why I’m voting for Sock Monkey

You know, I don’t understand you Republicans. You’ve allowed the bushcheney to snatch an American citizen off the street, call him an “unlawful combatant”, and toss him into jail. No courts, no lawyers, no contact with family, all on his say so alone. Are you sure you want Hillary Clinton to have that power? There’s a good chance that she’ll be your next president, and she’s still got to be pissed about what you all did to her Bill.

What about being able to pick and choose whatever laws she feels like obeying. Are you really comfortable with that? And, she won’t have to tell you anything about what she’s doing.

If you let george leave office with those powers intact, you’re telling the next president that all that’s ok with you. “Go ahead, we’re cool with it.” In fact, there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it, because it’s good chances the next Congress will be controlled by the democrats.

Think about it. Are you really that sure one of your guys are going to win the election for president? There’s a real good chance that either Clinton, or that other liberal, Obama, who’s been endorsed by Ted Kennedy, himself. gasp!

Think about it. They’ll be listening to your phone calls, reading your mail, seeing what you do on the internet. And of course, they’ll be laughing at your “little smoochums” you and your wife send to each other. Is that what you really want. Ha. I didn’t think so.

The only way you can stop that, and I do mean the only way, is to impeach the bushcheney. And right now. And you’re the only ones who can do it. It sure doesn’t seem the Democrats are going to do it. Uh... doesn’t that make you just a little bit suspicious?

Otherwise……hey, what can I say?

But, wow, that’s some choice you got this year. John “it’s ok with me if we’re in Iraq for a hundred years. They’re just gooks anyway” McCain, or Mitt “I’m just a rich dilettante, and my hair is perfect” Romney. And hey, they’re Republicans too. And the Republican Party is the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now. No other reason. It was all just politics, you know. Guiliani’s gone, Thompson. Gone. No wonder you’re all so depressed and freaking out.

But hey, the Democratic Party’s not in much better shape. Edwards dropped out, Kucinich. Now all they got is Hillary “I can be a heartless bitch” Clinton, and Barack “a shit storm’s coming” Obama.

Do you remember the 90’s, Bill Clinton? Sure you do. I even mentioned it earlier. That will seem like a walk in the park compared to the shit storm that will be coming down on Obama if he wins the election. Stop shifting around. You know what I mean, I know it, and anybody with a brain knows it. You know the Republican Party is already cranking it up. I just got another of those chain sleaze mails that are going around the internet now. And he’s not even the candidate yet. What do you think will happen if he gets elected?

And, sure Clinton can be a heartless bitch. And if you ask her, she’ll tell you. She’s a smart, tough woman, but there is a whole load getting set up, ready to deliver. Do you remember the 90’s, Bill Clinton? Sure you do. I even mentioned it earlier. All the groundwork, and all the tapes are all just sitting there, getting dusted off to repeat and improve on. Stop squirming. You know what I mean, I know it, and anybody with a brain knows it.

And do you think a Congress, that can’t even get it up to at least push back at the bushcheney that nobody really likes anymore, would have the clankers to stand up for their president in the face of that storm? Ha. Fat chance. They gotta get their donations and get re-elected, you know.

This day in history
- Edward Donald Slovik (February 18, 1920 – January 31,1945) was a private in the United States Army during World War II and the only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the American Civil War.
- In 1606, Guy Fawkes, convicted of treason for his part in the "Gunpowder Plot" against the English Parliament and King James I, was executed.

and,

- In 2003, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met at the White House; Bush said he would welcome a second U.N. resolution on Iraq but only if it led to the prompt disarming of Saddam Hussein. Pushing for a new resolution, Blair called confronting Iraq "a test of the international community."


So. That’s it. And that’s why I’m voting for Sock Monkey.




heh, heh. Hi! I’m Sock Monkey.

I’m not quitting. I’ve noticed that a bunch of guys quit their campaigns lately. Well, they’ll never get to be president that way.

We’ve got plenty of cash on hand. Me and Lumpy counted it all up, and we’ve got $7.43, and a Canadian quarter. So, we’re all set, and looking forward to the months ahead with enthusiasm and big hopes. Just the other day, or so, recently, we got this in a computer mail from New Jersey. In the northeast, near New York City. Grandpa’s got friends in Public Works. Those guys are great! Great picnics, too.

Cool, huh?

In other campaign news, production is almost ready to get started soon on a new campaign ad. You’re maybe getting kinda tired of seeing the same one over and over, again and again. And we have 2 (two) new position papers almost completely thought about. And we’ll be working on them soon, too.

We’d like to introduce Lester. He’s the new coordinator for our southwest activities. His assistant, Brian, has a lot of election experience himself, having lost an election himself.

We’re really looking forward to their progress reports, and we’ll pass them on to you when we do.

Handsome guy, ain’t he?

And don’t forget to visit SockMonkey08 [ http://tmars.iwarp.com/sockmonkey08/ ]

CBS Falsifies Iraq War History

What's Going On In Mosul?
Posted By Cernig
January 28, 2008
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/01/whats-going-on.html

I'm only asking because the US media's reporting on Iraq seems to have devolved to the level of reporting on hit-and-run accidents. What's going on in Mosul?

Not more than a few weeks back we were being told that Mosul was one of the Surge's great successes, enabling a drawdown of US forces to only one battalion from a high of over two dozen. Suddenly, Al Qaeda, we are told, has regrouped in the city. There was a massive explosion that killed as many as 50 and has been blamed on AQ (although insurgency-loyal websites have a different story). A suicide bomber killed provincial police chief Brigadier General Salah al-Juburi and two other officers the next day when they went to inspect the carnage. There were five US soldiers killed today in another explosion. There are rumors that Gadhafi's son is helping AQ there. The Iraqi Army has moved its tiny supply of tanks and helicopters into the city along with major reinforcements. The latter alone tells you there's a crisis of sorts, and if it doesn't then the Defense Minister's saying that "The situation in Mosul is worse than imagined by far" will.

And all of this popped up out of nowhere and escalated into the current security crisis just after reports of an Iraqi soldier who shot and killed two US servicemen just after Christmas. He was called an Al Qaeda member but local reports claimed he had become angry when US soldiers beat a pregnant woman and opened fire after arguing with them. Lefalets distributed in Mosul exhorted locals to emulate the soldier, known as Caesar. Could there be a connection? If so, then it is in the interests of both the Iraqi authorities and US military to downplay it and the mainstream media isn't looking to see if there is one. They're content with their stenography of the story of the last stand of a mysteriously and suddenly resurgent Al Qaeda. Yet an AQI that has such a regenerative ability to regroup and resupply would be just as problemmatic in its own way as a Sunni backlash following the Caesar incident, which should be garnering more attention than it is.


CBS Falsifies Iraq War History
by Robert Parry
Monday, January 28, 2008
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/012808.html

There’s a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBS’s “60 Minutes” demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott Pelley’s interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly - and accurately - announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. In fall 2002, Hussein’s government also allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war despite the U.N. Security Council’s refusal to authorize the invasion and its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.

But none of that reality is part of the history that Americans are supposed to know. The officially sanctioned U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech, is that Saddam Hussein “chose war” by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue and by misleading the world into believing that he still possessed these weapons.

In line with Bush’s version of history, “60 Minutes” correspondent Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq’s borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.

“For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking,” Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. “Why did he choose war with the United States?”

The segment never mentions the fact that Hussein’s government did disclose that it had eliminated its WMD. Instead Pelley presses Piro on the question of why Hussein was hiding that fact.

Piro said Hussein explained to him that “most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ‘90s, and those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.”

“So,” Pelley asked, “why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?”

After Piro mentioned Hussein’s lingering fear of neighboring Iran, Pelley felt he was close to an answer to the mystery: “He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?”

Wanting an Invasion?

But, still, Pelley puzzled over why Hussein’s continued in his miscalculation.

Pelley asked: “As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction,’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?”

It’s Bush World, with Pelley - like other prominent U.S. news correspondents - ignoring the well-established facts of the run-up to war and following the made-up story first presented by Bush four months after he forced the U.N. inspectors out, when he began claiming that Hussein had never let them in.

On July 14, 2003, as the U.S.-led WMD search also was coming up empty, Bush began asserting that it was all Hussein’s fault because he had never let the U.N. inspectors in. Bush told reporters:

“We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

Facing no challenge from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie in varied forms over the next four years as part of his public litany for defending the invasion.

On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, “We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution - 1441 - unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”

As the months and years went by, Bush’s lie and its constant retelling took on the color of truth.

At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein’s defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.

“I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically,” Bush said. “The world said, ‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.’ … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did.”

At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.

“As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein’s] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life.”

In the frequent repetition of this claim, Bush never acknowledges the fact that Hussein did comply with Resolution 1441 by declaring accurately that he had disposed of his WMD stockpiles and by permitting U.N. inspectors to examine any site of their choosing.

Journalistic Group Think

Prominent Washington journalists have even repeated Bush’s lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC’s veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he - Koppel - thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.

“It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, ‘All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,” Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now.”

Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to “come on in, check it out.” But he did so in the real history, not in the faux reality that now governs Washington and pervades America’s top news programs, including “60 Minutes.”

In Pelley’s historical formulation, the question is not why did Bush invade Iraq in violation of international law, causing the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but rather “How could [Hussein] have wanted his country to be invaded?”

This strategy of repeating a “big lie” often enough to make it sound true was famously described in the writings of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels during World War II. However, given the relatively free U.S. press, many Americans feel they are protected from “big lie” techniques, counting on journalists to call lying politicians to account.

But that clearly is no longer the case - and hasn’t been for some time. Facing career pressure from well-organized right-wing attack groups, American journalists act more like triangulating politicians, fearful of accusations of “liberal bias” or unpatriotic behavior or softness on terrorism.

To have challenged George W. Bush in July 2003 - when he was near the height of his popularity - or even now with his approval ratings at historic lows would carry career dangers that few American reporters want to risk.

So, discretion - or in this case the acceptance of a lie as truth - is the better part of valor.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek

the occupation of Iraq WILL go on.

I guess little georgie the bush just has to have his own Palestine.

US to Insist Iraq Grant It Wide Mandate in Operations
By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers
January 25, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/world/middleeast/25military.html

WASHINGTON — With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.

This emerging American negotiating position faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its fragmented Parliament, weak central government and deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state, according to these officials.

At the same time, the administration faces opposition from Democrats at home, who warn that the agreements the White House seeks would bind the next president by locking in Mr. Bush’s policies and a long-term military presence.

The American negotiating position for a formal military-to-military relationship, one that would replace the current United Nations mandate, is laid out in a draft proposal that was described by a range of White House, Pentagon, State Department and military officials on ground rules of anonymity. It also includes less-controversial demands that American troops be immune from Iraqi prosecution, and that they maintain the power to detain Iraqi prisoners.

However, the American quest for immunity for civilian contractors is expected to be particularly vexing, because in no other country are contractors working with the American military granted protection from local laws.

These officials said the negotiations with the Iraqis, expected to begin next month, also would determine whether the American authority to conduct combat operations in the future would be unilateral, as it is now, or whether it would require consultation with the Iraqis or even Iraqi approval.

“These are going to be tough negotiations,” said one senior Bush administration official preparing for negotiations with the Iraqis. “They’re not supplicants.”

Democrats in Congress, as well as the party’s two leading presidential contenders, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have accused the White House of sponsoring negotiations that will set into law a long-term security relationship with Iraq.

But administration officials said that the American proposal specifically does not set future troop levels in Iraq or ask for permanent American bases there. Nor, they said, does it offer a mutual security guarantee defining Washington’s specific responsibilities should Iraq come under attack.

Including such long-term commitments in the agreement would turn the accord into a bilateral treaty, one that would require Senate approval. The Bush administration faces the political reality that it cannot count on the two-thirds vote that would be required to approve a treaty with Iraq setting out such a military commitment.

Administration officials are describing their draft proposal in terms of a traditional status-of-forces agreement, an accord that has historically been negotiated by the executive branch and signed by the executive branch without a Senate vote.

“I think it’s pretty clear that such an agreement would not talk about force levels,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday. “We have no interest in permanent bases. I think the way to think about the framework agreement is an approach to normalizing the relationship between the United States and Iraq.”

While the United States currently has status-of-forces agreements with 80 countries around the world, including Japan, Germany, South Korea and a number of Iraq’s neighbors, none of those countries are at war. And none has a population outraged over civilian deaths at the hands of armed American security contractors who are not answerable to Iraqi law.

Democratic critics have complained that the initial announcement about the administration’s intention to negotiate an agreement, made on Nov. 26, included an American pledge to support Iraq “in defending its democratic system against internal and external threats.”

Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, said that what the administration was negotiating amounted to a treaty and should be subjected to Congressional oversight and ultimately ratification.

“Where have we ever had an agreement to defend a foreign country from external attack and internal attack that was not a treaty?” he said Wednesday at a hearing of a foreign affairs subcommittee held to review the matter. “This could very well implicate our military forces in a full-blown civil war in Iraq. If a commitment of this magnitude does not rise to the level of a treaty, then it is difficult to imagine what could.”

Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, who raised concerns in a letter to the White House in December, said that the negotiations were an unprecedented step toward making an agreement on status of forces without the overarching security guarantees like those provided in the NATO treaty. He added that the Democratic majority would seek to block any agreements with the Iraqis, unless the administration was clear about its ultimate intentions in Iraq.

“There’s no exit strategy, because the administration doesn’t have one,” Senator Webb said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “By entering this agreement, they avoid a debate and they validate their unspoken strategy.”

Over recent days, administration officials acknowledged that the language of the Nov. 26 announcement went too far. The officials said that they were limiting the scope of the pending negotiations to issues that could be resolved this year, before the Security Council resolution expires.

To that end, administration officials said that the draft text was narrowly written to codify what the administration regards as four essential requirements for the American armed forces to continue the mission in Iraq.

In seeking immunity for contractors, the administration is requesting protections for the 154,000 civilian contractors working for the Defense Department in Iraq; most carry out such duties as driving trucks, preparing meals and the like. The administration says it depends heavily on those contractors, including about 13,000 private security contractors working for the Pentagon.

Under an earlier agreement between the United States and Iraq, those contractors have been exempt from Iraqi law. Justice Department officials have said it is not clear whether any crimes committed by contractors in Iraq, including the role played by Blackwater employees in a September shooting in Baghdad, would be subject to American law, but the administration has taken steps intended to close any loopholes.

In seeking authority to conduct combat operations, the Bush administration is seeking something similar to the current United Nations Security Council resolution, which allows the United States and other coalition forces to operate in Iraq “in support of mutual goals,” one Bush administration official said.

The official said that the agreement sought by the United States could allow Iraq to “rescind that authority at a later date as the security environment improves and they take over the mission.”

In contrast to the contractors, the immunity being sought for American military personnel is a standard part of most recent agreements for basing American forces on foreign soil. Such agreements grant exclusive jurisdiction over American forces to American law, specifically the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In terms of prisoners, the administration and military would like the Iraqis eventually to take control of all battlefield detainees. But they say that the United States still needs the authority to hold those prisoners, because Baghdad does not yet have the capacity — in personnel, facilities or legal structures — to manage the current detainee population of about 26,000.

Senior administration officials say concerns that the agreement would limit the decisions of the next president are not justified.

“More than 90 percent of this will be a pretty standard status-of-forces agreement,” said one senior official involved in drafting the American proposal. “It is not something that will tie the hands of the next president.”

The military-to-military aspect of the relationship is to be negotiated by July 31, well ahead of the Dec. 31 expiration date for the United Nations Security Council Resolution that has been the core legal authority for the American-led military mission in Iraq. Diplomats also will negotiate political and economic relations between the two countries.

The draft American text on military-to-military relations, now under discussion at the White House, Pentagon and State Department, is short, running less than 15 pages.

“It’s not ‘War and Peace,’ and it doesn’t have a lot of hard-to-read legal jargon,” said one military officer who participated in drafting the text.

American officials are keenly aware that any agreement must be approved by Iraq’s fractured Council of Representatives, where Sunni and Shiite factions feud and even Shiite blocs loyal to competing leaders cannot agree.

A senior Iraqi defense ministry official said his government had been studying every American status-of-forces agreement, or SOFA, to understand what is the norm, and what is not.

“We know the Iraqis will compare it to others in the region and throughout the world,” a military officer involved in the discussions said. “We do not want them to believe they are held to different SOFA standards.”

The New New World Order:

A First-Strike NATO Über Alles
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 22 January 2008

The Lords of the West have called upon their elder chieftains of war to chart a course that will preserve their power and preeminence in the face of an ever-more uncertain future. The answer? A meaner, leaner NATO, openly committed to a nuclear first-strike strategy and stripped of all the "consensus" garbage that has sometimes hampered the organization's American bosses.

Five former military headmen from the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Holland have issued a "radical manifesto" calling for "root-and-branch reform" of NATO and a new "grand strategy" yoking the United States, NATO and the European Union more tightly together in a military behemoth under Washington's dominion, the Guardian reports.

The Mighty Five – who wrote their report "following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views" – were adamant in their insistence that a "nuke first, ask questions later policy" was "indispensible" in fending off any of the lesser breeds who want a piece of the action. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation," say the big brass.

(Who show a delightful talent for turning a phrase, by the way. "Quiver of escalation!" Fine stuff indeed, capturing both the minatory image of weapons at the ready – and the psychosexual thrill that all militarists feel at the thought of a good surge.)

In order to "prevail" over the dusky hordes, the brass also call for: "an overhaul of NATO decision-making methods;" eliminating consensus votes and national vetoes; doing away with the right of member nations to restrict how their troops will be used in an operation; "the use of force without UN Security Council authorization," and setting up a "new directorate" of leaders who can bypass "EU obstructions" (i.e., objections to America's will) and "respond rapidly" when Washington whistles.

Our poetic chieftains don't phrase the latter point quite so crudely, of course, but it is obviously one of the main objects of the exercise. A "streamlined" NATO, operating without the need for broad consensus among members – and free of even the pretense of seeking UN approval – will inevitably be an even more pliable instrument for its most overwhelmingly dominant member, the United States. And with "imperial overreach" badly straining U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world, a "reformed" NATO would be a very handy tool for extending the Pentagon's scope.

The great and good behind the manifesto are Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Bill Clinton; Lord Inge (Peter Inge, as was), former chief of the UK's general staff; Gen. Klaus Naumann, former chief of staff of the German military; Admiral Jacques Lanxade, former French chief of staff; and Gen. Henk van den Breemen, former Dutch chief of staff (whom the Guardian rather irrelevantly informs us is "an accomplished organist"). They have already handed in their homework to the honchos in the Pentagon; the 150-page "blueprint for urgent reform of Western military strategy and structures" will likely be taken up at the NATO summit in April, the newspaper reports.

And what are the dangers to "the West's values and way of life" that the war chiefs want to aim nuclear missiles at? Well, "political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism," for a start. (Reckon NATO will nuke the next GOP presidential debate?) The "dark side of globalization" is another; this apparently covers organized crime, terrorism and proliferation of WMD. Then there's "climate change and energy security," which will entail "a contest for resources and potential 'environmental' migration on a mass scale," as the Guardian puts it. Another danger worth nuking over is "the weakening of the nation-state, as well as of organizations such as the UN, Nato and the EU."

But how do the manifesto's "reforms" actually address these problems? For example, as we have seen over the years, unilateral, unsanctioned military action by the West only exacerbates "political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism." What's more, the mass slaughter of innocent civilians in these interventions – not to mention the repression, chaos and corruption they inevitably leave in their wake – only discredit the "values of the West" in the eyes of the world, which sees the assaults, quite rightly, as brutal grabs for loot and domination behind a smokescreen of pious, hypocritical blather.

And if NATO unlimbers its nukes and tanks on the "dark side of globalization" –mafias, terrorists, weapons-peddlers, etc. – it will certainly hit many of the prized assets of the West's own security and military forces, who have long created, coopted, penetrated and manipulated these dark materials. (A tale we have oft told here: see this and this for examples). So this is not a serious objective either.

As for the weakening of the nation-state, it is hard to see how creating a super-NATO that can override a member nation's wishes on how their troops should be used – and even override a nation's rejection of a given foreign adventure decided upon in Washington – will somehow strengthen the role of the nation-state. (Well, it might strengthen one nation-state.) And the idea that openly championing the right to launch military actions without UN Security Council approval bolsters the effectiveness of the United Nations is also a pretty good joke.

But when the Manifesters come to "energy security," and the "contest for resources" on an overwarmed, overpopulated globe, they are getting down to the heart of the matter. They know that the "values" that NATO has actually promoted over the years – not democracy, law or freedom, but keeping the Lords of the West in clover – are indeed under threat by the vast, crushing and ever-increasing economic and social disparities (at home and abroad) engendered by rapacious elites. And they aim to defend those values to the last drop of someone else's blood.

What is envisioned here is a gated community writ large; or perhaps more accurately a feudal castle bristling with modern technology: a Fortress West, where a priviliged few (supported by loyal courtiers and a cowed and distracted local peasantry) enjoy the bounty of the earth and leave the rest squabbling for scraps outside. If the others come too close or try to grab too much from the master's table – well then, it's the "quiver of escalation" for them.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/The_New_New_World_Order%3A_A_First-Strike_NATO_%DCber_Alles/

Iraq: Seeking Victory in Defeat

By Professor William A. Cook
World Prout Assembly
January 16, 2008
http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2008/01/iraq_seeking_vi.html

01/16/08 - "World Prout Assembly" - “Iraq will be a central challenge – perhaps the central challenge – for whoever succeeds President Bush and has to repair the profound damage he has wrought with a war that should never have been fought …”
(Editorial, The New York Times, 1/13/2008)

It has come to this after seven years; the venerable New York Times, without acknowledging its own culpability in fermenting the President’s drive to war with its front page declarations of imminent threats from Saddam Hussein against America as reported by Judith Miller, finally acknowledges that this war “should never have been fought” and places the responsibility for its “repair” on the President that succeeds Bush. How righteous. How simply stated -- “to repair the profound damage he has wrought.”

How exactly does this new President “repair” the lost lives of 4000 American soldiers and the devastation visited upon their families, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and children? How does he or she “repair” the broken bodies and tormented minds of those “wounded” in this war that should never have been fought? How does our newly elected leader “repair” the lives of Iraqis that have suffered in excess of a million dead, millions more forced from their homes and country, hundreds of thousands wounded, their homeland devastated, their lives lived in unending fear, years lost to aspirations and dreams?

How does this individual, thrust into office the day after the perpetrator of this havoc retreats to his ranch in Texas, “repair” America’s reputation in the mid-east? How does America turn again to its founding values when this man has mocked them and made them worthless in the eyes of the world, a deceptive sham used to propel an elite few to power with the full complicity of our once lauded free press? How does he or she apologize for America’s ravaging of Iraq? How does he or she convince the countries of the mid-east that we are no longer supportive of the criminal acts perpetrated against Arabs in Afghanistan, Darfur, Sudan, Somalia, and Palestine?

Is it too late to turn to respect for other peoples who live by other values, worship gods we do not recognize, seek goals we do not understand, dress differently, speak different languages, and live by philosophies we have yet to comprehend? Can he or she abandon Bush’s evangelical manifest destiny that requires America to force his reading of “God’s will,” that America is destined to inflict its monetary, Capitalistic form of Democracy on every nation on the planet, and find instead a humane compassion and true tolerance for those different from ourselves?

How does America “repair” what “never should have been done”?

Who will the New York Times hold accountable for “the profound damage” “he has wrought”? Have they “editorialized” the absolute need to bring those responsible for this war, that “should never have been fought,” to account through impeachment? Have they held themselves accountable? Have they offered to the American people a sincere contrition for their culpability and restitution to those most affected by its devastation? Have they undertaken a true investigative reporting that would analyze how this war was foisted on the American people, who is responsible, who gains by such deception, what feigned “American” interests were deceptively used to bring this “war” that “should never have been fought” to reality, and offer thereby some protection against future betrayal by our elected leaders? Have they considered the words of our former finance czar, Alan Greenspan, that the “war” was about “oil,” and our soldiers served to make its availability to the transnational energy companies a certainty, a kind of “welfare” for the well-healed lest they have to “buy” the product on the open market and suffer less profit?

How does this new President seek victory when the “war” “should never have been fought”? Does “victory” exist for those who “should never have died,” for those who live the remainder of their lives without arms or legs or a sound mind, for the children of Iraq whose lives have been twisted by the awful sinews of sinister sounds, screaming missiles, and sonic vibrations, for the land of Iraq that is now devastated, a veritable monument of rubble, that proclaims our presence in a land where we “should never have been”?

What is victory in a “war” when the act of “war” was deception, a fostered belief in what was never true? What banners will proclaim our triumph in the caverns of Wall Street when our soldiers come home? What truths can they proclaim if the truth is that this nation suffered the consequences the lies its President and Congress and complicit think tanks fostered to enact their war, lies that led to death and debt?

Perhaps its time for the New York Times and all those who shoved this nation into a war that “should never have been fought” to take responsibility for the crimes they committed and foster instead a time of reconciliation and respect for both the Iraqi people and the American people. They have been the victims of this war, not those who deceived to bring about the havoc and suffering.

We cannot seek victory in defeat resulting from deceit; but we can seek retribution for those responsible and, with a respectful hand, go forward with the Iraqi people to bring about a new Iraq where victory will be defined by dignity and friendship.

-William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush's Mideast Policy. He can be reached at: cookb@ulv.edu

The Subhuman Stain:

Federal Court Upholds Torture and Tyranny
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 14 January 2008
http://www.chris-floyd.com/

Last week, a federal appeals court upheld George W. Bush's outrageous claims of dictatorial powers, ruling that he and his designated minions can torture captives -- seized and held outside any legal process -- as they see fit. What's more, the judges -- all of them appointed by one of the Bushes who have stained the Oval Office with their bloodstained filth -- further ruled that these captives are "non-persons" in the eyes of the law: subhumans, without rights, without redress -- no matter what was done to them, no matter if they were innocent.

I was going to write about this story but I see that Scott Horton has already done it, and done it well. You can find some excerpts below, but you should read the whole piece as well. Horton also reveals that opposition to tyranny is part of his family heritage: his ancestor, Thomas Horton, was one of the judicial commissioners who voted to convict King Charles I in 1649 for his abuses of power. As Horton notes: "Among the specific items in the bill of particulars [against Charles] was the charge that he authorized and condoned acts of torture and cruelty against prisoners taken in wartime." Horton further notes: "[Charles] was convicted and an appropriate penalty was assessed: death."

[Charles, of course, was the author of the notorious remark: "Kings are not bound to give an account of their actions but to God alone" -- a sentiment echoed centuries later by another tyrant with a penchant for torture: "I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."]

Horton has nailed the perversity and implications of the case well -- noting also that the ruling was handed down on the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Bush's Terror War concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. From Horton's piece, "Less Than Human":
...And clear evidence of the putrefaction [of the American justice system] that has set in came on Friday. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has emerged as a bastion of Republican movement conservative jurisprudence, picked the anniversary of the opening of the Gitmo camps as the day to celebrate them and the abuses perpetrated there.

Three British detainees held at Gitmo, who were seized for bounty payments for no good reason and who were pried free by the British Government, filed suit alleging that they had been tortured and denied their religious freedom. They sought redress from the authors of the Gitmo system, including former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who crafted a series of once-secret orders directing the Guantánamo torture system. Among the practices introduced and used were waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time standing, sleep deprivation in excess of two days and the use of psychotropic drugs—each of which constitutes torture under American law and under international standards. These orders and their implementation were criminal acts under United States law. The evidence that the plaintiffs were in fact tortured is considerable, and the evidence of religious discrimination and abuse has been documented in internal Department of Defense investigations, which suggest, moreover, that at least some of it is officially condoned. However, the plaintiffs are being denied the right to present their evidence and make a case.

The judges hearing the case, all movement conservative Republicans appointed by a President named Bush– Karen LeCraft Henderson, Janice Rogers Brown and A. Raymond Randolph–concluded that the plaintiffs were not "persons" for purpose of the relevant statute protecting religious freedom. They further concluded that acts of torture and contempt and abuse targeting religious belief were within the legitimate scope of conduct of an American cabinet officer, so that official immunity blocked the suit. In so ruling, they substitute the political mantra of the Republican Party for the Constitution and laws of the United States. They implicitly adopt the Republican Party doctrine that the President is free to torture at whim, and to delegate this right to his cabinet officers, and ignore the Constitution and criminal statutes that prohibit this. This of course is a common enough judicial view of the perquisites of raw power in the world, but it is antithetical to the American idea. Indeed it violates the most fundamental of all the rules upon which the American Republic was founded, namely the view, as Fuller recorded it, "Be ye ever so high, still the Law is above Thee."

...Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has studied in depth the legal policies which enabled the horrendous abuses that occurred against prisoners during World War II. At their core, he writes, was the introduction of the pernicious view that the prisoners were beyond the protection of the law. He traces this idea back to the doctrine of the homo sacer, a term evolved in Roman jurisprudence by the second century of the common era. It provided that a person ajudged and condemned of certain heinous crimes was beyond the reach and help of the law. He could be victimized, abused and even killed without legal consequence for the perpetrator.

What the Bush Administration has attempted is worse than the Roman model, for a prisoner became homo sacer only at the end of a legal process—it was a formally assessed punishment. The Bush Administration's approach aims at making the Leader's power over these prisoners absolute, and their right to defend themselves or seek freedom through legal process a complete illusion. Yet again we witness a sickening spectacle: Bush-appointee judges snap to attention and follow their Leader, in a display which seems to reveal loyalty not to the law, but to the Party…

Indeed, the panel's entire exercise is dishonorable in the sense in which the English judges used that term in 1628, for it is a stain against honor–as they said in holding torture prohibited by the common law–to attempt to justify torture and to protect the torturer when his victim seeks justice. But this is precisely what this disreputable court has done.

Among the most shocking statements in the ruling is one that Horton alludes to but doesn't directly quote: the idea that the use of torture was "foreseeable" on anyone captured in the Terror War; in other words, it was normative behavior, standard operating procedure, the done thing, and thus in no way could be considered legally actionable. Here is a quote from the excellent story on the case by McClatchy Newspapers:

The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were "foreseeable.''

"It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably 'seriously criminal' would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,'' Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court's main opinion.

The Bush judges themselves openly acknowledge that the torture tactics are "seriously criminal," but, astonishingly, they then adopt the "Nuremberg defense," employed by scores of Nazi war criminals: perpetrators should have immunity for their atrocities if the acts were committed at the order of higher authorities. Whatever the Leader orders, either directly or through his designated subordinates, cannot be a crime -- precisely because the Leader has ordered it. His will is law; or rather, his will overrides the law. Horton likens this, rightly, to the "divine right of kings" embraced so fervently by Charles I, but it is also a precise echo of the Führerprinzip of Nazi Germany. This same principle, says the court, is now the basis of the American state.

I've been writing about Bush's assertion of autocratic power since November 2001, when it first emerged that he had granted himself the "right" to order the assassination of any person on earth whom he -- arbitrarily, at his own whim, without any legal process or oversight -- designated a "terrorist." Over the years, we have seen these authoritarian claims grow in all directions, with scarcely a demur from Congress or the Democratic "opposition." Occasionally a judge has attempted to put some sort of brake on this free-footed tyranny; but more often the courts have upheld it, and nothing has checked it. Given all this, there is nothing surprising about Friday's ruling, although it still comes as a moral shock, much as any atrocity – a gruesome killing, say, or some horrific rape – comes as shock, even though we all know the limitless depravity that human beings are capable of. Brutal, barbaric, dimwitted tyranny is one of those inherent propensities to evil that continually burst forth in human affairs; and now it has come – in its most naked, proud and preening form – to the United States.

Things are far gone now. As I wrote last year in Plain and Simple: Nothing But Ouster Will Stop Bush-Cheney Torture Regime (see original for links):

There is really no point in Congress passing laws restricting the Regime's use of torture (assuming that these slavish sad sacks were actually interested in doing so); nor is there any point in the courts ruling against it (assuming that the Bushist apparatchiks, arrogant partisans and lying dimbulbs on the Supreme Court would uphold any lower court rulings outlawing the Regime's filthy practices). It is obvious beyond all dispute by now that the Bush Regime will simply ignore any and all attempts to put fetters on its atrocities. They will not stop torturing people. They will not stop kidnapping people and holding them without charges. They will not stop launching mass-murdering wars of aggression. They will not stop perverting the electoral system to keep their extremist fringe views ensconced in power.

The only possible way to stop these criminal depradations is to remove Bush and Cheney from office. Nothing else will do it. And any national political figure or presidential candidate who does not have this removal at the top of their agenda, who is not beating this drum day after day and using all their power and influence and position to help bring it about is, as we have noted here before, nothing but an accomplice to torture and murder.

It's that simple.

Number Crunching:

Death Count Politics
Written by Chris Floyd
Sunday, 13 January 2008

In an age where Hitlerian wars of aggression are considered standard practice for "healthy" democracies (with only the "competence" of their execution being a fit subject for debate), it is difficult, if not impossible, to single out a single element of the grotesque carnival as the most macabre. But surely the warmongers' game-playing with the death toll of slaughtered Iraqis is a prime candidate.

Throughout George W. Bush's rape of Iraq, which was launched on a sea of lies and spin, the warmakers and their innumerable sycophants and transcribers in the media have relentlessly downplayed the number of Iraqis being killed in the conflict -- when they deign to notice the darker-hued dead at all, that is. Bush and his accomplices have been tossing around a number of 30,000 to 50,000 for a long time; these figures -- more than 10 times the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks -- are obviously considered a perfectly acceptable amount of "collateral damage" for such a noble crusade.

Several other death tolls have been offered, most notably the Iraq Body Count, which restricts itself to deaths reported in the press and by officials of the conquerors and their collaborators. This count has always run in advance of the number of murders happily admitted to by Bush, but the IBC numbers have always been, by design, merely a minimum baseline for the ever-churning slaughter.

As we all know, there was a very brief moment of panic amongst the death merchants when a survey by Johns Hopkins experts reported in 2006 that the true count of civilians who had died as a result of the war was at least 650,000. This study, published by The Lancet, one of the world's leading peer-reviewed medical journals, was quickly given the smear treatment, haughtily dismissed by Bush and his British moll, Tony Blair for its "unsound methodology" -- despite the fact that the moll's own officials confessed privately that the Lancet study's methodology was sound. Indeed, it was the same methodology employed by the U.S. and UK governments to estimate the slaughters in Rwanda and Darfur, among other atrocities. But evidently the same science does not apply when those ordering the atrocities have white hands.

Very quickly, the media mandarins took up the smear, and never failed, in their very few mentions of the Lancet study, to note the "controversy" over its methodology -- a controversy ginned up entirely by the warmakers and their apologists, much as revisionists like David Irving concoct "controversies" over the mass slaughter of Jews by the Nazis. Of course, Bush and his supporters are themselves very active revisionists on the Irving model -- "revising," in real time, the history of the holocaust they are carrying out in Iraq.

Last year, a follow-up to the Lancet study gave a credible estimate of more than 1 million Iraqis killed as a result of the invasion. One salient fact about this and the Lancet study should be borne in mind: there were areas of Iraq that are so dangerous that they could not be surveyed. In other words, the most deadly areas of the conquered land had to be left out of the studies. So they too are, in the end, minimum baselines for the total death count. Needless to say, the Lancet study follow-up has been invisible in the corporate press, not to mention in the presidential "debates."

("Debate" is certainly an odd term for a process deliberately designed to choke off any careful, thoughtful, in-depth examination and critique of issues and policy -- i.e., a debate -- and instead restricts candidates to throwing quick soundbites at each other for 90 minutes or so. Of course, it serves the purposes of the kind of sham democracy that the United States is saddled with, but it would be regarded as a ludicrous and sinister farce in any genuine republic.)

But even though the masticators of conventional wisdom have swallowed the Administration's blood-streaked bull droppings about the "success" of the "surge," pushing the war crime into the media background ("Thank god [Iraq] is off the front pages," the resurgent surge-monger John McCain told one of his sycophants in the press corps recently), the very length of the continuing conflict has forced war supporters to grudgingly adopt somewhat more "realistic" figures for the number of human beings gutted, shredded, shot and annihilated to aggrandize the wealth and power of corrupt and fanatic elites in both countries.

Thus a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has been seized upon by some war supporters as "vindication" for their cause -- primarily because it seems to refute or undercut the Lancet study: "Why, we haven't killed a million or even half a million fellow human beings in Iraq; we've only killed 151,000 of them! We're on the side of the angels over there, just like we said all along. Now, let me tell you my ideas about soft partitioning...."

But like the compulsive mastication surrounding the surge itself, the macabre PR driving this latest dribbling of conventional wisdom cud offers much less than meets the eye. Even putting aside the perversity of touting the senseless slaughter of 151,000 people as some kind of moral victory, the new study does not refute the Lancet survey at all; in fact, as Andrew Cockburn notes in an excellent Counterpunch article, the new report is guilty of the same kind of "questionable methodology" of which the Lancet study was unjustly accused. From Cockburn:

...Now we have a new result complied by the Iraqi Ministry of Health under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization and published in the once reputable New England Journal of Medicine, (NEJM) estimating the number of Iraqis murdered, directly or indirectly, by George Bush and his willing executioners at 151,000 -- far less than the most recent Johns Hopkins estimate. Due to its adherence to the rule cited above, this figure has been greeted with respectful attention in press reports, along with swipes at the Hopkins effort as having, as the New York Times had to remind readers, "come under criticism for its methodology."

However, as a careful and informed reading makes clear, it is the new report that guilty of sloppy methodology and tendentious reporting -- evidently inspired by the desire to discredit the horrifying Hopkins findings, which, the NEJM study triumphantly concludes "considerably overestimated the number of violent deaths." In particular, while Johns Hopkins reported that the majority of post-invasion deaths were due to violence, the NEJM serves up the comforting assessment that only one sixth of deaths in this period have been due to violence.

Among the many obfuscations in this new report, the most fundamental is the blurred distinction between it and the survey it sets out to discredit. The Johns Hopkins project sought to enumerate the number of excess deaths due to all causes in the period following the March 2003 invasion as compared with the death rate prior to the invasion, thus giving a number of people who died because Bush invaded. Post hoc, propter hoc. This new study, on the other hand, explicitly sought to analyze only deaths by violence, imposing a measure of subjectivity on the findings from the outset. For example, does the child who dies because the local health clinic has been looted in the aftermath of the invasion count as a casualty of the war, or not? As CounterPunch's statistical consultant Pierre Sprey reacted after reading the full NEJM paper, "They don't say they are comparing entirely different death rates. That's not science, it's politics."

...Les Roberts, one of the principal authors of the Johns Hopkins studies, has commented: "We confirmed our deaths with death certificates, they did not. As the NEJM study's interviewers worked for one side in this conflict, [the U.S. - sponsored government] it is likely that people would be unwilling to admit violent deaths to the study workers."

...If any further confirmation of the essential worthlessness of the NEJM effort, it comes in the bizarre conclusion that violent deaths in the Iraqi population have not increased over the course of the occupation. As Iraq has descended into a bloody civil war during that time, it should seem obvious to the meanest intelligence that violent deaths have to have increased. Indeed, even Iraq Body Count tracks the same rate of increase as the Hopkins survey, while NEJM settles for a mere 7% in recent years....

Finally, there is the matter of the New England Journal of Medicine lending its imprimatur to this farrago. Once upon a time, under the great editor Marsha Angell, this was an organ unafraid to cock a snoot at power. In particular, Angell refused to pander to the mendacities of the drug companies, thereby earning their undying enmity. Much has evidently changed, as the recruiting ad for the U.S. Army on the home page of the current New England Journal reminds us.

But of course, for moral perverts like George W. Bush and all those who have championed his Hitlerian assault -- from the bootlicking yellowstains of the Young Republicans to the bloodthirsty "liberal hawks" like Christopher Hitchens and Michael O'Hanlon -- it doesn't really matter how you count the dead....when the dead don't count.

URL: http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Number_Crunching%3A_Death_Count_Politics/

Why don't you Bomb Yourself and Save Us All

Gilad Atzmon / Aron Heller
01/11/08
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/01/11/p22509#more22509

"US Should Have Bombed Auschwitz"

"President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust Memorial on Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing"

---------------------------

Just in case the failed fool, little georgie, has forgotten: He is still enjoying the fruits of the slave labor at Auschwitz, thanks to his grandaddy, Prescott.

Heir to the Holocaust
Prescott Bush, $1.5 million, and Auschwitz: how the Bush family wealth is linked to the holocaust
by Toby Rogers
Clamor Magazine
Issue 14 May/June 2002 [ Clamor ceased publication in December 2006. ]

http://tmars.iwarp.com/theMagazine/archive/08/Holocaust-Heir.html

2007 Was Worst Year of Iraq Occupation

by Dahr Jamail; IPS News; January 07, 2008
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14672

Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.

One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop "surge" by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.

By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.
The Bush administration said the "surge" was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.

Iraq has a population around 25 million.

The non-governmental organisation Refugees International describes Iraq's refugee problem as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."

In October the Syrian government began requiring visas for Iraqis. Until then it was the only country to allow Iraqis in without visas. The new restrictions have led some Iraqis to return to Baghdad, but that number is well below 50,000.

A recent UNHCR survey of families returning found that less than 18 percent did so by choice. Most came back because they lacked a visa, had run out of money abroad, or were deported.

Sectarian killings have decreased in recent months, but still continue. Bodies continue to be dumped on the streets of Baghdad daily.

One reason for a decrease in the level of violence is that most of Baghdad has essentially been divided along sectarian lines. Entire neighbourhoods are now surrounded by concrete blast walls several metres high, with strict security checkpoints. Normal life has all but vanished.

The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that eight out of ten refugees are from Baghdad.

By the end of 2007, attacks against occupation forces decreased substantially, but still number more than 2,000 monthly. Iraqi infrastructure, like supply of potable water and electricity are improving, but remain below pre-invasion levels. Similarly with jobs and oil exports. Unemployment, according to the Iraqi government, ranges between 60-70 percent.

An Oxfam International report released in July says 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water, and 43 percent live on less than a dollar a day. The report also states that eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report says. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."

Nearly 10 million people depend on the fragile rationing system. In December, the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiralling inflation." The inflation rate is officially said to be around 70 percent.

The cuts are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, and have led to warnings of social unrest if measures are not taken to address rising poverty and unemployment.

Iraq's children continue to suffer most. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the economic sanctions period prior to the invasion, to 28 percent today.

This year has also been one of the bloodiest of the entire occupation. The group Just Foreign Policy, "an independent and non-partisan mass membership organisation dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy," estimates the total number of Iraqis killed so far due to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation to be 1,139,602.

This year 894 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, making 2007 the deadliest year of the entire occupation for the U.S. military, according to ICasualties.org.

To date, at least 3,896 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defence.

A part of the U.S. military's effort to reduce violence has been to pay former resistance fighters. Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."

While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis - the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.

Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.

According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country.

[Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq.]

Children As ‘Collateral Damage’ Of The War In Iraq

by Dan Jakopovich
January 07, 2008
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14669

Western journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Mahatma Gandhi: Yes, that would be a good idea.

Great is the hypocrisy of capitalist “civilization”. On the one hand, big business and its media boast of their “democracy” and “freedom,” while at the same time in today’s world they commit the greatest crimes. They spread rhetoric about human rights while stifling human dignity in a myriad of ways. Although several tens of billions of dollars would be enough to eliminate extreme hunger in the world, the USA annually spends approximately 600 billion dollars on its military budget, while approximately 15 million children are dying from starvation every year. It appears that it is still not in the interest of the system to eliminate poverty. War is profitable, and the profits coming from the war in Iraq are evidently more valuable than human lives. Naturally, we are all the same under the skin, and the suffering of men and women is not intrinsically less terrible than the suffering of children. Nonetheless, there is something particularly grotesque in the soulless manner in which the world powers behave towards the must vulnerable and least culpable generation. Perhaps it is precisely the hypocritical attitude towards them that best reflects the conscience of today's world society.

The First Gulf War, equally absurd as other wars before and after it, started at the beginning of the final decade of the last century. Approximately 90,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Iraq and Kuwait. Nonetheless, Saddam was not deposed. As Sami Ramadani, an Iraqi dissident and professor at the London Metropolitan University, points out, the United States even helped Saddam quell a military rebellion against his authority.

Criminal Sanctions
“We Think The Price Is Worth It”

The sanctions that were later imposed against defeated Iraq did not undermine the power of the autocrats but severely afflicted the lives of ordinary people. The sanctions were all-encompassing, perhaps the most restrictive and broadest in history – applying also to food, medicines and other humanitarian necessities. Even chlorine, needed for disinfecting water, was prohibited due to its alleged “dual function“ in the potential manufacture of weapons.

UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm) estimated the number of children under five years of age who died as a consequence of the sanctions at 500,000 (five hundred thousand). In 1996, that great liberal, the tastefully attired lady Madeleine Albright (secretary of state under Bill Clinton, whom the stupid, hypocritically moralistic public pilloried for oral sex with Monica Lewinsky and not for aggression waged against numerous countries), responded to a question asked on 60 Minutes as to whether the price of the lives of 500,000 children was worth it as follows: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Denis Halliday, the former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq (appointed in 1997 as an assistant to the secretary-general of the UN), estimated the total number of deaths due to sanctions at 1 million (an inconceivable number of human lives destroyed). In October 1998, after a 34-year career at the UN, he resigned in order to be able to criticize these cannibalistic sanctions freely and stated: “I don't want to administer a program that satisfies the definition of genocide.” Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, also submitted his resignation after two years in protest (i.e. revulsion) as did Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program for Iraq.

The corporate mass media ignored these events as much as they could. The corrupt Oil for Food program has only somewhat alleviated the suffering of the population. In addition to sanctions, this exploitative program is one more stain on the history of modern UN.

The Current Bestial War

Although periodical limited bombardment of Iraqi targets continued throughout the 1990s (without any great interest from the corporate mass media), the US and its allies announced a new war on Iraq in 2003. The leading British medical journal, The Lancet, estimated through scientific methods in October 2006 that 655,000 (six hundred fifty-five thousand) people had perished in the war by July 2006, as also confirmed by the elite Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US.

Dan Toole, director of the Office of Emergency Operations of the United Nations Children's Fund, recently stated: “Children today are much worse off than they were a year ago, and they certainly are worse off than they were three years ago.” He added that Iraqis no longer have safe access to the basic food basket established under Saddam's regime in order to survive international sanctions. At UNICEF there are concerns regarding a potential cholera epidemic because two thirds of the Iraqis do not have access to clean water. The prominent sociologist and professor at the Sorbonne Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, stated in 2005 that the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children had doubled since the beginning of the war in 2003. Nutritional and health indicators have significantly worsened since the beginning of the occupation. According to a study commissioned by the BBC, ABC News, the ARD of Germany and USA Today, 64% of interviewed Iraqis described their family situation as somewhat poor or very poor, which represents an increase in comparison to 30% in 2005. Access to electricity is described by 88% as somewhat poor or very poor, while 65% thought so in 2004. Although 48% described their access to clean water as poor or very poor in 2004, 69% feel this way now.

According to UNICEF, half of the 4 million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the beginning of the war were children. Tens of thousands of children have lost one or both parents. Deprived of many of their rights, frequently exposed to psychological, physical and sexual violence and potentially harmful forms of labor, the future of these children does not appear overly promising.

The Strategy Of Tension

Viewed politically, the American occupation of Iraq has generated what had been formerly largely nonexistent enmity and sectarian-based conflicts among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. According to the tried and tested “divide and conquer’’ model, the US is actively promoting these divisions in the Iraqi society. The occupying army has divided the representative bodies, political parties and cities according to these lines. Furthermore, Amnesty International has expressed concern due to the shady trafficking of arms from Bosnia to Iraq, and it appears that the US has imported large shipments of weapons for arming the Sunni militias. Occupying troops have been implicated in cases of terrorist bombings of civilian territories and some of the members of the military forces have been arrested wearing improvised explosive devices that are used for terrorist purposes. For anyone even partly cognizant of the history of the American secret services, for example, this is not a great surprise. In any case, the continuation of foreign occupation has led to further escalation of the conflict, fundamentalism and a civil war that is already raging for its fifth year.

Despair and desire for vengeance have pushed many young people into fundamentalism, which under normal circumstances would be foreign to them. Monstrous violence and fear, isolation, roadblocks, electricity shortages, the destruction of communications links and the general struggle for sheer survival have seriously hindered any serious or realistic dialogue among Iraqis about their common future. The puppet Iraqi government under the control of the US has prohibited strikes, reintroduced the death penalty and imprisoned tens of thousands of people (many without trials). The secular democratic Iraq Freedom Congress has been repressed both by extreme Islamists and the US forces. Under such restrictive conditions, the struggle for the country’s democratization is exceptionally difficult. Meanwhile, the object of this necessary democratization – the Iraqi people – is being subjugated and politically, economically, culturally, physically and psychologically crippled.

Wounds Below The Surface

Professor Kholoud Nasser Muhssin of the University of Baghdad points out that approximately 60–70% of all Iraqi children suffer from psychological problems. Many of them have also survived traumatic experiences. Psychological wounds are difficult to heal and post-traumatic stress disorder is very common. “New generations, especially this one, will be aggressive,” points out the Baghdad psychiatrist Bilal Youssif Hamid. Many children whom Hamid has tried to treat have witnessed or participated in murders and death. Although parents are frequently too afraid to take their children to a clinic for a medical check-up, much less to school, even the children who go to school have great learning difficulties, as well as anxiety, depression, aggressiveness, nightmares, bedwetting etc. War is always catastrophic for the human psyche.

How can new generations acquire an awareness of the preciousness of each individual when human life is so cheap, the dignity of all people so blatantly ignored and human potentials so suppressed? How can a country be democratized when the most basic rights, such as the right to strike, are prohibited, and the call for vengeance and voice of despair drown out more rational alternatives to imperialism? How to popularize the philosophy of nonviolence?

Dan Jakopovich is the main editor of the left-wing magazine on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia Novi Plamen (www.noviplamen.org).

How many more Americans must die?

A question that each President candidate must answer
January 3, 2008 - 8:15am

By DOUG THOMPSON
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4137

There’s a question that nobody asks Presidential candidates in this year’s run for the top job in the White House.

It’s a question that must be asked: How many more Americans must die before we end the illegal and immoral war in Iraq?

Forget about timetables, forget about political implications and forget about our so-called “mission” to bring Democracy to that war-torn country. We no longer have Democracy in the United States so how on earth can we export it to another country?

This is a simple question of life and death. How many more dedicated men and women must die before we admit we were wrong and bring them home?

The American death toll will soon top 4,000. I suspect it passed 4,000 a long time ago because the Pentagon has played fast and loose with the numbers and some who died after leaving the country with wounds died later from those wounds but their deaths were not listed as Iraq combat casualties.

But the issue here is morality, not numbers. It was wrong for the United States to invade a country that posed no immediate threat to our way of life. We aren’t supposed to do things like that. If one American dies from an illegal and immoral act then that is one American too many.

The blood of every American killed or wounded in that war stains the hands of everyone who helped promote the invasion: The Bush Administration hacks who cooked the intelligence data, the members of Congress who voted to authorize the invasion, the media that fell for the flag-waving propaganda and every right-wing nutcase that continues to promote the slaughter as some God-given right of America to kill those who disagree with us.

America has become a bigger tyrant than those we seek to overthrow. We are an international bully feared on some front and despised on many more. Respect for this nation vanished on the international stage long ago. Even the late Pope warned George W. Bush that invading Iraq would “be a criminal act.”

The Presidential campaign treats the Iraq war as a taboo subject that must be handled with hyperbole and double-talk. Among the front-runners on both sides, only Democrat Barack Obama has suggested he might have voted against the invasion of Iraq but even his comments have tempered of late and he has flipped on the issue. Hillary Clinton voted for the invasion and has refused to apologize for that vote. John Edwards has changed his position more times than couples in a sex-education video and Republican front-runners march in goose-step with Bush on the war.

Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich based much of their campaigns on opposition to the war but, barring a major upset in a primary, neither stand much of a chance of winning their party’s nomination.

So it’s time to ask the question to those who stand the best chance of becoming the candidates:

How many more Americans must die in Iraq?

The only acceptable answer is “none.”

About that UN Mandate for Occupation

Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew UN Mandate for Occupation
by Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland; AlterNet; January 01, 2008

On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year.

The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament -- the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 -- and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population.

Earlier in the week, a group representing a majority of lawmakers in Iraq's parliament -- a group made up of Sunni, Shiite and secular leaders -- sent a letter to the Security Council, a rough translation of which reads: "We reject in the strongest possible terms the unconditional renewal of the mandate and ask for clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable."

We don't know if it was even read by members of the Security Council, but we do know that it, like previous communications from the Iraqi legislature, was completely ignored.

James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, which follows the United Nations' intrigues, said that while "there's concern in many delegations at the United Nations about what is going on," Security Council delegates "are under instructions from their governments to lay low and pass the U.S. resolution." According to Paul, the move "shows the despotic power of the U.S. government to force everyone to knuckle under, no matter how much the law is violated."

It was an egregious assault on Iraq's nascent democracy, as well as its supposed "sovereignty," and can only encourage more bloodshed. Yet the commercial media has so far ignored the story entirely, reporting only that "Iraq" had requested that the mandate be renewed.

The real picture is dramatically different. Just as some congressional Democrats in Washington have tried desperately to limit Bush's ability to maintain troops in Iraq forever -- inserting various conditions into the endless series of supplemental spending bills that have financed the occupation -- and been thwarted by the administration, so too has a majority of Iraq's parliament come out against renewing the mandate without attaching conditions to it, including a requirement that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal.

That's a process story, unsexy by definition, but that doesn't change its importance. This move speaks to the degree to which occupation and democracy are mutually exclusive, and to how Bush and Maliki must run roughshod over the Iraqi legislature (not to mention the U.S. Congress), sacrificing opportunities for political reconciliation along the way, in order to maintain an almost universally despised American military presence in the country.

The U.N. mandate

The U.N. mandate provides vital political cover for the occupation. The Bush administration has ignored or violated much of the international law governing the conduct of an occupying power. As Orwellian as it is, the United States, having bombed the hell out of Iraq, invaded it with a huge mechanized army and installed a government that exists wholly within the confines of its sheltered "international zone" -- the "Green Zone" -- and now maintains that its troops are in the country by the invitation of that government. The United Nations' mandate is a key part of maintaining that fiction.

Last year, at Maliki's request, the Security Council renewed the U.N. mandate suddenly, surprising many of the Iraqi lawmakers we reached in Baghdad at the time. Dr. Alaa Makki, a Sunni MP representing the Accord Front, asked that we send him a copy of the U.N. resolution and Al-Maliki's letter since he had no clue about the machinations that were going on between the PM and the Security Council. Hasan al-Shammari, a Shia parliamentarian with the Al-Fadhila party, told us by phone: "We had a closed session two days ago, and we were supposed to vote on the mandate in 10 days. I can not believe the mandate was just approved without our knowledge or input." Dr. Hajim al-Hassani, a secular MP and the former speaker of the parliament, also didn't know that the mandate had been renewed until receiving our call. "We were supposed to have a meeting with the Prime Minister and other top officials in the parliament during the next couple of weeks to decide what to do with the mandate," he said.

A majority of Iraq's legislators viewed the renewal as unconstitutional. While article 80, section 6, of the young constitution gives the cabinet the right to "negotiate" and "sign" international agreements and treaties, article 61, section 4, reads: "A law shall regulate the ratification of international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Council of Representatives." Like the U.S. system, the executive branch can only negotiate international treaties; the legislature has to ratify them.

At the time, Maliki argued that while he respected the powers given to the parliament, the U.N. mandate didn't count as either a treaty or an agreement, and therefore didn't require a nod from the legislative branch.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of the PM's maneuvers this year, the Iraqi legislature has tried to put its foot down and assert its rights under the country's constitution. First, at the end of April, 144 members of the parliament -- a majority -- sent a nonbinding letter to the members of the United Nations Security Council and to the United Nations secretary general condemning last year's "unconstitutional" renewal and calling for a timetable for foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq.

The Parliament then went a step further at the end of May, when 140 of its members co-sponsored a resolution requiring Maliki to get parliamentary approval before renewing the mandate this year.

Here the story gets a bit legalistic, but bear with us. The resolution was submitted on May 27. During the session, Al-Mashhadani, the head of the Iraqi parliament, refused to allow a vote on the measure, sending it instead to the parliament's legal committee for review (also known as "sending it to die in committee"). On June 5, however, Al-Mashhadani bowed to pressure and allowed a vote on the resolution, which passed by an 85-59 margin. Maliki's cabinet then had a choice of vetoing the law or sending the resolution to the federal court for review.

According to Article 73, section 3 of the constitution, if neither of those actions are taken, then a law passed by the parliament is "considered ratified after 15 days from the date of receipt." The legislation was neither vetoed nor sent to the judiciary for review, so, according to the Constitution, it was duly passed and became binding under Iraqi law.

A few days later, Hoshyar Zebari, the minister of foreign affairs, was called to a hearing at which a member of the parliament's legal committee posed a question. "A few days ago," said Omar Khalaf Jawad, an MP from the secular National Iraqi Dialogue Front, "the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution that obligates the cabinet to receive approval from the parliament before renewing the occupation forces' mission. What steps have your ministry, or the Iraqi cabinet as a whole, taken to inform international entities and countries with forces in Iraq about this resolution, so that we will be sure the resolution will be respected and implemented?" Zebari assured the parliament that its legislation would be disseminated to the appropriate parties and respected by the prime minister and his cabinet.

But, four months after that hearing, in an off-the-record conference call with most of the Security Council's 15 delegates and a number of Sunni, Shiite and secular Iraqi MPs, two unexpected discoveries came to light.

First, the delegates were informed that a report submitted by the secretary-general contained some crucial factual errors. The SG's report said that the parliament had "passed a nonbinding resolution on 5 June obligating the cabinet to request parliament's approval on future extensions of the mandate governing the multinational force in Iraq and to include a timetable for the departure of the force from Iraq." On the call, the Iraqi lawmakers explained to the delegates that the resolution was a binding law and that it did not contain a request to include a timetable. One of the MPs attending the meeting from Baghdad clarified: "All that the resolution requests is that the Iraqi parliament be allowed to practice its constitutional rights."

The second and more shocking discovery of the meeting was that the letter sent in April by the 144 members of Iraq's parliament had never been delivered to the Security Council delegations. Some of the Iraqi MPs confirmed that they had handed the letter to Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the United Nation's special representative for Iraq (Qazi later insisted that he had indeed delivered the letter to the Security Council members and to the secretary-general).

The next day, the Iraqi MPs took it upon themselves to notify the Security Council delegates that any request to renew the mandate that is "issued by the Iraqi cabinet without the Iraqi parliament's approval is unconstitutional." It added: "The Iraqi parliament, as the elected representatives of the Iraqi people, has the exclusive right to approve and ratify international treaties and agreements including those signed with the United Nations Security Council."

At the end of November, Foreign Affairs Minister Zebari was again called to testify before the Iraqi parliament. He promised, unequivocally, that any request to extend the mandate "will not be presented to the U.N. Security Council prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament for deliberation."

But that wasn't to be. In the letter sent this week, Iraqi lawmakers' demand was unambiguous: "We ask the Security Council not to accept any letter requesting renewal that is not ratified by the parliament. Such a letter would be deemed illegal and unconstitutional according to the laws of Iraq," it read.

No debate was held in the Iraqi legislature, and on Tuesday the Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate.

Iraqi lawmakers not the only ones getting the runaround

Our sources in the United Nations told us to expect a vote towards the end of the week, and we were caught by surprise when it was held Tuesday.

The timing appears to have been a response to senior members of Congress picking up on the Iraqi legislature's efforts to put conditions on the renewal. In a letter sent to Condoleezza Rice on Dec. 5, Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., chairman of a House subcommittee on foreign affairs, noted the Iraqi parliament's legislation and warned that ignoring its prerogatives might lead to a broader perception that the occupation is "illegal, illegitimate and evidence of a desire for the long-term basing of our military officials in Iraq."

On Wednesday, Delahunt held hearings on the renewal (at which one of this article's authors, Raed Jarrar, testified). We can't say for sure if the attempt to get these issues into the record on Capitol Hill had to do with the vote being moved up to Tuesday, but the fact that the mandate was renewed, suddenly, just one day before Congressional hearings were held suggests that there was an effort to create "facts on the ground" that would effectively sideline legislators' interest in the matter.

What this story reveals, again, is that U.S. "interests" -- that is, the interests of the U.S. foreign policy elite -- which include establishing a permanent foothold in the Middle East and exerting influence over the political and economic course Iraq takes in the future, are paramount, and that any talk of democratizing missions or "liberating Iraqis" has never been more than political theater.

The renewal is the latest in a string of instances in which the Bush administration and its allies in Iraq's executive branch have shut down a nonviolent, political avenue for Iraqi citizens to resist the presence of foreign troops in their country. By denying them those avenues, Bush and Maliki have effectively done what they accuse advocates of withdrawal of doing: "emboldening" violent insurgents and getting more innocent Iraqis and more U.S. troops killed.

One can only wonder, now that the United States has "liberated" Iraq from Saddam Hussein, just who will liberate Iraq from the United States?

Raed Jarrar is Iraq consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. He blogs at Raed in the Middle. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet editor and staff writer.

URL: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14633