV was reporting on. Allowing all of Iraq to be deemed a War Zone (that goes to the Bush and Obama administration) led to shooting
an Iraqi teen but instead hitting a preganant woman and a small child
(apparently her relative). She was wounded, the child was killed.Saturday Christian Science Monitor's Jane Arraf and McClatchy Newspapers' Mohammed al Dulaimy team up (link goes to Miami Herald) to reported
that Nouri al-Maliki's office issued a statement insisting the release
of the documents was the work of his foes in an attempt to take him
down. Salam Faraj (Brisbane Times) explains
that Nouri was bothered that the documents cover his rise in 2006 and
how "he created security units loyal to him that Iraqis referred to as
'dirty forces' for their heavy-handed treatment of suspects and
detainees." Nouri fears the release may prevent him from remaining
prime minister. March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August,
"These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but
everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a
cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive
government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single
slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they
may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the
executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with
other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament
seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent
various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of
Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat
holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the
current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show
of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing
coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this
coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they
have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's seven months and nineteen days and still counting.
Sunday the country's highest court ordered the Parliament to resume session. The Ventura County Star editorial board offers their take including revealing that despite not meeting (they had one parliamentary session on June 14th
which lasted less than 20 minutes) the MPs are each receiving $22,500
in salary a month as well as a housing per diem and they note that if
the Court's ruling is ignored, "the court could theoretically order new
elections." Mohammad Akef Jamal (Gulf News) reports,
"The Islamic Supreme Council for Iraq (ISCI), Al Fadila party and the
Badr Brigade, all of whom are a part of the INC, have all become closer
to Al Iraqiya List. Another sensational happening took place when the Al
Iraqiya List said it was willing to support the candidature of ISCI's
Adel Abdul Mehdi. This move may well give way to the formation of an
alliance, including Al Iraqiya, the ISCI, Al Fadila party and other
smaller blocs, to weaken the position of outgoing Prime Minister Nouri
Al Maliki's chance for a second term as premier. Nevertheless, even this
alliance will not be able to gain a majority in the parliament to form a
government." Meanwhile Nouri and his defenders have gone so far to
claim that the WikiLeak documents were Photoshopped. Kelly McEvers (NPR's All Things Considered, link has audio and text) covered that yesterday and also reported: The
truth is something many Iraqis are still searching for: the wife who
went missing; the son whose body was never found. These new documents
might hold some answers. For now, WikiLeaks has redacted all names from
the sigact database that's available online. But news outlets were given
the full database, and some names are beginning to trickle out. Saad
Eskandar heads the Iraqi National Archive. He's trying to convince the
U.S. government to release another trove of documents. These detail
atrocities during the Saddam Hussein era. Eskandar says much of this
database would be accessible to Iraqi academics and lawyers, but not to
average people. He says while people have the right to know what
happened to their relatives, how they might act on information from the
Saddam data or the WikiLeaks data could be dangerous. Turning
now to The Whoring Of America. The WikiLeaks release is huge, it is a
story that is far reaching. But take a moment to look around. The MSM?
Diane Rehm's covered it, Larry King, Good Morning America, The
NewsHour, the three commerical broadcast evening news programs, the New
York Times, etc, have covered it. Who's whoring? Our so-called left.
The Progressive? Matty Rothschild did one audio on it this week --
finally. Can't write about it. Can't be bothered with that. But those
little 60 second spots he does twice a week? He did one on WikiLeaks.
Oh, how he must have tired himself. He can write -- and has repeatedly
-- since the release but he's focused on elections. We'll come back to
elections in a moment. Baby Cum Pants Amitabh Pal. The little liar,
you may remember, made such a whorish judgment, his ass honestly should
have been canned. 'Examing' the landscape after England elected their
new prime minister, Pal said the Iraq War didn't do in Labour and that
England was "keen to forget" the Iraq War. Rebecca called the lying bag
of s**t out here.
Rebecca and I both knew better because we had access to Labour's
polling throughout the lead up to the election (and Rebecca went to
London to help with the p.r.). Baby Cum Pants Pal wanted to forget. As
we saw after Baby Cum Pants made his ridiculous statements, the fight
for prime minister came down to where did you stand on Iraq. One
brother triumphed over another (Ed Miliband over David -- I know both
Miliband brothers) as a result of where they stood on Iraq. Not only
that, Iraq's continued importance in England was addressed last Friday
on The Diane Rehm Show:James
Kitfield: Diane, can I just make a point? I just came back from London,
working on this story. The-the fact is Britain no longer wants to be
that ally to us. You know the Iraq War has really soured them on being
America's, you know, ally of first resort. It's an aftermath, blowback
from the Iraq War.Baby Cum
Pants has never, ever issued an apology or correction. Though he can't
write about WikiLeaks, Baby Cum Pants showed up at The Progressive
yesterday to cup and fondle Bob Herbert. Why, oh, why didn't Herbert
get more attention? He means media attention and, as usual, Baby Cum
Pants doesn't know what he's talking about. While jerking off to
Herbert, he fails to grasp that African-Americans in any staff position
on a TV public affairs show tend to object to Herbert as a guest. Why?
They know how he leap frogged from the New York Daily News to the New York Times
(on the backs of young African-American males whom he portrayed as
criminals in one of NYC's most sensationalistic crimes, Herbert tried
and covicted them in his columns -- history has proven him wrong). So
if you want to know why you're hero doesn't get more attention, Baby Cum
Pants, you need to know what your hero did. When his name is raised,
African-American staffers will regularly recommend Clarence Page,
Colbert King, William Raspberry and a host of others. Your ignorance is
not an excuse, Baby Cum Pants.Friday we were calling out
Bob Herbert's dreadful on campus speech. In it, you may remember,
Herbert had the nerve to blame the American people for not focusing on
the Iraq War when the media is the one not focusing -- like Pal, the
media wants to "forget" -- and when Herbert's grandstanding was undercut
by the fact that you had to drop back 15 columns to find Herbert even
writing about the wars (he wrote about Afghanistan in a column published
on the day Barack gave his big nothing August 31st speech). In
addition, he wrote about Afghanistan August 17th, and then again June
26th . . . No, that's not regularly for a person with a twice-a-week
column. And you have to go way, way back to find a column by him on the
Iraq War. Baby Cum Pants is waxing on Herbert's dreadful speech with
claims of it being anti-war and political. It wasn't. It was The Best Years Of Our Lives.
It was let Bob Herbert hide behind wounded veterans and pretend to be
brave. It is impossible to believe that any sane American -- regardless
of right or left or inbetween or don't care about politics -- takes joy
or gladness in the wounded of US service members. It's not a political
issue. It's something everyone can agree on. And that was the basis
of Herbert bad and non-brave speech. It was not "an eloquent anti-war
oration" and that anyone at The Progressive wants to whore it as such
goes a long way to explaining why that tepid magazine just gets more and
more deadly dull. Pal wrote about his sexual desire but he didn't have
time for WikiLeaks.Over at The Nation, they've posted a video of Jerry Scahill talking about WikiLeaks . . . on MSNBC. Did Jerry write about WikiLeaks for The Nation?
Woops! No, he didn't. In fact, other than Greg Mitchell's slight and
sleight dispatches (newly fashioned as the Liz Smith of the faux
political set by The Nation magazine), the only writing on WikiLeaks was to allow an Iranian dissident on the US payroll to distort a field report (we addressed that Saturday
and I'm being very kind and not putting it into a snapshot). Greg
contributes his free-form prose stylings which include 5 'sentences' in
his most recent dispatch on WikiLeaks if by sentences you mean words
tossed together (if you mean subject-verb-direct object, they don't pass
muster but Greg's discovered ellipses in his gossip maven phase). Now
it's not that The Nation has stopped posted online. They just have more
'important' things to talk about. Plugging Katrina vanden Heuvel's
media appearances, for example or what Matty Damon wants for his
birthday (besides a hit film which continues to elude him), ESPN, Juan
Williams, Ziggy Marley and pot, and always and always elections.Point
of fact, we're now back to elections, people not in Nevada are not
strongly invested in Nevada's Senate election. People not in Delaware?
The same. Political junkies devoted to races, a small section of the
public, may need their fix, but that's really not what The Nation or The Progressive
is supposed to be about. The coverage is bulls**t and instantly
disposable after next Tuesday. They've wasted everyone's time in
attempts to up the vote for the Democratic Party. That's whoring. And
America can't afford it. The Progressive has served up a
whopping sixty seconds on WikiLeaks. Except for Gushing Greg's
Breathless Bulletins and outsourcing a report to an Iranian dissident, The Nation can't even claim to have done that.Oh all around the marketplaceThe buzzing of the fliesThe buzzing and the stingingDivinely barrenAnd wickedly wiseThe killer nails are ringingEnter the multitudesIn Exxon blueIn radiation roseTragedyNow you tell me Who you gonna get to do the dirty workWhen all the slaves are free?Who're you gonna getWho you gonna get to do the dirty workWhen all the slaves are free?-- "Passion Play," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her Night Ride HomeWhat of In These Times? You mean In These Turn Out The Vote For The Democratic Party Times?
This magazine is so far from its roots that its eventual demise will
be no cause for sadness. All they're doing is whoring. The left and
so-called left outlets are whoring for the Democratic Party with fan
club bulletings while ignoring WikiLeaks' revelations. It tells you a
great deal about how the nation's been dumbed down and about The Whoring
of America. Once upon a time, these same outlets liked to hector the
MSM and pretend they were better than the MSM. Their own actions have
demonstrated that they're not in the MSM because they couldn't hold down
a job there. Their hilarious excuse for their lack of Iraq coverage
has been "it's too violent" blah, blah, blah. Here they have to do
nothing but sit at their computers and read over documents -- and
judging by their ass size, they're very good at sitting at their
computers -- but even that's too much for them. Anything more than
gossip is apparently too much for them.They've
shamed themselves and those who refuse to call them out are endorsing
The Whoring of America. Mid-term elections are Tuesday -- many
Americans that will vote have already voted -- most Americans are
interested in their own races if they are interested at all. But each
day we can count on our so-called 'independent' 'news' outlets to ignore
WikiLeaks but churn out more get-out-the-vote pieces. It's shameful
and whores need to come with a sell-by-date. Forced retirement would
cut a lot of this crap out.Amy
Goodman's done her whoring in headlines thus far this week and made
time for WikiLeaks on Monday and on Tuesday. If she had any real guts,
WikiLeaks would be a story -- not a headline -- every day on Democracy Now! this week. I doubt she has the fortitude to do that. (I could be wrong -- and would love to be.) Today she spoke with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (link has text, audio and video). Excerpt:Julian
Assange: Well, these documents cover the periods of 2004 to the
beginning of 2010. It is the most accurate description of a war to have
ever been released. Within them, we can see 285,000 casualties. That's
added up, report by report. That's each casualty, where it happened,
when it happened, and who was involved, according to internal US
military reporting. Now, looking at particular groups of casualties, we
can see, for example, over 600 civilians killed at checkpoint killings,
including thirty children, previously -- mostly previously unreported,
that three-quarters of those killed at checkpoint killings, according to
the United States military itself, were civilians, and only
one-quarter, according to the US military internal reporting, were
insurgents. We see 284 reports covering torture or other forms of
prisoner abuse by coalition forces, covering 300 different people. We
see over a thousand reports of torture and other prisoner abuse by the
Iraqi state itself, many or most of those receiving no meaningful
investigation. I heard in your introduction that the Pentagon claims
that the Iraqi government is responsible for this, but in international
law, it is the person or government or organization that has effective
control that is responsible. And certainly, before the technical legal
handover from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi
government, it is clear that the United States and other coalition
forces were the effective, legally responsible group for those. We see
in the United Kingdom, Phil Shiner and his group Public Interest
Lawyers, Amnesty International, and in New York, Human Rights Watch,
calling for investigation and, in some cases, lawsuits against coalition
forces for wrongful death. There's other aspects, as well. We can see
the involvement of Iran in Iraq with various forms of support given to
Shia groups. We can see the corruption present in the Maliki government,
including what appears to be a special forces -- Iraqi special forces
-- squad personally responsible to Maliki and not tasked by the Iraqi
army itself that has been going around and strong-arming and possibly
assassinating opponents.Meanwhile Gareth Porter (Antiwar.com) reports what the New York Times 'forgot' (got wrong) about Iran and its connections to Iraq:Petraeus's
spokesman, Gen. Kevin Bergner, later accused Iran of having directed
the Karbala attack though it control of networks of "Special Groups"
armed and trained by Iran. Petraeus maintained consistently that Iran
was backing "rogue" units that had left the Mahdi Army. The
WikiLeaks documents show, however, that Petraeus and his command in
Iraq were well aware that al-Dulaimi was a Mahdi Army commander in
charge of secret operations. The Petraeus "Special Groups" line was
aimed at hiding the fact that the U.S. command was determined to destroy
as much of the Mahdi Army as possible by claiming that it was actually
attacking rogue Shi'ite militias. The New York Times
story on Iran-related WikiLeaks documents by Michael Gordon, which
portrays the documents as reconfirming the Petraeus line on Iran-backed
"Special Groups," highlighted the intelligence report on Dulaimi but
omitted the central fact that it clearly identifies him as a Mahdi Army
commander. The evidence also indicates that the Mahdi Army Karbala operation was done with the full knowledge of the Maliki government. Adam Ashton (Bellingham Herald) examines the documents and compares them with when he was on the ground reporting for McClatchy Newspapers. Sabrina Tavernise (New York Times) reports her impressions of the documents in an analysis: The
reports read like nightmares. In January 2005, a human head was thrown
from an Opel Omega into the Mufrek traffic circle in the city of Baquba.
The next month, 47 workers from a brick factory were found murdered
north of Baghdad. One report noted that a discovery of six bodies at a
sewage treatment plant in Baghdad was the third such episode at the same
plant in recent weeks. Later during that month, there were also two
more similar discoveries there. All the bodies had gunshot wounds to the
head. Read the Document » The
Pentagon was slow to acknowledge what had become abundantly clear on
the ground -- that Iraq had sunk into sectarian war. The military began
to release partial civilian casualty figures in 2005 under pressure from
Congress. The word "sect" appears only 12 times in the archive in 2005,
the year that systematic cleansing began. Corpses that were surfacing
in garbage dumps, rivers and empty lots were blandly categorized as a
"criminal event" and seem to have been given about as much importance as
traffic accidents. Read the Document »
Reuters notes
a Tal Afar roadside bombing which claimed 1 life and left five family
members injured, a Tal Afar roadside bombing which claimed 1 life, a
Khalis roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 6 Iraqi soldiers, a
Mosul roadside bombing which injured one person, a Mosul roadside
bombing which claimed 1 life, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured
two bodyguards for Deputy Planning Minister Mehdi al-Alak, a Baghdad
sticky bombing which injured one person and a Kirkuk assault and robbery
(on the goldsmith market) in which 10 people were killed. We'll close with Iraq Veterans Against the War's statements on WikiLeaks' release:The
recent Wikileaks release--The Iraq War Logs--has shed important light
on the high rate of civilian death and widespread atrocities, including
torture, that are endemic to the war in Iraq. As veterans of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, we are outraged that the U.S. government sought
to hide this information from the U.S. public, instead presenting a
sanitized and deceptive version of war, and we think it is vital for
this and further information to get out. Members of IVAW have
experienced firsthand the realities of war on the ground, and since our
inception we have spoken out about similar atrocities in Iraq and
Afghanistan. We are asking the U.S. public to join us in calling on our
government to end the occupations and bring our brothers and sisters
home.
The U.S. government has been claiming for years that they
do not keep count of civilian death tolls, yet the recent releases show
that they do, in fact, keep count. Between 2004 and 2009, according to
these newly disclosed records, at least 109,032 Iraqis died, 66,081 of
whom were civilians. The Guardian
reports that the Iraq War Logs show that the U.S. military and
government gave de facto approval for hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi soldiers and police officers. These
recent revelations, along with the Afghan War Diaries and Collateral
Murder footage, weave a picture of wars in which the rules of engagement
allow for excessive violence, woven into the fabric of daily life with
the U.S. military presence acting as a destabilizing and brutalizing
force. The Iraq War Logs, while crucial, are reports produced in real
time and themselves may be slanted to minimize the culpability of U.S.
forces. Still, they represent an important part of evidence in assessing
the reality of the Iraq war, evidence that can only be improved by the
further release of documents and information and corroboration by
individuals involved. To this end, our members are reviewing both
Wikileaks' Afghanistan War Diaries and the Iraq War Logs to identify
incidents we were part of and to shed more light on what really
happened.
IVAW has been speaking out about
these atrocities and abuses since our inception. Our organization is
comprised of over 2,000 veterans and active duty troops who have served
since September 11, 2001. We demand immediate withdrawal of all
occupying forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, reparations for the people
of those countries, and full benefits for returning veterans, including
mental healthcare. At our March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings in
Maryland, more than fifty veterans and active-duty service members
publicly testified about the orders they were told to carry out in these
countries, sharing stories of excessive violence, trauma, and abuse.
Josh
Stieber and Ethan McCord, two IVAW members who were in the unit
captured in the Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video, have spoken out
about how the incidents caught on film are not isolated cases of 'a few
bad soldiers' but rather, part of the nature of these wars. "There has
been little accountability in the wars that my friends and I once
thought represented everything that was noble about our country," wrote
Stieber in anticipation of the Iraq War Logs. In an open letter, Stieber
calls for policy makers to "take accountability for these wars and the
full truth about them."
As veterans, we know
that the violence documented in the Iraq War Logs traumatizes the people
living under occupation. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also have
been marked by staggering rates of military trauma and suicide among the
troops tasked with carrying out these orders. Last year, 239 soldiers
killed themselves and 1,713 soldiers survived suicide attempts; 146
soldiers died from high-risk activities, including 74 drug overdoses. A
third of returning troops report mental health problems, and 18.5
percent of all returning service members are battling either
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression, according to a study by
the Rand Corporation. Our Operation Recovery campaign, launched on
October 7, seeks to end the cruel and inhumane practice of redeploying
troops suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Military Sexual
Trauma, Traumatic Brain Injury, and other mental and physical wounds--a
practice that underlies the continued occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Critics attacking Wikileaks
founder Julian Assange's character are attempting to use ad hominem
arguments to detract from the real issues and divert public attention
from the content of the Iraq War Logs. We urge honest and thorough
discussion of the content of these documents, and we think this
discussion must not be sidelined. Furthermore, with past Wikileaks
revelations, U.S. administration and military authorities were quick to
vilify Army Specialist Bradley Manning who is being accused of leaking
these documents to the public. Yet we insist that it is the right of the
U.S. public to have accurate information about wars that are being
fought in our name and funded by our tax dollars, and we support the
Posted at 08:36 pm by politicsscree
Permalink
 that's Isaiah's The
World Today Just Nuts " Barack Wins The Terrible" from yesterday and
yesterday also saw Kat's " Kat's Korner: Cher and the too far gone 70s"
which is her 2nd in a series on cher. cher, if you don't know is not in
the rock and rall hall of fame. how many men are in there as a solo
performers? over 70. how many women? it's not even
half. go ahead and guess. 11. that's disgusting. and
cher's not in but men with far less accomplishments than her are in. it's
disgusting. did you hear? war hawk and former australian prime
minister john howard? had
a shoe thrown at him. that makes me laugh. let's close with
c.i.'s ' Iraq snapshot:'
Monday,
October 26, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the US State Dept publicly states
the White House is open to extending the US military presence in Iraq past 2011,
the political stalemate continues, the WikiLeaks revelations lead to calls for
inquiries and more.
Today Robert Dreyfuss
(The Nation) reports that former US
Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spoke last week to the National Council on US -
Arab Relations and " that when the dust clears in the formation of a new
government in Iraq that Baghdad would come to the United States to ask for an
extension of the US military presence beyond the end of 2011. By that date,
according to the accord signed in 2008 by the Bush administration, all US troops
are to leave Iraq. But Crocker said that it is 'quite likely that the Iraqi
government is going to ask for an extension of our deployed presence'." (He also
expressed that Nouri would remaing prime minister. Why? The US government backed
Nouri as the 'continuing' prime minister after Nouri promised he's allow the US
military to remain in Iraq past 2011.) Today at the US State Dept, spokesperson
Philip J. Crowley was asked about Crocker's remarks. He responded, "Well, we
have a Status of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The Status of
Forces Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are working towards
complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces Agreement, which would include the
withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year. The nature of
our partnership beyond next year will have to be negotiated. On the civilian
side, we are committed to Iraq over the long term. We will have civilians there
continuing to work with the government on a range of areas – economic
development, rule of law, civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that
Iraq desires to have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the
United States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that would be
something that I would expect a new government to consider. [. . .] Should Iraq
wish to continue the kind of military partnership that we currently have with
Iraq, we're open to have that discussion."
We are? Barack didn't end the war.
(Even if some losers and whores 'moved on' from the Iraq War.) Crowley's the
spokesperson for the US State Dept. And while the Cult of St. Barack humps their
mattresses every night still believing rainbows shoot out of Barack's ass, the
US State Dept just admitted that a continued military presence in Iraq is a
something that they're "open" to discussing. End the war in Iraq? It's not
looking that way.
Late Friday, WikiLeaks released
391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. Tomorrow on The Diane Rehm Show (airs on most NPR
stations and begins streaming live online at 10:00 a.m. EST), Diane will devote
the first hour to a discussion on the WikiLeaks revelations (and her second hour
will find her joined by Juan Williams to discuss his NPR career and firing). The
Defense Dept response to the revelations was predictable. Jason Ditz
(Antiwar.com)
reports, "Pentagon officials are, as always,
struggling to find a common ground between downplaying the crimes revealed in
nearly 400,000 new classified documents released yesterday by WikiLeaks while
insisting that their revelation is a grave affront." Saturday in London,
WikiLeaks held a press conference and legendary Pentagon Papers whistle blower
Daniel Ellsberg provided the
perspective.
Daniel Ellsberg: The threat being made by the
Pentagon, as we read over the last few days, of warning newsmen to stand away
from this material, to refuse to receive it and, if they do receive it, to
return it seems absurd on its face. We're not dealing with the 7,000 pieces of
paper, top secret pieces of paper, that comprised the Pentagon Papers. The
Pentagon did make a demand to the New York Times that they return that pile of
paper to the -- to the Pentagon. The Times refused until -- in fact, never did
return it. And refused to stop the presses until a court order came down. But
with cyber material, it's all over the world right now and in several papers
right now, the demand seems absurd. I understand the reason for those words
because they echo the words first used against me, the legal words of 18 USC
793, paragraphs D and E which for the first time used the so-called espionage
act as if it were a kind of official secrets act that you have in Britain which
simply criminalizes the release of any classified material to any unauthorized
person. We don't have such a law. And the irony now is that President Obama in
making these clear threats of applying this law to anybody who deals with this
information including not only the journalists but the words apply to the people
who read it and don't return it to the proper authorities actually. President
Obama's threats are not entirely without credibility here because he has started
as many prosecutions for leaks as all previous presidents put together. It's a
small number. It's three. The last one is Bradley Manning. [C.I. note: The other
two are Shamai Kedem Leibowitz of the FBI and Thomas Drake of the NSA.] That's
small because we don't have an official secrets act. And prior to Bush and
Obama, presidents took it for granted that any application of the espionage act
was likely to be overthrown as unconstitutional in our First Amendment by the
Supreme Court but we're now facing a different Supreme Court. And, after 9-11,
Obama is making a new experiment on this issue which will really change the
relationship of the press to sources very radically. As it is, any source, with
or without this change in the law, who gave this kind of material -- 400,000
pages of documents, 800,000 pages of documents -- to WikiLeaks would have to
know that they were facing a risk of being where Bradley Manning is right now,
in prison, accused of these things. And we don't know, I don't know, who the
source is. If the president should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is
Bradley Manning, we can give him his unreserved admiration from us and thanks
for what he did. But whomever did it, in fact, acted very appropriately in the
course of deadly, stalemated war and which has one characteristic, by the way,
in Iraq which isn't going to come out clearly in these 400,000 pages or in the
discussion. And that is that the origins of war were clearly in the form of
lying to the publics of Britain and America in order to carry on a clearly
illegal crime against the peace, a war of aggression. So all of these civilian
casualties are killed in a war of aggression. We won't have to say also the
non-civilian casualties reported here are in the role of fighting against
foreign occupiers, invaders, by the standards of the world, the question is
raised very much whether their death by the invader is not also to be counted
among the murders?
You can view
portions of the press conference at World Can't
Wait and Press TV's
YouTube channel. And you can stream it in
full at CSpan. At the press conference, Public
Interest Lawyers' Phil Shiner states the documents indicate that US and UK
forces looked the other way on torture which is a violation of international law
and that the two had "a very clear legal responsibility". UN Special Rappoteur
called on Barack to launch an investigation into whether or not the Us was
complicit in torture. Tara Kelly (Time magazine) reports on the press conference
here. Aged sexist and
one-time journalist Thomas E. Ricks
(Foreign Policy) parrots his think-tank's
line of nothing-to-see-here while explaining that, in a recent dining
experiment, mayo did not make his favorite spread taste better. Before he was
bought and paid for by the Defense Industry, he worked for the Washington
Post. So did Ellen Knickmeyer. At The Daily
Beast, journalist Ellen Knickmeyer explains
that February 22, 2006, there was a slaugher in Baghdad ("We watched hundreds of
black-clad religious militiamen, waving their AK 47s in the air and calling for
revenge, in what would be the start to a campaign of sectarian killing and
tortue") and that the corpses piled "over the next two days" with well over
1,000 processed and more
waiting:
Here's the thing, though:
According to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commanders,
it never happened. These killings, these dead, did not exist. According to them,
reporters like myself were lying.
"The country is not awash
in sectarian violence," the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey said,
on talk show after talk show, making the rounds to tell the American home-front
not to worry. Civil war? "I don't see it happening, certainly anytime in the
near term," he said, as he denied the surge in sectarian violence.
[. . .]
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.
Nothing to see says Tom
Ricks, Ellen Knickmeyer points out that journalists "were under attack" for
reporting the truth. Apparently Thomas E. Ricks never encountered that problem.
How very strange -- or how very telling. WikiLeaks release is filled with new
information. Angus Stickler's "US Apache guns
down surrendering insurgents" (The Bureau of
Investigative Journalism) reports that on a February 22, 2007 assault when
insurgents outside Baghdad attempted to surrender, a US helicopter crew radioed
that attempt but was given orders to kill the insurgents because "Lawyer stated
they cannot surrender to aircraft." That is a War Crime. Military officials
giving the orders should be court-martialed and drummed out of the US military
with no benefits. War Criminals don't get to be on the public dole for years and
years to come. Not only should those officials making that call and giving that
order be court-martialed, this incident is documented. All military brass who
saw this report should be immediately court-martialed for their refusal to live
up to the code of conduct they swear to uphold and to instead cover up for War
Crimes. Stickler also
reports:
President Barack Obama's government handed over
thousands of detainees to the Iraqi authorities, despite knowing there were
hundreds of reports of alleged torture in Iraqi government facilities.
Washington was warned by the United
Nations and many human rights organisations that torture was widespread in Iraqi
detention centres. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal the
US's own troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture
by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and
2009.
The Times of London
notes, "Files seen by The Sunday Times also provide
first-hand accounts of underground bunkers operated by insurgents that contained
cattle prods, whips and even a chainsaw. The mutilated bodies of victims were
regularly found dumped at the roadside or on wasteland. Accounts from detention
centres operated by Iraqi police and the army tell of suspects being whipped
with cables, chains, wires and pistols." The Telegraph of London
publishes an overview they dub "key findings" while
Debra Sweet
(World Can't Wait) offers key
themes:
Key
themes in the Iraq War
Logs show:
Abuse, rape, torture,
murder of detainees: Hundreds of incidents of abuse and torture of prisoners by
Iraqis security services, up to and including rape and murder. These are so
egregious that the UN is calling for further
investigation.
Civilians are dying in greatest numbers:
Rumsfeld always said "we don't do numbers" on civilian deaths. Iraq War reveals
that they kept some numbers. The US & allies killed civilians much more
frequently than thos they identified in the Log as "insurgents." Still, we'll
never know the total.
Hundreds of civilians killed at
checkpoints: Robert Fisk says, "Out of the 832 deaths recorded at checkpoints in
Iraq between 2004 and 2009, analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Jounalism
suggests 681 were civilians. Fifty families were shot at and 30 children killed.
Only 120 insurgents were killed in checkpoints incidents."
Private contractors non-uniformed, unsupervised, wreak
havoc: Blackwater (now Xe) and the thousands of civilian "security" operatives
got away with murder, over and over again. And there are even more contractors
in Afghanistan now than the larger troop force Obama sent
in.
Along with turning prisoners over
when you know the group you're handing to them practice torture (which would be
a violation of international law), Raphael G.
Satter and Paisley Dodds (AP) report that
the documents reveal that US interrogators would be questioning Iraqis with
fresh wounds -- which would mean they were emerging from torture, which would
mean the US was deliberately sending some to be tortured to 'soften' them up --
which is also illegal under the treaties and conventions the United States
signed off on. Both of these issues, the reporters point out, happen despite
Barack's claim that the US will "eschew torture". Al Jazeera's John Terrett
pressed the issue today at the US State
Dept.
John Terrett: PJ, I'm sorry, my
question is a bit of a war and a peace question today, if you'd graciously just
bear with me for 20 seconds. As you know, my stations Al Jazeera English and Al
Jazeera Arabic have been disseminating the WikiLeaks information, the 400,000
classified documents over the weekend. The three key headlines -- as far as I
can see -- are Iran's influence in the region, the abuse and torture of Iraqi
citizens by Iraqi security forces and allegations that the US turned a blind eye
to that -- though the Pentagon denies that. Now the United Nations Special
Representative for Torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that the White House has an
obligation to carry out a full, independent inquiry. So that's already the
administration he was talking about generally. Do you -- Does State have a
reaction to all of this?
Philip J.
Crowley: Well let's see. Let's take them one at a time. The first one is concern
-- documentation of concern about Iran's influence in Iraq -- just move the same
context from Afghanistan to Iraq. We have been concerned about the role that
Iran has been playing in Iraq for some time which is not to say that an Iraqi
government or the Iraqi people are not going to stand up for their own sovereign
rights. They are. But certainly we have had and have been vocal in our concerns
about Iran trying to undercut Iraq's sovereignty. The second
point?
John Terrett: The allegation of
torture of Iraqi citizens by Iraqis security forces and that the US turn a blind
eye to that -- by and large.
Philip J.
Crowley: We have not turned a blind eye. Our troops will report -- were
obligated to report abuses to appropriate authorities and to follow up and they
did so in Iraq. Without commenting on any specific documents, obviously these
documents have a range of dates attached to them. One of the things that we've
done in Iraq -- during our time there -- has been to partner with Iraqi forces
-- conduct human rights training. We have done that and that's one of the
reasons why we continue to have military forces in Iraq: To help with ongoing
training of Iraqi security forces. And we believe that we've seen their
performance improve over time.
John
Terrett: And just quickly, pressure mounting from the Australian government, the
Denmark government, the UN -- there for a full investiation. Do you think there
will be one?
Philip J. Crowley: I think
if there needs to be an accounting -- first and foremost -- there needs to be an
accounting by the Iraqi government itself and how it has treated its own
citizens. And that, too, is a conversation that we have had and will continue to
have with the government of Iraq.
The
question someone should have posed to Crowley was about the 1997 Leahy
Amendment:
None of the funds made
available by this Act may be provided to any unit of the security forces of a
foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit
has committed gross violations of human rights, unless the Secretary determines
and reports to the Committees on Appropriations that the government of such
country is taking effective measures to bring the responsible members of the
security forces unit to justice: Provided, That nothing in this section shall be
construed to withhold funds made available by this Act from any unit of the
security forces of a foreign country not credibly alleged to be involved in
gross violations of human rights: Provided further, That in the event that funds
are withheld from any unit pursuant to this section, the Secretary of State
shall promptly inform the foreign government of the basis for such action and
shall, to the maximum extent practicable, assist the foreign government in
taking effective measures to bring the responsible members of the security
forces to justice so funds to the unit may be
resumed."
Before the WikiLeaks
revelations, March 24, 2008,
the Center for American Progress was calling on the end of federal funds to Iraq
citing the Leahy Amendment. That was before the
WikiLeaks release.
Thomas E. Ricks says nothing to see.
Really? Human rights groups do not share his opinion. First, Amnesty
International issued the following
Friday:
Amnesty International today
called on the USA to investigate how much US officials knew about the torture
and other ill-treatment of detainees held by Iraqi security forces after new
evidence emerged in files released by the Wikileaks organization on
Friday.
"We have not yet had an opportunity to study the leaked files in
detail but they add to our concern that the US authorities committed a serious
breach of international law when they summarily handed over thousands of
detainees to Iraqi security forces who, they knew, were continuing to torture
and abuse detainees on a truly shocking scale," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty
International's director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The new
disclosures appear to closely match the findings of New Order, Same Abuses:
Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq, a report published by Amnesty
International in September 2010 detailing the widespread torture and other
ill-treatment of detainees by Iraqi forces, committed with impunity. Thousands
of Iraqis who had been detained by US forces were transferred from US to Iraqi
custody between early 2009 and July 2010 under an agreement between the USA and
Iraq that contains no provisions for ensuring protection of the detainees' human
rights.
"These documents apparently provide further evidence that the US
authorities have been aware of this systematic abuse for years, yet they went
ahead and handed over thousands of Iraqis they had detained to the Iraqi
security forces," said Malcolm Smart.
The USA is a party to the UN
Convention against Torture, the main international treaty prohibiting torture,
which requires all states to prohibit torture and to refrain from transferring
detainees to the authorities of another state at whose hands they face
torture.
Amnesty International continues to campaign for full
accountability in the cases of all those detainees tortured and ill-treated by
USA military personnel in Iraq , such as those in Abu Ghraib prison.
The
US authorities, like all governments, have an obligation under international law
not only to ensure that their own forces do not use torture, but also that
people who were detained and are being held by US forces are not handed over to
other authorities who are likely to torture them.
"The USA failed to
respect this obligation in Iraq, despite the great volume of evidence, available
from many different quarters, showing that the Iraqi security forces use torture
widely and are allowed to do so with impunity." said Malcolm Smart
"The
information said to be in these documents also underscores the urgent need for
the Iraqi government to take concrete measures to end torture, ensure the safety
of all detainees, and root out and bring to justice those responsible for
torture and other serious human rights abuses, however senior their
position."
And yesterday Human Rights
Watch issued a press release which included the
following:
The Iraqi government
should investigate credible reports that its forces engaged in torture and
systematic abuse of detainees, Human Rights Watch said today. Hundreds of
documents released on October 22, 2010, by Wikileaks reveal beatings, burnings,
and lashings of detainees by their Iraqi captors. Iraq should prosecute those
responsible for torture and other crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
The US
government should also investigate whether its forces breached international law
by transferring thousands of Iraqi detainees from US to Iraqi custody despite
the clear risk of torture. Field reports and other documents released by
Wikileaks reveal that US forces often failed to intervene to prevent torture and
continued to transfer detainees to Iraqi custody despite the fact that they knew
or should have known that torture was routine.
"These new disclosures show
torture at the hands of Iraqi security forces is rampant and goes completely
unpunished," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
"It's clear that US authorities knew of systematic abuse by Iraqi troops, but
they handed thousands of detainees over anyway."
That's
not the full release, we'll try to note it in full later this week but there's
not room for all of it in today's snapshot.
Jason Beattie
(Mirror)
reports that England's Deputy Prime Minister Nick
Clegg has called for an inquiry. Susan Sachs
(Globe and Mail) quotes British Deputy
Prime Minister telling the BBC, "We can bemoan how these leaks occurred, but I
think the nature of the allegations made are extraordinary serious. They are
distressing to read about and they are very serious. I am assuming the U.S.
administration will want to provide its own answer." Deborah Haynes
(Times of London) quotes Clegg stating,
"Anything that suggests that basic rules of war and conflict and of engagement
have been broken, or that torture has in any way been condoned, are extremely
serious and need to be looked at."
On Lateline (Australia's
ABC), Emma Alberici reported, "The Ministry of Human
Rights in Iraq is now also calling for an investigation of these latest crimes."
Wijdan Michael, Iraqi Minister of
Human Rights: The documents that have been leaked will be studied by the Human
Rights Ministry and by the Government, and if they produce new evidence that
charge Americans or specific persons with torturing civilian or committing
violations against Iraqi citizens, they will be adopted and the case will be
opened again.
As
calls emerge for accountability, patterns emerge in coverage. For example,
Tom Gjelten
(All Things Considered, NPR) thinks he can just repeat "the Penatgon
says" over and over and, even when asked for "reactions" fall back to the
Pentagon and ignore human rights group. Then there's
commercial broadcast television. Friday and Saturday, they covered the released
documents. ABC went with "brazen" and "outrage" and so much more, NBC went with
WikiLeas that "threatenend" and "claims" (the Pentagon, exposed as a liar in the
documents released, still got treated as a reliable source by NBC Nightly News).
Only the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric (and the CBS Evening
News with Jeff Glor) stuck to reporting and avoided using charged language
that would allow them to editorialize.
Editorialize?
Like saying "those
documents never should have gotten out to the public in the first place" while
you're supposed to be an impartial reporter? Pentagon fan boy -- billed as
Pentagon correspodent -- Jim Mikalszewski managed to insert that into his report
on Friday's NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. (For more, see
Ava and I my scribbling about the network coverage of the
release.) Cable coverage was most interesting as a
result of Atika Shubert. CNN has asserted that they were offered the revelations
ahead of time but turned them down. Saturday Atika
Shubert whored for her corporate owners and attacked WikiLeaks' Julian Assange
on the air. That might seem strange to some unless
that stopped a moment and thought. If you did, you'd remember that CNN is
sitting on footage of the US military shooting an innocent Iraqi teenager.
Former CNN correspondent Michael Ware went public with that only last month
(refer to the September 22nd
snapshot). When you bury your own footage of
unreported war crimes, getting your TV personality to attack Julian Assange is
just more of the same.
Dropping back to
the State Dept press conference
today:
Philip J. Crowley: We have not
turned a blind eye. Our troops will report -- were obligated to report abuses to
appropriate authorities and to follow up and they did so in Iraq. Without
commenting on any specific documents, obviously these documents have a range of
dates attached to them. One of the things that we've done in Iraq -- during our
time there -- has been to partner with Iraqi forces -- conduct human rights
training. We have done that and that's one of the reasons why we continue to
have military forces in Iraq: To help with ongoing training of Iraqi security
forces. And we believe that we've seen their performance improve over
time.
"And we believe that we've
seen their performance improve over time." Do they not get the morning papers at
State anymore? Budget cutbacks preventing that? Because this morning, the
New York Times ran Timothy Williams
and Omar al-Jawoshy report that an increasing number
of Iraqi security forces "are becoming dependent on drugs or alcohol" with some
areas of the country experiencing 50% of the forces using drugs while on
duty.
Today in Baghdad, Reuters
notes, 1 Ministry of Electricity employee was
shot dead and a Baghdad sticky bombing targeted the car of a Ministry of Defense
worker injuring him and two more
people.
Meanwhile Ernesto Londono
(Washington Post)
reports that the Supreme Court of Iraq told MPs
yesterday that they had to hold a session: "The ruling could add a sense of
urgency to negotiations among political factions, because the court set a
two-week deadline to resume parliamentary sessions." June
14th was the only time the new Parliament has
convened -- they did a roll call, took their oaths and quickly adjourned, all in
less than 20 minutes.
New parliament? March 7th, Iraq concluded
Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted
in August, "These elections were hailed prematurely
by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely
doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form
the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no
single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but
the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add
more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive
government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties
and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example,
to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad
Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the
biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki,
the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of
lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the
certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition
with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not
give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the
government. In
2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime
minister. It's seven months and eighteen days and
still counting.
In all that time, the Parliament has met only once. No,
that's not how it's supposed to be nor is that what the Constitution demands of
the Parliament. Londono reports acting Speaker of Parliament Fouad Massoum
states, "I'm not going to disobey this decision. I will call for a session. But
if the majority of the parliament doesn't show up, I won't be in charge."
Anthony Shadid
(New York Times)
hypothesizes that one of the outcome's of the
Court's decision may be to "perhaps set the stage for another constitutional
crisis." And Shadid reports that the ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought "by
a civil society group backed by the venerable but small Communist Party, against
the acting Parliament speaker, Fouad Massoum." Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times)
quotes that civil society -- Civil Initiative to
Preserve the Constitution -- spokesperson Ali Anbori, "It doesn't matter if some
political parties are happier than others. For us the most important thing is to
observe the constitution and end this political crisis." She also notes concerns
on the part of some that the Court's order will benefit Nouri.
Benefit
Nouri? The way the US decision to go against the UN setting up a caretaker
government benefited Nouri?
If there were a caretaker government right
now, you can be sure Nouri would not be able to stone wall other parties. If
there were a caretaker government, for example, it's very unlikely he could have
spent months ignoring that Moqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim didn't want him as
prime minister (al-Hakim is still not on board). But retaining -- illegally
retaining -- the position of Prime Minister has allowed him not only to ride it
out but to have resources that others vying for the post don't have. When the US
refused to go along with the creation of a caretaker government, that benefited
Nouri but we've yet to see one US outlet point that reality out.
With no
caretaker government in place, it is conceivable that Nouri could remain prime
minister for years without the March 7th election results ever being decisive.
He could just continue to hang on to the post he's in -- which expired some time
ago -- and say, "Well I'm the last Prime Minister elected by Parliament so I'm
still in charge." It was a huge, huge mistake on the part of the US to allow
Nouri to delay the elections and then stall and stall on the election law. By
doing that and refusing the creation of a caretaker government, they ensured
that Nouri would be in office after the elections despite his term being up.
They knew it took four months after the December 2005 elections to form a
government. They had every reason to guess it would take at least that long
again. Nouri's played the system very well but only after the US ensured the
system was broken.
Today
Amy Goodman
hosted a discussion the WikiLeaks release on Democracy Now! (link has text,
audio and video) and the New York Times'
At War blog is taking questions about the WikiLeaks
release for their reporters who are covering the
issue (among those covering the release have been Sabrina Tavernise, James
Glanz, Andrew W. Lehren, Michael R. Gordon, etc.).
iraq
the bureau of
investigative journalism
angus stickler
the washington post
ellen knickmeyer
antiwar.com
jason ditz
daniel ellsberg
the world cant wait
press tv
the new york times
sabrina tavernise
al jazeera
reuters
| | the mirror
jason beattie
alsumaria tv
the telegraph of
london
the new york
times
timothy
williams
omar
al-jawoshy
ernesto
londono
the new york
times
anthony
shadid
the los angeles
times
liz sly
| | |
Posted at 04:03 am by politicsscree
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