Sign to FREE SPC BRADLEY MANNING NOW!
Free SPC Bradley Manning, Arrested for Exposing U.S. War Crimes in Iraq & Afghanistan
End the Occupations Now
Stop the Murder and Abuse of Civilians by U.S. and NATO Military
Sign the Petition Now:
http://www.iacenter.org/iraq/freebradleymanning
A 22 year old U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning, has been arrested on suspicion of leaking classified combat video footage and secret documents to a whistle-blower website. SPC Manning, from Potomac, Maryland, is assigned to the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division and was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, located east of Baghdad. SPC Manning was arrested in Iraq and is currently being held in Kuwait pending further investigations. The WikiLeaks website posted a video which shows U.S. occupation forces shooting civilians on a Baghdad street during 2007.
The video, which was filmed by the U.S. military, shows a horrendous massacre of unarmed civilians on the ground by a helicopter gunship, accompanied by crude and insensitive remarks by the crew and ground troops associated with the assault. A Reuters reporter and two children were also wounded in the assault. The Pentagon has not questioned the validity or authenticity of the video.
Two U.S. soldiers who were part of the ground unit which took part in the attack, Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, have written and published a letter of apology to the Iraqi people for their actions.
But those who are really responsible for this war crime, the U.S. military, far from apologizing have chosen to track down and arrest the person whom they believe released the video, Bradley Manning.
If Bradley Manning did courageously leak the video, he is to be commended for exposing a war crime, not punished. According to international law, and even the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), combatants are required to report violations of rules of combat outlined in the Geneva Conventions first laid down in 1950. And those rules of combat explicitly list the intentional shooting of unarmed civilians as a war crime.
At the Nuremberg trials in 1946, Nazi war criminals were tried and punished, not only for their own despicable acts, but for remaining silent while others committed atrocities. The operable phrase was "silence equals consent".
Many of the mainstream press and other apologists for U.S. and NATO wars and occupations have attacked Bradley Manning as a threat to national security because the video was classified. It has long been known that the U.S. government routinely classifies not only information directly associated with weapons and tactics, but anything that might make them look bad, or call into question their attempts to justify unjust wars and occupations.
There have also been reports that other classified documents and videos may have been released by Manning. The existence of such material shows that this case goes beyond a single war crime incident. It points to a broad program of criminal planning and conspiracy to commit or to cover up war crimes by the U.S. Military.
Progressive and peace-loving people everywhere must rally to defend Bradley Manning, and condemn the war crimes which he is accused of revealing.
Sign the Petition Now: http://www.iacenter.org/iraq/freebradleymanning
Petition Text:
To: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Dana K. Chipman, Congressional leaders, U.N. Secretary General Ban, members of the U.N. Security Council, U.N. member states
cc: Major media representatives, International Red Cross
Free Bradley Manning!!
End the Wars and Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!
Bring the Troops Home Now!
Bring to Justice the U.S. Perpetrators of War Crimes, including the Pentagon
I am writing to demand that Bradley Manning, a courageous soldier deployed in Iraq, be immediately be released from custody, and that any and all charges against him be immediately dropped and that any administrative or military sanctions against him be suspended.
Bradley Manning is suspected of being responsible for the leak of a classified video filmed by the U.S. military, which shows in graphic detail the massacre of civilians by a U.S. helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007.
Far from being punished, Bradley Manning should be commended. In fact, the Geneva Conventions of 1950, the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1946, and even the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, not only permit, but require that violations of international law and the rules of engagement be reported. Silence equals consent!
U.S. and NATO troops who are sent to fight and occupy other countries are placed in an impossible situation. They are forced to fight and die in unjustified wars and inevitably many come to regard the entire population as their enemy.
I therefore further demand that the United States stop its aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home immediately.
I also demand that a commission independent of the U.S. government or its allies be established to thoroughly and publicly investigate the events portrayed by the video allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning.
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Anti-war protesters arrested outside West Point
AP, WCAX.com, Dec. 1, 2009
WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) - Six anti-war protesters were arrested outside the U.S. Military Academy during President Barack Obama speech outlining his planned troop buildup in Afghanistan.
Highland Falls Police Chief Peter Miller said Tuesday the protesters were charged with disorderly conduct for blocking the roadway.
More than 200 protesters had marched a half mile to a rally at the military academy's gates before Obama's speech Tuesday night. They carried candles and protest signs saying "The audacity of torture," "Get out now," and "How many lives per gallon?"
The group included people of all ages, from young children to seniors hobbling with canes, as well as war veterans and family members with loved ones fighting overseas. Many said they had voted for Obama and were disappointed with his decision to add 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.
WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) - Six anti-war protesters were arrested outside the U.S. Military Academy during President Barack Obama speech outlining his planned troop buildup in Afghanistan.
Highland Falls Police Chief Peter Miller said Tuesday the protesters were charged with disorderly conduct for blocking the roadway.
More than 200 protesters had marched a half mile to a rally at the military academy's gates before Obama's speech Tuesday night. They carried candles and protest signs saying "The audacity of torture," "Get out now," and "How many lives per gallon?"
The group included people of all ages, from young children to seniors hobbling with canes, as well as war veterans and family members with loved ones fighting overseas. Many said they had voted for Obama and were disappointed with his decision to add 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Protest Escalation of War On Mon. & Wed. in Charlotte
From CODEPINK Charlotte:
Hi Codepinkers and others. We will have a Monday action at the Square at 12 noon (Trade St & Tryon St, Charlotte, NC).
Rather than wait to react, we will pass out the White House phone number and ask people to ACT!
Our message will be: WAGE PEACE, with hand outs of the White House comment line, with why surging troops in Afghanistan is the not the way to go, and what we suggest as an alternative. Some suggestions are: MORE WAR=MORE SUFFERING FOR AFGHAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN, DOLLARS, LIVES & HUMAN NEEDS DOWN THE DRAIN! WE NEED AN EXIT STRATEGY NOT AN ESCALATION. GROUND THE DRONES, STOP THE SURGE-START RESPONSIBLE WITHDRAWAL
Then on Wed at 6pm at The Square:
We will wear black, and head coverings, and possibly death masks (whatever they are) and holding "babies" (or candles?) at an event to protest any decision to escalate the troops and violence. That will be at 6pm Wednesday at the square.
Please bring you own messages if you like. We want this to be big!
Peace,
Elaine
CODEPINK Charlotte
codepinkcharlotte@gmail.com
Hi Codepinkers and others. We will have a Monday action at the Square at 12 noon (Trade St & Tryon St, Charlotte, NC).
Rather than wait to react, we will pass out the White House phone number and ask people to ACT!
Our message will be: WAGE PEACE, with hand outs of the White House comment line, with why surging troops in Afghanistan is the not the way to go, and what we suggest as an alternative. Some suggestions are: MORE WAR=MORE SUFFERING FOR AFGHAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN, DOLLARS, LIVES & HUMAN NEEDS DOWN THE DRAIN! WE NEED AN EXIT STRATEGY NOT AN ESCALATION. GROUND THE DRONES, STOP THE SURGE-START RESPONSIBLE WITHDRAWAL
Then on Wed at 6pm at The Square:
We will wear black, and head coverings, and possibly death masks (whatever they are) and holding "babies" (or candles?) at an event to protest any decision to escalate the troops and violence. That will be at 6pm Wednesday at the square.
Please bring you own messages if you like. We want this to be big!
Peace,
Elaine
CODEPINK Charlotte
codepinkcharlotte@gmail.com
Oct. 14: Rethinking Afghanistan film screening
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
7:30pm - 9:30pm
UNCC, After Hours (UNCC map)
9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
As we approach the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the concept of "victory" remains more undefined and less tangible than ever. After a particularly violent summer, U.S. public support of "the Good War" is at an all-time low. Obama himself, surrounded as he is by Bush-era military brass, seems to be growing more ambivalent. Yet the dilemma, as articulated by his administration, is merely a matter of troop levels. We need to begin strongly speaking out against the absurd occupation of a country that has never been subdued militarily in the history of civilization.
Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Rethink Afghanistan" is a fresh, frontlines chronicle of this quagmire. It seeks out those perspectives which U.S. generals have consistently failed to take into account: those of the Afghani people, as well as voices of dissent from former troops and members of the CIA. What is really at stake here? Are the Afghani people truly any safer because of our bombardments and our proxy government in Kabul? Are we?
We'll be screening the film at around 7:30. Stick around for a lively discussion afterwards with members of Charlotte ISO and SDS about Afghanistan, Pakistan and U.S. imperialism.
7:30pm - 9:30pm
UNCC, After Hours (UNCC map)
9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
As we approach the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the concept of "victory" remains more undefined and less tangible than ever. After a particularly violent summer, U.S. public support of "the Good War" is at an all-time low. Obama himself, surrounded as he is by Bush-era military brass, seems to be growing more ambivalent. Yet the dilemma, as articulated by his administration, is merely a matter of troop levels. We need to begin strongly speaking out against the absurd occupation of a country that has never been subdued militarily in the history of civilization.
Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Rethink Afghanistan" is a fresh, frontlines chronicle of this quagmire. It seeks out those perspectives which U.S. generals have consistently failed to take into account: those of the Afghani people, as well as voices of dissent from former troops and members of the CIA. What is really at stake here? Are the Afghani people truly any safer because of our bombardments and our proxy government in Kabul? Are we?
We'll be screening the film at around 7:30. Stick around for a lively discussion afterwards with members of Charlotte ISO and SDS about Afghanistan, Pakistan and U.S. imperialism.
14 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan Over Past Week
Eight U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan Firefight (Update2)
By Alan Katz and Jay Shankar, Bloomberg.com, Oct. 4, 2009
Eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan troops died after militants in eastern Nuristan province attacked two outposts yesterday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement today.
The deaths were the worst U.S. fatalities in a single engagement since July 2008, the Associated Press said.
Six other U.S. soldiers were killed in four separate incidents on Oct. 2 and Oct. 3, said Lieutenant Junior Grade Tommy Groves of the ISAF public affairs office in Kabul.
The total number of U.S. soldiers killed in and around Afghanistan as of 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Oct. 2 was 774, according a Defense Department Web site.
President Barack Obama on Sept. 30 met with top national- security and military advisers in the second of five meetings planned to decide on whether to bolster troop levels in Afghanistan by as many as 40,000 soldiers. He also met with Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, aboard Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen on Oct. 2.
The discussions over strategy come as public support in the U.S. for the war has slipped. Fifty-one percent of adults said the war in Afghanistan wasn’t worth fighting and 46 percent said it was, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted Sept. 10 to Sept. 12. That findings reverse a March poll in which 56 percent said the war was worth fighting and 41 percent said it wasn’t.
Dawn Attack
Fighting in Nuristan began around dawn on Oct. 3 and lasted several hours, AP reported, citing Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province. Almost 300 insurgent fighters flooded the first outpost, manned by Afghan troops, then swept around it to reach the U.S. station on higher ground from both directions, the news service added, citing Mohammad Qasim Jangulbagh, the provincial police chief.
Militants came from a nearby mosque and village, ISAF said in the statement. Groves, who declined to name the village, said that the fighting lasted most of the day.
“My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow soldiers who remained to finish this fight,” Colonel Randy George, commander of Task Force Mountain Warrior, said in the statement.
The U.S. and its allies are trying to push back the Taliban insurgency that is threatening the stability of Afghanistan and the fight against international terrorism.
The military situation in Afghanistan is “in some ways deteriorating,” and requires quick action from the U.S. and NATO to combat insurgents, McChrystal said in an Oct. 1 speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net
By Alan Katz and Jay Shankar, Bloomberg.com, Oct. 4, 2009
Eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan troops died after militants in eastern Nuristan province attacked two outposts yesterday, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement today.
The deaths were the worst U.S. fatalities in a single engagement since July 2008, the Associated Press said.
Six other U.S. soldiers were killed in four separate incidents on Oct. 2 and Oct. 3, said Lieutenant Junior Grade Tommy Groves of the ISAF public affairs office in Kabul.
The total number of U.S. soldiers killed in and around Afghanistan as of 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Oct. 2 was 774, according a Defense Department Web site.
President Barack Obama on Sept. 30 met with top national- security and military advisers in the second of five meetings planned to decide on whether to bolster troop levels in Afghanistan by as many as 40,000 soldiers. He also met with Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, aboard Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen on Oct. 2.
The discussions over strategy come as public support in the U.S. for the war has slipped. Fifty-one percent of adults said the war in Afghanistan wasn’t worth fighting and 46 percent said it was, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted Sept. 10 to Sept. 12. That findings reverse a March poll in which 56 percent said the war was worth fighting and 41 percent said it wasn’t.
Dawn Attack
Fighting in Nuristan began around dawn on Oct. 3 and lasted several hours, AP reported, citing Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province. Almost 300 insurgent fighters flooded the first outpost, manned by Afghan troops, then swept around it to reach the U.S. station on higher ground from both directions, the news service added, citing Mohammad Qasim Jangulbagh, the provincial police chief.
Militants came from a nearby mosque and village, ISAF said in the statement. Groves, who declined to name the village, said that the fighting lasted most of the day.
“My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow soldiers who remained to finish this fight,” Colonel Randy George, commander of Task Force Mountain Warrior, said in the statement.
The U.S. and its allies are trying to push back the Taliban insurgency that is threatening the stability of Afghanistan and the fight against international terrorism.
The military situation in Afghanistan is “in some ways deteriorating,” and requires quick action from the U.S. and NATO to combat insurgents, McChrystal said in an Oct. 1 speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net
FREE DR. AAFIA SIDDIQUI, RELEASE THE SECRET U.S. DOCUMENTS ON HER TORTURE
International Action Center, Press Release, Sept. 5, 2009
Sara Flounders, the Co-Director of the International Action Center released the following statement to the media on Friday, September 5, 2009, following the September 3 court appearance of Dr Aafia Siddiqui in U.S. District Court in New York City.
Now that the documents recording the systematic torture of thousands of prisoners in secret U.S. prisons has been released to the world media in U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s report, the secret documents on the imprisonment and torture of Dr Aafia Siddiqui must also be released to the courts and to the world.
Days before Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a small woman weighing less than 90 pounds, was again forcibly brought into United States District Court on wild and contradictory charges of trying to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan, the latest documentary evidence of what the FBI and CIA is really doing in Afghanistan and in secret prisons around the world was confirmed in major news stories for all to read.
Tens of thousands of pages of newly de-classified government documents released by U.S. Attorney Holder confirm in the most graphic details that CIA interrogators threatened to kill the children of detainees, threatened sexual assaults on another’s mother, threatened bound prisoners with guns and an electric drill. Used water boarding against one prisoner 183 times, used chocking into unconsciousness, brutal strip searches and mock executions, confinement in a tiny box, continued slamming of the head.
The release of these documents and U.S. Attorney General Holder’s appointment of a special federal prosecutor to investigate interrogation practices of the CIA was announced on August 28, 2009. Monday's documents represent the largest release of information about the Bush Administration's once-secret system of capturing terrorism suspects and interrogating them in undisclosed locations around the world.
An ACLU law suit compelled the release of the CIA’s own 2004 Inspector General’s internal report on stomach turning interrogations. These released documents of "enhanced interrogation" tactics were heavily ‘redacted’ or censored with whole pages blocked out for “security reasons”.
This 2004 Inspector General’s report shows that the CIA kept detailed observational records on thousands of prisoners and the impact of their torture techniques on the human psyche. They made systematic measurements of the prisoners’ reaction to torture. From the censured documents it is clear that medical doctors and psychologists betrayed their profession by monitoring calibrated, incremental increases of torture to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation and shame. The documents make it clear that all tortures were designed to create a systematic emotional and psychological breakdown in the prisoners being interrogated.
At a court appearance on September 3, 2009 the date for the start of Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial was set for Monday, November 2. The court room was full of Pakistani and other Muslim supporters. Supporters of the Pakistan USA Freedom Forum and other organizations have mobilized on days when Dr Siddiqui is brought into court. But this is a case that must be taken up in full solidarity by the entire progressive movement in the U.S., including the women’s movement, the movement for immigrant rights and the broad movement against U.S. racism and war.
The demand for Aafia Siddiqui’s freedom and return to her family in Pakistan must be combined with the demand to release all the secret documents on Dr Siddiqui’s long imprisonment. The 130,000 pages of documents released by U.S. Attorney General Holder last week confirms that the most detailed records were kept with, Nazi-like meticulousness, on the wrenching torture and abuse of countless prisoners held in U.S. secret prisons.
The case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui exposes the whole sordid torturous role of U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and widening war in Pakistan. Support for freedom and return to her family in Pakistan is a basic demand for human rights and justice for a woman who has been horrendously abused.
A rally to support Dr Siddiqui is planned for the opening day of her trial, Monday, November 2 in front of U.S. District Court, 500 Pearl Street.
For more info:
International Action Center
55 West 17th St, Suite 5C
New York, NY 10011
www.iacenter.org 212-633-6646
Founded by Ramsey Clark
Sara Flounders, the Co-Director of the International Action Center released the following statement to the media on Friday, September 5, 2009, following the September 3 court appearance of Dr Aafia Siddiqui in U.S. District Court in New York City.
Now that the documents recording the systematic torture of thousands of prisoners in secret U.S. prisons has been released to the world media in U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s report, the secret documents on the imprisonment and torture of Dr Aafia Siddiqui must also be released to the courts and to the world.
Days before Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a small woman weighing less than 90 pounds, was again forcibly brought into United States District Court on wild and contradictory charges of trying to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan, the latest documentary evidence of what the FBI and CIA is really doing in Afghanistan and in secret prisons around the world was confirmed in major news stories for all to read.
Tens of thousands of pages of newly de-classified government documents released by U.S. Attorney Holder confirm in the most graphic details that CIA interrogators threatened to kill the children of detainees, threatened sexual assaults on another’s mother, threatened bound prisoners with guns and an electric drill. Used water boarding against one prisoner 183 times, used chocking into unconsciousness, brutal strip searches and mock executions, confinement in a tiny box, continued slamming of the head.
The release of these documents and U.S. Attorney General Holder’s appointment of a special federal prosecutor to investigate interrogation practices of the CIA was announced on August 28, 2009. Monday's documents represent the largest release of information about the Bush Administration's once-secret system of capturing terrorism suspects and interrogating them in undisclosed locations around the world.
An ACLU law suit compelled the release of the CIA’s own 2004 Inspector General’s internal report on stomach turning interrogations. These released documents of "enhanced interrogation" tactics were heavily ‘redacted’ or censored with whole pages blocked out for “security reasons”.
This 2004 Inspector General’s report shows that the CIA kept detailed observational records on thousands of prisoners and the impact of their torture techniques on the human psyche. They made systematic measurements of the prisoners’ reaction to torture. From the censured documents it is clear that medical doctors and psychologists betrayed their profession by monitoring calibrated, incremental increases of torture to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation and shame. The documents make it clear that all tortures were designed to create a systematic emotional and psychological breakdown in the prisoners being interrogated.
At a court appearance on September 3, 2009 the date for the start of Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial was set for Monday, November 2. The court room was full of Pakistani and other Muslim supporters. Supporters of the Pakistan USA Freedom Forum and other organizations have mobilized on days when Dr Siddiqui is brought into court. But this is a case that must be taken up in full solidarity by the entire progressive movement in the U.S., including the women’s movement, the movement for immigrant rights and the broad movement against U.S. racism and war.
The demand for Aafia Siddiqui’s freedom and return to her family in Pakistan must be combined with the demand to release all the secret documents on Dr Siddiqui’s long imprisonment. The 130,000 pages of documents released by U.S. Attorney General Holder last week confirms that the most detailed records were kept with, Nazi-like meticulousness, on the wrenching torture and abuse of countless prisoners held in U.S. secret prisons.
The case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui exposes the whole sordid torturous role of U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and widening war in Pakistan. Support for freedom and return to her family in Pakistan is a basic demand for human rights and justice for a woman who has been horrendously abused.
A rally to support Dr Siddiqui is planned for the opening day of her trial, Monday, November 2 in front of U.S. District Court, 500 Pearl Street.
For more info:
International Action Center
55 West 17th St, Suite 5C
New York, NY 10011
www.iacenter.org 212-633-6646
Founded by Ramsey Clark
U.S. troops stormed Afghan hospital, aid group says
CNN, Sept. 7, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. soldiers searched a hospital in central Afghanistan for Taliban fighters, tying up hospital guards and entering women's wards in violation of local customs, an aid worker said Monday.
The soldiers raided the hospital Wednesday night in Wardak province, said Anders Fange, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan.
The troops, from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, said they were looking for suspected Taliban fighters in the hospital, he said.
They tied up four hospital guards and searched patients' relatives, broke into the nutrition ward and ultrasound room, and searched the female ward of the hospital, according to the aid worker. He said the actions were disrespectful of Afghan culture.
He called the incident "simply not acceptable."
"It is not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict, but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement between NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and ISAF," he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
In a statement, the ISAF said it met Monday with staff at the medical clinic "to discuss the force's relationship with the clinic."
"Afghan National Police and International Security Assistance Forces entered the clinic on September 2, acting on a report that an insurgent commander was being treated on the premises," the statement said.
Assisted by ISAF troops, Afghan police searched the clinic to determine if the insurgent leader, who was suspected of being responsible for an earlier attack on a convoy in the area, was present, according to the statement. The ISAF said it informed the clinic staff of its reasons for entering the hospital.
Earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, an ISAF spokeswoman, said the matter was under investigation. Any operation in the area would have been Afghan-led, supported by ISAF forces, she added. The U.S. Army does operate in the area.
The Swedish aid group reported the matter to Afghanistan's public health minister, who in turn was to take up the matter with the U.S. ambassador, Fange said.
The U.S. Embassy said it had heard of the allegations and was checking to see if the Ministry of Public Health had lodged a complaint or discussed the matter with American officials.
Fange said he is trying to arrange a meeting with a senior U.S. commander in Wardak province.
The Afghan Ministry of Public Health subcontracts aid groups in Afghanistan to provide what's called "Basic Package Health Services."
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is responsible for Wardak province. The staff at the hospital work directly for the committee.
CNN's Ingrid Formanek and Wahid Mayar contributed to this report.
*************
International military violently entered SCA Hospital in Wardak
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, PRESS RELEASE, Kabul, September 6, 2009
On Wednesday evening September 2 at 10 pm coalition vehicles drove up at SCA’s Hospital in Shaniz, Wardak province along the main highway from Kabul to Ghazni. They entered the hospital compound, reportedly without giving any reason or justification for entering the hospital compound. They searched all rooms, even bathrooms, male and female wards. Rooms that were locked were forcefully entered and the doors of the malnutrition ward and the ultrasound ward were broken by force to gain entry. Upon entering the hospital they tied up four employees and two family members of patients at the hospital. SCA staffs as well as patients (even those in beds) were forced out of rooms/wards throughout the search.
On leaving the hospital at around 12 pm, IMF issued verbal "orders"/instructions; that on receiving any patient that could be an insurgent the hospital staff has to report to the Coalition Forces who would then determine if the hospital would be permitted or not of treating such patient.
“This is simply not acceptable. It is not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement between NGOs and ISAF. We demand guarantees from the IMF command that such violations will not be repeated and that this is made clear to commanders in the field. SCA can not and will not tolerate this kind of treatment by the IMF. Nor is the SCA bound by any orders from IMF regarding to whom treatment can be given” says Anders Fange, Country Director, SCA.
The hospital is located in an area where community acceptance is essential to the continued functioning and safety of the hospital and its staff. The hospital has faced a further intrusion on 13 July, when private security guards escorting a convoy came under attack from insurgents and sought shelter/treatment in a very aggressive manner in the hospital and proceeded to assault staff and damage property.
This latest incident comes at a time when a clinic in Paktika was attacked on 26 August by ANSF/IMF following reports of an alleged AOG commander inside. At issue, in addition to the safety of staff and patients, are perceptions amongst all parties as to the status of clearly marked hospital/medical facilities. When such facilities are no longer regarded with the sanctity which has previously been accorded, then hospitals merely become buildings and a legitimate arena to continue the conflict. Such intrusions have previously been recorded by both sides in the conflict.
For more information please contact:
Anders Fänge
Country Director SCA
+93-(0)700-299 288
anders.fange@sca.org.af
Dr. Shams
Coordinator Health Technical Unit
+93-(0)700-395 401
s.s.shams@sca.org.af
Information Unit
+93-(0)700-078 103
Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, Main Jalalabad Road, Paktia Kot. Behind UNO Printing Press.
Kabul, Afghanistan. PO Box 5017
info@sca.org.af.
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. soldiers searched a hospital in central Afghanistan for Taliban fighters, tying up hospital guards and entering women's wards in violation of local customs, an aid worker said Monday.
The soldiers raided the hospital Wednesday night in Wardak province, said Anders Fange, the country director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan.
The troops, from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, said they were looking for suspected Taliban fighters in the hospital, he said.
They tied up four hospital guards and searched patients' relatives, broke into the nutrition ward and ultrasound room, and searched the female ward of the hospital, according to the aid worker. He said the actions were disrespectful of Afghan culture.
He called the incident "simply not acceptable."
"It is not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict, but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement between NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and ISAF," he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
In a statement, the ISAF said it met Monday with staff at the medical clinic "to discuss the force's relationship with the clinic."
"Afghan National Police and International Security Assistance Forces entered the clinic on September 2, acting on a report that an insurgent commander was being treated on the premises," the statement said.
Assisted by ISAF troops, Afghan police searched the clinic to determine if the insurgent leader, who was suspected of being responsible for an earlier attack on a convoy in the area, was present, according to the statement. The ISAF said it informed the clinic staff of its reasons for entering the hospital.
Earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, an ISAF spokeswoman, said the matter was under investigation. Any operation in the area would have been Afghan-led, supported by ISAF forces, she added. The U.S. Army does operate in the area.
The Swedish aid group reported the matter to Afghanistan's public health minister, who in turn was to take up the matter with the U.S. ambassador, Fange said.
The U.S. Embassy said it had heard of the allegations and was checking to see if the Ministry of Public Health had lodged a complaint or discussed the matter with American officials.
Fange said he is trying to arrange a meeting with a senior U.S. commander in Wardak province.
The Afghan Ministry of Public Health subcontracts aid groups in Afghanistan to provide what's called "Basic Package Health Services."
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is responsible for Wardak province. The staff at the hospital work directly for the committee.
CNN's Ingrid Formanek and Wahid Mayar contributed to this report.
*************
International military violently entered SCA Hospital in Wardak
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, PRESS RELEASE, Kabul, September 6, 2009
On Wednesday evening September 2 at 10 pm coalition vehicles drove up at SCA’s Hospital in Shaniz, Wardak province along the main highway from Kabul to Ghazni. They entered the hospital compound, reportedly without giving any reason or justification for entering the hospital compound. They searched all rooms, even bathrooms, male and female wards. Rooms that were locked were forcefully entered and the doors of the malnutrition ward and the ultrasound ward were broken by force to gain entry. Upon entering the hospital they tied up four employees and two family members of patients at the hospital. SCA staffs as well as patients (even those in beds) were forced out of rooms/wards throughout the search.
On leaving the hospital at around 12 pm, IMF issued verbal "orders"/instructions; that on receiving any patient that could be an insurgent the hospital staff has to report to the Coalition Forces who would then determine if the hospital would be permitted or not of treating such patient.
“This is simply not acceptable. It is not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement between NGOs and ISAF. We demand guarantees from the IMF command that such violations will not be repeated and that this is made clear to commanders in the field. SCA can not and will not tolerate this kind of treatment by the IMF. Nor is the SCA bound by any orders from IMF regarding to whom treatment can be given” says Anders Fange, Country Director, SCA.
The hospital is located in an area where community acceptance is essential to the continued functioning and safety of the hospital and its staff. The hospital has faced a further intrusion on 13 July, when private security guards escorting a convoy came under attack from insurgents and sought shelter/treatment in a very aggressive manner in the hospital and proceeded to assault staff and damage property.
This latest incident comes at a time when a clinic in Paktika was attacked on 26 August by ANSF/IMF following reports of an alleged AOG commander inside. At issue, in addition to the safety of staff and patients, are perceptions amongst all parties as to the status of clearly marked hospital/medical facilities. When such facilities are no longer regarded with the sanctity which has previously been accorded, then hospitals merely become buildings and a legitimate arena to continue the conflict. Such intrusions have previously been recorded by both sides in the conflict.
For more information please contact:
Anders Fänge
Country Director SCA
+93-(0)700-299 288
anders.fange@sca.org.af
Dr. Shams
Coordinator Health Technical Unit
+93-(0)700-395 401
s.s.shams@sca.org.af
Information Unit
+93-(0)700-078 103
Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, Main Jalalabad Road, Paktia Kot. Behind UNO Printing Press.
Kabul, Afghanistan. PO Box 5017
info@sca.org.af.
Oct. 5: National Anti-War Protest & Civil Resistance at The Whitehouse
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Sept. 4, 2009
There is an article on Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/01-8 that says the White House is worried about pressure from left-wing liberals to end the war in Afghanistan. The administration knows they are in trouble. They know that with record numbers of deaths in Afghanistan there will be a call to bring the troops home.
We have a great opportunity on October 5 to show the Obama administration that they better be scared because the people are not behind them in the illegal war of aggression in Afghanistan, and the people are demanding an end to this immoral war and occupation. The week of October 5 begins the 9th year of the US waging terror on an innocent civilian population. It is time to stop.
This week we learned that peace mom Cindy Sheehan has signed up to be with us at the White House. Won't you join us, as well?
NCNR and many other peace groups are joining together to raise our voices against the imperialistic policies of our government in actions of nonviolent civil resistance at the White House on October 5. We are expecting a few hundred people there willing to risk arrest, but we need to raise that expectation to 300-400. Now is the time for those of us who have been thinking about doing more to take that next step in resistance against government policies that have caused such suffering and death for so many innocent people.
There will be a planning meeting on Oct. 4 at the Festival Center at 1640 Columbia Rd. NW where we will discuss final plans. At this meeting, we will share what the different affinity groups will be doing and people will have a chance to join in with the various affinity groups or to organize their own group.
On Oct. 5 we will gather in McPherson Square at 10:00 am where Liz McAlister will speak to the crowd. We will form a solemn and mournful procession to the White House as we reflect on the suffering and death of so many innocent people. Once at the White House we will engage in an action of nonviolent civil resistance in the spirit and discipline of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and others.
We, the people, have the power to bring change, and we will not give up, we will not be deterred. Please join us on Oct. 5. Please http://www.nogoodwar.org and register for the action by clicking on the link to the online form. Please share this information widely.
In peace and resistance,
Joy First
Co-Convener, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
There is an article on Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/01-8 that says the White House is worried about pressure from left-wing liberals to end the war in Afghanistan. The administration knows they are in trouble. They know that with record numbers of deaths in Afghanistan there will be a call to bring the troops home.
We have a great opportunity on October 5 to show the Obama administration that they better be scared because the people are not behind them in the illegal war of aggression in Afghanistan, and the people are demanding an end to this immoral war and occupation. The week of October 5 begins the 9th year of the US waging terror on an innocent civilian population. It is time to stop.
This week we learned that peace mom Cindy Sheehan has signed up to be with us at the White House. Won't you join us, as well?
NCNR and many other peace groups are joining together to raise our voices against the imperialistic policies of our government in actions of nonviolent civil resistance at the White House on October 5. We are expecting a few hundred people there willing to risk arrest, but we need to raise that expectation to 300-400. Now is the time for those of us who have been thinking about doing more to take that next step in resistance against government policies that have caused such suffering and death for so many innocent people.
There will be a planning meeting on Oct. 4 at the Festival Center at 1640 Columbia Rd. NW where we will discuss final plans. At this meeting, we will share what the different affinity groups will be doing and people will have a chance to join in with the various affinity groups or to organize their own group.
On Oct. 5 we will gather in McPherson Square at 10:00 am where Liz McAlister will speak to the crowd. We will form a solemn and mournful procession to the White House as we reflect on the suffering and death of so many innocent people. Once at the White House we will engage in an action of nonviolent civil resistance in the spirit and discipline of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and others.
We, the people, have the power to bring change, and we will not give up, we will not be deterred. Please join us on Oct. 5. Please http://www.nogoodwar.org and register for the action by clicking on the link to the online form. Please share this information widely.
In peace and resistance,
Joy First
Co-Convener, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
Video: Scores killed in Nato air strike in Afghanistan
A Nato air strike is said to have killed between 70 and 130 people in the Afghan province of Kunduz.
Nato say they targeted Taliban fighters who had seized two fuel tankers.
Al Jazeera's James Bays reports from a nearby village, where locals say many of the killed were civilians.
Why The War On Afghanistan Is Illegal
The Illegalities of the Bush Jr. War Against Afghanistan
by Francis A. Boyle, Media Monitors Network, Sept. 13, 2002
The "Blowhard Zone"
On September 13, I got a call from FOX News asking me to go on the O'Reilly Factor program that night, two days after the tragic events of September 11, to debate O'Reilly on War v. Peace. It is pretty clear where I stood and where he stood. I had been on this program before. I knew what I was getting in to. But I felt it would be important for one lawyer to get up there in front of a national audience and argue against a war and for the application of domestic and international law enforcement, international procedures, and constitutional protections, which I did.
Unfortunately, O'Reilly has the highest ranked TV news program in the country. I thought someone should be on there on September 13. I think most people agree that I beat O'Reilly. By the end of the show he was agreeing with me. But the next night he was saying that we should bomb five different Arab countries and kill all their people. But let me review for you briefly some of the international law arguments that I have been making almost full time since September 13. They are set forth in the introduction in my new book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence.
Terrorism v. War
First, right after September 11 President Bush called these attacks an act of terrorism, which they were under the United States domestic law definition at that time. However, there is no generally accepted definition of an act of terrorism under international law, for reasons I explain in my book. Soon thereafter however and apparently after consultations with Secretary of State Powell, he proceeded to call these an act of war, ratcheting up the rhetoric and the legal and constitutional issues at stake here. They were not an act of war as traditionally defined. An act of war is a military attack by one state against another state. There is so far no evidence produced that the state of Afghanistan, at the time, either attacked the United States or authorized or approved such an attack. Indeed, just recently FBI Director Mueller and the deputy director of the CIA publicly admitted that they have found no evidence in Afghanistan linked to the September 11 attacks. If you believe the government's account of what happened, which I think is highly questionable, 15 of these 19 people alleged to have committed these attacks were from Saudi Arabia and yet we went to war against Afghanistan. It does not really add up in my opinion.
But in any event this was not an act of war. Clearly these were acts of terrorism as defined by United States domestic law at the time, but not an act of war. Normally terrorism is dealt with as a matter of international and domestic law enforcement. Indeed there was a treaty directly on point at that time, the Montreal Sabotage Convention to which both the United States and Afghanistan were parties. It has an entire regime to deal with all issues in dispute here, including access to the International Court of Justice to resolve international disputes arising under the Treaty such as the extradition of Bin Laden. The Bush administration completely ignored this treaty, jettisoned it, set it aside, never even mentioned it. They paid no attention to this treaty or any of the other 12 international treaties dealing with acts of terrorism that could have been applied to handle this manner in a peaceful, lawful way.
War of Aggression Against Afghanistan
Bush, Jr. instead went to the United National Security Council to get a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. He failed. You have to remember that. This war has never been authorized by the United Nations Security Council. If you read the two resolutions that he got, it is very clear that what Bush, Jr. tried to do was to get the exact same type of language that Bush, Sr. got from the U.N. Security Council in the late fall of 1990 to authorize a war against Iraq to produce its expulsion from Kuwait. It is very clear if you read these resolutions, Bush, Jr. tried to get the exact same language twice and they failed. Indeed the first Security Council resolution refused to call what happened on September 11 an "armed attack" - that is by one state against another state. Rather they called it "terrorist attacks." But the critical point here is that this war has never been approved by the U.N. Security Council so technically it is illegal under international law. It constitutes an act and a war of aggression by the United States against Afghanistan.
No Declaration of War
Now in addition Bush, Jr. then went to Congress to get authorization to go to war. It appears that Bush, Jr. tried to get a formal declaration of war along the lines of December 8, 1941 after the Day of Infamy like FDR got on Pearl Harbor. Bush then began to use the rhetoric of Pearl Harbor. If he had gotten this declaration of war Bush and his lawyers knew full well he would have been a Constitutional Dictator. And I refer you here to the book by my late friend Professor Miller of George Washington University Law School, Presidential Power that with a formal declaration of war the president becomes a Constitutional Dictator. He failed to get a declaration of war. Despite all the rhetoric we have heard by the Bush, Jr. administration Congress never declared war against Afghanistan or against anyone. There is technically no state of war today against anyone as a matter of constitutional law as formally declared.
Bush, Sr. v. Bush, Jr.
Now what Bush, Jr. did get was a War Powers Resolution authorization. Very similar to what Bush, Sr. got. Again the game plan was the same here. Follow the path already pioneered by Bush, Sr. in his war against Iraq. So he did get from Congress a War Powers Resolution authorization. This is what law professors call an imperfect declaration of war. It does not have the constitutional significance of a formal declaration of war. It authorizes the use of military force in specified, limited circumstances.
That is what Bush, Sr. got in 1991. It was to carry out the Security Council resolution that he had gotten a month and one-half before to expel Iraq from Kuwait. But that is all the authority he had - either from the Security Council or from Congress. And that is what he did. I am not here to approve of what Bush, Sr. did. I do not and I did not at the time. But just to compare Bush, Jr. with Bush, Sr. So Bush, Jr. got a War Powers Resolution, which is not a declaration of war.
Indeed, Senator Byrd, the Dean of the Senate, clearly said this is only a War Powers authorization and we will give authority to the president to use military force subject to the requirements of the War Powers Resolution, which means they must inform us, there is Congressional oversight, in theory, (I do not think they are doing much of it), controlled funding, and ultimately we decide, not the Executive branch of the government - we are the ones who gave the authorization to use force.
Again very similar to what Bush, Sr. got except the Bush, Jr. War Powers Resolution is far more dangerous because it basically gives him a blank check to use military force against any state that he says was somehow involved in the attack on September 11. And as you know that list has now gone up to 60 states. So it is quite dangerous, which led me to say in interviews I gave at the time this is worse that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Better from our perspective than a formal Declaration of War, but worse constitutionally and politically than the Tonkin Gulf resolution. But still subject to the control of Congress and the terms of the War Powers Resolution. Indeed you might be able to use that War Powers Resolution and the authorization in litigation that might come up. Keep that in mind.
No War Against Iraq!
For example, on Iraq. Right now they cannot use that War Powers Resolution to justify a war against Iraq. There is no evidence that Iraq was involved in the events on September 11. So they are fishing around for some other justification to go to war with Iraq. They have come up now with this doctrine of preemptive attack. Quite interesting that argument, doctrine was rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants made it at Nuremberg. They rejected any doctrine of preemptive attack.
Nazi Self-Defense
Then what happened after failing to get any formal authorization from the Security Council, the U.S. Ambassador Negroponte - who has the blood of about 35, 000 people in Nicaragua on his hands when he was U.S. Ambassador down in Honduras - sent a letter to the Security Council asserting Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to justify the war against Afghanistan. And basically saying that we reserve the right to use force in self-defense against any state we say is somehow involved in the events of September 11. Well, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed me on that and asked what is the precedent for this? I said that the precedent again goes back to the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants argued that we, the Nazi government had a right to go to war in self-defense as we saw it, and no one could tell us any differently. Of course that preposterous argument was rejected by Nuremberg. It is very distressing to see some of the highest level of officials of our country making legal arguments that were rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Kangaroo Courts
Now let me say a few words about the so-called military commissions. I have a little handout out there called "Kangaroo Courts." It would take me a whole law review article to go through all the problems with military commissions. I have been interviewed quite extensively. I have some comments on it in my book. Professor Jordan Paust, a friend and colleague of mine at the University of Houston, just published an article in the Michigan Journal of International Law which I would encourage you to read. It goes through the major problems. But basically there are two treaties on point here that are being violated at a minimum.
First, the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. I will not go through all of the arguments here but it is clear that just about everyone down in Guantanamo (not counting the guys who were picked up in Bosnia and basically kidnapped) but all those apprehended over in Afghanistan and Pakistan would qualify as prisoners of war within the meaning of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, and therefore have all the rights of prisoners of war within the meaning of that convention. Right now however, as you know, all those rights are being denied. This is a serious war crime. And unfortunately President Bush, Jr. himself has incriminated himself under the Third Geneva Convention by signing the order setting up these military commissions. Not only has he incriminated himself under the Third Geneva Convention, but he has incriminated himself under the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 or so, signed into law by President Clinton and making it a serious felony for any United States citizen either to violate or order the violation of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949.
The Federalist Society Cabal
I am not personally criticizing President Bush. He is not a lawyer. He was terribly advised, criminally mis-advised, by the cabal of Federalist Society lawyers that the Bush administration has assembled at the White House and the Department of Injustice under Ashcroft. President Bush, Jr., by signing this order, has opened himself up to prosecution anywhere in the world for violating the Third Geneva Convention, and certainly if there is evidence to believe that any of these individuals have been tortured, which is grave breach, let alone at the end of the day executed. So this is a very serious matter.
I did not vote for President Bush, Jr. But I certainly think it is a tragedy that these Federalist Society lawyers got the President of the United States of America, who is not a lawyer, to sign the order that would incriminate him under the Geneva Conventions and United States Domestic Criminal Law. This is what happened.
Jeopardizing U.S. Armed Forces
Moreover, by us stating we will not apply the Third Geneva Convention to these people we opened up United States armed forces to be denied protection under the Third Geneva Convention. And as you know, we now have U.S. armed forces in operation in Afghanistan, Georgia, the Philippines, in Yemen and perhaps in Iraq. Basically Bush's position will be jeopardizing their ability to claim prisoner of war status. All that has to happen is our adversaries say they are unlawful combatants and we will not give you prisoner of war status. The Third Geneva Convention is one of the few protections U.S. armed forces have when they go into battle. Bush, Jr. and his Federalist Society lawyers just pulled the rug out from under them.
U.S. Police State
In addition the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights clearly applies down in Guantanamo. It applies any time individuals are under the jurisdiction of the United States of America. Guantanamo is a colonial enclave, I will not go through its status any further. But clearly those individuals are subject to our jurisdiction and have the rights set forth therein - which are currently being denied.
If and when many of these Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzalez police state practices make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, we have to consider that a five to four majority of the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush, Jr. What is going to stop that same five to four majority from giving Bush, Jr. a police state? The only thing that is going to stop it is the people in this room.
Mr. Francis A. Boyle is a Professor in International Law. The author served as Legal Advisor: to the Palestine Liberation Organization on Creation of the State of Palestine (1987-1989), to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations (1991-1993) and sometime to the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine. The viewpoints expressed here are his own.
by Francis A. Boyle, Media Monitors Network, Sept. 13, 2002
The "Blowhard Zone"
On September 13, I got a call from FOX News asking me to go on the O'Reilly Factor program that night, two days after the tragic events of September 11, to debate O'Reilly on War v. Peace. It is pretty clear where I stood and where he stood. I had been on this program before. I knew what I was getting in to. But I felt it would be important for one lawyer to get up there in front of a national audience and argue against a war and for the application of domestic and international law enforcement, international procedures, and constitutional protections, which I did.
Unfortunately, O'Reilly has the highest ranked TV news program in the country. I thought someone should be on there on September 13. I think most people agree that I beat O'Reilly. By the end of the show he was agreeing with me. But the next night he was saying that we should bomb five different Arab countries and kill all their people. But let me review for you briefly some of the international law arguments that I have been making almost full time since September 13. They are set forth in the introduction in my new book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence.
Terrorism v. War
First, right after September 11 President Bush called these attacks an act of terrorism, which they were under the United States domestic law definition at that time. However, there is no generally accepted definition of an act of terrorism under international law, for reasons I explain in my book. Soon thereafter however and apparently after consultations with Secretary of State Powell, he proceeded to call these an act of war, ratcheting up the rhetoric and the legal and constitutional issues at stake here. They were not an act of war as traditionally defined. An act of war is a military attack by one state against another state. There is so far no evidence produced that the state of Afghanistan, at the time, either attacked the United States or authorized or approved such an attack. Indeed, just recently FBI Director Mueller and the deputy director of the CIA publicly admitted that they have found no evidence in Afghanistan linked to the September 11 attacks. If you believe the government's account of what happened, which I think is highly questionable, 15 of these 19 people alleged to have committed these attacks were from Saudi Arabia and yet we went to war against Afghanistan. It does not really add up in my opinion.
But in any event this was not an act of war. Clearly these were acts of terrorism as defined by United States domestic law at the time, but not an act of war. Normally terrorism is dealt with as a matter of international and domestic law enforcement. Indeed there was a treaty directly on point at that time, the Montreal Sabotage Convention to which both the United States and Afghanistan were parties. It has an entire regime to deal with all issues in dispute here, including access to the International Court of Justice to resolve international disputes arising under the Treaty such as the extradition of Bin Laden. The Bush administration completely ignored this treaty, jettisoned it, set it aside, never even mentioned it. They paid no attention to this treaty or any of the other 12 international treaties dealing with acts of terrorism that could have been applied to handle this manner in a peaceful, lawful way.
War of Aggression Against Afghanistan
Bush, Jr. instead went to the United National Security Council to get a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. He failed. You have to remember that. This war has never been authorized by the United Nations Security Council. If you read the two resolutions that he got, it is very clear that what Bush, Jr. tried to do was to get the exact same type of language that Bush, Sr. got from the U.N. Security Council in the late fall of 1990 to authorize a war against Iraq to produce its expulsion from Kuwait. It is very clear if you read these resolutions, Bush, Jr. tried to get the exact same language twice and they failed. Indeed the first Security Council resolution refused to call what happened on September 11 an "armed attack" - that is by one state against another state. Rather they called it "terrorist attacks." But the critical point here is that this war has never been approved by the U.N. Security Council so technically it is illegal under international law. It constitutes an act and a war of aggression by the United States against Afghanistan.
No Declaration of War
Now in addition Bush, Jr. then went to Congress to get authorization to go to war. It appears that Bush, Jr. tried to get a formal declaration of war along the lines of December 8, 1941 after the Day of Infamy like FDR got on Pearl Harbor. Bush then began to use the rhetoric of Pearl Harbor. If he had gotten this declaration of war Bush and his lawyers knew full well he would have been a Constitutional Dictator. And I refer you here to the book by my late friend Professor Miller of George Washington University Law School, Presidential Power that with a formal declaration of war the president becomes a Constitutional Dictator. He failed to get a declaration of war. Despite all the rhetoric we have heard by the Bush, Jr. administration Congress never declared war against Afghanistan or against anyone. There is technically no state of war today against anyone as a matter of constitutional law as formally declared.
Bush, Sr. v. Bush, Jr.
Now what Bush, Jr. did get was a War Powers Resolution authorization. Very similar to what Bush, Sr. got. Again the game plan was the same here. Follow the path already pioneered by Bush, Sr. in his war against Iraq. So he did get from Congress a War Powers Resolution authorization. This is what law professors call an imperfect declaration of war. It does not have the constitutional significance of a formal declaration of war. It authorizes the use of military force in specified, limited circumstances.
That is what Bush, Sr. got in 1991. It was to carry out the Security Council resolution that he had gotten a month and one-half before to expel Iraq from Kuwait. But that is all the authority he had - either from the Security Council or from Congress. And that is what he did. I am not here to approve of what Bush, Sr. did. I do not and I did not at the time. But just to compare Bush, Jr. with Bush, Sr. So Bush, Jr. got a War Powers Resolution, which is not a declaration of war.
Indeed, Senator Byrd, the Dean of the Senate, clearly said this is only a War Powers authorization and we will give authority to the president to use military force subject to the requirements of the War Powers Resolution, which means they must inform us, there is Congressional oversight, in theory, (I do not think they are doing much of it), controlled funding, and ultimately we decide, not the Executive branch of the government - we are the ones who gave the authorization to use force.
Again very similar to what Bush, Sr. got except the Bush, Jr. War Powers Resolution is far more dangerous because it basically gives him a blank check to use military force against any state that he says was somehow involved in the attack on September 11. And as you know that list has now gone up to 60 states. So it is quite dangerous, which led me to say in interviews I gave at the time this is worse that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Better from our perspective than a formal Declaration of War, but worse constitutionally and politically than the Tonkin Gulf resolution. But still subject to the control of Congress and the terms of the War Powers Resolution. Indeed you might be able to use that War Powers Resolution and the authorization in litigation that might come up. Keep that in mind.
No War Against Iraq!
For example, on Iraq. Right now they cannot use that War Powers Resolution to justify a war against Iraq. There is no evidence that Iraq was involved in the events on September 11. So they are fishing around for some other justification to go to war with Iraq. They have come up now with this doctrine of preemptive attack. Quite interesting that argument, doctrine was rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants made it at Nuremberg. They rejected any doctrine of preemptive attack.
Nazi Self-Defense
Then what happened after failing to get any formal authorization from the Security Council, the U.S. Ambassador Negroponte - who has the blood of about 35, 000 people in Nicaragua on his hands when he was U.S. Ambassador down in Honduras - sent a letter to the Security Council asserting Article 51 of the U.N. Charter to justify the war against Afghanistan. And basically saying that we reserve the right to use force in self-defense against any state we say is somehow involved in the events of September 11. Well, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed me on that and asked what is the precedent for this? I said that the precedent again goes back to the Nuremberg Judgment of 1946 when the lawyers for the Nazi defendants argued that we, the Nazi government had a right to go to war in self-defense as we saw it, and no one could tell us any differently. Of course that preposterous argument was rejected by Nuremberg. It is very distressing to see some of the highest level of officials of our country making legal arguments that were rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Kangaroo Courts
Now let me say a few words about the so-called military commissions. I have a little handout out there called "Kangaroo Courts." It would take me a whole law review article to go through all the problems with military commissions. I have been interviewed quite extensively. I have some comments on it in my book. Professor Jordan Paust, a friend and colleague of mine at the University of Houston, just published an article in the Michigan Journal of International Law which I would encourage you to read. It goes through the major problems. But basically there are two treaties on point here that are being violated at a minimum.
First, the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. I will not go through all of the arguments here but it is clear that just about everyone down in Guantanamo (not counting the guys who were picked up in Bosnia and basically kidnapped) but all those apprehended over in Afghanistan and Pakistan would qualify as prisoners of war within the meaning of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, and therefore have all the rights of prisoners of war within the meaning of that convention. Right now however, as you know, all those rights are being denied. This is a serious war crime. And unfortunately President Bush, Jr. himself has incriminated himself under the Third Geneva Convention by signing the order setting up these military commissions. Not only has he incriminated himself under the Third Geneva Convention, but he has incriminated himself under the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 or so, signed into law by President Clinton and making it a serious felony for any United States citizen either to violate or order the violation of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949.
The Federalist Society Cabal
I am not personally criticizing President Bush. He is not a lawyer. He was terribly advised, criminally mis-advised, by the cabal of Federalist Society lawyers that the Bush administration has assembled at the White House and the Department of Injustice under Ashcroft. President Bush, Jr., by signing this order, has opened himself up to prosecution anywhere in the world for violating the Third Geneva Convention, and certainly if there is evidence to believe that any of these individuals have been tortured, which is grave breach, let alone at the end of the day executed. So this is a very serious matter.
I did not vote for President Bush, Jr. But I certainly think it is a tragedy that these Federalist Society lawyers got the President of the United States of America, who is not a lawyer, to sign the order that would incriminate him under the Geneva Conventions and United States Domestic Criminal Law. This is what happened.
Jeopardizing U.S. Armed Forces
Moreover, by us stating we will not apply the Third Geneva Convention to these people we opened up United States armed forces to be denied protection under the Third Geneva Convention. And as you know, we now have U.S. armed forces in operation in Afghanistan, Georgia, the Philippines, in Yemen and perhaps in Iraq. Basically Bush's position will be jeopardizing their ability to claim prisoner of war status. All that has to happen is our adversaries say they are unlawful combatants and we will not give you prisoner of war status. The Third Geneva Convention is one of the few protections U.S. armed forces have when they go into battle. Bush, Jr. and his Federalist Society lawyers just pulled the rug out from under them.
U.S. Police State
In addition the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights clearly applies down in Guantanamo. It applies any time individuals are under the jurisdiction of the United States of America. Guantanamo is a colonial enclave, I will not go through its status any further. But clearly those individuals are subject to our jurisdiction and have the rights set forth therein - which are currently being denied.
If and when many of these Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzalez police state practices make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, we have to consider that a five to four majority of the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush, Jr. What is going to stop that same five to four majority from giving Bush, Jr. a police state? The only thing that is going to stop it is the people in this room.
Mr. Francis A. Boyle is a Professor in International Law. The author served as Legal Advisor: to the Palestine Liberation Organization on Creation of the State of Palestine (1987-1989), to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations (1991-1993) and sometime to the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine. The viewpoints expressed here are his own.
Now is the time to tell Obama to stop the war in Afghanistan
Kevin Zeese, VotersForPeace.US, Sept. 2, 2009
The Obama administration is at a crossroads when it comes to the war in Afghanistan. It is time to tell President Obama why you oppose the Afghanistan War. Click here to write President Obama.
General McChrystal has prepared a report on Afghanistan calling for escalation. The White House says President Obama will be reading the report this week and a decision on any changes will occur in the next few weeks.
So now is the time to let Obama know what you think. Click here.
Media reports on the report indicate that McChrystal is seeking to restart the Afghanistan War with more troops, more U.S. civilians, and a bigger Afghan force.
This may be the best opportunity we have to stop this war. If we do not act now, we could have a long stay in Afghanistan. David Lindorff may have said it best: "If the American people don't rise up and demand an end to this thing right now, we could be in for another 8-10 years of brutal and bloody warfare, and in the end, the United States is, once again, going to lose."
At a recent Brookings Institution Conference in Washington, DC, four hawkish speakers, some who advise the administration, urged escalation. Richard Dreyfuss summarized the speakers' shared views: 1. "Significant escalation" is essential "to avoid utter defeat." 2. If "tens of thousands" of new troops were sent to Afghanistan, it would be impossible to know whether this reinforcement changed anything until another 18 months had elapsed. 3. Even if the U.S. "turns the tide," no "significant drawdown" of American troops could occur for at least another five years.
McChrystal's report comes at a bad moment in Afghanistan. August was the deadliest month and September started off following suit. The U.S. military is exhausted and stretched thin. As a result, there are a greater percentage of mercenaries in Afghanistan than any war in U.S. history. The recent election in Afghanistan undermined the legitimacy of the government with 1,740 complaints of fraud, 567 serious enough to change the outcome.
McChrystal's report also comes at a time when deficits at home are at record highs and Congress knows that we are risking hyperinflation. Borrowing more money to fight a failing and unnecessary war makes even less sense in these circumstances. In fact, the media is already predicting rising tensions in Congress over Afghanistan. In addition, the White House reportedly fears liberal reaction to Afghanistan. And, the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs is unsure whether more troops can be provided. The White House is divided and the Pentagon is insecure about support for escalation.
The essential question that President Obama has been unable to answer is "What are we fighting for?"
While we want you to take action today by writing President Obama, that is not enough.
To highlight the eighth anniversary of the Afghan War, on Monday, October 5, 2009, Voters for Peace will be joining with the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), along with Witness Against Torture, Peace Action, The War Resisters League, Atlantic Life Community, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Veterans for Peace. We will mark the anniversary and speak out against the war with direct action, risking arrest at the White House. Hundreds are likely to risk arrest. If you want to get involved, visit: Voices for Creative Non-Violence. There will be more events around the anniversary this fall and we will keep you informed so you can take action.
Opposition to the Afghanistan War is not only coming from the peace movement. Just this week, conservative commentator George Will came out in favor of ending the Afghanistan War in a column titled "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." He urged a "rapid reversal" of policy and highlighted the fact that, "The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars. . ." He says, "Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable."
Now is the time to increase our efforts to stop this war. The combination of a failing war, stretched-thin military, corrupt Afghani government, record government deficits, and a majority of Americans opposing the war, makes this the time to change. If we don't act now we may find ourselves deeper into a war-quagmire that makes leaving even more difficult.
Thank you for taking action.
Sincerely,
Kevin Zeese
Executive Director
Kevin Zeese
Executive Director
US wants 20,000 more troops to fight Taliban
British and American soldiers to shoulder brunt of surge's next phase
By Kim Sengupta, The Independent, Aug. 29, 2009
Kabul - The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan will ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of his new strategic plan for the alliance's war against a resurgent Taliban, The Independent has learned.
The demand from General Stanley McChrystal will almost certainly lead to more British soldiers being sent to the increasingly treacherous battlegrounds of Helmand, the Taliban heartland, despite growing opposition to the war.
General McChrystal, tasked with turning the tide in the battle against the insurgency on the ground, has given a presentation of his draft report to senior Afghan government figures in which he also proposes raising the size of the Afghan army and police force.
But the request for troop reinforcements will come at a time of intensifying public debate about the role of the Nato mission. Last month saw a record number of troop deaths and injuries in a conflict that has claimed more than 200 British soldiers since the start of the US-led invasion in 2001. British losses rose sharply last month with 22 deaths, making it the bloodiest month for UK forces since the Falklands war. August has been the deadliest month for American troops in the eight-year war. Most of the deaths have come from lethal roadside bombs that Western troops appear unable to combat effectively. For the first time, the American public now views the fight against the Taliban as unwinnable, according to the most recent opinion polls.
The conduct of the Afghan government has not helped the mood on either side of the Atlantic. While US, British and other foreign troops are dying in what is supposedly a mission to rid Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida militants and make the country safe for democracy, the incumbent President stands accused of forging alliances with brutal warlords and overseeing outright fraud in an attempt to "steal" the national elections, the results of which are still being counted.
Last week, General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, intervened against a backdrop of heightened debate about the UK's military role. He stressed that the objective of the war was "to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for al-Qa'ida and other extremists".
According to General McChrystal's draft plan, the number of Afghan troops would rise from 88,000 to 250,000, and the police force from 82,000 to 160,000 by 2012. These increases are higher than expected, with previous suggestions that the totals would be raised to 134,000 and 120,000 for the army and police respectively.
The US commander will, however, ask other Nato countries to send further reinforcements and will travel shortly to European capitals to discuss the issue. It is widely expected that the UK will send up to 1,500 more troops. At the same time, a force of 700 sent to help provide security for the Afghan elections last week on a temporary basis will become a permanent presence.
Following the withdrawal from Iraq, British military commanders, backed by the then Defence Secretary, John Hutton, had recommended in the spring that up to 2,500 extra troops could be sent to Afghanistan. However, following lobbying from the Treasury, Gordon Brown agreed to only the temporary deployment of 700. Criticism of the decision by senior officers has led, it is claimed, to Downing Street changing its stance.
General McChrystal, who replaced Gen David McKiernan as Nato chief in Afghanistan earlier this year, was originally due to produce his strategic report this month, but decided to wait until after the Afghan presidential election. According to Western and Afghan sources he is continuing to take soundings from various quarters and the finalised document is due out after it becomes clear whether or not a second round of voting is needed to decide the outcome of the poll.
As part of an initial troop surge overseen by General McChrystal, the US has already committed to boosting its forces from 31,000 to 68,000 this year. However Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan was told by commanders in Afghanistan last week that those numbers would not be enough for what is being viewed as defining months of fighting to come.
In his meeting with Afghan officials, General McChrystal is reported to have stated that the extra troops would be needed to enforce a new policy of maintaining a presence in the areas captured from insurgents. This will provide security for residents and allow reconstruction and development.
Other Nato nations have the option of focusing on the training of Afghan security forces. However, say American officials, failure by Nato countries to "step up to the plate" would mean the shortfall would be covered by the US.
Diplomatic sources have also revealed that plans are being drawn up to sign a "compact" between Afghanistan and the US which will reiterate Washington's commitment to the security of Afghanistan while the Afghan government pledges to combat corruption and reinforce governance. Unlike previous international agreements over Afghanistan, the compact will be bilateral, without any other governments being involved. The timing of the agreement is due to coincide with a visit by Mr Karzai to New York, if, as expected, he emerges the election winner.
By Kim Sengupta, The Independent, Aug. 29, 2009
Kabul - The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan will ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of his new strategic plan for the alliance's war against a resurgent Taliban, The Independent has learned.
The demand from General Stanley McChrystal will almost certainly lead to more British soldiers being sent to the increasingly treacherous battlegrounds of Helmand, the Taliban heartland, despite growing opposition to the war.
General McChrystal, tasked with turning the tide in the battle against the insurgency on the ground, has given a presentation of his draft report to senior Afghan government figures in which he also proposes raising the size of the Afghan army and police force.
But the request for troop reinforcements will come at a time of intensifying public debate about the role of the Nato mission. Last month saw a record number of troop deaths and injuries in a conflict that has claimed more than 200 British soldiers since the start of the US-led invasion in 2001. British losses rose sharply last month with 22 deaths, making it the bloodiest month for UK forces since the Falklands war. August has been the deadliest month for American troops in the eight-year war. Most of the deaths have come from lethal roadside bombs that Western troops appear unable to combat effectively. For the first time, the American public now views the fight against the Taliban as unwinnable, according to the most recent opinion polls.
The conduct of the Afghan government has not helped the mood on either side of the Atlantic. While US, British and other foreign troops are dying in what is supposedly a mission to rid Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida militants and make the country safe for democracy, the incumbent President stands accused of forging alliances with brutal warlords and overseeing outright fraud in an attempt to "steal" the national elections, the results of which are still being counted.
Last week, General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, intervened against a backdrop of heightened debate about the UK's military role. He stressed that the objective of the war was "to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for al-Qa'ida and other extremists".
According to General McChrystal's draft plan, the number of Afghan troops would rise from 88,000 to 250,000, and the police force from 82,000 to 160,000 by 2012. These increases are higher than expected, with previous suggestions that the totals would be raised to 134,000 and 120,000 for the army and police respectively.
The US commander will, however, ask other Nato countries to send further reinforcements and will travel shortly to European capitals to discuss the issue. It is widely expected that the UK will send up to 1,500 more troops. At the same time, a force of 700 sent to help provide security for the Afghan elections last week on a temporary basis will become a permanent presence.
Following the withdrawal from Iraq, British military commanders, backed by the then Defence Secretary, John Hutton, had recommended in the spring that up to 2,500 extra troops could be sent to Afghanistan. However, following lobbying from the Treasury, Gordon Brown agreed to only the temporary deployment of 700. Criticism of the decision by senior officers has led, it is claimed, to Downing Street changing its stance.
General McChrystal, who replaced Gen David McKiernan as Nato chief in Afghanistan earlier this year, was originally due to produce his strategic report this month, but decided to wait until after the Afghan presidential election. According to Western and Afghan sources he is continuing to take soundings from various quarters and the finalised document is due out after it becomes clear whether or not a second round of voting is needed to decide the outcome of the poll.
As part of an initial troop surge overseen by General McChrystal, the US has already committed to boosting its forces from 31,000 to 68,000 this year. However Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan was told by commanders in Afghanistan last week that those numbers would not be enough for what is being viewed as defining months of fighting to come.
In his meeting with Afghan officials, General McChrystal is reported to have stated that the extra troops would be needed to enforce a new policy of maintaining a presence in the areas captured from insurgents. This will provide security for residents and allow reconstruction and development.
Other Nato nations have the option of focusing on the training of Afghan security forces. However, say American officials, failure by Nato countries to "step up to the plate" would mean the shortfall would be covered by the US.
Diplomatic sources have also revealed that plans are being drawn up to sign a "compact" between Afghanistan and the US which will reiterate Washington's commitment to the security of Afghanistan while the Afghan government pledges to combat corruption and reinforce governance. Unlike previous international agreements over Afghanistan, the compact will be bilateral, without any other governments being involved. The timing of the agreement is due to coincide with a visit by Mr Karzai to New York, if, as expected, he emerges the election winner.
“Enough Already”
By Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Blog, Aug. 20, 2009
“And you look at somebody like that (note: me -CS) and you think here's somebody who's just trying to find some meaning in her son's death. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. But enough already.”
- ABC Nightly News Anchor, Charles Gibson, August 18, 2009
“Enough already?” Hmmm…I don’t know Charlie Gibson and I don’t pay any attention to his career, but I seem to agree with him on this one: “Enough already.”
Enough with the killing, torturing, wounding and profiting off of the backs of our troops and off of the lives of the people of Iraq-Af-Pak: as our brothers and sisters in Latin America say: “Basta!”
Somehow, I don’t think that this is what Charlie Gibson meant, though. I am sure that he just wants me to go away like most of the rest of the anti-war movement has done under the Obama presidency.
One of the things I hear quite often from people from all over the political spectrum is: “Why don’t you just go away, you’ve had your 15 minutes of fame.”
Yes, that’s exactly what I thought as soon as I heard that my son was killed in the US’s illegal and immoral war in Iraq: “this is a perfect opportunity to get my 15 minutes of fame.” Actually, after I slowly recovered from the shock and horror, the pain always remains, I thought that I had to do everything I can to end this nightmare so other mothers/families wouldn’t have to go through what I was going through and what I am going through.
I certainly am not the anchor of a major network news show, but last time I checked, people are still dying at a heartrending clip in Iraq-Af-Pak.
If my goal was “15 minutes of fame,” I could have gone quietly away a long time ago. I started because I wanted the wars to end, and I will figure I can go away when the wars end…but when is that going to be? In my lifetime, probably not.
I am cutting my writing-staycation short to head to Martha’s Vineyard because I think the new titular head of the empire needs to know that his policies are devastating people as much as the same policies did when Bush was president.
I would rather be able to go away and spend the rest of my life worshipping my grandchildren, writing, reading, resting, and doing humanitarian work where I am needed.
I wish the wars would go away, but they aren’t going away if we the people don’t get more militantly insistent.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/enough-already-by-cindy-sheehan.html
“And you look at somebody like that (note: me -CS) and you think here's somebody who's just trying to find some meaning in her son's death. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. But enough already.”
- ABC Nightly News Anchor, Charles Gibson, August 18, 2009
“Enough already?” Hmmm…I don’t know Charlie Gibson and I don’t pay any attention to his career, but I seem to agree with him on this one: “Enough already.”
Enough with the killing, torturing, wounding and profiting off of the backs of our troops and off of the lives of the people of Iraq-Af-Pak: as our brothers and sisters in Latin America say: “Basta!”
Somehow, I don’t think that this is what Charlie Gibson meant, though. I am sure that he just wants me to go away like most of the rest of the anti-war movement has done under the Obama presidency.
One of the things I hear quite often from people from all over the political spectrum is: “Why don’t you just go away, you’ve had your 15 minutes of fame.”
Yes, that’s exactly what I thought as soon as I heard that my son was killed in the US’s illegal and immoral war in Iraq: “this is a perfect opportunity to get my 15 minutes of fame.” Actually, after I slowly recovered from the shock and horror, the pain always remains, I thought that I had to do everything I can to end this nightmare so other mothers/families wouldn’t have to go through what I was going through and what I am going through.
I certainly am not the anchor of a major network news show, but last time I checked, people are still dying at a heartrending clip in Iraq-Af-Pak.
If my goal was “15 minutes of fame,” I could have gone quietly away a long time ago. I started because I wanted the wars to end, and I will figure I can go away when the wars end…but when is that going to be? In my lifetime, probably not.
I am cutting my writing-staycation short to head to Martha’s Vineyard because I think the new titular head of the empire needs to know that his policies are devastating people as much as the same policies did when Bush was president.
I would rather be able to go away and spend the rest of my life worshipping my grandchildren, writing, reading, resting, and doing humanitarian work where I am needed.
I wish the wars would go away, but they aren’t going away if we the people don’t get more militantly insistent.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/enough-already-by-cindy-sheehan.html
We Have the Moral High Ground
By Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Blog, Aug. 19, 2009
"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1958
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal…” Dr. King, 1967
I remember back in the good ol’ days of 2005 and 2006 when being against the wars was not only politically correct, but it was very popular. I remember receiving dozens of awards, uncountable accolades and even was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Those were the halcyon days of the anti-war movement before the Democrats took over the government (off of the backs of the anti-war movement) and it became anathema to be against the wars and I became unpopular on all sides. I guess at that point, I could have gone with the flow and pretended to support the violence so I could remain popular, but I think I have to fiercely hold on to my core values whether I am “liked” or not.
Killing is wrong no matter if it is state-sanction murder or otherwise. Period. Not too much more to say on that subject, except what I quote above from Dr. King.
However, while the so-called left is obsessed over supporting a very crappy Democratic health care plan, people in far away countries are being deprived of their health and very lives by the Obama Regime’s continuation of Bush’s ruinous foreign policy.
I was never dismayed when the so-called right attacked me and called me names for protesting Bush. However, something inside me gets a little sick when I hear people who claim to be peace activists supporting the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, a policy that is not like Bush’s in the fact that it’s much worse.
I have been called a “racist” from the so-called left. In these people’s opinion, I was totally justified in protesting Bush, but I am a racist for protesting the same policies under Obama. When I opposed Bush’s policies, I was called traitor, anti-American, anti-Semitic, and other names I cannot print. Name-calling is a great way to shut down critical thinking and discussion. And, not to mention, I think the murder of innocent life in the Iraq-Af-Pak regions is racist and morally corrupt.
There are many people in this country who oppose Obama because they’re racist, but I am not one of them. I oppose Obama’s policies because they are wrong…again, period!
One cannot obfuscate when innocent lives are being destroyed, here and abroad. We cannot allow “political reality” to get in the way of morality. Human sacrifice is not worth the political reality. Violence, killing, war and more war are NEVER the solution to any problem. Period.
If Obama has violent shadow forces around him pulling him in the direction of violence, which begets more violence and more resistance; then we, especially people in the peace or anti-war movements need to gather and organize to pull him in the direction towards peaceful conflict resolution and solutions that aren’t based on exploiting people’s fears, anxieties or ignorance.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because we have the moral high ground. The war supporters aren’t going to protest Obama’s wars. They are strangely silent over his foreign policy, unless they are praising it.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because someone has to speak for the babies of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan that do not deserve the horrible fate that has been handed to them by the US Military Industrial Complex. The voiceless need a voice, and even if I am called every name in the book by all sides, I will speak up for them.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because so many people have been blinded to the fact that the system has momentum that rolls on and over and around no matter who is the titular head of the system.
Let's just pretend that elections are fair in this country and my candidate, Cynthia McKinney, won for president. If she wasn’t able to rein in the systemic violence, then I would be going wherever she vacationed to protest her policies, too. I guess at that point, I would not only be called “racist,” but I would be called a “self-hating female.”
In a recent conversation someone was trying to convince me that I should not be so stridently opposed to Obama’s policies and I responded that today 75 people were killed and 300 people were wounded in a bomb blast in Iraq and 26 mostly women and children were killed in a wedding party in Afghanistan this week and she said: “Oh, that wouldn’t be acceptable if it happened here.”
And that‘s the problem: it’s not acceptable if it happens anywhere, to anybody, no matter who is President of the USA.
Not only is the death toll mounting for innocent civilians but also is once again climbing for our troops.
While the “festivities” are occurring on Martha’s Vineyard next week, there are families all over the world who will never again be able to fully feel festive. Ahhhh…. everyone should just stand down, relax and sip an Obamarita on the beach…Hope reigns once again in The Empire.
And, yes, we are going to Martha’s Vineyard to get attention. We vehemently want to call attention to all of the points I have made above.
Even though there is a small anti-war, peace movement in this country, there still is one and this movement has the moral high ground and punditry, personal attacks, glitzy marketing, or “political realities won’t drown us out.
Members of Dr. King's own caucus tried to convince him not to publicly speak out against the Vietnam war, and that's when he delivered his brilliant Beyond Vietnam speech at the Riverside Church in NYC exactly one year before he was assassinated. That speech was in response to the critics. Dr. King took the moral high ground when he said: "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."
That time has now come, once again. By our silence we are betraying humanity.
Love the President or hate him, or anywhere in between, but we must speak out loudly and without any timidity against the institutional violence of the US Empire.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-have-moral-high-ground-by-cindy.html
"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1958
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal…” Dr. King, 1967
I remember back in the good ol’ days of 2005 and 2006 when being against the wars was not only politically correct, but it was very popular. I remember receiving dozens of awards, uncountable accolades and even was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Those were the halcyon days of the anti-war movement before the Democrats took over the government (off of the backs of the anti-war movement) and it became anathema to be against the wars and I became unpopular on all sides. I guess at that point, I could have gone with the flow and pretended to support the violence so I could remain popular, but I think I have to fiercely hold on to my core values whether I am “liked” or not.
Killing is wrong no matter if it is state-sanction murder or otherwise. Period. Not too much more to say on that subject, except what I quote above from Dr. King.
However, while the so-called left is obsessed over supporting a very crappy Democratic health care plan, people in far away countries are being deprived of their health and very lives by the Obama Regime’s continuation of Bush’s ruinous foreign policy.
I was never dismayed when the so-called right attacked me and called me names for protesting Bush. However, something inside me gets a little sick when I hear people who claim to be peace activists supporting the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, a policy that is not like Bush’s in the fact that it’s much worse.
I have been called a “racist” from the so-called left. In these people’s opinion, I was totally justified in protesting Bush, but I am a racist for protesting the same policies under Obama. When I opposed Bush’s policies, I was called traitor, anti-American, anti-Semitic, and other names I cannot print. Name-calling is a great way to shut down critical thinking and discussion. And, not to mention, I think the murder of innocent life in the Iraq-Af-Pak regions is racist and morally corrupt.
There are many people in this country who oppose Obama because they’re racist, but I am not one of them. I oppose Obama’s policies because they are wrong…again, period!
One cannot obfuscate when innocent lives are being destroyed, here and abroad. We cannot allow “political reality” to get in the way of morality. Human sacrifice is not worth the political reality. Violence, killing, war and more war are NEVER the solution to any problem. Period.
If Obama has violent shadow forces around him pulling him in the direction of violence, which begets more violence and more resistance; then we, especially people in the peace or anti-war movements need to gather and organize to pull him in the direction towards peaceful conflict resolution and solutions that aren’t based on exploiting people’s fears, anxieties or ignorance.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because we have the moral high ground. The war supporters aren’t going to protest Obama’s wars. They are strangely silent over his foreign policy, unless they are praising it.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because someone has to speak for the babies of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan that do not deserve the horrible fate that has been handed to them by the US Military Industrial Complex. The voiceless need a voice, and even if I am called every name in the book by all sides, I will speak up for them.
I am going to Martha’s Vineyard because so many people have been blinded to the fact that the system has momentum that rolls on and over and around no matter who is the titular head of the system.
Let's just pretend that elections are fair in this country and my candidate, Cynthia McKinney, won for president. If she wasn’t able to rein in the systemic violence, then I would be going wherever she vacationed to protest her policies, too. I guess at that point, I would not only be called “racist,” but I would be called a “self-hating female.”
In a recent conversation someone was trying to convince me that I should not be so stridently opposed to Obama’s policies and I responded that today 75 people were killed and 300 people were wounded in a bomb blast in Iraq and 26 mostly women and children were killed in a wedding party in Afghanistan this week and she said: “Oh, that wouldn’t be acceptable if it happened here.”
And that‘s the problem: it’s not acceptable if it happens anywhere, to anybody, no matter who is President of the USA.
Not only is the death toll mounting for innocent civilians but also is once again climbing for our troops.
While the “festivities” are occurring on Martha’s Vineyard next week, there are families all over the world who will never again be able to fully feel festive. Ahhhh…. everyone should just stand down, relax and sip an Obamarita on the beach…Hope reigns once again in The Empire.
And, yes, we are going to Martha’s Vineyard to get attention. We vehemently want to call attention to all of the points I have made above.
Even though there is a small anti-war, peace movement in this country, there still is one and this movement has the moral high ground and punditry, personal attacks, glitzy marketing, or “political realities won’t drown us out.
Members of Dr. King's own caucus tried to convince him not to publicly speak out against the Vietnam war, and that's when he delivered his brilliant Beyond Vietnam speech at the Riverside Church in NYC exactly one year before he was assassinated. That speech was in response to the critics. Dr. King took the moral high ground when he said: "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."
That time has now come, once again. By our silence we are betraying humanity.
Love the President or hate him, or anywhere in between, but we must speak out loudly and without any timidity against the institutional violence of the US Empire.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-have-moral-high-ground-by-cindy.html
The President Exhibits Crazy Speech Patterns
By Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Blog, Aug. 18, 2009
As I listened to clips of Obama's speech to the VFW on August 17th, 2009, I was wondering if his speechwriters were on vacation and they just recycled an old Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice speech.
While the so-called left is focused on the health care debacle and is allowing the so-called right to define the debate when it should be: Medicare for all, and all for Medicare; Obama and his neocon foreign policy team are preparing for a decades long, bloody foray in Af-Pak.
As Yael T. Abouhalkah, an editorial writer for the Kansas City Star, put it:
We cannot allow the War Party and other elites to define the terms of the War Debate.
Obama actually had this to say in his speech in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW):
One thing that we must NEVER forget is that the Taliban, and especially the people of Afghanistan (26 members of a WEDDING party, not WAR party, but WEDDING party were bombed and killed yesterday) DID NOT attack us on 9/11. Even if Osama did plan the attacks from someplace in Afghanistan (not likely) this war of choice is not about defending America. Remember: profit is not a consequence of war, it is the reason for war. And how can we as a nation allow the War Party to sacrifice innocent babies for the illusion of safety? Afghanistan is just as much a war of choice as Iraq is, and Obama is choosing to continue it by exploiting the lies.
What is fundamental to the defense of our people is a sane foreign policy, not more war crimes brought to the world by the War Criminals in DC. What is fundamental to our health and prosperity is to bring the troops home from Iraq-Af-Pak and reduce the Pentagon budget so we can afford such basic human rights as health care, housing and education.
Besides Afghans and Pakistanis being killed and displaced at a Bushian clip, these days, our troops are increasingly being killed and wounded so the War Profiteers can squeeze more bucks out of violence. More of our families will be harmed while most of the anti-war movement stands down for Obama.
This is unconscionable.
I don't care if you love Obama, or hate him, or something in between (he has the lowest approval ratings of any President after 7 months in office), we must loathe his wars and his crazy hate speech directed at our brothers and sisters in war torn regions.
Please join us on Martha's Vineyard from August 26th-30th to demonstrate to the world that there are still some people here in America who want peace no matter who's inhabits the Oval Office.
For more information please email, or call:
Laurie Dobson
lauriegdobson@yahoo.com
(207) 604-8988
or
Bruce Marshall
brmas@yahoo.com
(802) 767-6079
Or donate to help with the expenses:
Go to: www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com
And click the DONATE link.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/president-exhibits-crazy-speech.html
As I listened to clips of Obama's speech to the VFW on August 17th, 2009, I was wondering if his speechwriters were on vacation and they just recycled an old Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice speech.
While the so-called left is focused on the health care debacle and is allowing the so-called right to define the debate when it should be: Medicare for all, and all for Medicare; Obama and his neocon foreign policy team are preparing for a decades long, bloody foray in Af-Pak.
As Yael T. Abouhalkah, an editorial writer for the Kansas City Star, put it:
President Barack Obama did his best imitation of former President George Bush Monday at the VFW national convention in Phoenix.This is one of the reasons I am leading protests next week on Martha's Vineyard where President Obama will be vacationing. The anti-war movement cannot allow itself to be co-opted by the Democratic Party any longer.
Obama sounded downright hawkish -- and, yes, presidential -- when he addressed the issue of terrorism in front of the veteran-laden crowd…Dick Cheney could not have said it better.
We cannot allow the War Party and other elites to define the terms of the War Debate.
Obama actually had this to say in his speech in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW):
We must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.He also made a lot of other crazy Bushian statements, but this one has to take the cake and lead the charge for peace!
One thing that we must NEVER forget is that the Taliban, and especially the people of Afghanistan (26 members of a WEDDING party, not WAR party, but WEDDING party were bombed and killed yesterday) DID NOT attack us on 9/11. Even if Osama did plan the attacks from someplace in Afghanistan (not likely) this war of choice is not about defending America. Remember: profit is not a consequence of war, it is the reason for war. And how can we as a nation allow the War Party to sacrifice innocent babies for the illusion of safety? Afghanistan is just as much a war of choice as Iraq is, and Obama is choosing to continue it by exploiting the lies.
What is fundamental to the defense of our people is a sane foreign policy, not more war crimes brought to the world by the War Criminals in DC. What is fundamental to our health and prosperity is to bring the troops home from Iraq-Af-Pak and reduce the Pentagon budget so we can afford such basic human rights as health care, housing and education.
Besides Afghans and Pakistanis being killed and displaced at a Bushian clip, these days, our troops are increasingly being killed and wounded so the War Profiteers can squeeze more bucks out of violence. More of our families will be harmed while most of the anti-war movement stands down for Obama.
This is unconscionable.
I don't care if you love Obama, or hate him, or something in between (he has the lowest approval ratings of any President after 7 months in office), we must loathe his wars and his crazy hate speech directed at our brothers and sisters in war torn regions.
Please join us on Martha's Vineyard from August 26th-30th to demonstrate to the world that there are still some people here in America who want peace no matter who's inhabits the Oval Office.
For more information please email, or call:
Laurie Dobson
lauriegdobson@yahoo.com
(207) 604-8988
or
Bruce Marshall
brmas@yahoo.com
(802) 767-6079
Or donate to help with the expenses:
Go to: www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com
And click the DONATE link.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/08/president-exhibits-crazy-speech.html
6 U.S. troops die in Afghanistan ahead of election
USATODAY.com, Aug. 19, 2009
KABUL (AP) — The U.S. military said Wednesday six American troops were killed in Afghanistan, as militants killed six election workers amid growing fears on the eve of the presidential election that insurgents would mar the vote.
Two troops were killed in gunfire in the south on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, while a third was killed in an unspecified hostile attack. The U.S. also said a roadside bomb Tuesday in the south killed two troops, while another died of noncombat-related injuries. No other details were released.
BACKGROUND: Gunfire erupts ahead of presidential vote
The deaths bring to at least 32 the number of American troops killed in the country this month, a record pace. Forty-four U.S. troops died in Afghanistan last month, the deadliest month of the eight-year war.
Attacks in the countryside killed six election workers, officials said Wednesday, one day before Afghanistan decides whether President Hamid Karzai deserves a second five-year term. In Kabul, three Taliban militants took over a bank, and gunfire and small explosions reverberated throughout the capital. Police stormed the bank and killed the three militants.
The drumbeat of attacks would appear to signal the intent of Taliban insurgents and their militant allies to disrupt Thursday's vote.
Karzai faces some three dozen presidential candidates at the polls, including his former foreign minister and top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Islamist insurgents have threatened violence against those who take part in the election — a crucial step in President Obama's campaign to turn around the deteriorating war.
Afghanistan's electoral commission said all but one of the country's 364 districts had received voting materials. Polls open at 7 a.m. Thursday (0230 GMT Thursday, 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday).
In a region generally considered safe, four election workers were killed Tuesday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 miles (30 kilometers) outside the capital of northeastern Badakhshan province. Officials said the four were delivering materials to a polling station.
Another two election workers were killed in Shorabak district of Kandahar province on Tuesday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, said Abdul Wasai Alakozai, the chief electoral officer for southern Afghanistan.
A remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded early Wednesday near a vehicle taking voting supplies to a poll in the Chaparhar district of the eastern province of Nangarhar, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the governor's spokesman. The driver was slightly wounded, but the voting materials were not damaged, he said. Security forces arrested the man who detonated the bomb, he said.
The Interior Ministry says about a third of Afghanistan is at high-risk of militant attack, and that no polling stations will open in eight Afghan districts under control of militants.
The three armed men took over a branch of the Pashtani bank early Wednesday in a section of Kabul's old city still in ruins from the country's 1990s civil war. Police surrounded the building, exchanging gunfire with the attackers.
Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, head of Kabul's criminal investigations unit, said police eventually stormed the building and killed three "terrorists." Few civilians were in the area because government ministries and businesses were closed Wednesday in observance of Afghanistan's independence from British rule.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said 20 armed suicide attackers wearing explosive vests had entered Kabul and that five of them battled police. The claim could not be confirmed, but the Taliban in recent months have unleashed several attacks involving teams of insurgents assaulting government or high-profile sites.
The latest attacks were an ominous sign that the Taliban and their militant allies are determined to disrupt Thursday's election.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the rise in insurgent violence in Afghanistan reflected a deliberate campaign to intimidate voters. A shopkeeper near Wednesday's gunfire attack in Kabul, Abdul Jalal, said that if violence persisted into Thursday, he and his wife would not vote.
"Tomorrow we plan to go the polling center," said Jalal. "But if it was like today, we will not vote. Elections are a good thing for Afghanistan, but security is more important."
Attacks nationwide have increased in recent days from a daily average of about 32 to 48, said Brig. Gen. E. Tremblay, the spokesman for the NATO-led force. Even with the increase, Tremblay said that insurgents do not have the ability to widely disrupt voting at the country's 6,500 or so polling sites.
"When you're looking purely at statistics ... they're not going to be able to attack even 1% of the entire polling sites in this country," he said on Tuesday.
U.N. Secretery-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged all Afghans to vote and said that by participating in the election Afghans will help "bring fresh vigor to the country's political life, and ultimately reaffirm their commitment to contribute to the peace and prosperity of their nation."
The next president will face challenges on several fronts: the rising Taliban insurgency, internal political divisions, ethnic tensions, unemployment, the country's drug trade and corruption.
Karzai is favored to win, but if he does not get more than 50% of Thursday's vote he and the second-place finisher will face off in an October run-off. Polls show Abdullah in second place with around 25% support and Karzai's support around 45%.
Preliminary official results of the presidential election should be announced sometime Saturday evening.
Fearing that violence may dampen turnout, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement Tuesday demanding that news organizations to avoid "broadcasting any incidence of violence" between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on election day "to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people."
In other violence, a roadside bomb killed a district government leader and a tribal elder early Wednesday in the Registan district of Kandahar, said Ghulam Ali Wahadat, a police commander in southern Afghanistan.
Another roadside bomb in Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, killed three policemen, said Ali Jan, a provincial police official.
KABUL (AP) — The U.S. military said Wednesday six American troops were killed in Afghanistan, as militants killed six election workers amid growing fears on the eve of the presidential election that insurgents would mar the vote.
Two troops were killed in gunfire in the south on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, while a third was killed in an unspecified hostile attack. The U.S. also said a roadside bomb Tuesday in the south killed two troops, while another died of noncombat-related injuries. No other details were released.
BACKGROUND: Gunfire erupts ahead of presidential vote
The deaths bring to at least 32 the number of American troops killed in the country this month, a record pace. Forty-four U.S. troops died in Afghanistan last month, the deadliest month of the eight-year war.
Attacks in the countryside killed six election workers, officials said Wednesday, one day before Afghanistan decides whether President Hamid Karzai deserves a second five-year term. In Kabul, three Taliban militants took over a bank, and gunfire and small explosions reverberated throughout the capital. Police stormed the bank and killed the three militants.
The drumbeat of attacks would appear to signal the intent of Taliban insurgents and their militant allies to disrupt Thursday's vote.
Karzai faces some three dozen presidential candidates at the polls, including his former foreign minister and top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Islamist insurgents have threatened violence against those who take part in the election — a crucial step in President Obama's campaign to turn around the deteriorating war.
Afghanistan's electoral commission said all but one of the country's 364 districts had received voting materials. Polls open at 7 a.m. Thursday (0230 GMT Thursday, 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday).
In a region generally considered safe, four election workers were killed Tuesday when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 miles (30 kilometers) outside the capital of northeastern Badakhshan province. Officials said the four were delivering materials to a polling station.
Another two election workers were killed in Shorabak district of Kandahar province on Tuesday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, said Abdul Wasai Alakozai, the chief electoral officer for southern Afghanistan.
A remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded early Wednesday near a vehicle taking voting supplies to a poll in the Chaparhar district of the eastern province of Nangarhar, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the governor's spokesman. The driver was slightly wounded, but the voting materials were not damaged, he said. Security forces arrested the man who detonated the bomb, he said.
The Interior Ministry says about a third of Afghanistan is at high-risk of militant attack, and that no polling stations will open in eight Afghan districts under control of militants.
The three armed men took over a branch of the Pashtani bank early Wednesday in a section of Kabul's old city still in ruins from the country's 1990s civil war. Police surrounded the building, exchanging gunfire with the attackers.
Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, head of Kabul's criminal investigations unit, said police eventually stormed the building and killed three "terrorists." Few civilians were in the area because government ministries and businesses were closed Wednesday in observance of Afghanistan's independence from British rule.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said 20 armed suicide attackers wearing explosive vests had entered Kabul and that five of them battled police. The claim could not be confirmed, but the Taliban in recent months have unleashed several attacks involving teams of insurgents assaulting government or high-profile sites.
The latest attacks were an ominous sign that the Taliban and their militant allies are determined to disrupt Thursday's election.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the rise in insurgent violence in Afghanistan reflected a deliberate campaign to intimidate voters. A shopkeeper near Wednesday's gunfire attack in Kabul, Abdul Jalal, said that if violence persisted into Thursday, he and his wife would not vote.
"Tomorrow we plan to go the polling center," said Jalal. "But if it was like today, we will not vote. Elections are a good thing for Afghanistan, but security is more important."
Attacks nationwide have increased in recent days from a daily average of about 32 to 48, said Brig. Gen. E. Tremblay, the spokesman for the NATO-led force. Even with the increase, Tremblay said that insurgents do not have the ability to widely disrupt voting at the country's 6,500 or so polling sites.
"When you're looking purely at statistics ... they're not going to be able to attack even 1% of the entire polling sites in this country," he said on Tuesday.
U.N. Secretery-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged all Afghans to vote and said that by participating in the election Afghans will help "bring fresh vigor to the country's political life, and ultimately reaffirm their commitment to contribute to the peace and prosperity of their nation."
The next president will face challenges on several fronts: the rising Taliban insurgency, internal political divisions, ethnic tensions, unemployment, the country's drug trade and corruption.
Karzai is favored to win, but if he does not get more than 50% of Thursday's vote he and the second-place finisher will face off in an October run-off. Polls show Abdullah in second place with around 25% support and Karzai's support around 45%.
Preliminary official results of the presidential election should be announced sometime Saturday evening.
Fearing that violence may dampen turnout, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement Tuesday demanding that news organizations to avoid "broadcasting any incidence of violence" between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on election day "to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people."
In other violence, a roadside bomb killed a district government leader and a tribal elder early Wednesday in the Registan district of Kandahar, said Ghulam Ali Wahadat, a police commander in southern Afghanistan.
Another roadside bomb in Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, killed three policemen, said Ali Jan, a provincial police official.
Winners And Losers In The American Warfare State
By Sherwood Ross, Aug. 17, 2009
“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”
Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea of why the war Fadel deplored is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.” What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.
“Defense Earnings Continue to Soar,” Renae Merle wrote in The Washington Post on July 30, 2007. “Several of Washington’s largest defense contractors said last week that they continue to benefit from a boom in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…” Merle added, “Profit reports from Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin showed particularly strong results in operations in the region.” More recently, Boeing’s second-quarter earnings this year rose 17 percent, Associated Press reported, in part because of what AP called “robust defense sales.”
But war, it turns out, is not only unhealthy for human beings, it is not uniformly good for the economy. Many sectors suffer, including non-defense employment, as a war can destroy more jobs than it creates. While the makers of warplanes may be flying high, these are “Tough Times For Commercial Aerospace,” Business Week reported July 13th. “The sector is contending with the deepening global recession, declining air traffic, capacity cuts by airlines, and reduced availability of financing for aircraft purchases.”
The general public suffers, too. “As President Bush tried to fight the war without increasing taxes, the Iraq war has displaced private investment and/or government expenditures, including investments in infrastructure, R&D and education: they are less than they would otherwise have been,” write Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(Norton). Stiglitz holds a Nobel Prize in economics and Bilmes is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They say government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.
The war has also starved countless firms for expansion bucks. “Higher borrowing costs for business since the beginning of the Iraq war are bleeding manufacturing investment,” Greg Palast wrote in “Armed Madhouse”(Plume). And when entrepreneurs---who hire so many---lack growth capital, job creation takes a real hit.
We might recall too, the millions abroad who filled the streets to protest President Bush’s impending attack on Iraq and who have quit buying U.S. products, further reducing sales and employment. “American firms, especially those that have become icons, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, may also suffer, not so much from explicit boycotts as from a broader sense of dislike of all things American,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “America’s standing in the world has never been lower,” they say, noting that in 2007, U.S. “favorable” ratings plunged to 29 percent in Indonesia and nine percent in Turkey. “Large numbers of wealthy people in the Middle East---where the oil money and inequality put individual wealth in the billions---have shifted banking from America to elsewhere,” they say.
Because the Iraq war crippled that country’s oil industry, output fell, supplies tightened, and, according to Palast, “World prices leaped to reflect the shortfall…” What’s more, he points out, after the Iraq invasion the Saudis withheld more than a million barrels of oil a day from the market. “The one-year 121% post-invasion jump in the price of crude, from under $30 a barrel to over $60, sucked that $120 billion windfall to the Saudis from SUV drivers and factory owners in the West.” Count the Saudis among the big winners.
The oil spike subtracted 1.2% from the gross domestic product, “costing the USA just over one million jobs,” Palast reckoned. Stiglitz and Bilmes said the oil price spike means “American families have had to spend about 5 percent more of their income on gasoline and heating than before.” Last year, the Iraq and Afghan wars cost each American household $138 per month in taxes, they estimated. Count the Joneses among the big losers.
Palast writes, “It has been a very good war for Big Oil---courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004…But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $120 billion in profits to come in 2006: $15.6 billion for Conoco, $17.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon’s $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $378 billion.
Palast notes the oil firms have their own reserves whose value is tied to OPEC’s price targets, and “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil oil alone by just over $666 billion…Chevron Oil, where Condoleezza Rice had served as a director, gained a quarter trillion dollars in value…I calculate that the top five oil operators saw their reserves rise in value by over $2.363 trillion.” Who’s surprised when Forbes reports of the ten most profitable corporations in the world five are now oil and gas companies---Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Petro-China.
“Since the Iraq War began,” Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, “aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled.” An Associated Press account published July 23rd observed: “With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven.”
Among the big winners are top Pentagon contractors, as ranked by WashingtonTechnology.com as of 2008. Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007 and their operations are covered later. Data was selected for typical years 2007-09.
1.Lockheed Martin
2. Boeing
3. KBR
4. Northrop Grumman
5. General Dynamics
6. Raytheon
7. SAIC
8. L-3 Communciations
9. EDS Corporation
10. Fluor Corporation
# Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., a major warplane builder, in 2007 alone earned profits of $3 billion on sales of nearly $42 billion.
# Boeing, of Chicago, saw its 2007 net profit shoot up 84% to $4 billion, fed by “strong growth in defense earnings,” according to an Agence France-Presse report.
# Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, a manufacturer of bombers, warships and military electronics, had 2007 profits of $1.8 billion on sales of $32 billion.
# General Dynamics, of Falls Church, Va., had profits in 2008 of about $2.5 billion on sales of $29 billion. It makes tanks, combat vehicles, and mission-critical information systems.
# Raytheon, of Waltham, Mass, reported about $23 billion in sales for 2008. It is the world’s largest missile maker and Bloomberg News says it is benefiting from “higher domestic defense spending and U.S. arms exports.”
# Scientific International Applications Corp., of La Jolla, Calif., an engineering and technology supplier to the Pentagon, had sales of $10 billion for fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, and net income of $452 million.
# L-3, of New York City, has enjoyed sales growth of about 25% a year recently. Its total 2008 sales of $15 billion brought it profits of nearly $900 million. Its primary customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies high tech surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
# EDS Corp., of Plano, Tex., purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May, 2008, had 2007 sales of nearly $20 billion. Its priority project is building the $12 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, said to be the largest private network in the world.
# Fluor Corp., of Irvine, Tex., an engineering and construction firm, had net earnings of $720 million in 2008 on sales of $22 billion.
The good times continue to roll for military contractors under President Obama, who has increased the Pentagon’s budget by 4 percent to a total of about $700 billion. One reason military contractors fare so well is that no-bid contracts with built-in profit margins tumble out of the Pentagon cornucopia directly into their laps. The element of “risk,” so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at socialist governments abroad. If this isn’t enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7% compared to 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.
Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, according to author Pratap Chatterjee in his “Halliburton’s Army”(Nation Books), raked in “more than $25 billion since the company won a ten-year contract in late 2001 to supply U.S. troops in combat situations around the world.” As all know, President Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney previously headed Halliburton (1995-2000) and landed in the White House the same year Halliburton got its humungous outsourcing contract. Earlier, as Defense Secretary, (1989-1993) Cheney sparked the revolutionary change to outsourcing military support services to the privateers. Today, Halliburton ranks among the biggest “defense” winners of all.
Halliburton’s army “employs enough people to staff one hundred battalions, a total of more than 50,000 personnel who work for KBR, a contract that is now projected to reach $150 billion,” Chatterjee writes. “Together with the workers who are rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and the private security divisions of companies like Blackwater, Halliburton’s Army now outnumber the uniformed soldiers on the ground in Iraq.”
Accompanying Pentagon outsourcing, Chatterjee writes, “is the potential for bribery, corruption, and fraud. Dozens of Halliburton/KBR workers and their subcontractors have already been arrested and charged, and several are already serving jail terms for stealing millions of dollars, notably from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.”
There’s likely no better example of how Halliburton/KBR literally burned taxpayers’ dollars than its destruction of $85,000 Mercedes and Volvo trucks when they got flat tires and were abandoned. James Warren, a convoy truck driver testified to the Government Affairs Committee in July, 2004, “KBR didn’t seem to care what happened to its trucks…It was common to torch trucks that we abandoned…even though we all carried chains and could have towed them to be repaired.”
Bunnatine Greenhouse, once top contract official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made headlines by demanding old-fashioned free enterprise competitive bidding. She told a Senate committee in 2005: “I can unequivocally state the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed” in 20 years of working on government contracts. Greenhouse was demoted for her adherence to the law, Chatterjee said, but she became a cover girl at “Fraud” magazine and was honored by the Giraffe Society, a tribute to one Federal employee who stuck her neck out.
Tales of Halliburton/KBR’s alleged swindles fill books. Rory Maybee, a former Halliburton/KBR contractor who worked at dining facilities in Camp Anaconda in 2004 told the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee “that the company often provided rotten food to the troops and often charged the army for 20 thousand meals a day when it was serving only ten thousand.” Food swindling, though, is small potatoes. Say Stiglitz and Bilmes: “KBR has also been implicated in a lucrative insurance scam that has gouged U.S. taxpayers for at least $600 million.”
To fatten profit margins, contractors who cheat U.S. taxpayers apparently think nothing of underpaying their help. “While the executives of KBR, Blackwater, and other firms are making profits, many of those performing the menial work, such as cooking, driving, cleaning, and laundry, are poorly paid nationals from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “Indian cooks are reported to earn $3-$5 a day. At the same time, KBR bills the American taxpayer $100 per load of laundry.” Blackwater, the security firm repeatedly charged with shoot-first tactics, fraudulently obtained small-business set-aside contracts worth more than $144 million, they assert.
According to “Blackwater”(Nation Books) by Jeremy Scahill, the security firm in 2004 got a five-year contract to protect U.S. officials in Iraq totaling $229 million but as of June, 2006, just two years into the contract, it had been paid $321 million, and by late 2007 it had been paid more than $750 million. Scahill reports an audit charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs. The result was “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.” Scahill writes, “The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.”
“As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors’ deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000),” Scahill said. “These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. …This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq.” And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America’s No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America’s biggest export is war.
“Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?” philosopher Noam Chomsky asks rhetorically in his “Imperial Ambitions” (Metropolitan Books). “The U.S. taxpayer,” he answers. “The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” It’s also been a body blow to Iraq, killing a million inhabitants, forcing two million into exile and millions more out of their homes. Incredibly, the U.S. proposed to reconstruct the nation it invaded with their oil revenues---and then, after taking perhaps $8 billion left the job undone. (Since the U.S. kept no records of how the dough was dispensed, it is not possible to identify the recipients.)
As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, “The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns.” In an article in the August 24th Nation, policy analyst Georgia Levenson Keohane cites the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to the effect that 48 states are reporting deficits totaling nearly $166 billion, projected to reach, cumulatively, $350 billion-$370 billion by 2011. “Although many states have attempted tax increases, these are politically challenging and often insufficient to close the gaps. Consequently, statehouses have been forced to cut vital services at a time when the need for them is ever more desperate,” Keohane writes.
In the same issue, reporter Marc Cooper notes the poverty rate in Los Angeles county borders on 20 percent; that California’s schools are ranked 47th nationally; that the state college system has suspended admissions for Spring, 2010; that thousands of state workers are being laid off and/or forced to take furlough days; that unemployment has reached 12 percent; that state parks are being closed; that personal bankruptcies peaked last; that one in four “capsized mortgages in the U.S. is in California.” Plus, California’s bond rating is just above the junk level and it faces a $26 billion budget shortfall.
California’s woes need to be examined in the light of the $116 billion the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says its taxpayers have shelled out for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Those same dollars roughly would put four million California students through a four-year college. Bear in mind, too, outlays for those wars are but a fraction of all Pentagon spending, so the total military tax bill is far higher than $116 billion to California.
In calling for a reduction in military spending, Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) said, "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy….(American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face." On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known. My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven’t connected the country’s looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people, and its precious resources.
After the long-suffering civilian population of Iraq, whose crime was having oil---a country Steiglitz says that has been rendered virtually unlivable---the big losers are the American taxpayers who are bleeding income, jobs, and quality of life, not just sacrificing family members, on behalf of a runaway war machine. California’s plight is being repeated everywhere. A great nation is being looted and millions of its citizens are being pauperized before our eyes.
(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant who has worked as a reporter for major dailies, a publicist in the civil rights movement, and as a wire service columnist. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com or visit his web site Sherwood Ross Associates.)
“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”
Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea of why the war Fadel deplored is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.” What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.
“Defense Earnings Continue to Soar,” Renae Merle wrote in The Washington Post on July 30, 2007. “Several of Washington’s largest defense contractors said last week that they continue to benefit from a boom in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…” Merle added, “Profit reports from Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin showed particularly strong results in operations in the region.” More recently, Boeing’s second-quarter earnings this year rose 17 percent, Associated Press reported, in part because of what AP called “robust defense sales.”
But war, it turns out, is not only unhealthy for human beings, it is not uniformly good for the economy. Many sectors suffer, including non-defense employment, as a war can destroy more jobs than it creates. While the makers of warplanes may be flying high, these are “Tough Times For Commercial Aerospace,” Business Week reported July 13th. “The sector is contending with the deepening global recession, declining air traffic, capacity cuts by airlines, and reduced availability of financing for aircraft purchases.”
The general public suffers, too. “As President Bush tried to fight the war without increasing taxes, the Iraq war has displaced private investment and/or government expenditures, including investments in infrastructure, R&D and education: they are less than they would otherwise have been,” write Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(Norton). Stiglitz holds a Nobel Prize in economics and Bilmes is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They say government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.
The war has also starved countless firms for expansion bucks. “Higher borrowing costs for business since the beginning of the Iraq war are bleeding manufacturing investment,” Greg Palast wrote in “Armed Madhouse”(Plume). And when entrepreneurs---who hire so many---lack growth capital, job creation takes a real hit.
We might recall too, the millions abroad who filled the streets to protest President Bush’s impending attack on Iraq and who have quit buying U.S. products, further reducing sales and employment. “American firms, especially those that have become icons, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, may also suffer, not so much from explicit boycotts as from a broader sense of dislike of all things American,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “America’s standing in the world has never been lower,” they say, noting that in 2007, U.S. “favorable” ratings plunged to 29 percent in Indonesia and nine percent in Turkey. “Large numbers of wealthy people in the Middle East---where the oil money and inequality put individual wealth in the billions---have shifted banking from America to elsewhere,” they say.
Because the Iraq war crippled that country’s oil industry, output fell, supplies tightened, and, according to Palast, “World prices leaped to reflect the shortfall…” What’s more, he points out, after the Iraq invasion the Saudis withheld more than a million barrels of oil a day from the market. “The one-year 121% post-invasion jump in the price of crude, from under $30 a barrel to over $60, sucked that $120 billion windfall to the Saudis from SUV drivers and factory owners in the West.” Count the Saudis among the big winners.
The oil spike subtracted 1.2% from the gross domestic product, “costing the USA just over one million jobs,” Palast reckoned. Stiglitz and Bilmes said the oil price spike means “American families have had to spend about 5 percent more of their income on gasoline and heating than before.” Last year, the Iraq and Afghan wars cost each American household $138 per month in taxes, they estimated. Count the Joneses among the big losers.
Palast writes, “It has been a very good war for Big Oil---courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004…But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $120 billion in profits to come in 2006: $15.6 billion for Conoco, $17.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon’s $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $378 billion.
Palast notes the oil firms have their own reserves whose value is tied to OPEC’s price targets, and “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil oil alone by just over $666 billion…Chevron Oil, where Condoleezza Rice had served as a director, gained a quarter trillion dollars in value…I calculate that the top five oil operators saw their reserves rise in value by over $2.363 trillion.” Who’s surprised when Forbes reports of the ten most profitable corporations in the world five are now oil and gas companies---Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Petro-China.
“Since the Iraq War began,” Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, “aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled.” An Associated Press account published July 23rd observed: “With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven.”
Among the big winners are top Pentagon contractors, as ranked by WashingtonTechnology.com as of 2008. Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007 and their operations are covered later. Data was selected for typical years 2007-09.
1.Lockheed Martin
2. Boeing
3. KBR
4. Northrop Grumman
5. General Dynamics
6. Raytheon
7. SAIC
8. L-3 Communciations
9. EDS Corporation
10. Fluor Corporation
# Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., a major warplane builder, in 2007 alone earned profits of $3 billion on sales of nearly $42 billion.
# Boeing, of Chicago, saw its 2007 net profit shoot up 84% to $4 billion, fed by “strong growth in defense earnings,” according to an Agence France-Presse report.
# Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, a manufacturer of bombers, warships and military electronics, had 2007 profits of $1.8 billion on sales of $32 billion.
# General Dynamics, of Falls Church, Va., had profits in 2008 of about $2.5 billion on sales of $29 billion. It makes tanks, combat vehicles, and mission-critical information systems.
# Raytheon, of Waltham, Mass, reported about $23 billion in sales for 2008. It is the world’s largest missile maker and Bloomberg News says it is benefiting from “higher domestic defense spending and U.S. arms exports.”
# Scientific International Applications Corp., of La Jolla, Calif., an engineering and technology supplier to the Pentagon, had sales of $10 billion for fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, and net income of $452 million.
# L-3, of New York City, has enjoyed sales growth of about 25% a year recently. Its total 2008 sales of $15 billion brought it profits of nearly $900 million. Its primary customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies high tech surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
# EDS Corp., of Plano, Tex., purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May, 2008, had 2007 sales of nearly $20 billion. Its priority project is building the $12 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, said to be the largest private network in the world.
# Fluor Corp., of Irvine, Tex., an engineering and construction firm, had net earnings of $720 million in 2008 on sales of $22 billion.
The good times continue to roll for military contractors under President Obama, who has increased the Pentagon’s budget by 4 percent to a total of about $700 billion. One reason military contractors fare so well is that no-bid contracts with built-in profit margins tumble out of the Pentagon cornucopia directly into their laps. The element of “risk,” so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at socialist governments abroad. If this isn’t enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7% compared to 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.
Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, according to author Pratap Chatterjee in his “Halliburton’s Army”(Nation Books), raked in “more than $25 billion since the company won a ten-year contract in late 2001 to supply U.S. troops in combat situations around the world.” As all know, President Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney previously headed Halliburton (1995-2000) and landed in the White House the same year Halliburton got its humungous outsourcing contract. Earlier, as Defense Secretary, (1989-1993) Cheney sparked the revolutionary change to outsourcing military support services to the privateers. Today, Halliburton ranks among the biggest “defense” winners of all.
Halliburton’s army “employs enough people to staff one hundred battalions, a total of more than 50,000 personnel who work for KBR, a contract that is now projected to reach $150 billion,” Chatterjee writes. “Together with the workers who are rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and the private security divisions of companies like Blackwater, Halliburton’s Army now outnumber the uniformed soldiers on the ground in Iraq.”
Accompanying Pentagon outsourcing, Chatterjee writes, “is the potential for bribery, corruption, and fraud. Dozens of Halliburton/KBR workers and their subcontractors have already been arrested and charged, and several are already serving jail terms for stealing millions of dollars, notably from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.”
There’s likely no better example of how Halliburton/KBR literally burned taxpayers’ dollars than its destruction of $85,000 Mercedes and Volvo trucks when they got flat tires and were abandoned. James Warren, a convoy truck driver testified to the Government Affairs Committee in July, 2004, “KBR didn’t seem to care what happened to its trucks…It was common to torch trucks that we abandoned…even though we all carried chains and could have towed them to be repaired.”
Bunnatine Greenhouse, once top contract official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made headlines by demanding old-fashioned free enterprise competitive bidding. She told a Senate committee in 2005: “I can unequivocally state the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed” in 20 years of working on government contracts. Greenhouse was demoted for her adherence to the law, Chatterjee said, but she became a cover girl at “Fraud” magazine and was honored by the Giraffe Society, a tribute to one Federal employee who stuck her neck out.
Tales of Halliburton/KBR’s alleged swindles fill books. Rory Maybee, a former Halliburton/KBR contractor who worked at dining facilities in Camp Anaconda in 2004 told the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee “that the company often provided rotten food to the troops and often charged the army for 20 thousand meals a day when it was serving only ten thousand.” Food swindling, though, is small potatoes. Say Stiglitz and Bilmes: “KBR has also been implicated in a lucrative insurance scam that has gouged U.S. taxpayers for at least $600 million.”
To fatten profit margins, contractors who cheat U.S. taxpayers apparently think nothing of underpaying their help. “While the executives of KBR, Blackwater, and other firms are making profits, many of those performing the menial work, such as cooking, driving, cleaning, and laundry, are poorly paid nationals from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “Indian cooks are reported to earn $3-$5 a day. At the same time, KBR bills the American taxpayer $100 per load of laundry.” Blackwater, the security firm repeatedly charged with shoot-first tactics, fraudulently obtained small-business set-aside contracts worth more than $144 million, they assert.
According to “Blackwater”(Nation Books) by Jeremy Scahill, the security firm in 2004 got a five-year contract to protect U.S. officials in Iraq totaling $229 million but as of June, 2006, just two years into the contract, it had been paid $321 million, and by late 2007 it had been paid more than $750 million. Scahill reports an audit charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs. The result was “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.” Scahill writes, “The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.”
“As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors’ deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000),” Scahill said. “These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. …This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq.” And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America’s No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America’s biggest export is war.
“Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?” philosopher Noam Chomsky asks rhetorically in his “Imperial Ambitions” (Metropolitan Books). “The U.S. taxpayer,” he answers. “The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” It’s also been a body blow to Iraq, killing a million inhabitants, forcing two million into exile and millions more out of their homes. Incredibly, the U.S. proposed to reconstruct the nation it invaded with their oil revenues---and then, after taking perhaps $8 billion left the job undone. (Since the U.S. kept no records of how the dough was dispensed, it is not possible to identify the recipients.)
As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, “The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns.” In an article in the August 24th Nation, policy analyst Georgia Levenson Keohane cites the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to the effect that 48 states are reporting deficits totaling nearly $166 billion, projected to reach, cumulatively, $350 billion-$370 billion by 2011. “Although many states have attempted tax increases, these are politically challenging and often insufficient to close the gaps. Consequently, statehouses have been forced to cut vital services at a time when the need for them is ever more desperate,” Keohane writes.
In the same issue, reporter Marc Cooper notes the poverty rate in Los Angeles county borders on 20 percent; that California’s schools are ranked 47th nationally; that the state college system has suspended admissions for Spring, 2010; that thousands of state workers are being laid off and/or forced to take furlough days; that unemployment has reached 12 percent; that state parks are being closed; that personal bankruptcies peaked last; that one in four “capsized mortgages in the U.S. is in California.” Plus, California’s bond rating is just above the junk level and it faces a $26 billion budget shortfall.
California’s woes need to be examined in the light of the $116 billion the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says its taxpayers have shelled out for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Those same dollars roughly would put four million California students through a four-year college. Bear in mind, too, outlays for those wars are but a fraction of all Pentagon spending, so the total military tax bill is far higher than $116 billion to California.
In calling for a reduction in military spending, Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) said, "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy….(American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face." On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known. My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven’t connected the country’s looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people, and its precious resources.
After the long-suffering civilian population of Iraq, whose crime was having oil---a country Steiglitz says that has been rendered virtually unlivable---the big losers are the American taxpayers who are bleeding income, jobs, and quality of life, not just sacrificing family members, on behalf of a runaway war machine. California’s plight is being repeated everywhere. A great nation is being looted and millions of its citizens are being pauperized before our eyes.
(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant who has worked as a reporter for major dailies, a publicist in the civil rights movement, and as a wire service columnist. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com or visit his web site Sherwood Ross Associates.)
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