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Saturday, September 01, 2007

UN Conference Ends Without Agreements On Global Warming

Industrialized, Developing Nations Still at Odds Over How and When to Cut Emissions
Washington Post John Ward Anderson September 1, 2007 03:02 PM
A U.N. study found that it would cost at least $200 billion a year in additional funding to reduce the expected growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and to return them to their current levels in 2030. By contrast, the U.S. government currently devotes about $6 billion a year to climate change programs.
The Vienna Climate Change Talks were attended by about 1,000 diplomats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists from 158 countries.
LinkHere

NYT: Rice Considers Iraq A "Stain" On Her Legacy

New York Times HELENE COOPER September 1, 2007 09:24 AM
Within hours, the letters to the editor started coming in. "Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back," wrote Don Ornstein, identified by the newspaper as an emeritus professor of mathematics in a letter published May 31.
Online comments on the newspaper's Web site were even harsher, a veritable stream of vitriol.

Ex-UK Army Chief Blasts "Intellectually Bankrupt" US Iraq Policy

Associated Press September 1, 2007 03:34 PM
The head of the British army during the Iraq invasion described former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approach as "intellectually bankrupt," according to comments published Saturday.
Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, who retired in August 2006 as chief of the general staff, said Rumsfeld was "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," in excerpts from an autobiography that were published by The Daily Telegraph.

Liberals, Bush Unite in Ethnic Cleansing of Iraq

By Chris Floyd
It is now obvious that one impetus behind the "surge" was to accelerate the "ethnic cleansing" of Iraq.
Given the manifest failure to establish a strong central government to serve as a client state, the conquerors now find it easier to deal with separate ethnic enclaves, which can police themselves, shake out their own internal conflicts (however bloodily) and thus establish some kind of solid leadership that can cut deals and guarantee investments.
LinkHere
By Arianna Huffington
As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup.

"Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty.

Stanford should not welcome her back,"

NYT: Rice Accepts Iraq As "Stain" On Her Legacy

New York Times HELENE COOPER September 1, 2007 09:24 AM
Within hours, the letters to the editor started coming in. "Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back," wrote Don Ornstein, identified by the newspaper as an emeritus professor of mathematics in a letter published May 31.
Online comments on the newspaper's Web site were even harsher, a veritable stream of vitriol. One of the milder posts came from Jon Wu, who did not give...
Craig Resigns: "I Am Deeply Sorry" »
Associated Press JOHN MILLER and MATTHEW DALY September 1, 2007 12:06 PM
Idaho Sen. Larry Craig resigned Saturday over a men's room sex sting, bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans worried about a scandal dimming their election prospects.
"I apologize for what I have caused," Craig said.

That Tingle Means It's Working

Doesn't it set a wonderful example for democracy when leaders in this country, both Democrat and Republican, call for the ouster of the elected Maliki government in Iraq?
And now for your first lesson in elected democracy -- the coup d'etat.
Oh, and number two -- installing a CIA-backed emergency government.
But let's all see this for what it is: another excuse to buy this war some more time.

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"kill everybody in the vicinity"

Fri Aug 31, 2007 8:48pm ET
By Dan Whitcomb
CAMP PENDLETON, California (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha gunned down five unarmed men who were standing next to a car after a roadside bombing, a Marine from his squad told a military court on Friday.
Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz also testified that, about a week before the incident at Haditha, another bombing prompted Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to say the squad should "kill everybody in the vicinity" if they were hit again.
Dela Cruz took the witness stand against his former squad leader at a hearing to determine if Wuterich, 27, should face court-martial over the November 19, 2005, events at Haditha.
Iraqi witnesses say U.S. troops massacred two dozen unarmed men, women and children at Haditha in retaliation for the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas in the roadside bomb. Defense lawyers say the civilians died during a chaotic house-to-house battle in the western Iraqi town.

Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world-or else governments wouldn't let them in.
History Will Not Absolve Us
Nat Hentoff writes for The Village Voice: "If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors."

If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success?

There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency

The Great Iraq Swindle

Matt Taibbi Matt Taibbi, writing for Rolling Stone, explains "how Bush allowed an army of for-profit contractors to invade the US Treasury."
Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity - to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.


Sep 1, 2007 in The War, Threat to America, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, Politics with 0 Comments
by Paul Craig Roberts
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.
US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.
US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.
US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs.
The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.
US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.
US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
Bush’s war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq.
Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening “the security of nations everywhere” and of the Iraqi resistance for “a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power.” Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation’s world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.
David Ivanovich writes for The Houston Chronicle that "the jury in the criminal trial of Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt, scheduled to start next week, can be told about an Iraqi document that suggests he discussed American troop levels and possible dates for an attack with a member of Saddam Hussein's regime before the US-led invasion in 2003, a federal judge ruled today."

At least 1,809 civilians were killed in the month, compared to 1,760 in July

Associated Press DAVID RISING September 1, 2007 08:54 AM
At least 1,809 civilians were killed in the month, compared to 1,760 in July, based on figures compiled by the AP from official Iraqi reports. That brings to 27,564 the number of Iraqi civilians killed since AP began collecting data on April 28, 2005.
The August total included 520 people killed in quadruple suicide bombings on Yazidi communities near the Syrian border. The horrific attacks made Aug. 14 the single deadliest day since the war began in March 2003.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.'
- Dwight David Eisenhower, April 16, 1953.
(Thanks to Congressman McDermott)
Posted by: Not My President at August 31, 2007 10:31 PM
By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - Awaiting a visit Friday by President Bush to discuss the war, the Pentagon defended its efforts to rid the Iraqi national police of sectarian bias and corruption, even as an independent review found the force too tainted to continue. >>>cont

NO wonder Georgie is in the White House, No child left behind? Well I would say one child was left behind.

Comment by kender 31 August 2007 at 1:20 am
It is all bushitlers fault. He personally taught this girl geography.

Bush among top 'mass murderers of all time'

Nick JulianoPublished: Friday August 31, 2007
President Bush's apparent plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran will only add to the civilian death toll as a result of US intervention that has placed the president "high on the list of mass murders of all time," a former aide in President Ronald Reagan's administration known for strident anti-Bush rhetoric said Friday.
"Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening 'the security of nations everywhere' and of the Iraqi resistance for 'a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power,'" writes Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury. "Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration."
Roberts, who has emerged as a fierce critic of Bush's war policies, accused the president of ignoring habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justifying torture and demonizing critics as anti-American.
"Bush ... is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time," Roberts writes in a column published Friday on antiwar.com. "The vast majority of 'kills' by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians."
A report last month found that US and NATO troops killed more Afghan civilians in the first half of this year than the Taliban. >>>cont

Friday, August 31, 2007

U.S. Military Censors ThinkProgress

Recently, an avid ThinkProgress reader — a U.S. soldier serving his second tour in Iraq — wrote to us and said that he can no longer access ThinkProgress.org.
snip -
The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.

Grant legal immunity

Bush seeks immunity for companies in spy caseVerizon, AT&T face eavesdrop
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants the power to WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.
The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.
Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11. Yet some Democrats fear the administration’s proposal would do much more than advertised, potentially protecting anyone who gave broad categories of aid to the government as part of a spy program that monitors communications.
Because the administration does not want to identify which companies participated in the operations, it is asking Congress to let the attorney general intervene on behalf of any person or company accused of participating in the surveillance work, whether or not they actually did, two senior Justice Department officials said.
More than a dozen government officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition they not be identified because sensitive negotiations with Congress are ongoing.to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.
The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.
Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11. Yet some Democrats fear the administration’s proposal would do much more than advertised, potentially protecting anyone who gave broad categories of aid to the government as part of a spy program that monitors communications.
Because the administration does not want to identify which companies participated in the operations, it is asking Congress to let the attorney general intervene on behalf of any person or company accused of participating in the surveillance work, whether or not they actually did, two senior Justice Department officials said.
More than a dozen government officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition they not be identified because sensitive negotiations with Congress are ongoing.
Source: Press release (nothing on the news yet)
Several community organizations, including Power U Center and the Miami Worker's Center from Miami, took over the US HUD administrative office in New Orleans today, Friday August 31, 2007 at around 12:30pm. The groups are in New Orleans to commemorate the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The groups and residents are demanding that HUD open St Bernard's Parish housing project, which serves low-income Black residents. Two years after the area was evacuated in the post-Katrina floods,the housing project remains empty. Residents and groups have been prevented from rehabilitating and filling the vacant units, and the federal government has refused to do so.
US military vehicles, including armed Hummers, have surrounded the 25 people encamped inside, who refused to leave the building unless HUD officials acquiesce to community demands.The community effort to open St. Bernard's Parish is symbolic effort of the dislocated Black community of New Orleans to return to home. Residents such as former public housing residents have been met ignored, criminalized and otherwise excluded from the rebuilding of New Orleans
No link yet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just received this in an email and did a quick google check and came up with nothing, so it is that fresh. RIM

(Australian) Rudd rebuffs Bush on Iraq

The age.com.au
Michelle Grattan, Adam Morton and Brendan Nicholson
OPPOSITION Leader Kevin Rudd has rebuffed US President George Bush's intervention in domestic politics by refusing to bend on the ALP's commitment to pull troops out of Iraq.
In pointed remarks before his Australian visit, President Bush told reporters he would tell Mr Rudd that an early withdrawal of Australian troops would be disastrous. He said the decision should be made on the basis of conditions on the ground, claiming there were strong signs the US was making headway.
"I'm going to remind him that, one, the stakes in Iraq are very high for peace; that the liberation of a country (and) Iraqi-style democracy in the heart of the Middle East is part of winning this ideological struggle," he said in an interview with journalists from the region.
"And I'll remind him that, as far as I'm concerned, leaving Iraq before the job is done will cause an enemy that attacked us before to become emboldened."
Read more:

Out Of Iraq Now!!!!

From Congressman Jim McDermott


HUMPTY DUMPTY A short Floor speech I recited recently.
Bush, Cheney and others had a great call--
Remake Iraq, it will be such a ball.
Now all Bush's troops and all daddy's men
can't put Iraq back together again.
Our soldiers keep dying, day after day.
So why put up with more endless delay?
Let's just acknowledge what everyone knows:
Bush didn't and doesn't have any clothes.
He broke it, can't fix it, doesn't know how;
Mission impossible: out of Iraq now.

House of Representatives
"We love you Nate"
CLOVIS, California (CNN) -- Jeff Hubbard fought back tears as he talked about his boy -- a "great, great young man" who was killed last week in Iraq in a helicopter crash. It's the second time he's had to bury a son killed in the Iraq war.
His third son, also a soldier in Iraq, was immediately on the scene of last week's helicopter crash and watched as soldiers carried the remains of his brother, 21-year-old Army Cpl. Nathan Hubbard, from the crash site.
Nathan's flag-draped coffin arrived in Fresno earlier this week and eventually to his hometown of Clovis. Watch "We love you Nate" »
Hundreds of mourners gathered Friday to remember Nathan at St. Anthony of Padua, the same church where his oldest brother's funeral was held in 2004. Nathan will be laid to rest at Clovis Cemetery, beside his brother, Jared.
Nathan and his other brother entered the military shortly after Jared was killed -- to honor his sacrifice.
"Their decision to join the military was motivated by a love for their brother and a desire to serve their country," the priest told mourners Friday. "The death of Jared touched him deeply. Losing a brother and a friend made a profound impact on him, and brought to his attention the seasons of war and grief and loss."
Jeff Hubbard spoke to reporters Thursday ahead of the funeral, struggling to find words to describe how much his youngest son meant to him and his family.
"I want everybody to remember and celebrate Nate in their own way, the way they want," he said. "We want him honored, remembered and celebrated -- he was a great, great young man. Wonderful young man."
Tragically, the Hubbards have gone through this anguish before.
In 2004 their son, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard, was on patrol in Iraq with his best friend and fellow Marine, Jeremiah Baro -- also from Clovis -- when a roadside bomb exploded, killing both.
LinkHere
In the administration of George W. Bush, the Republican Party has achieved the greatest combination of idiocy and evil in human history. The Republicans have bogged America down in a gratuitous and illegal war. The war has destroyed Iraq, killed between 650,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians, displaced 4,000,000 Iraqis, and littered the country with depleted uranium.
George Bush and other Iraq War supporters have argued that if we withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the killing fields of Cambodia -- an odd comparison considering that the US has direct responsibility for that holocaust.
Timothy V. Gatto: This is a Movement People, Don't Ever Doubt it! There will be a permanent display of the anti-war movement that the mainstream media can no longer ignore. This movement will be an in-your-face, do or die expression of disgust with this administration and with Congress and their do nothing attitude. If we accomplish nothing, at least we can show the rest of the world and this government that we won't blindly accept authority when the policies go against everything we believe
By Kevin Gosztola
With eight Democratic candidates running for election in 2008, only one has stood up and spoken about the plans to privatize Iraqi oil. He has detailed what it means for U.S. troops. Essentially, we cannot bring our troops home until the Iraqi government agrees to let U.S. companies steal a major source of their nation's wealth.

Propaganda, Propaganda, Propaganda everything about this war in Iraq is Propaganda




Posted by Ilan Goldenberg
Hat tip to Brian Katulis at CAP who clued me on to this issue and Spencer Ackerman has already got a great post on this.
Basically there are more serious questions about the violence numbers that are being reported out of Iraq. The Pentagon is congressionally mandated to produce a quarterly progress report to Congress measuring stability in Iraq. Each of these reports has a graphic measuring sectarian violence. The last four reports were August, 29 2006 (pg 35), November 30, 2006 (pg 24), March 2, 2007 (pg 17) and June 7, 2007 (pg 17).
I graphed the levels of sectarian violence from these various reports and found some confusing trends. The abnormalities have been labeled A, B and C. (There is no difference between the November report and the March report and thus they overlap).

Abnormality A: Between August and November 2006, DOD started reclassifying “casualties” as “deaths by execution” and suddenly you see a dramatic drop in killings. For example, in March 2006 right after the Samarra Mosque bombings you go from 1,750 “casualties” to 750 “deaths by execution.” Between November 2006 and March 2007 “Deaths by Execution” becomes “Sectarian Murders” but the numbers remain the same.

Abnormality B: Between the March 2007 report and the June 2007 report there was a dramatic change in the number of killings that were reported for the second half of 2006. In both cases the numbers were described as “sectarian murders.” The impact here is that it makes the “pre surge” situation look extraordinarily dire and therefore signals progress thereafter.

Abnormality C: Somehow the reclassification that occurred between the March and June 2007 reports caused the violence numbers in April and May of 2006 to drop dramatically. This was in the months following the Sammara bombings in February 2006 when sectarian violence was escalating. I really have no idea why these numbers are so inconsistent, but it does lead me to call into question the violence numbers that are being reported by the Administration, when it touts progress. Clearly certain types of violence have been taken out and others have been added. What we need is some transparency. Congress needs to take a very careful look at the numbers that come before it in September
Update: Slight correction. I changed the legend so that Nov. 07/Mar. 07 now reads Nov. 06/Mar. 07.

Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War,





Dina Rasor, 08.31.2007
The military's track record on this war will show that they have not done the best for the soldiers but, instead, they have been bullied to do the best for contractors.
As with Hitler's Brownshirts, CheneyBush have created their own private legions by outsourcing a huge raft of national security functions to private contractors. These "mercenary" forces are bought and paid for by the American taxpayer, but are not accountable to anyone other than their corporate bosses and the financial "bottom line." Their existence and power does catastrophic damage to democracy.

The quiet rebellion

Justice Department Lawyers Refuse Detainee Cases (quiet rebellion against Gitmo policies)
Some lawyers in the civil appeals division object to the government's policies on Guantánamo Bay
The government's legal arguments justifying the detention of hundreds of people at the Guantánamo Bay naval base have been repudiated three times by the U.S. Supreme Court. But it's not just outsiders who take issue with the U.S. Justice Department strategy: Up to one fourth of the department's own civil appellate staff has recently opted out of handling the government's cases against detainee appeals, two sources familiar with the matter tell U.S. News.
These conscientious objectors—their exact number is not known—have decided not to take part in the government's litigation against the detainees because of disagreements with the legal approach, these sources say. They would not elaborate on the specific reasons for the objections, but critics have long objected to the government's failure to formally charge detainees and have pushed for closing Guantánamo because of allegations of torture and inhumane conditions. Defense lawyers also contend that the government has stymied their cases by withholding documents and curbing client access.
The quiet rebellion has emerged in recent months among the approximately 56 attorneys in the appellate section of the Justice Department's civil division following a court ruling in February that placed the defense of the approximately 130 remaining Guantánamo cases under the responsibility of the appellate lawyers. More than 300 men captured shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 are still being held at Guantánamo over alleged ties to terrorists, although all but a handful have never been formally charged with crimes.
Though the objectors have created some tension among the appellate staff, it's unclear that their opposition has hampered the government's efforts—especially because the court ruling will be reviewed by the Supreme Court this term. But the staff attorneys' objections highlight how dissension has grown even within the department's own ranks.

"Redacted". "The pictures are what will stop the war."

Raw look at Iraq war dominates Venice film fest
A US film exposing the ugly reality of the Iraq war seared the big screen at the Venice film festival Friday, with director Brian De Palma saying he hoped it would help end America's military occupation.
"The pictures are what will stop the war," De Palma told a news conference after the showing of the movie, "Redacted".
The feature, which is based on the actual March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi schoolgirl by US soldiers who also slaughtered her family, is a reaction to what he sees as sanitised media accounts of the war seen in the United States.

If the U.S. doesn't make the next technological revolution, foreigners don't need to hang onto U.S. dollars to be ready to buy up the future.

When you don't have competition, with few exceptions, you don't get nearly as much progress or better products. And so the U.S. has worse broadband. It has worse wireless. It has worse (and deliberately crippled) phones. It's falling behind in the very industries it invented. All because a few gatekeeper corporations don't want to have to compete and because the Bush administration and conservative justices believe in concentration of wealth rather than progress and competition.
The U.S. will keep falling behind as long as this remains the case. Americans like to think that they are the most technically advanced nation in the world, but except in military affairs, and perhaps biotech, that's generally not the case. The best and most advanced cars aren't made in the U.S. The U.S.'s trains are a joke compared to ultra-fast trains in Japan, China and Europe. The U.S.'s consumer electronics are not as good with very few exceptions. And the U.S. is falling behind on all types of telecommunications that don't involve spying on someone.
If the U.S. doesn't make the next technological revolution, foreigners don't need to hang onto U.S. dollars to be ready to buy up the future. And since the U.S. needs foreigners to subsidize American overconsumption and the overvalued dollar, that's a bad place to be. If the future isn't in America, then buying America suddenly doesn't seem like such a good deal...

Brought to you by the party of "family values".

Source: UPI
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a British-based non-profit that provides training and practical assistance to local journalists in conflict zones, and distributes their articles, this week circulated a series of assessments of Iraq’s schools, colleges and universities.
The news is almost all bad, although there are some bright spots, principally in the Kurdish north where the security situation is better and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has meant that Kurds and Turkomen can at last get public education about their ethnic history and in their native tongue.
But elsewhere the educational situation is overwhelmingly bleak, something that bodes very ill for the future. In the Palestinian Territories and the South African townships during the struggle against apartheid, the breakdown of educational institutions helped fuel the rise of violent militias and street gangs.
The situation is especially bad in Baghdad, the institute’s reporting shows. “Kidnappings of middle-class and wealthy students are common, and many teachers have been killed. Families escort their children to school and sometimes stay with them until the end of the day so they can take them home safely,” reads one report about the capital’s school system.
. . .
“The chaos caused by violent attacks and kidnappings is felt at nearly every level, with students misbehaving and missing class, and teachers refusing to come to work. Approximately 600 teachers were murdered across Iraq in the 2006-2007 academic year, according to the ministry of education,” the report says.
The Nation David Corn August 31, 2007 10:28 AM
As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush's latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue. But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption....

Tower Guard

It can get pretty contentious in the peace and justice movement, and the same kinds of tensions exist on the ground and inside-the-beltway as exist within our small community here: incrementalism vs. revolution; support for what might happen vs. holding Members accountable; in-your-face actions that get you arrested and/or fined vs. calm discussions with the powerful wherein everyone is polite and not much changes.
But there is one part of the movement that gives me hope and I want to emphasize it to all of us who despair. That is the Iraq Vets themselves.
The veterans of this unholy war are speaking up and acting out. A few months ago, Geoff Millard and Garrett Repenhegan and a few others put on desert fatigues and took fake rifles and skulked around the Mall, acting out some of what they had done in Iraq. People knew it was theatre, but they made their points.
The effort is not new, as most of us know here, the Vietnam War was, in the end, brought to a halt not because of hippies in the streets, or students and professors on the campuses, or John and Yoko singing "All we are saying...", but because the soldiers began to refuse to fight poor villagers.
The film, Sir, No Sir, is a reminder of what DOES work. "We came to understand that the war would not end until soldiers put down their weapons and refused to fight", the narrator says. Watch the trailer, at least.
This week, on the National Mall, a young Iraq vet has constructed a tower, where he sits 24/7, in a vigil to bring attention to the Stop Loss program. He is garnering publicity and changing hearts and minds.
He even had the chance to speak directly to Alberto Gonzales as Gonzales announced his resignation. According to witnesses, Gonzales stood in front of Evan, while Evan recounted the horrors of the war and the torture program, with his hands folded and his head down.
We all have to listen now.
Here is his story:
August 22, 2007Evan’s Statement for DC Vigil 7-day Tower Guard Vigil, Washington, DCIn Protest of the Immoral and Unethical Policies PerpetratedAgainst US Soldiers and My Friends
by Evan Michael Knappenberger, 1st BDE, 4th Infantry Division
I am spending one entire week on a scaffold on the National Mall in the District of Columbia in protest of the US military’s STOP-LOSS and INACTIVE RESERVE (READY RESERVE) policies, which are being used as a substitute for conscription in a political war–under the pretense of a non-existent national emergency–and destroying our military readiness, as well as the lives of our young men and women.
I joined the Army in 2003 at the age of seventeen. I believed at the time that the war in Iraq was necessary, if not morally justified. (Since then, I have learned the hard way that the ends never justify the means.) I served nearly four years as an intelligence analyst in a combat unit, including Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF ‘05-’07). I spent 97 nights on tower guard contemplating the nature of our destructive zeitgeist, which is inspiring the better part of this protest and my other protests this year.
The truth of the matter is that our armed forces are being destroyed by a collective neurosis; something obvious even to President Bush and his staff. The mishandling of post-war Iraq is only one minor symptom of the illness; but what is the cause of this neurosis? I believe that fundamentally conflicting values are being forced onto the institution by a fundamentally conflicted administration. The lack of moral integrity at the head of our government is monadistically infecting all levels of government, military, and culture. Notwithstanding a treatise on the ethics of something political in nature, I argue that, if nothing else, the current administration policy of STOP-LOSS (see note 1) (as well as their call up of the IRR–see note 2) is immoral, destructive, and often overlooked. Not only does it devalue the fragile constitutional legality of the process; it devalues all legality, reason, and sound judgment in general.
STOP-LOSS is being used as a circumvention of the contractual agreements between the federal government and soldiers. The irony of volunteerism-exploitation-politics is not lost on soldiers who signed up fully trusting in the ability of our elected officials to hold accountable the chief executive. If nothing else, those soldiers who have difficulty thinking in terms of moral integrity do understand injustice: they too are victims of egregious moral fraud! Ask any one of them that has been extended to 2030 or beyond.
As actions typically resound louder than words, it is all but obvious that we can add “volunteer conscript” to the oxymoronic vocabulary that has resulted from our conflicted status as liberator-occupiers and freedom-crusaders. It is not, therefore, surprising that soldiers who are treated like slaves (and their ‘contractor’ mercenary counterparts) are able and willing to commit terrible acts of violence on harmless civilians in places like Abu Ghraib prison. These are the acts of humans who have been robbed of their moral judgment by a malicious and harmful few who happen to occupy the seat of power in the federal government.In short, we must hold it as our duty as responsible citizens to “bring to justice” an administration that has broken the contracts of almost 200,000 young patriots as a way of exploiting a political situation. But more than that, we owe our sons and daughters the moral integrity we would expect in a county founded by Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. You as a human being with a conscience owe my friends the dignity they deserve in facing the outrageous policy enslaving them on their way back into the maelstrom. Please join me in my efforts to bring STOP-LOSS to an end so we can begin rebuilding a shattered service and halt the suffering of my comrades-at-arms. War cannot and should not be won when the cost is our conscience and integrity, because that is all we have. WE MUST END THE STOP-LOSS AND RESTORE TRUE JUSTICE AT THE RISK OF LOSING EVERYTHING, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
Notes:
1) When a person enlists into the armed forces, (s)he signs a contract stating a specific amount of time which will be served on active duty. The remaining time, the difference that makes eight total years, is spent on what is termed inactive ready reserve (IRR). There is no mention of “stop-loss” in the armed forces contract. Similarly, the contractual connection between stop-loss and the IRR stipulation (paragraph 10A) is non-existent. The Department of Defense has broken the contract of thousands of soldiers whose IRR time has expired, thereby negating this phrase as the basis for STOP-LOSS. Paragraph 9C, which has been claimed as the legal basis for the measure, is flimsy at best and relies upon semantics which the DOD interprets as it pleases. It is one small sentence in 50 pages of fine print, and the Military Entrance Processing and Recruiting Command routinely avoid discussion of it during enlistment.
2) According to U.S.C. 10 § 12301-12305.
More of Evan's writing here
Please share this story across the land. And take hope today; these young people are powerful speakers of truth to power.
Mary Hanna: *My Son, Back from Iraq, Lives on Tower on National Mall My son, Evan Knappenberger, is a former Albemarle High School student and a veteran of the Iraq War. As I speak these words, he is sitting in a makeshift guard tower on the Mall in Washington DC, protesting the US military's stop-loss policy, which is the involuntary extension of soldier's active duty enlistment time.

Newsday calls FOR BUSHES REMOVAL!

Remove Bush over war lies

Link Here

A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of terrified Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha

Marine Says He Was Ordered To Shoot Women And Children At Haditha »
AFP Rob Woollard August 30, 2007 10:28 PM
A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of terrified Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.
The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Final act in cover-up of US atrocities

Military court acquits Abu Ghraib interrogations director of prisoner abuse
A military jury on Tuesday acquitted Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan of all charges related to the torture of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Jordan is the only officer to face criminal charges in the horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners that came to light with the publication in April 2004 of photos showing grinning US military police subjecting detainees to sadistic and degrading treatment. Jordan’s court martial, the final trial in connection with the Abu Ghraib atrocities, is the last act in a systematic cover-up of both the scale of the torture and murder that occurred at the US-run prison as well as the responsibility of top military commanders and government officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and President George Bush, for war crimes that shocked world opinion and have come to symbolize the American rape of Iraq...

DISAPPEARING IRAQ

Malcom Lagauche
In 1992, while editor of the East County Weekly newspaper, I opened the new white page telephone directory when it arrived in the office. In those days, there was no Internet, so the white pages were important in finding out the dialing codes of countries of the world. I wanted to find the dialing code for Iraq because a friend asked me to get it for him so he could call his family in Baghdad. When I went to the International Dialing Codes section, I went down the list. After Iran was Israel. Iraq was not listed. I again checked to make sure I did not miss the entry and was shocked to see that Iraq was not in the directory. After a couple of hours of fruitless calls to the telephone company, I was connected with a manager. When I asked if she knew anything about the International Dialing Codes pages, she said, "Yes. I wrote that section." I pointed out that Iraq was not included and she quickly said, "The country is not big enough to be listed." I knew this was a lie and then I told her that every country surrounding Iraq, many with a much smaller population, was included. She changed her story to, "Well, Iraq has never been listed in this section." I responded, "I have the 1989 and 1990 white page directories in front of me and Iraq is in both."...There was silence. Then, I asked, "Did anyone tell you not to list Iraq?"
continua / continued

New Orleans tell Bush: "We don;t understand"

Blood in the Water: Katrina and the Death of the Common Good

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

This week we remember the destruction of New Orleans: an "act of God" aided mightily by the perfidy of man. As Greg Palast revealed this week, the Bush White House knew that the levees were breaking -- and deliberately failed to inform emergency officials in the city and state (...) Scott Horton at Harper's has some inside dirt on the gigantic boondoggle that has followed in the wake of the killer storm: the "reconstruction" effort that, just as in Iraq, Bush has turned into a massive trough of corruption for his swinish cronies. And none are more literally swinish than the fat-faced swill-master Haley Barbour, the longtime GOP bagman now serving as Mississippi's governor. As Horton notes, Barbour has managed to wangle a vastly disproportionate share of federal reconstruction aid for his state, which suffered far less damage than Louisiana...

continua / continued

Junior ranks take flak for Abu Ghraib

By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
The acquittal of a US army colonel on charges relating to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib means no officers have been found criminally guilty.
The episode stained the reputation of the US military and may well have acted as a recruiting agent for insurgents.
Ten junior soldiers have been convicted over the Abu Ghraib abuse (AP Photo/Courtesy of The New Yorker)
The officer, Lt-Col Steven Jordan, was found not guilty by a military jury of failing to train and supervise the soldiers under his authority at Abu Ghraib.
Instead he was convicted of breaking an order not to discuss the case. He was reprimanded.
The lack of convictions among the senior ranks leaves doubt as to whether the abuse was part of a wider policy of condoning or even encouraging the breaking of prisoners' morale in advance of interrogation.
Two officers were subject to disciplinary punishments.
Col Thomas Pappas, the senior military intelligence officer at the prison, was reprimanded and had pay deducted for dereliction of duty. This included allowing dogs to be present at interrogations.
Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, the officer in charge of Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, was reduced in rank to colonel for dereliction of duty.
Policy of abuse?

Lack of convictions troubling, may hint at broader policy of abuse.
Bucky
Thu Aug-30-07 02:06
4. Thank you, Gov Perry, for that tiny drop of rain in the desert. May I have another, sir?
Foster is simply not complicit in that murder. He didn't, as the press reports, "drive the getaway vehicle." He was actually unaware that a crime took place until after he finished driving away. He doesn't deserve life in prison, either. He should be resentenced--maybe--as an accessory after the fact. But a review of this case makes it clear that a life sentence is still way too harsh a penalty for having the wrong friend at the wrong time.
Texas governor spares getaway driverKenneth Foster sentence commuted; execution reduced to life in prison.
Texas Governor Rick Perry on Thursday spared the life of a death row inmate who had never killed anyone, commuting his sentence hours before an execution that had drawn international attention.

CheneyBush's "Mercenary" Legions

Bernard Weiner writes for The Crisis Papers:
"'Outsourcing' jobs overseas is only the tip of the iceberg. How about the CheneyBush administration 'outsourcing' our military, our intelligence-gathering, our nation's soul? Taking private enterprise way beyond what is reasonable, or desirable, or safe, the CheneyBush administration has turned over a huge raft of national-security functions to those not adequately trained, not accountable to the public or the law, not showing up on the political radar."
Spencer Ackerman reports for TPMMuckraker: "Get ready for more revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency's post-9/11 warrantless surveillance program....the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to hear testimony from Jack Goldsmith, the former head of Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, a key ally in James Comey's efforts as acting attorney general to scale back what they considered an illegal program."

The Flooding Didn't Destroy Enough Houses

Harry Shearer
Along with other New Orleanians, I've been amazed at the lack of alacrity with which both Republicans and Democrats have approached the problem of a federally caused flood that destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes, wrecking whole neighborhoods and communities, and spinning half a city's population into involuntary, semi-permanent exile. Now the answer becomes clear: the post-Katrina flooding just didn't destroy enough houses.
Latest estimate, in today's Times-Picayune, 105,000 residential buildings severely damaged in the City of New Orleans alone, a $14 billion loss. Apparently, judging by the turtle-like response, just not enough.

"They don't want no poor niggers back in - that's the bottom line."

“By midnight the White House knew - but the state police didn't know."
Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans
In Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans, Greg Palast and his team travel to New Orleans to investigate what happened in the year following Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast. On his visit, he discovers that the population of New Orleans is miniscule, the reconstruction sparse, suicide rates are climbing, and many have not - nor do they know how to - return to "the city that care forgot." He examines why residents had to leave, what really caused the flood and why they aren't returning.

More Shame, More Sorrow

By Paul Craig Roberts
In the administration of George W. Bush, the Republican Party has achieved the greatest combination of idiocy and evil in human history.
LinkHere
The Washington Post's Anne E. Kornblut and Michael D. Shear report: "One of the foremost experts on politics in the Granite State thinks she has found the next critical constituency: military moms."
Pat Forgey of The Juneau Empire reports: "A federal judge has for the first time publicly linked former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of US Senator Ted Stevens, to the corruption investigation that has been underway since 2004."

And the lists go on and on

Are our children safe anywhere today? The church, Scouts, Politics, and who else in positions of trust and power, can our children trust today.
Troop leaders suspected of molestation outed every 2-3 days for past 60 years.

Leaked


Washington Post Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks August 29, 2007 09:37 PM
Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.
The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver...

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I did nothing wrong?

Iraq Slogger August 28, 2007 10:22 PM
Iraqi opposition leader Ayad Allawi's newly-hired Washington lobbying firm will likely be in violation of U.S. law unless it discloses the identity of the anonymous Iraqi supporter who is underwriting Allawi's U.S. lobbying campaign, legal analysts say.
As IraqSlogger first reported, $300,000 is being paid to the powerful lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR) -- a firm with close ties to the Bush administration -- to help Allawi promote himself and his agenda, a centerpiece of which is the...

Bush Wants $50 Billion More For War

Washington Post August 29, 2007 10:37 AM
President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.
The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in...
LinkHere

TOO FEW BEDS FOR THE HOMELESS

The U.S. military has released six Iranians who work for Tehran's power ministry, a day after American soldiers detained the delegation in Baghdad, Yassin Majid, an aide to Iraq's prime minister, told CNN. full story
Taliban: Hostages to be freed soon
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants agreed Tuesday to release 19 South Korean church volunteers held hostage for six weeks after Seoul reaffirmed a pledge to withdraw its troops by year's end and prevent Christian missionaries from working in Afghanistan.
American Nightmare: Gonzales "wrong and illegal and unethical"
by Greg Palast
Tuesday, August 28.
"What I've experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream."
Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.
Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn't expect:
"They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just going to roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn't, that I'd go away quietly but I just couldn't do that. You know US Attorneys and the Justice Department have a history of not taking into consideration partisan politics. That should not be a factor. And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal and unethical."
When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it's not just small talk. And the illegality wasn't small. It's called, "obstruction of justice," and it's a felony crime.
Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted him to bring what the prosecutor called "bogus voter fraud" cases. In effect, US Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss to charge citizens with crimes they didn't commit. Saddam did that. Stalin did that. But Iglesias would NOT do that - even at the behest of the Attorney General. Today, Captain Iglesias, reached by phone, told me, "I'm not going to file any bogus prosecutions."
But it wasn't just Gonzales whose acts were "unethical, wrong and illegal."
It was Gonzales' boss.
Iglesias says, "The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter fraud laws."
In other words, it went to the top. The Decider had decided to punish a prosecutor who wouldn't prosecute innocents.
All day long I've heard Democrats dance with glee that they now have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales. They nailed the puppet. But what about the puppeteer?
The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors asked of Richard Nixon, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"
Or, to update it for Dubya, "What did the President know and how many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?"
During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his Attorney General and other officials. Then, Congress refused to swallow the Nixon bait. The only resignation that counted was the one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal: Nixon's. The President's.
But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not be the end of it. Because this isn't about finagling with the power of prosecutors, it's about the 2008 election.
"This voter fraud thing is the bogey man," says Iglesias.
In New Mexico, the 2004 announcement of Iglesias' pending prosecution of voters (which he ultimately refused to do) put the chill on the turnout of Hispanic citizens already harassed by officialdom. The bogus "vote fraud" hysteria helped sell New Mexico's legislature on the Republican plan to require citizenship IDs to vote - all to stop "fraudulent" voters that simply don't exist.
The voter witch-hunt worked. "Wrong" or "insufficient" ID was used to knock out the civil rights of over a quarter million voters in 2004. In New Mexico, that was enough to swing the state George Bush by a mere 5,900 votes.
So what is most frightening is not the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, the Pinocchio of prosecutorial misconduct, but the resignation of Karl Rove. Because New Mexico 2004 was just the testing ground for the roll-out of the "ID" attack planned for 2008.
And Rove who three decades ago cut his political fangs as chief of the Nixon Youth, is ready to roll. To say Rove left his White House job under a cloud is nonsense. He just went into free-agent status, an electoral hitman ready to jump on the next GOP nominee's black-ops squad. The fact that Rove's venomous assistant, Tim Griffin, was set up to work for the campaign Fred Thompson, is a sign that the Lord Voldemort of vote suppression is preparing to practice his Dark Arts in '08.
It was Rove who convinced Bush to fire upright prosecutors and replace them with Rove-bots ready to strike out at fraudulent (i.e. Democratic) voters.
Iglesias, however, remains the optimist. "I'm hopeful that I'll get back to the American dream. And get out of the American nightmare."
Dreams. Nightmares. I have a better idea for America: Wake up.
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