Iraq Permanent Bases

Richard Bonin tells the story of Ahmad Chalabi, whose wealthy Shiite family was exiled from Iraq after a revolution that ultimately put Saddam Hussein in power. In Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi's Long Journey to Triumph in Iraq Bonin traces Chalabi’s efforts to stoke a desire for Iraqi regime change in the United States, and earn support for to installing him as overseer of U.S. interests in the Middle East. The outcome was perhaps the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history.

This is from WNYC.

"How many PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] staff members does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to hire a contractor who fails to complete the job and two to write the press release in the dark."

A FOB is a Forward Operating Base, and the Fobbits who live in them have their own brand of sad SNAFU humor, enough to fill many volumes and constituting, in my opinion, the silver lining of our wars. The above bit is taken from Peter Van Buren's new book "We Meant Well." The author has been in the U.S. Foreign Service for 23 years, working in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the U.K., Hong Kong, and -- from 2009 to 2010 -- in Iraq. The book is about Iraq.

An upcoming Charlottesville conference highlights the importance of whistleblowers when addressing the corruption present in military contracting

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.

I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government's warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.

I'm entirely supportive of outrage. I just have larger crimes in mind. Specifically this:

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
"Article 20
"1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."

The Fox News Channel is endless propaganda for war, and various other deadly policies. As Robin Beste points out,

For the majority of people in the United States -- a majority does not vote, a majority believes the government is broken, a majority thinks our public policy is headed in the wrong direction -- the fact that we call this place a democracy is apparently outweighed by the fact that our national government almost never does what a majority of us want done. Some of the things we don't want done include the destruction of the planet's environment, the mass slaughter of war, the spreading of violence, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny aristocracy while millions at home and billions abroad suffer horrifically for lack of readily available resources.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just done something it hasn't done since Vietnam, passing a resolution that supports efforts to speed up the ending of our current wars and calls on the President and Congress to "bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs."

Here's a page that organized this: http://www.wardollarshome.org

Activist groups are already taking the opportunity to ask Congress and the President to finally listen to what has, after all, been majority public opinion for a long time.

LONDON -- Before long public pressure might just lead Britain to drop out of participation in US wars, a move that would seriously damage future pretenses of acting as an international coalition.

I've spent the past few days here in London talking with leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, sitting in on a weekly planning meeting, and attending a day-long conference on building opposition to the Afghanistan and Libya wars. This movement is strong, smart, well-organized, and eager to work with other peace movements around the world.

Remarks from a session at the Stop the War Coalition's June 11, 2011, conference in London on "Afghanistan and the War on Terror: 10 Years On."

I want to thank the Stop the War Coalition and Lindsey German in particular for having invited me here. And it is an honor to speak together with Steve Bell and Kevin Ovenden, and I'm sorry Joe Glenton was unable to be here. Kevin and I will be on "The Real Deal" with George Galloway tomorrow, so please watch.

Afghanistan was supposed to be the campaign promise that President Barack Obama actually kept. He said he would escalate that war and enlarge the military and strike into Pakistan, and sure enough he did. But he made another promise since the election that we actually want him to keep, and he's going to violate it before the next election. Clearly we need an activist force apart from elections to address this.

Of all the 95% of humans who live outside the United States, or any of those within it for that matter, who do you think is most invisible? Whose existence, did we come to hear about it, would be the most incomprehensible and therefore inaudible?

I have a nominee: the 4.8 million Iraqis made homeless by the liberation, the people liberated from their homes, millions of them liberated into exile from their country, afraid to return and with little to return to.

These people are not the most exotic or different. They just fit so poorly into U.S. news narratives that, despite having heard or read about them several times, you probably have no real idea that they exist at all.

Usually "power couple" describes two plutocrats, but here is a young engaged (to be married) (and in the struggle for justice) couple with the power to move people against war, that leaves the audience asking them to speak in their schools. Wasfi is an Iraqi American who speaks of war from the point of view of its victims. Caputi is a US veteran of the current war on Iraq who describes the crimes he engaged in and the thinking that allows such acts, including what he describes as "reconnaissance by fire" (shooting up houses as a means of determining whether anyone is in them) and the ability of the human mind to rationalize killing people on behalf of the people being killed.

Random Row Bookstore

Charlottesville VA

March 17, 2011

Video by David Swanson