US Boots on the Ground In Pakistan

Obama: March, 2009:

Asked if he meant he would put U.S. troops on the ground in Pakistan, Obama said: "No."

February, 2010: Troop Deaths Draw Focus to U.S. Presence in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack Wednesday lifted the veil on United States military assistance to Pakistan that the authorities here would like to keep quiet and the Americans, as the donors, chafe at not receiving credit for.

They "chafe", do they? And how about Obama? Does he "chafe" too after telling the American people that there wouldn't be any American boots on the ground last year? If he does, it's probably because he's broken yet another very public promise and now has to face the music - along with even more ire from the Pakistani people who overwhelmingly reject a US military presence there.

Related:

Obama ups Pakistan drone strikes in assassination campaign

U.S. terror suspects in Pakistan allege FBI torture
 

This So-called "War of Necessity"

With Obama reportedly set to announce an increase of US troop levels in Afghanistan by tens of thousands next week - for this "war of necessity", as he calls it - we need to be reminded that the public has been repeatedly told that if that war is a failure (and actually "winning" it has been questionable since Day One) NATO's credibility is on the line.

So, what is this really about? "Democracy promotion"? Been there - done that. Ended up with corrupted election results once again propping up Karzai and his corrupt government.

Improving human rights? Well, the Canadian government would like you to believe that that's what we're they for and they've proven that they'll lie about that - shortchanging humanitarian spending while boosting the military budget.

Defeating al Qaeda? According to General McChrystal, the architect of the proposed troop surge in Afghanistan, he does not "see indications of a large al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan now".

And the Taliban? First of all, we need to be reminded of who they are since "the Taliban" is too often referred to as some monolithic, organized threat. We also need to admit that the Afghans blame poverty for [the] war, making corruption a very lucrative business for those with regional power aka those lumped together as "the Taliban" so we can have a conveniently-named enemy. We also need to question why it is that the US is using [extremely irresponsible and anti-Pakistani sovereignty] drone attacks in Pakistan to go after "the Taliban" there but feels it needs to put tens of thousands more boots on the ground in Afghanistan to achieve the same end. The answer surely can't be about concern for civilians being struck down in Afghanistan since scores of civilians have been wantonly killed by drones in Pakistan.

Obama stated this week that he intends to "finish the job" in Afghanistan - to "dismantle and destroy" al-Qaida terrorists and extremist allies. If that is truly his goal, he and the military will have to be there for decades no matter what his new strategy might entail.

"I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive," he said, speaking at a White House news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Recent polls show that his confidence is misplaced.

If the full expansion that U.S. military planners anticipate does happen, it would take up to two years to get all the additional U.S. forces into the landlocked country.

The United States is quietly pressing NATO and other allies to increase forces as well, with a goal of between 5,000 and 7,000 additional non-U.S. troops.

NATO countries involved in the war have been begging for years for more troops from the US in order to hang on to that NATO credibility.

In the meantime, due to the lack of proper oversight, the US doesn't even know how many contractors it has in country.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting, a bipartisan, independent commission mandated by Congress, presented data at a hearing showing major discrepancies in different accounting methods used to determine the number of U.S. contractors.

A traditional manual count by the U.S. military's Central Command turned up nearly 74,000 U.S. Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan as of June 30 -- more than twice the number shown in another survey by the Pentagon.

"I kind of want to scream.... Why if it's so important, are we failing to do something so basic?" said Christopher Shays, a former Republican lawmaker and a co-chair of the bipartisan committee.

Gary Motsek, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense, acknowledged in testimony that U.S. efforts to create a system to better count the number of contractors in Afghanistan had so far come up short.

"We failed," Motsek said, calling for better funding and regulations to require all U.S. agencies to report figures for contractors. "You should be concerned about the gap, because we are concerned about the gap."

Yet we're supposed to trust these guys to run a war?

Let's not fool ourselves. The fact that Obama is now the US commander-in-chief does not mean that this will suddenly morph into some new and better war. There are only limited war strategies to choose from. More troops does not necessarily equal mission accomplished. That was certainly the lesson from Vietnam. And if we're supposed to be comforted by the so-called success of the "clear, hold and build" strategy employed in Iraq, we have to ask why - if that was indeed a victory - the coalition of the shilling is still at war in that country.

The only honest answer we need to hear from Obama when he addresses his nation next week is that to the question of, "Why is the military still in Afghanistan?" And any answer that includes "national security concerns" must be forcefully challenged.
 

Shooting Rampage at Fort Hood, Texas

The latest from Lt General Bob Cone at Fort Hood:

12 dead
31 injured
3 gunmen ("soldiers") - 1 dead (see update - he's not dead), 2 in custody (see update below)

Cone said the shootings occurred in the "soldier readiness" area.

It was not immediately known whether the victims were all soldiers or civilians, but Cone said at least one of those killed was a civilian police officer and NBC affiliate KCEN-TV of Waco reported that at least four SWAT officers were among those wounded.

It's too early to know what the possible motive may have been.

Update:

CNN has named the slain gunman: "Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, according to a law enforcement source. The source believes he is 39 or 40 years old."

Video from the Associated Press:



Update:

The gunman was an army psychiatrist.

Hasan "was scheduled to be deployed and was upset about that," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said on CNN after receiving a briefing from Army officials.

...

Two other soldiers were initially apprehended on suspicion of involvement in the attack, but they were later released after questioning, and another soldier was picked up as a suspect, military officials said.

UPDATE:

Officials: 12 killed in Fort Hood shootings; suspect alive

(CNN) -- At least one soldier opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday, killing 12 and wounding 31 others, officials at the Army base said.

The gunman, who officials initially said was killed, is wounded but alive, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone said.

Cone said that man is believed to be the only shooter.

Obama's Extrajudicial Executions

"Extrajudicial executions". That's a nasty phrase, isn't it? And to attach the much-loved and vaunted President Obama's name to it? Well, that's almost akin to blasphemy. But, if you refuse to call the US military drone attacks on Pakistani civilians exactly what they are no matter which party you support, you're simply a hypocrite with no sense of justice for innocent civilians being killed by a war machine that refuses to recognize another country's sovereignty. It is as simple as that.

Via the BBC:

US warned on deadly drone attacks

The US has been warned that its use of drones to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan may violate international law.

UN human rights investigator Philip Alston said the US should explain the legal basis for attacking individuals with the remote-controlled aircraft.

He said the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.

Drones have killed about 600 people in north-west Pakistan since August 2008.

Mr Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: "My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

"The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."

The US, of course, can't prove that executions aren't being carried out because that's exactly what's happening. Any time a drone hits a suspected al Qaeda or Taliban member, the US military boasts about it. And whenever there are reports of civilians being killed, the US military offers its immediate standard denials - labeling them as "militants" or "insurgents" as they have done in Iraq and Afghanistan - while promising to "investigate" further. Those investigations too often result in an eventual admission of guilt that amounts to a correction on page B8 of your local newspaper - if they ever admit fault at all.

Take a look at the numbers if you're in the mood to justify the use of these drones:

LAHORE: Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.

And since then? Back to the BBC:

Increased use

Mr Alston raised the issue in a report to the UN General Assembly's human rights committee on Tuesday.

At a news conference afterwards, he said he had become increasingly concerned at the increase in their use since June, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US told the UN in June that it has a legal framework to respond to unlawful killings. It also said the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict.

But Mr Alston described that response as "simply untenable".

No role? I don't recall the US government using that line about the recent Goldstone report about Israel's Operation Cast Lead that was presented to the UN Human Rights Council (although Obama's government is definitely trying to bury it and congress is set to pass legislation rejecting Goldstone's report ASAP).

And what exactly is that "legal framework to respond to unlawful killings"? That sounds like a holdover policy from the Bush/Cheney/Gonzales administration which assured that no one in the CIA would ever be prosecuted for war crimes or human rights abuses. The Obama administration hasn't exactly embraced the ICC.

And just how much have those drone attack numbers increased? Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman, in the preface to her interview with Philip Alston reports:

Investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine revealed last week the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan has risen dramatically under President Obama. During his first nine-and-a-half months in office, Obama authorized at least forty-one CIA missile strikes in Pakistan, a rate of approximately one bombing a week. That’s as many drone attacks as President Bush sanctioned in his final three years in office. The attacks have killed between 326 and 538 people, that’s according to Jane Mayer. She writes, quote, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official US policy.”

More from that interview:

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the legality of the drones. Does it surprise you how many President Obama has used, at least—what is it?—now saying one a week since the beginning of his term?

PHILIP ALSTON: Right. Well, the frequency doesn’t surprise me, because if you’re a Defense Department person, it’s a very attractive proposition. One can use the Predators without putting US servicemen in any harm. They are very effective. They can kill very significant numbers of people. And one reads very clearly that the likelihood of their usage is going to grow, I think, exponentially, in fact. So Jane Mayer’s figure of one a week is probably only just the beginning of a real expansion of the program.

AMY GOODMAN: You feel it’s illegal?

PHILIP ALSTON: There are circumstances under which it could be legal. In other words, if you are definitely in an armed conflict situation, if you ascertain that there is no other way in which you can capture the combatant that you’re trying to target, and you take all of the relevant precautions to make sure that civilians are not killed, in accordance with the relevant international rules, then it may be legitimate.

The problem is that we have no real information on this program. What Jane Mayer exposed in her New Yorker piece is probably the most detailed information we have. She herself said that the CIA provides no information. It’s extraordinary that it’s the Central Intelligence Agency which is actually operating a missile program, which is actually deciding who to kill, when and where. There’s no accountability for it. There’s no indication of the rules that they use. So, I said before, there are rules, that it’s possible to justify a particular killing, but the CIA has never tried to do that. They have simply issued a general assurance: “No, no, everything’s fine. We really follow the rules, and we’re very careful.” Well, if Israel or some other country that we’re scrutinizing says that, we say, “Sorry, guys, it’s not enough. We need to get the details.”

AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling for a special prosecutor to investigate?

PHILIP ALSTON: No, I’m calling for the government to make clear the details of the program; the legal basis, under US law, on which they are relying; the rules that they have put in place which govern the CIA actions, assuming there are rules; and what sort of accountability mechanisms they have. Do they review what they’ve done? They identify an individual. Often these identifications are very vague. But they say, “OK, we’ve got X in our sights.” Did they actually kill X? Did they kill someone else? How many other civilians did they kill? There’s never any accounting of that. And we need that sort of retrospective analysis, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Jane Mayer writes in her New Yorker piece that in exchange for being able to carry out these drone attacks in Pakistan, the CIA has added some of Pakistan’s enemies to the hit list.

PHILIP ALSTON: Right. Well, that’s one of the problems. It’s a slippery slope, of course, because you start off—it’s always the same. You start off saying, “Look, we’ve got to get someone like Osama bin Laden.” You’ve some big guy at the top. Then you get rid of the big guys, and then you start killing lower-level people. Then you get a few additional people put on the list. And who knows? Maybe we’ll be getting opium lords and various others. And then the locals are able to nominate a few of their friends that they’d like to see out of action. Unless the program is very strictly controlled, the opportunities for abuse are immense.

And, no doubt, the fact that congress just tripled its aid to Pakistan adds to this cozy deal.

Can we expect Obama's CIA/Pentagon to come clean about its drone program? Extremely unlikely. They can hide behind the standard "national security concerns" excuse and it was clear when Obama spoke to CIA employees last spring that he plans to protect them every step of the way.

So what's the big deal about a few extrajudicial executions anyway? Those civilians should have stayed out of the way - obviously.

Related:

Jane Mayer, The New Yorker - The Predator War

Chris Floyd - Depraved Indifference: Drone Wars, Whack Jobs and Imperial Terror

CBS Pro-Drone Propaganda

Mother Jones - Google Finds Drones in Pakistan

And, finally, the latest from Hillary, speaking in Pakistan on Thursday:

Although Clinton said she was making a priority of engaging frankly and openly on her visit, she declined to talk about a subject that has stirred some of the strongest feelings of anti-Americanism here — U.S. drone aircraft attacks against extremist targets on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.

The Obama administration routinely refuses to acknowledge publicly that the attacks are taking place.

"There is a war going on," she said, and the U.S. wants to help Pakistan be successful.

Hmm...I didn't know the US was at war with Pakistan.
 

Let's Bomb Washington!

Oh wow. It's embarrassing to be a Canadian when news like this hits the stands:

Canada to stage mock Afghan attack in Washington

The Taliban will attack an Afghan village set up in the heart of Washington courtesy of the Canadian Forces, who will send in a medic in a dramatic effort to save a civilian crippled by the explosion.

At least four times over two days this month, simulated IED blasts will bring the Afghan war – and Canada's combat role in Kandahar – home to Americans if an elaborate scheme based on modern training realism attracts widespread attention, as is hoped.

“If this works the way I want it to, more Americans will know what Canada is doing in Afghanistan,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Martin, a military attaché at the Canadian embassy.

Yeeha! Eh?

Between scheduled IED attacks at noon and 2 p.m. on Sept. 23, the first day of the conference, there will be an Afghan luncheon hosted by Kabul's envoy to Washington, Ambassador Said Jawad.

A division of Lockheed Martin [double check that bill when they're done. -catnip] that specializes in combat-training simulations will construct the mock village of three buildings and a mini-souk and provide the role-players – Afghan actors who will play the defenceless civilians [because they're running out of real defenceless civilians -catnip]. Strategic Operations Inc., a California company that claims to bring the “magic of Hollywood” to hyper-realistic training, will provide the pyrotechnics for the IED explosions.

Not to be outdone, the US military announced that it will host the following activities:

1. Hide and Seek: Find our secret torture prisons!
2. Whack-an-Afghani civilian: man your own drone and be home in time for supper.
3. Dress Hamid Karzai.
4. Pin the tail on the mass grave sites.

And for those nostalgia buffs who want to harken back to the Pentagon's glory days, there will be an extra-special demonstration:

5. How we napalmed Vietnam!
(Hazmat gear provided. Child volunteers needed.)



Yes. A good time will no doubt be had by all.

Hooah!

(h/t pogge)
 

Selling a Bloodied Afghanistan

Last week, the Stars and Stripes revealed that the Pentagon was using the Rendon Group (a very well-paid company of pro-military propagandists) to "profile reporters" writing about the Afghanistan war.

The new revelations of the Pentagon’s attempts to shape war coverage come as senior Defense Department officials are acknowledging increasing concern over recent opinion polls showing declining popular American support for the Afghan war.
[...]
Stars and Stripes reported on Monday that the Pentagon was screening reporters embedding with U.S. forces to determine whether their past coverage had portrayed the military in a positive light. The story included denials by U.S. military officials that they were using the reporters’ profiles to determine whether to approve embed requests.

In the wake of that story, officials of both the Defense Department and Rendon went further, denying that the rating system exists.

“They are not doing that [rating reporters], that’s not been a practice for some time — actually since the creation of U.S. Forces–Afghanistan” in October 2008, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters Monday. “I can tell you that the way in which the Department of Defense evaluates an article is its accuracy. It’s a good article if it’s accurate. It’s a bad article if it’s inaccurate. That’s the only measurement that we use here at the Defense Department.”

Why anyone believes anything that comes out of the Pentagon is beyond me especially since the only way it ever admits the truth if it ends up being publicly humiliated into doing so.

La voila, today the US military has terminated Rendon's contract.

“The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the Media Analyst contract,” belonging to The Rendon Group, said Col. Wayne Shanks, chief of public affairs for International Security Assistance Forces–Afghanistan.
[...]
“The decision to terminate the Rendon contract was mine and mine alone. As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from our main mission,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, in an e-mail sent Sunday to Stars and Stripes.

Did I say the Pentagon admits "the truth"? Whoops. Sorry. It was all just a "distraction" (cough cough).

“I have been here since early June and at no time has anyone who worked for me ever conducted themselves in a manner as your newspaper alleged. I cannot and will not speculate on the past, although I have found no systemic issues with fairness or equity in the way U.S. forces have run their media embed program.”

Compiling reporters’ past bodies of work is common practice to help the military’s public affairs officers prepare for incoming journalists, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said last week.

On Thursday, Whitman said Rendon would continue to produce the profiles and they would include “characterizations” as positive-to-negative, but he scoffed at their value and said the Pentagon used no such outside analysis.

“This was a decision made by US forces Afghanistan. I would refer you to them for their reasons,” Whitman wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes on Sunday.

Then why fire Rendon?

In at least two of the profiles, copies of which were obtained by Stars and Stripes, Rendon clearly stated the purpose of the analysis was to help military public affairs officers determine what kind of coverage to expect from the journalist, whether to grant their embed request, and if that journalist could be steered toward “positive” coverage for the military.

On Friday, a public affairs officer with the 101st Airborne Division said that when his unit was in Afghanistan and in charge of the Rendon contract, he had used the conclusions contained in Rendon profiles in part to reject at least two journalists’ applications for embeds.

It's not just a US military effort that's been required to keep selling this unpopular war. As I blogged back in 2007, our government had also been very busy at the time (and no doubt since then) trying to convince Canadians that our military presence there was all about the Orwellian-sounding "democracy promotion".

On a side note, I find it interesting that the US and Canadian governments were outraged (outraged!) by claims of election corruption/rigging in Iran but seem to be absolutely mute about the the same accusations coming out of Afghanistan following that country's recent election. Will the end result there be any more legitimate than what happened in Iran? No. Will our governments really care? No.

Today, controversial military honcho General Stanley McChrystal told BBC News the same old song and dance: time is needed to come up with a new strategy that will allow the Afghan people to control their own country.

The general says the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead - but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police.

It's been 7 years already. Just how long does it take to train these people?

The bottom line is that there is no end game here. This will be Obama's Vietnam. And you can try dressing it up in purple-stained icing and multi-coloured sprinkles but you can't hide the fact that what lies beneath is a new, monthly, record-setting death toll for US troops along with a seemingly never-ending rise in "collateral damage" - all juxtaposed against a corrupt government that will take much more than a new leader to fix.

Meanwhile, an Afghan man said Monday that Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he tried to vote in the Aug. 20 presidential election.

"I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card," Lal Mohammad said from his hospital bed in Kabul. He said they cut off his nose and ears before beating him unconscious with a weapon.

"I regret that I went to vote," Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face. "What is the benefit of voting to me?"

(More about Mr Mohammad here).

Somebody needs to answer his question. Honestly.

Perhaps he should have a chat with Robert Fisk.
 

Secret prisons by any other name...

The NYT reports that the ICRC will now be given the names of so-called terrorist suspects in Obama's secret prisons "temporary screening sites" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But, wait a minute, you're thinking - didn't Obama close the secret prisons?

Well, no.

The executive order he signed last January only included secret CIA prisons. (And we'll never really know if that has actually happened, will we?) Meanwhile, the US military is still more than free to have its own little private gulags.

The New York Times reported in 2006 that some soldiers at the temporary detention site in Iraq, then located at Baghdad International Airport and called Camp Nama, beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces, and used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.

Military officials say conditions at the camps have improved significantly since then, but virtually all details of the sites remain shrouded in secrecy.

There's more of that promised transparency Obama campaigned on.

How often do we need to be reminded that people taken prisoner during these wars have been continuously denied their basic human rights while our governments pretend otherwise?
 

Thousands Disappear in DR Congo

Stunning news:

The first UN aid convoy to reach the heart of rebel-held territory in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo arrived yesterday to find refugee camps that had housed tens of thousands of people last week now standing empty.

Stunned aid workers described the camps around Rutshuru that had been sheltering as many as 50,000 people displaced by the relentless fighting, as levelled with all signs of building materials and people gone.

"All the camps are empty. They have all left," said Francis Nakwafio Kasai, a field officer with the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "All the shelters have been destroyed ... nothing remains."

The BBC adds:

Aid workers found refugee camps that had held tens of thousands were virtually empty. Many people are believed to have fled into the forests around the camps fearing further violence.

While as many as 50,000 displaced people reached Goma, many others have tried to return to their homes on foot without safe shelter, food or water.

The recent rebel offensive was exacerbated by a wave of killing, looting and raping by retreating Congolese soldiers.

On Sunday afternoon, I was surprised to hear CNN anchor Don Lemon actually say at the top of the hour that they'd go straight to their election coverage because there was no other news. Well, guess what Don? There's a helluva more going on in the world than your election and whoever wins will have this growing humanitarian crisis to deal with and AFRICOM is (rightly) off to a very rocky start. Having been refused a permanent headquarters on the continent so far, it will remain based in Germany - and with good reason.

So, just how much attention will be paid to regional conflicts horrors like those in DR Congo and Darfur by a new American administration? And exactly how will that attention be given? African leaders are justified in their concern that the permanent presence of American military personnel on their land will only serve to bring up fears of western colonialism once again. They've been down that road before.

Meanwhile, as the power struggle continues, what will be done about these disappearing and dying refugees?

Related:
Congo's riches fuel its war
 

Convicted Felons in the US Military

This is the US military's idea of hiring the best and brightest:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army and Marine Corps let 861 convicted felons join their ranks in 2007, an 88 percent jump over the previous year that helped meet recruiting goals in wartime, according to data released on Monday.

The Army, the largest branch of the U.S. military, gave felony waivers to 511 recruits last year, up from 249 in 2006, according to the figures released by a congressional panel. The Marine Corps granted 350 waivers, up from 208 the year before.

The waivers for convictions ranging from assault and burglary to manslaughter and sex crimes allowed the military to enlist people otherwise precluded by recruitment standards.

Nearly 250 recruits were granted waivers for their burglary convictions -- 142 from the Marine Corps and 106 from the Army. Another 87 waivers were granted for recruits convicted of aggravated assault.

Both the Army and Marine Corps also granted waivers to recruits convicted of making terrorist threats, including bomb threats. The Marine Corps granted five such waivers in 2007 while the Army granted two.

The Army gave waivers to eight people convicted of arson, 56 convicted of grand larceny and five convicted of sex crimes.

The Marines gave waivers to 11 people convicted of carrying a weapon on school grounds.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce defended waivers, saying the pool of recruits reflected society at large.

"We are a reflection of American society and the changes that affect it: today's young men and women are more overweight, have a greater incidence of asthma and are being charged for offenses that in earlier years wouldn't have been considered a serious offense, and might not have resulted in charges in the first place," he said in an e-mail.

Alrighty. So let's see if I have this straight: making terrorist threats, bomb threats, killing people etc etc etc weren't "serious" offences before...well...sometime before the army decided that people convicted of those types of offences should get the chance to be all they can be in the US military? Have I got that right? And I guess there are too many fat and sick kids now too which makes these waivers the best idea ever!

(Hint: how about ending all of the massive military spending and focusing on health care for everyone for a change? And if all of those convictions can be waived, why not empty some of your overcrowded prisons at the same time - or would you only do that if those people promised to die for you too?)

Well, I guess they can join right in with all of those members of various hate groups over there and have a grand old time of it.

What's wrong with this picture?
 

'UN investigator speaks out against torture, abuse'

That's the headline, but that doesn't exactly cover the whole story:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Soldiers from countries whose armies are suspected of engaging in torture or other abuse should not be considered for peacekeeping duty, the UN's chief anti-torture investigator says.

UN special rapporteur Manfred Nowak said in an interview for Monday's editions of the Austrian news magazine Profil that the world body's standards for selecting peacekeepers are too low, and suggested it should reconsider forming its own professional standing army.

Concerns about the quality, training and ethics of soldiers are growing as developing countries with questionable human rights records increasingly are tapped for troops for international peacekeeping operations, Nowak said.

"The criteria are not very high," he told Profil, which released excerpts of the interview on Saturday. "The UN must impose stricter standards in recruiting soldiers."

Nowak did not mention past abuses by soldiers from the U.S., Britain and other Western countries who have formed the bulk of many peacekeeping operations worldwide.

George Bush tried to fool the public when he issued his recent executive order supposedly banning torture but that's not what it actually does. As long as Bush permits so-called "alternative", classified interrogation techniques there is no guarantee that torture will not continue.

And today, The Independent reports:

The British Army is facing new allegations that it was involved in "forced disappearances", hostage-taking and torture of Iraqi civilians after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

One of the claims is made by the former chairman of the Red Crescent in Basra, who alleges he was beaten unconscious by British soldiers after they accused him of being a senior official in Saddam's Baath party.

The family of another Iraqi civilian claims he was arrested and kidnapped by the British in order to secure the surrender of his brother, who was also accused of being a high-ranking member of the party. He was later found shot dead, still handcuffed and wearing a UK prisoner name tag.

Both cases are being prepared for hearings in the High Court in which the Government will be accused of war crimes while carrying out the arrest and detention of alleged senior members of the Baath party.

So, why is the UN's "chief anti-torture investigator" refusing to acknowledge reality especially when he said this during an interview this past January?

Kanishk Tharoor: In what ways has the Bush administration directly or indirectly allowed for torture?

Manfred Nowak: The Bush administration has done quite a lot to undermine the absolute prohibition of torture, for instance by interpreting torture in a very restrictive manner and claiming they are not really torturing. To them, torture is only really something after which you suffer long-term mental disorder or organ failure. Everything else is called "humanely-degrading treatment" which needs to be balanced against the threat of terrorism - it's a trade-off between security and human rights.

One can employ these harsher interrogation methods against suspected terrorists because the United States feels itself to be in a war on terror. It's breaking a taboo and since the US was always a champion of human rights and democracy, and one of the oldest countries to have a bill of rights in their constitution, this negative example has many negative consequences for the US and many other states. If even the US considers these means of detention, these flights lawful then, other countries feel that they can do the same.

Kanishk Tharoor: With US actions, new sources of torture have come into place, most specifically the outsourcing of torture to countries like Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Is there any precedent for this? How has the Bush administration been engaged in it in recent years?

Manfred Nowak: I do not know any precedent for what they call "extraordinary rendition". There is a precedent for "ordinary rendition", of suspected terrorists abducted by the CIA, Israeli or other intelligence services in another country to be tried domestically. This has also been illegal but was at least done for the legitimate purpose of bringing someone to justice.

Extraordinary abduction is the opposite - depriving individuals of liberty without any legal remedies in order to send them to countries that are known for torture. This violates the absolute prohibition of refoulement: countries are not only not allowed to torture, but also not allowed to send suspects to countries that will torture them.

This was a systematic practice, and I'm afraid, an ongoing practice.

Kanishk Tharoor: What kind of incentives were governments given to allow rendition and to conduct the torture? Should equal pressure be brought to bear on the US as well as the cooperating governments, be they in Cairo, Damascus or Amman?

Manfred Nowak: Of course, this is also the responsibility of countries like Egypt or Syria who are well known for systematic practice of torture. They are the first ones violating international human rights law, even though they have ratified the United Nations convention against torture. They are thus obligated to criminalise torture. But also every state which sends suspects to torturing countries violates the convention.

Countries like the United Kingdom have tried to circumvent this problem by getting "diplomatic assurances" in which they ask those countries to be kind enough not to torture - These diplomatic assurances are a clear attempt to circumvent the absolute prevention of refoulement.
[...]
...the prohibition of torture is an "absolute right", which means that there is no proportionality to be applied. A little bit of torture doesn't make us safer, it's the opposite. As soon as you undermine the prohibition of torture, and you start in the "ticking bomb scenario" to apply torture, it very quickly spreads and creates new terrorism. We now have more terrorists since we are fighting terrorism by violating our own standards and the international rule of law.

Turkey, Northern Iraq & the US Military

The Independent reports that Turkey has stepped back from the idea of invading Northern Iraq:

As Turkey's government savoured an overwhelming electoral victory yesterday, regional analysts agreed that the immediate impetus for an invasion of northern Iraq had receded.

Sunday's clear mandate for the Islamic-rooted AKP of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been received as a snub to his secularist and nationalist opponents, who put the fight against Kurdish separatist guerrillas across the border at the centre of their failed campaign.

The US military has continually denied reports that Turkey has massed over 100,000 troops on the Iraq border while one general is now raising the possibility of moving US troops out of Northern Iraq and placing the entire region in the hands of the Iraqi government.

If put in place, Mixon's approach would not necessarily mean an overall reduction in U.S. troops early next year. It could mean shifting several thousand troops from Mixon's area to other parts of Iraq for some months.

That, however, could mark the beginning of a phased move away from the heavy combat role U.S. troops have played, at a cost of more than 3,600 U.S. deaths, for more than four years. That, in turn, could lead to the first substantial U.S. troop reductions beginning in the spring or summer — a far slower timetable than many in Congress are demanding.
[...]
There are nearly 24,000 U.S. troops in Mixon's area of responsibility. It stretches north from Baghdad to the Turkish border, including the semiautonomous Kurdish region where three provinces — Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah — already have returned to Iraqi government control.

Mixon said he might be able to reduce that total by one-half in the 12 to 18 months after beginning a transition in January.

But, via The Guardian, it's obvious that things aren't quite that simple:

It remains to be seen if the mandate will quickly dissolve the air of crisis that has enveloped Turkey in recent months.

The possible threat of a coup, deadlock between government and opposition over a new head of state, pressure for a military invasion of northern Iraq to crack down on Turkish Kurdish guerrillas sheltering there, poor relations with the US over Iraq, and near-paralysis in Turkey's efforts to negotiate membership of the EU - all these are issues piling up in the in-tray.

The multiple challenges have produced an outpouring of extreme nationalism, resulting in the parliamentary presence of the MHP, widely viewed as neo-fascist, with a paramilitary wing. Its leader campaigned with a hangman's noose, his preferred solution to the Kurdish insurgency in the south-east.

And, just as a side note, one army colonel who commented about repositioning US troops from al Anbar province said, "The police are the keys to maintaining security from al-Qaida," - interesting since many people like me believe that al Qaeda should have been dealt with from a police standpoint to begin with.

So, has the US government already received assurances from Turkey's government that its troops will stay out of Iraq or is the US military planning a pullout to avoid being trapped in that front of the war? Hard to say. Of course, considering how the so-called "surge" is working out, it's also possible that these redeployments to other areas of Iraq are just another move in the huge whack-a-mole game strategery they're now employing.

According to the Turkish Weekly, Turkey's PM warned before the election that "if the talks fail with Maliki Turkey will be left with no other option but to act against the PKK in northern Iraq." And:

Erdogan said Turkey conveyed its concerns to the U.S. over reports that the Americans were suspected of supplying weapons to the PKK in northern Iraq. He said the Americans had explained that they too had detected that such weapons had found their way into the PKK arsenal and that their investigation showed this could have happened as a result of corruption involving some U.S. personnel.

Now, I'll note that I don't know the reputation of the Turkish Weekly but it also published this warning from Turkey's PM which shows there is definitely tension between Turkey and the US government:

"As a strategic ally we are extending support to you (the U.S.) whenever you confront terrorism and ask for help. Afghanistan is the biggest example of this. It is not right to adopt an approach discriminating as 'my terrorist is bad, your terrorist is good.' All terrorists are bad. And we need to form a joint platform for combat this. We have situated ourselves against terror wherever it is encountered because we suffer from it. The number of martyrs we have given to terror has exceeded 15,000. Just as how you have alarmed the world when the twin towers were hit, you should show the same participation and cooperation in this now. If you do not fulfill your responsibilities in this, we will have to do whatever it takes. And that 'whatever' is obvious," said Erdogan.

It seems there aren't many countries left that want to call America "friend" - not that Turkey has been a US sockpuppet since it refused to allow US troops deployments from its soil into Iraq when that war began.

So I guess the waiting game is on and there aren't any particularly clear indications from Turkey about what it will do to deal with attacks coming from inside Iraq.

Related: The big question: What are the implications of the Turkish election result?

More on the PKK reportedly using US weapons from the Chicago Tribune.

(h/t to JJB over at Marisacat's blog for the link to The Guardian's article.)
 

The Nation Exposes 'The Other War': Civilian Killings by the US Military in Iraq

Via The Nation, this one is a must read. Be prepared. It's lengthy. Here's the intro:

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

Court cases, such as the ones surrounding the massacre in Haditha and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old in Mah­mudiya, and news stories in the Washington Post, Time, the London Independent and elsewhere based on Iraqi accounts have begun to hint at the wide extent of the attacks on civilians. Human rights groups have issued reports, such as Human Rights Watch's Hearts and Minds: Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces, packed with detailed incidents that suggest that the killing of Iraqi civilians by occupation forces is more common than has been acknowledged by military authorities.

This Nation investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate these assertions.

I've done a lot of writing about civilian deaths in the wars that have raged on the last few years - always wondering what we didn't know about. Now, finally, at least some of this will be brought to light by the efforts of these courageous journalists and veterans. I think we all have a responsibility to closely examine what our countries' militaries are doing in our names and to hold those responsible accountable.

Excerpt:

"I'll tell you the point where I really turned," said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. "I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg.... An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn't crying, wasn't anything, it just looked at me like--I know she couldn't speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?... I was just like, This is--this is it. This is ridiculous."

Movie Nite at Gitmo

In an obvious attempt to soften up the prison's vile image, the US military has announced that the detainees will now have a movie nite, among other amenities. (Don't count on Escape From Alcatraz being shown there any time soon.)

A year after three suicides and a riot prompted a security overhaul, the military hopes to provide “increased mental stimulation” with expanded recreation areas, Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“There are certainly benefits to giving them outlets other than sitting in their cell or sitting in their recreation cell for hours at a time with nothing else to exercise their mind or think about other than their situation,” Buzby said.

And it took them how many years to figure this out?

The immediate changes are in Camp 4, a communal section reserved for those detainees considered the most compliant. In recent weeks, the military started allowing detainees to watch soccer matches and preapproved programs such as nature documentaries and episodes of “Deadliest Catch,” a popular Discovery Channel series about crab fishing crews off Alaska.

Until then, detainees did not have access to television except when interrogators offered it as a reward.

Authorities also built a new classroom inside Camp 4 so detainees — some of whom are illiterate — could more easily study Pashto and Arabic, with one leg manacled to the floor. They have also begun looking for an English teacher.

The roughly 45 detainees in Camp 4 sleep in dorm-like rooms and can spend up to 19 hours a day outside. They were also recently allowed a vegetable garden.

Most detainees are in Camps 5 and 6, maximum-security facilities where they are confined alone in solid-wall cells.

In Camp 6, the newest prison, [that was built by Halliburton -catnip] military officials said they are cutting windows into the high concrete wall of the outdoor recreation area and expanding it so more can go outside at one time. They are also expanding the recreation area of Camp 5, the facility generally reserved for detainees who are considered least compliant or of greatest intelligence value.

It's kind of ironic that I wrote this just last week:

Maybe next week we'll be reading that there are actually amusement park rides at Gitmo too - aka "Gitmo Disney"™ - which the Pentagon has been keeping under wraps to avoid having a huge flurry of crazed tourists flocking to the heaven-like facility torturing gulag for their winter vacations.

Well, the roller coaster hasn't quite been announced yet, but stay tuned.

I wonder if they'll be forced to watch 24 or, Dog forbid, Bill O'Reilly.
 

More Children Killed by a US Airstrike in Aghanistan

If there's one phrase that should immediately be removed from the military vernacular when it comes to describing dead civilians in a war zone, it is the completely depersonalizing term "collateral damage". Hit an empty building by mistake? Fine. That's "collateral damage". Kill innocent civilians? Sorry. You don't get to diminish their lives by referring to them as "collateral" or "damage". And, to add further insult to fatal injuries, you don't get to pay off the families with a measly few thousand dollars and walk away with a clear conscience - if you even had one to begin with.

For too long now, the use of military bombings by the US forces in Afghanistan have cost so many lives that one wonders if they've ever heard of the cliche "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results." Insanity seems to be the modus operandi of the US military strategy in Afghanistan. Just how many civilians will they kill before they figure out that their tactics are failing?

The lastest headline reads: 7 Children Killed in Airstrike in Afghanistan, but read the fine print:

More than 130 civilians have been killed in airstrikes and shootings in the past six months, according to Afghan authorities.

That toll may soon inflate dismally. Afghan officials said late Monday that more than 50 civilians may have died during fierce fighting over the past three days between NATO forces and the Taliban in the Chora district of the southern province of Uruzgan.

That's NATO - the coalition our Canadian forces are a part of. While Peter Mackay was busy throwing out the same worn out talking points in parliament on Monday about how schools and hospitals are being built, I don't recall him mentioning one word about civilian deaths. Of course he wouldn't and when and if this government does, it comes in the form of an appropriately quiet and sheepish statement of "regret" which is always followed by a "but" to explain just how our presence in Afghanistan is supposedly doing wonders. It's a completely unbalanced lie.

I'd like to see Mackay sit face to face with this man and try to spout off his happy stories, just to see what would happen:

“I have seen with my own eyes that women and children were badly hit by bombing,” said Mullah Ahmidullah Khan, head of Uruzgan’s provincial council. “The fighting is inside the villages, so that’s why the civilians are suffering casualties. I have met some families who have lost almost everyone.”

The US military meanwhile just blames al Qaeda for the children it killed.

Here's the deal people: if you're not 100% sure that there aren't any children or other civilians in your sights, you don't shoot and you sure as hell don't drop a bomb. According to the US spokesperson, they netted 7 "militants" in that air raid that killed those 7 children. Was the trade off worth it guys? You apparently seem to think so or you'd stop this madness. And if your government didn't send you enough damn troops to fight this war on the ground face to face, instead of from airplanes which you prefer to do now, maybe you should be talking to your bosses about that. Not that they fucking care. That's been obvious since the beginning of this so-called war.

So, you keep doing exactly what you're doing: creating generations of enemies while you're at it -- because that's all the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are accomplishing: dead and maimed people and new enemies. And, in case you haven't figured out what that means yet, let me spell it out for you: you're losing the "war on terror". You are terror.
 

Torture

The tainted fruits of torture:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An al Qaeda suspect at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison said he was tortured until he confessed to involvement in the USS Cole attack and other plans, according to a hearing transcript released on Friday.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the U.S. warship, also said he told interrogators Osama bin Laden had a nuclear bomb. He said he made up that and other statements because he was being tortured, according to a transcript of a March 14 hearing held at Guantanamo Bay.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent, said through a translator.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," he said. "They were very happy when I told them those things.

Do we have any reason not to believe his claims considering the Bush administration's track record?

It is still utterly unbelievable that there hasn't been a rebellion in the United States to take the country back from the torturers and those who make and condone the torture policies. The silence is absolutely deafening.

It's not enough to just sit in front of your television or computer screen, cringing whenever another tale of alleged torture appears. It's not enough to just fire off a few e-mails in disgust when there's proof that your president endorses torture and has taken it upon himself to even itemize what's acceptable. A man who also authorized torture flights and makes no apology for them whatsoever. And, when victims have sued the government, their cases are blocked on "state secrets" grounds because, apparently, protecting the security of the United States means covering up torture methods and locations.

Torture continues.

That is something everyone should keep in mind.

The CIA operatives involved in torture have been giving immunity from congress.

Somewhere, in some secret US torture prison, someone is most likely being tortured as you read this - in the name of the United States.

And, let's not forget that Canada's government is doing absolutely nothing to have Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr, who has also reported being tortured returned to our country - a move that many other countries have made regarding their nationals. Why have we washed our hands of him? Has he ceased being a Canadian?

When did that become acceptable? When was it decided that it's okay to push the issue of torture to irrelevance behind whatever other concerns of the day may be competing for the nightly news audience? Why aren't more people talking about it? Why isn't there an investigation by this Democratic congress into the use of torture? Why, in relation to the attorney scandal which surrounds Alberto Gonzales right now, aren't more people screaming that his endorsement of torture via his legal justifications made as Bush's counsel shows exactly what kind of so-called character he has? Why is he considered to be a moral authority on anything related to the concept of "justice"?

Tortured. That's what all of this is. And let's never forget the victims. They will live with their physical scars and the scars of indifference forever. They deserve more than that.
 

Disgusting Bigotry in the US Military

And to top it all off, the person involved is still working for the US military:

(CBS) JERSEY CITY, N.J. An Army recruiter is in hot water after taking part in a war of racial and anti-gay words with a Jersey City resident who had simply posted his resume on a Web site in search of a job. Corey Andrew, an openly gay black man said the heated exchange began in late February after the recruiter responded to his resume displayed on CareerBuilder.com.

U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode wrote to Andrew from her official military e-mail address, but after Andrew said he wasn't interested in joining the Army, he did probe the recruiter on the Army's policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. The fireworks set off when he revealed he's openly gay.

Ramode told Andrew that being gay made him unqualified, and that it was "disgusting and immoral."

"In any other corporate structure in America, an e-mail like this going around in an office building would result in termination immediately," Andrew said.

But the message that struck the strongest chord with Andrew was when Ramode wrote: "GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE. ... THAT'S WHERE YOU BELONG"

To say Andrew, a musician who is a copywriter by trade, was shocked would be an understatement. "I thought she was absolutely out of her mind," Andrew said.

Andrew admits he lost his cool at times during the exchange and shot back at Ramode, taking shots at her for spelling and grammatical errors, but also told her after he'd found she was Native American to "take that to your next rain dance."
[...]
Officials say for now Ramode is still working in the military, but not in recruiting. Andrew is hoping she'll be removed from the post for good, especially for violating the Department of Defense's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in which recruiters are barred from asking applicants about their sexual orientation.

This is just disgusting all the way around and Andrew obviously didn't do himself any favours by striking back with a racist slur either, however, the fact that this woman is still employed by the US military when proof of this exchange exists is inconceivable.

Then again, if General Peter Pace can get away with calling homosexuality "immoral" while neo nazis have become acceptable recruits, what can anyone expect from the US military establishment anymore when it comes to respecting civil and human rights?
 

How to Insult Your Allies

We all remember when Bush forgot to mention Canada as one of the US's good friends in his SOTU speech...and when Rumsfeld gleefully used the phrase "Old Europe". And who doesn't have the term "freedom fries" scorched in their brain forever?

Well, there's nothing like calling the British military wimps to really make you the popular kid on the block:

A senior American commander in the Gulf has said his men would have fired on the Iranian Republican Guard rather than let themselves be taken hostage.

In a dramatic illustration of the different postures adopted by British and US forces working together in Iraq, Lt-Cdr Erik Horner - who has been working alongside the task force to which the 15 captured Britons belonged - said he was "surprised" the British marines and sailors had not been more aggressive.

Asked by The Independent whether the men under his command would have fired on the Iranians, he said: "Agreed. Yes. I don't want to second-guess the British after the fact but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team's training is a little bit more towards self-preservation."

The executive officer - second-in-command on USS Underwood, the frigate working in the British-controlled task force with HMS Cornwall - said: "The unique US Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence. They [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?'"

And, as if that wasn't bad enough, the Brits are apparently taking the fall for a huge diplomatic blunder made by the yanks in Iraq:

His comments came as it was reported British intelligence had been warned by the CIA that Iran would seek revenge for the detention of five suspected Iranian intelligence officers in Iraq two months ago but refused to raise threat levels in line with their US counterparts.

Nevertheless, the Brits will gladly take the heat, apparently:

The capture of the eight sailors and seven marines - including one young mother - will undoubtedly renew accusations that Britain's determination to maintain a friendly face in the region has left its troops frequently under protected.

Even though...

Vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, the Royal Navy team from HMS Cornwall were seized on Friday after completing a UN-authorised inspection of a merchant dhow in what they insist were clearly Iraqi waters. The Iranian Republican Guard Corps Navy appeared in half a dozen attack speedboats mounted with machine guns..

On top of that, the Brits are obviously tea-sipping pacifists:

Yesterday, the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, said British rules of engagement were "very much de-escalatory, because we don't want wars starting ... Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away."

I mean, really. With a title like "First Sea Lord", you know they were just asking for trouble.

Obviously, they don't show Rambo enough in Britain.

Dreadful pity.
 

Random News & Views Roundup

- The Republicans have decided to allow a debate on the Iraq war in congress. How nice of them! Right. Let's face it. No matter what proposals the Dems come up with, Bush will whip out his trusty veto pen. In the meantime, the Repubs will get to tell all 2 of their happy surge stories over and over as they slap each other on the back while noting how divided the Dems are.

- At a British inquest set up to look into the "friendly fire" (being bombed is more like it) death of British soldier L/Cpl Matty Hull, not only was US military procedure under fire, it was also revealed that:

Despite high-level pressure on the US to start co-operating with the inquiry, it emerged today that the Pentagon was still refusing to provide information requested by the coroner and the Ministry of Defence.

Requests for details of the US rules of engagement, the training records of the pilots, and a detailed explanation of the cockpit recording of had been turned down, the MoD's lawyers told the coroner.

Only a heavily edited copy of the American investigation of the incident has been released, the inquest was told.

This incident happened in 2003. What is the Pentagon hiding and why are they hiding it?

- This is just plain wrong - not to mention gutless:

WASHINGTON - Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit
President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the
Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on
Israel had argued for the change in strategy.
[...]
Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran.

Bombs away!

- Yes, as a matter of fact I do have a few things to say about Abu Gonzales' press conference. Later.

- Okay. I'm tired. That's it for now.

Update: The New York Times has an editorial about congress' options for dealing with the Iraq war: The Purse Isn’t Congress’s Only Weapon. (Is it "congress' " or "congress's"? Hmmm... Whatever. They need to get off their asses.)
 

General Pace Calls Homosexuality 'Immoral'

Via the Chicago Tribune:

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving in the military because homosexual acts "are immoral," akin to a member of the armed forces conducting an adulterous affair with the spouse of another service member.

Responding to a question about a Clinton-era policy that is coming under renewed scrutiny amid fears of future U.S. troop shortages, Pace said the Pentagon should not "condone" immoral behavior by allowing gay soldiers to serve openly. He said his views were based on his personal "upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral.

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

You want to know what's really "immoral", General?

War is immoral.
Torturing people is immoral.
Hiding detainees in secret prisons is immoral.
Extraordinary renditions are immoral.
Secret military tribunals are immoral.
Indefinite detention is immoral.
Blood for oil is immoral.
Sacrificing more troops in two lost wars is immoral.
Propping up Rumsfeld, as you did for so long, is immoral.
Sexual abuse in the military is immoral.
Housing sick soldiers in filth is immoral.
Sending sick soldiers back into combat is immoral.
Ignoring homeless veterans is immoral.
Taking money from education programs to keep funding the wars is immoral.
Bush is immoral.
Cheney is immoral.
Rove is immoral.
The entire administration is immoral.
The neocons are immoral.
PNAC is immoral.
The Bush Doctrine is immoral.
Putting the costs of these wars on the backs of your grandchildren is immoral.
The reputation of the United States is immoral.
Bullying other countries with military threats is immoral.
The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are immoral.
The deaths of 3,195 troops in Iraq in an illegal war for oil is immoral.
The displacement of millions of people is immoral.
Rape and murder by US troops is immoral.
Killing civilians is immoral.
The fact that children still live in fear for their lives in Iraq is immoral.

That's what's "immoral", Pace.

Do I need to go on?

Did those things come up in your "upbringing", General? What exactly did you learn about morality? Not much, it appears.
 

What's wrong with this news story?

Via The Independent:

Nine civilians, including four children, were killed in Afghanistan when US planes dropped two 2,000lb bombs on their mud home. Their deaths came after at least eight civilians were killed by US Marines a day earlier.

It has been a disastrous two days for the Americans in Afghanistan. First US Marines trying to get to safety after being ambushed by a suicide bomber sprayed gunfire wildly across one of the busiest roads in the country, killing passers-by.

And now US planes have dropped two bombs on a family home, killing children aged between six months and five years.

And what about the disastrous time the Afghans have had what with their children, friends, neighbours, family members and colleagues being bombed, shot at and killed?

What's worse is that the US military is already claiming innocence for these so-called mistakes so none of the survivors will find any justice. These deaths will just be counted as collateral damage and the war will move right along.

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

~Voltaire