Iraq War and Occupation

Huffing and Puffing at the Pentagon

dlindorff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:02:26 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one. “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, "has the upper hand right now."

Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But Gates doesn’t speak with such clarity and directness in other matters. "I think that there is a real concern that Russia has turned the corner here and is headed back toward its past rather than toward its future, and my hope is that we will see actions in the weeks and months to come that provide us some reassurance," he said, speaking on ABC and CNN, claiming that the country was returning to the authoritarianism of the old Soviet era.

Ahem.

It might also be noted that the US is heading increasingly towards an authoritarian future, no? Certainly over the course of the last seven years we have seen the executive branch in the US claim that it no longer needs to enact or adhere to laws passed by Congress or to terms of international treaties approved by the Senate. We have also seen this administration refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas for information and testimony from White House officials, effectively establishing the presidency as a dictatorship, have we not?

As for Gates’ condemnation of Russia for resorting to force in Georgia, one need not defend Russia’s actions there to note that such tactics have long been deemed fully appropriate in the US. Only recently America used force to depose an elected government in Haiti, hustling its elected president off into exile. The US has also been working assiduously through covert means to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela, even supporting (and probably helping to organize) a temporarily successful military coup there. Then of course there is the decades-long effort by the US to overthrow the government of Cuba, which has included everything from invasions and embargos to multiple assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Russia is clearly moving in an authoritarian direction at home, and is reasserting its influence and control over some—though hardly all—of the states that were formerly part of the USSR. But in all of this it is merely aping the behavior of the US government, which is becoming more authoritarian also, and which has always been a bully in its local neighborhood.

If Gates has anything legitimate to complain about it is that the American military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its preoccupation with drumming up conflict with Iran, have rendered the Pentagon almost impotent when it comes to threatening Russia.

All that is left for Gates to do is huff and puff about Russia backsliding to the bad old days when it was able to stand up to the US as an equal.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

This War Report Has Been Approved by Your Government

dlindorff — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:24:52 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any
independent American corporate news media these past few days as the
coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John
Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of
Georgia.

In the first case, we had the completely pointless if prurient
airing of Edwards’ sordid extra-marital affair. Pointless because
Edwards at this time is a has-been politician. If there were any point
to the coverage it should have been, as Alex Cockburn pointed out in
his journal Counterpunch,
the abject failure of those same reporters and “news” organizations to
cover the story back last fall, when it might have mattered. Back then,
when the only paper covering the story was the National Enquirer,
Edwards was still a viable candidate for the presidency, or a possible
contender for vice president again. It’s not that his personal sex-life
has any news value in and of itself. The point is that had he won the
nomination, or been picked as a vice presidential running mate, its
inevitable exposure later during the general election would have
destroyed any Democratic presidential chances. And the corporate media
knew back then all about this story. They just weren’t pursuing it (and
the current blitz of stories proves that they weren’t holding back out
of principle!).

Then there’s the Georgia war. I was stunned by the graphic
depictions of Russian brutality in Gori and other cities that were
massively bombed and shelled, with apartment buildings collapsed into
rubble, children killed, and civilians targeted. The New York Times, in
particular, had photographic images of dead Georgian soldiers, of
charred bodies, of hysterical mothers. On NBC News, Russian planes were
shown dropping their loads of bombs on apartments.

We read that President Bush condemned the Russian invasion of another nation and called for an immediate ceasefire. Yet there was not one word of astonishment or challenge from reporters or commentators or editorial writers at this stunningly cynical statement coming from a leader who himself is responsible for the blatantly illegal and much more destructive invasion of another nation. And remember, while Georgia is on Russia’s border, and was at least possibly guilty of oppressing and attacking and perhaps even killing members of the Russian minority in two of its provinces (Georgia bombed the biggest town in the secessionist province of Ossetia, killing perhaps 1000 civilians, before Russia invaded), Iraq is half a world away from America and was minding its own business, not threatening Americans in any way. Russia, thus far, has at most killed a few thousand Georgians. America has, by most accounts killed hundreds of thousands and perhaps as many as 1.2 million Iraqis, very few of them combatants.

We watch and read voluminous reports on this relatively small Russian war against its neighbor and former domestic province (Georgia was one of the SSRs in the old USSR), and meanwhile there is almost nothing being reported about the continuing five-year-old war launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. And certainly, over the course of five years we have gotten no visual depiction of that war even approaching the scenes that were on display from the front in Georgia.

Apparently, in the view of our corporate news editors and managers, it is important for Americans to fully witness the bloody horrors of war when that war is being fought by Russia, but we are to be carefully protected from seeing such things when they are being perpetrated by our own centurions. We aren’t even allowed to see the grievous injuries and death being suffered by our own troops.

And, of course, don't feel to good about the quality of the coverage of the Russian/Georgia conflict either. This too is biased. Indeed one reason we are shown all the carnage is that the US government has been backing Georgia, and there is evidence that the US even encouraged the Georgian attacks on ethnic Russians which provoked the invasion. The US also has obligingly airlifted Georgian troops back from Iraq to Georgia.

This is not news. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

American corporate news media broadcasts and articles should include
a disclaimer: “This report was approved by the media managers of the
Bush/Cheney administration.”
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Check Out Alan Grayson's new ad! (D-FL CD08)

ddeclue — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:59:04 -0400

Fellow Democrats:

Just in case you haven’t seen Alan’s new ad on TV yet, you can check it out on-line at the DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/25/155020/561/340/556978

I actually saw it for the first time on TV the other night and I thought it was really an eye-catching ad in which Alan talks about just how much money has gone missing in Iraq and how he has been working to recover tax dollars through his whistleblower lawsuits for waste fraud and abuse. I thought the ad had a lot of energy and avoided the usual political clichés that voters tune out.

Please be sure to leave a comment and please be sure to tell your friends.

Thanks,

Doug D.

Torture for the Torturers

dlindorff — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:04:19 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I don’t believe in torture, but right now, I’d like to see a few
people subjected to some of the torture techniques that they approved
for use against US captives in the so-called War on Terror.

I’d be satisfied if they just stuck to the ones used against
15-year-old Omar Khadr—techniques that a US federal judge established
constituted torture under the Geneva Conventions.

I have a 15-year old son, so I’m particularly aware of what an
atrocity it has been the way the US has treated Khadr, and some 2500
other young boys and teenagers that it admits to having captured and
labeled as “enemy combatants” in its so-called “war on terror.”

Khadr, recall, was sent at the age of 14 to Pakistan by his
allegedly terrorist-linked Canadian father to attend a madrassa—one of
those fundamentalist Muslim schools. Like a number of students of those
schools, he was indoctrinated in jihad and ended up fighting with the
Taliban in Afghanistan against the warlords that opposed them. When the
US attacked Afghanistan, in 2001, Khadr got caught up in a war against
America. According to the charge against him, he was arrested in 2002
after US Special Forces found him and some adult fighters hiding out in
a remote compound in the mountains. The Americans called in an air
strike, and then moved into the rubble to find out who was left—quite
probably, according to some testimony in the case—to finish them off.
Someone, still alive after the attack, tossed a grenade which killed
one of the Americans and blinded another. The others sprayed the
wounded fighters, gravely injuring Khadr and killing one of his older
companions.

Khadr was accused of being the grenade tosser, and was reportedly
tortured in Afghanistan, before being shipped off to Guantanamo, where
he remains six years later, facing a military tribunal. He was
interrogated there, not just by Americans, but by Canadians too.

A citizen of Canada, and clearly someone who was captured and held
in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which hold that children are
“protected persons,” not to be held as POWs if captured in wartime, but
rather to be treated as victims of war, Khadr has thus far been
abandoned to his fate by his own government. The Conservative prime
minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, anxious to have Canada serve as a
willing servant of US military power and foreign policy, has not lifted
a finger to help him.

Now a court in Canada has ordered the Canadian government to
release videotapes it was keeping secret of Khadr’s interrogations, and
they make for ugly viewing. Khadr is shown weeping, holding up his
wounded arms, pleading to be given treatment, pleading to be returned
to Canada. It’s a disgusting scene, especially when we learn that he
had already been “softened up” for his Canadian interrogators by
American torture specialists at Guantanamo who subjected this boy to
three weeks of sleep deprivation and god knows what other creative
techniques which we recently learned were copied from the methods
developed by the North Koreans and applied to American captives in the
Korean War.

It all makes you disgusted to be an American—especially with so
many Americans still justifying this kind of grotesque behavior.

But back to my desire to see some torture inflicted. My profound
wish is that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Department
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Canadian Prime Minister Harper all be subjected to no less than a month
of torture, to include water boarding, at least 2-3 weeks of sleep
deprivation, a variety of 24-stints of being forced into stress
positions (Rumsfeld’s should be standing), some violent slapping
around, and a bit of creative sexual humiliation. Since we don’t know
at this point that anal sodomizing was officially sanctioned, or just
was something that the torturers on the ground came up with that was
then ignored by superiors, I’m willing to let that one be left up to
those performing the torture, but I sure won’t object if it happens.

At this point, I can’t think of anything less than such a
punishment that would be fitting for these monsters who are currently
still running our, and Canada’s, governments.

When I think of what kind of twisted minds these people must have
in order to actually have met in the White House and approved such
methods for use against human beings—human beings who under our
Constitution are to be afforded the presumption of innocence, and who
are promised to be protected against “cruel and unusual” punishments
(or in Harper’s case to have known about it and then not protested,
even to protect a child born in his own country)—it makes me sick to my
stomach.

If there is a hell, I am sure there is in it some special circle
reserved for such monsters, but I think, having seen what was done at
their direction and with their approval to young Khadr (who after all,
if he really ever did toss that grenade, was only doing what any US
soldier would hope to have the courage to do in wartime if his unit
were attacked), that hell is too good for these leaders. They all need
and deserve the special punishment of having done to them what they
ordered or allowed to be done to others.

Sadly, my wish to see them suffer such a fate is unlikely to be
granted. One can at least hope, though, that they will have their names
etched somewhere for posterity on some memorial to the victims of war
crimes and to the eternal condemnation of the perpetrators of such
bestiality.
______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in Philadelphia.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now in paperback). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Paul Krugman and Blindness About the War and the Economy

dlindorff — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:36:00 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In a New York Times column on Monday (“Behind the Bush
Bust”), economics columnist Paul Krugman mused on whether President
George Bush could be blamed for the nation’s economic crisis. His
conclusion was that, yes, to some extent the crisis was Bush’s fault,
but he largely lets the current administration off the hook, instead
blaming Republican policies dating back 10-15 years.

Oddly, Krugman does say that a key cause of economic problems has
been rising energy prices, but he then attributes these to “growing
demand from China and other emerging economies,” and suggests that
prices might have been at least a bit lower had the US, after 9/11,
adopted “higher gas taxes and fuel efficiency standards,” a failing he
attributes to Bush.

The gaping hole in Krugman’s logic is the Iraq War, which the
columnist, incredibly, doesn’t even mention. Yet clearly, the invasion
and subsequent war and occupation of Iraq which was purely the result
of Bush/Cheney machinations, has been a major, if not the major cause
of oil price increases.

By destroying Iraq’s oil production, and by hindering much of
Iran’s production (Iran, seen as an enemy by the US, has been frozen
out of capital markets, blocking it from being able to modernize and
even maintain its own huge oil infrastructure), and putting even
Kuwait’s and Saudi Arabia’s production at risk, the US war in Iraq has
jeopardized about one-third of the world’s oil capacity—a fact not lost
on oil speculators. Every rumor of a longer occupation or a wider war
in the Middle East—especially a possible attack by the US on Iran--has
pushed up oil prices further, as has every attack on a pipeline.

It is no secret why crude oil, over the course of five years, has
soared four or five times in price. Demand has certainly not gone up by
that amount. It hasn’t even doubled. What has happened is that the
Middle East has been thoroughly destabilized by American military
action.

The rise in oil prices has been the major cause of the US dollar’s
stunning collapse, which in turn has limited the hand of the Federal
Reserve, which cannot risk lowering interest rates as much as it would
like to stimulate economic growth, for fear of further undermining the
dollar. This in turn has allowed the mortgage crisis to fester and grow
worse.

At the same time, the massive amount of industrial production that
has gone into the war effort—the building of planes, tanks, armored
cars, etc.—while perhaps producing some jobs, has been wholly
inflationary in its effect, since this is production that cannot add to
available goods and services in the civilian economy. That means that
there are more people with wages and salaries, chasing the same number
of things to buy—a sure-fire recipe for higher prices. Add to that the
huge war budget, all funded by debt, and you have even more downward
pressure on the dollar.

Bush’s and Cheney’s war in Iraq has been, it should be clear, a
huge catastrophe for the US economy, and yet somehow Prof. Krugman
managed to miss it completely. You could read his column and not even
know that the country is and has been, for the past seven years, at war.

I’m not sure what to make of this oversight on Krugman’s part. Is
he trying to downplay the war, figuring it’s soon to become a
Democratic venture? Is he unfamiliar with the argument that war is bad
for economies?

One thing is clear: You cannot look at a nation at war and analyze
its economy without considering the impact of the war, which is what
the usually astute Krugman has done here.

But let’s make the point crystal clear, even if Krugman doesn’t see
it or doesn’t want to see it: The slumping US economy, and the crashing
US dollar, which is heading towards Peso status as a trash currency,
are clearly the direct result of Bush/Cheney policies, aided and
abetted by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who have bought
the story line that war is good.

We will all be paying for this imperialist misadventure for years to come.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Keeping Count (When Ours Goes Down, Theirs Goes Up)

dlindorff — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:18:25 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Celeste Zappala, the Gold Star mother of an early casualty in
America's invasion of Iraq who lost her son when he was doing guard
duty during a fraudulent "search" for alleged WMDs in Iraq, was
speaking from the heart when she told a group of antiwar demonstrators
at Philadelphia's Independence Mall Saturday that she was grateful no
American troops had been killed during the past week in Iraq.

Her concern for the troops' well-being is understandable.

But left unsaid is that the lower US casualty figures in Iraq are
coming at the expense of much higher civilian casualties. This is even
more true in Afghanistan, where the war is heating up.

The reason for this ugly calculus is that in order to keep
politically damaging US casualties as low as possible, the US military
and the Bush/Cheney administration that gives the generals their
marching orders, are resorting increasingly to the use of air
power--bombs and rockets and remote controlled, missile-equipped
Predator drone aircraft--to attack suspected militant targets.

Case in point--the 22 people the BBC reports
were killed in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province yesterday in a
US missile strike on what turns out to have been a wedding procession.
According to reports from local Afghan police and other officials
quoted in the BBC story, 19 of the victims of this horrific attack were
women and children.

This slaughter--which US military authorities, following their
standard MO, are denying, claiming that those killed were "militants"--
follows an earlier one Friday in Afghanistan, in which a missile fired
from a US helicopter killed 15 people, all civilians.

It has reached a point that in Afghanistan, the US and its NATO
allies (though primarily the US, since most NATO forces are not in
front-line combat roles, and are not conducting most of the air
strikes) are killing far more Afghan civilians than are the Taliban and
their allies in the country.

The same thing is true in Iraq, where the on-the-ground combat role
of US forces is being scaled back, while the use of air power is being
ramped up.

The very idea of conducting an "occupation" via airpower is
fundamentally criminal in nature, since there is simply no way that
people operating at command centers and computer terminals--sometimes
in the case of Predator drones, terminals that are actually situated in
the US!--can make accurate determinations about who the target is, and,
equally importantly, how many innocent civilians may be in the
immediate vicinity of a strike.

We cannot celebrate the reduction in US casualties if they are
coming at the expense of innocent civilians (and I know that this was
not Ms. Zappala's intent, either).

The same strategy of killing from the air was adopted in the later
years of the Vietnam War. It wasn't as successful at reducing US
casualties, because in Vietnam, US forces were confronting a large,
well organized military force, and had to confront them on the ground,
but it was successful at killing innocent Vietnamese, as well as people
in Cambodia and Laos, who were dying at a more prodigious rate towards
the end of that conflict than in its earlier years, thanks to
indiscriminate US bombardment.

The same thing is happening now in America's current imperialist wars.

At the Independence Mall demonstration, organized by the venerable
Brandywine Peace Community, there was a somber memorial made to
America’s dead in Iraq: a black cloth on which was painted the number
4000 in large white numerals. Several blood-red long-stemmed roses were
laid upon the cloth. But there should have been a second black cloth
also strewn with roses, on which should have been painted the number
1.2 million—the estimated number of innocent Iraqis killed in America’s
invasion and occupation of their country. (I don’t mean to criticize
either Celeste or Brandywine here, and certainly the Iraqi and Afghani
deaths were mentioned by speakers at the event.)

We in the anti-war movement need to make certain that we do not
allow the issue to be narrowly focussed on protecting American troops.
We need to continually make the point that it is criminal for America's
military forces to be slaughtering innocent Iraqis and Afghanis.
___________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is
“The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available
in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Nobody's Hero: My War Story

dlindorff — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:32:53 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I’m certainly no hero, but since some readers of my last post have
reacted by attacking my courage and integrity on the grounds that I
“never served,” I want to at least set the record straight on my
youthful response to war.

In 1967, when I was a senior in high school in Storrs, CT., I faced
a momentous decision. In April, I would turn 18, and would have to
register for the draft. The Vietnam War was by then in full swing. A
year or two earlier, I’d been an avid fan of military aviation
magazines, and bought into the whole anti-Communist Cold War thing. But
by ’67, I had seen enough of the violence being done in Vietnam against
a desperately poor peasant population—the napalm attacks on civilians,
the burned babies, etc.—that I had done a 180-degree turn. I wanted
nothing to do with war and killing. So I made a decision: I would fill
out my registration at the draft board, and I’d get my draft card, but
I would not let myself be inducted into the military.

When I told my parents, who still supported the war, of my plan,
they were of course upset but supportive. My dad was an engineer and a
former Marine and my mother a Navy WAVE in WWII. My paternal
grandfather had earned a silver star in WWI and my maternal grandfather
had had his lungs permanently scarred by mustard gas in the same
conflict. A history teacher, Bernie Marlin, referred me to a junior
high teacher in the school who had been a conscientious objector during
the Korean War. I talked with him, a Mr. Storrs, at length, and was
very impressed with his story, but I soon realized that I didn’t really
think I was CO material. I did feel war could be justified
sometimes—for example if America were attacked. At any rate, in early
April of ’67, I went ahead and filled out my draft registration form.

That fall, I began college at Wesleyan University. By then, I had
been working as a foot soldier in the anti-war movement a bit, and had
already been to one anti-war demonstration and march in New York City.
At college registration, there was a table for registering for a
student deferment. I decided on the spur of the moment to pass that up.
It seemed unfair to me that friends of mine in high school, who were
not college bound, were going to get drafted, but I wouldn’t because I
was lucky enough to be going to college. So unlike Vice President and
Warmonger-in-Chief Dick Cheney, I just skipped it. I figured when my
time came and I got an induction notice, I would just refuse, and
they’d jail me.

In October, there was a huge demonstration and march in Washington
against the war—the famous “Mobe” about which Norman Mailer wrote in
“Armies of the Night.” I went down to DC with a few other students. We
ended up near the front of the march, and then up on the Mall of the
Pentagon. Through the night, federal marshals were arresting people up
there on the Mall. I made it through until morning, when I was finally
grabbed by the legs, yanked through a line of bayonet-armed soldiers,
beaten with clubs and carried off to a paddy wagon, which took me to a
federal minimum-security prison in Occoquan, VA. I spent a couple days
there in the company of a hundred or so other demonstrators in a prison
dormitory. It was an education like no other. Veteran anti-war and
civil rights activists ran workshops about the war and about a strategy
of resistance, and about how we could build a better world. I soaked it
all up avidly.

When I was released, with a small fine and a 10-day suspended
sentence for “trespassing” on the Pentagon, I hitchhiked back to
school, all fired up to challenge the war. The night before my arrest,
I had joined hundreds of other protesters in burning my draft card. I
had kept the ashes in my shirt pocket, and when I got home, I put them
in an envelope and mailed them to my draft board, with a note saying I
would never carry that card again (a federal crime). My draft board
responded by sending me a new I-A card. I tucked it in my wallet,
saving it for the next card-burning opportunity.

Over the next two years, during which time I participated actively
in student radical activism, building sit-ins, and draft-resistance
actions, such as informational picketing of inductees at the induction
center in New Haven, CT, I had occasion to burn my card and tear up my
card several times—including once at a communion at the Yale chapel,
where we turned our cards in to Rev. William Sloane Coffin. Each time,
I’d send the ashes or the pieces of card to my draft board, and each
time, they’d send me a new one. Along the way, the infamous draft
lottery was established. I was number 81—a certainty to be called up.

At one point, back in the summer of 1968, I filed a CO application,
but I made it clear that I was not religious, and that I was not
opposed to all wars. When I had my CO hearing at the draft board, the
board members were sitting at a table, with all my destroyed draft
cards set in a pile in front of them. I explained to the men sitting in
judgement on me that while I opposed the war in Vietnam, if I were
Vietnamese, I would surely be fighting for my country against the US.
That didn’t go over very well. My application was unanimously rejected.

My day came in the spring of 1969. At the time, I was in a full leg
cast, having broken both bones in my lower leg just above the ankle in
a ski accident. I notified the induction center that I was on crutches
and in a cast and suggested they postpone my pre-induction physical
until I was out of the cast and all better—a delay of about four months
according to my doctor. They said no. They wanted to see me to make
sure I was genuinely injured.

So on a cold late-winter day, I found myself on a bus riding from
the draft board in Rockville, CT to New Haven with a bunch of
frightened young men. I handed out informational packets to everyone,
telling them their rights, how to apply for CO status, etc., and talked
about what was wrong with the war.

When we arrived, I joined everyone in taking the so-called
intelligence test. Then we went for our physicals. I was pulled from
the line and told I needed to go to see a consulting physician at
Yale-New Haven Hospital. Since the address was a mile or so away, and
the sidewalks were icy, I said I’d need cab fare. I was told by the
head of the medical unit that the government didn’t pay for
transportation. He informed me there was a bus that stopped outside
that would take me there.

I replied that I was on crutches, and that I hadn’t asked to be sent
to a consultation—in fact I had asked for a postponement until my leg
was healed—and said that if they wanted to send me anywhere they could
fucking well pay for the transportation. That didn’t make the guy very
happy. He had a screaming fit, and called the head of the center, who
came down. “What’s the problem?” he asked. I explained the situation,
and said that if they wanted me to go all the way to a hospital because
they didn’t trust that my leg was truly broken, they could pay my
fucking cab fare. The guy got angry, called me a “little prick,” but
then took out his wallet and threw some bills at me. I picked the money
up off the floor and went down to the street. Seeing no cab, I went
over to the bus stop. I looked up and saw the Induction Center
commander looking out of a window, so as the bus pulled up, I flipped
him a one-finger salute and got on.

At the hospital, I discovered that the office of the doctor in
question was closed for the day. Angry that I’d wasted all this time
for nothing, I got back on the bus and returned to the Induction
Center. This time, I went directly to the office of the head of the
center, and tossed an envelope of X-Rays from my doctor on his desk.
“It’s no wonder you’re losing the fucking war!” I said. “You guys can’t
even arrange a doctor’s appointment. The office was closed.” I told him
that he could check my X-Rays, and added, “But I’ve come down here once
already, and it’s the last time I’m coming. If you want me back, you
can send the FBI to bring me.” I hung around until the end of the day
and rode home on the bus to my draft board.

When I got there, I went into the office, where the office
secretary, an older woman with a neat grey perm, was still at her desk.
“Excuse me,” I said. “But I’m really pissed off.” She started at my
coarse language. I recounted my experience and she said, “Well, I think
they owe you an apology.” To my astonishment, she picked up the phone,
called the Induction Center, and asked to speak to the head of the
operation—the guy who’d thrown the money at me. “I have a young man
here who is very angry,” she said into the phone. “And I think you owe
him an apology.”

She handed me the phone.

“All right, you little prick,” he said, sounding like he was gritting his teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“You fuckin’ oughta be,” I said, again shocking the secretary.

I put down the phone, thanked the secretary and left.

A month later, to my astonishment, instead of FBI agents at my door,
I got a letter from my draft board. It was a card declaring me to be
IV-F—“unfit for military service.”

Clearly, there was no medical justification for my rejection. My leg
bones healed up just fine a few months later, and I spent part of the
next year loading heavy boxes in a warehouse and driving semi-trailer
trucks. I suspect that, it being 1969, and the army in Nam being by
then in a state of near insurrection, the Army had concluded it didn’t
want people like me anymore. Perhaps a year earlier, before Tet, I
might instead have been sent into the infantry.

I tell this story because while it may not be heroic, and while
other war resisters paid heavily for their stands, I nonetheless think
it contrasts well with the likes of a Dick Cheney, who hid through the
war years behind student deferments and his wife’s skirt, or of a
George Bush, who joined the Air National Guard and made care to check a
box saying he would be “unavailable for overseas duty”—something the
poor guys in the Guard now doing multiple tours in the Iraqi desert on
Bush's orders didn’t have the option of doing.

I don’t apologize for my opposition to the Vietnam War. And while
being prepared to go to jail for a principle may not rank on the
courage meter anywhere near to standing one’s ground under fire during
an enemy assault, or jumping on top of a live grenade, I’m proud that I
did my best to oppose it, and that I never once tried to duck
responsibility for my own actions. Furthermore, I’ll stand my actions
up against any of those in the Bush administration or in Congress who
are so quick to support wars, but who hid behind student deferments or
used powerful connections to avoid military service or combat duty
themselves when it was their turn to “serve.”
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34504';
digg_title = "Nobody\'s Hero: My War Story";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\nI’m certainly no hero, but since some readers of my last post have reacted by attacking my courage and integrity on the grounds that I “never served,” I want to at least set the record straight on my youthful response to war.\r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Bush/Cheney and special contracts with Big Oil in Iraq - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

seandiego — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:23 -0400

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE TODAY (7/2/08). THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST UNITE TO SHOW THE WORLD WE DID NOT SUPPORT OR APPROVE OF THE INJUSTICES OF THIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE CRIMES IT COMMITTED AGAINST IRAQ, THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD. TO REGAIN OUR STATURE IN THE WORLD, WE MUST CHARGE BUSH AND CHENEY WITH WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES IT FOR US. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS TODAY!

Opening Iraq's oil fields to Big Oil

By Bob Herbert
THE NEW YORK TIMES

July 2, 2008

It's getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. It was the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

We also learned this week that a group of American advisers, led by a team from the State Department, played a key role in drawing up the contracts between the companies and the Iraqi government. Chevron and several smaller oil companies also got contracts.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both former oil company executives, have long tried to tell us this war was about terrorism, about weapons of mass destruction, about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, about anything but oil.

Said Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He didn't wait. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States. Or that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The troops were sent into battle in early 2003 and there is still, after more than five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, no end to the war in sight.

One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, U.S. troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target – the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The New York Times Magazine in November 2003:

“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry – not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry – probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its unusual no-bid contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq's vast oil reserves. As the Times reported Monday, “At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world's largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry.”

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the United States, where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans – in July! – are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

And then there's the so-called war on terror.

The latest news is that al-Qaeda, the terror network that actually did attack the United States, has successfully regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has reconstituted its ability to institute terror attacks from the region.

For an administration joined at the hip to the oil industry, the lure of Iraq's enormous reserves was stronger even than the impulse to conquer an enemy that murdered more than 2,700 civilians on Sept. 11, a toll greater than the number of Americans killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Referring to al-Qaeda members who regrouped in Pakistan, the Times reported on Monday:

“Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.”

Who knows how long it will be before the United States disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.

How long will it take before that finally sinks in?

Does James Baker Control Bush's Iraq Policies?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:10:22 -0400

Is James Baker the real White House puppetmaster?

Did he write the plan to invade Iraq in April 2001, five months before 9/11?

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Is Baker writing the contracts that ExxonMobil and other oil giants are trying to impose on Iraq?

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

Those widely-reported contracts were rejected by Iraq because they were too greedy, but you have to read AfterDowningStreet.org to learn that.

"We did not finalise any agreement with them because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees as they wanted a share of the oil," [Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani] said.

Is Baker writing the ~~occupation diktat~~ "security agreement" too? That was also too greedy, so U.S. negotiators are scaling it back by removing immunity for contractors and control over Iraqi airspace.

Iraq’s foreign minister said Tuesday that the United States had agreed to lift immunity for foreign security contractors operating in Iraq, making them subject to prosecution under Iraqi law, according to Iraqi politicians.

Is Baker engineering an even more disastrous war with Iran?

In all of these crucial stories about Iraq, the "deciders" are never identified. We know Dick Cheney is the "decider" within the government, but is he really just taking orders from James Baker in his role as consiglieri to the Bush Organized Crime Family?

What's So Special About Veterans?

dlindorff — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:37:25 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The teacup tempest over retired Gen. Wesley Clark’s self-evident
remark about John McCain—to whit that flying a fighter aircraft and
getting shot down and captured is not particularly relevant to the
skill set needed to be a president—raises a larger question: Why do
veterans, and particularly the veterans of the criminal and pointless
war in Iraq, or the earlier criminal and pointless one in Vietnam,
automatically get “hero” status, and why are they seen as naturals to
run for higher national office?

I’m sure there are plenty of heroes in the military—people who put
their lives on the line, and even give their lives, for their comrades,
people who give up safe jobs and leave their families for what they see
as a patriotic duty. But let’s face it: the whole recruiting project is
about convincing young men and women that joining the military is in
their self-interest—a way to get ahead, a way to see the world, a way
to get financial aid for college, a way to have some excitement, a way
to get a fat signing bonus so you can buy that new car you’ve been
coveting. And people who sign up for these self-interested reasons are
no more heroic than people who go to work for Merrill Lynch or Wal-Mart.

Furthermore, while there are dangerous posts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the nature of the military is that the vast majority of
people who wear a uniform just work in offices or motor pools, and face
dangers no greater than workers who do the same thing in civilian life
at home. In fact, in the case of more hazardous work, like heavy
equipment repair or flying cargo planes, it’s probably safe to say that
after years of speedups and of gutting worker safety rules and
inspections, it may be safer working for the Pentagon than working for
a civilian employer.

Beyond that, there are people who are easily as heroic as many of our
uniformed citizens who don’t get any credit for their courage and
dedication to humanity and to their country. How about young doctors
who eschew lucrative careers in plastic surgery to work as GPs in
low-income communities or on Indian reservations? How about Peace Corps
or Vista volunteers who go to dangerous places at home and abroad to
help people improve their lives? The Pennsylvania soldier who died
throwing himself on top of a live grenade to save his buddies is a true
hero. But so is the 23-year-old math teacher slain in Philadelphia last
month who left safe, suburban Minnesota to take a low-wage post
teaching underserved kids in this notorious murder capital. Even in
uniform there are heroes who don’t get credit for their courage. How
about people like Lt. Ehren Watada or Sgt. Camilo Mejia, or other members of the military who risked jail, or even did hard time rather than fight, or continue to fight in an illegal war?

There are heroes in our schools, heroes on the job, heroes who work
in jobs like police officer or firefighter, heroes trying to raise
families in adversity, even heroes in politics (though these are few
and far between!). Most of them aren’t ever recognized by society for
what they do. Not everyone who serves in the military is a hero, and plenty of people who don’t, or won’t, wear a uniform are genuine heroes.

Furthermore, as Gen. Clark noted, wearing a uniform, and going to
war, or even earning a medal, do not make a person better suited for
government or politics. But I’d go him one further. Even having been a
high-ranking officer, and having had significant administrative or
policy-making experience in the military does not make a person any
better suited for an executive or a legislative position in government.
In fact, arguably, it makes a person less well suited for government in
a democratic society. The military is not a place that values open
expression of opinions. It is a top-down organization in which
obedience to “superiors” is valued more highly than initiative and
self-direction. The military isn’t even as democratic as the old
Bolshevik Party. At least in theory, Lenin’s Bolshevik model was
supposed to encourage democratic discussion until a decision was
reached by the leadership, after which there would be discipline and
unquestioned obedience. In the military, the democratic discussion part
is eliminated from the model. What that has to do with democratic
governance I don’t know.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a endless sympathy for the hundreds of
thousands of military personnel, active duty, reservist and National
Guard members, who got dragged off under false pretenses to have to
serve in an illegal war of aggression, even to get seriously wounded or
to die there, and I’m a strong supporter of generous veterans’ benefits
for all of them and for their long-suffering families.

But let’s not cheapen the term “hero” by assigning it to all of
them—especially while ignoring the heroism of those who have refused to
fight, or of those who engage in heroic efforts to better the lives of
their fellow human beings instead of just helping to kill them.

And let’s stop pretending that having worn a uniform somehow
automatically makes someone a better person, and a more competent
leader, than someone who never wore one.

The returned soldiers I’ve known from Vietnam, and the soldiers I’ve
spoken to who have served in Iraq, have for the most part been the
first to say that they don’t feel like heroes. It is, in fact, the
charlatans and political cowards in government who are busy promoting
endless war who are tossing that label around with such abandon. They
are in both parties, and we should recognize their abuse of the term,
“hero” and their fake stances of “respect” and “support” for the
troops, for what it is: cheap political posturing, designed to
intimidate critics of a criminal war.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006,
and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net