Black and poor residents are excluded from the city elections and they're still finding bodies, but America has lost interest |
| by Gary Younge |
| "There are two types of power," said Linda Jeffers, addressing an accountability session of New Orleans mayoral candidates at the city's Trinity Episcopal church. "Organized money and organized people." Since Hurricane Katrina, the battle between those two forces has shaped the struggle to rebuild New Orleans. With mayoral elections on Saturday it is set to intensify. The one thing both sides seem to agree on is that neither wants the city to return to the way it was before the hurricane. The people of New Orleans, most of whom are black and many of whom are poor, want schools that will educate their children, jobs that will pay a living wage, and neighborhoods where capital investment matches the large pools of social capital created by their churches and close-knit communities. Organized money has something else in mind: the destruction of many of those communities and permanent removal of those who lived in them, a city that follows the gentrification patterns of racial removal and class cleansing that have played out elsewhere in the US. Under these circumstances, the organization of people has been impressive. Grassroots groups have done a remarkable job of gathering those scattered throughout the country into a political constituency. Jeffers spoke to an audience of more than 500 people who had been bussed in from Tennessee and elsewhere in Louisiana, as well as over 1,000 who watched the session on satellite in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Five days later Jeffers, a leader with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) who moved from New Orleans to Houston after Katrina, schlepped through the unforgiving Houston heat distributing food and signing up evacuees for their absentee ballots. Meanwhile organizations have been ferrying people from neighboring states to satellite polling stations dotted around Louisiana for early voting. But the circumstances have been dire. Evacuees in Houston exist in a constant state of bureaucratic harassment. Last week the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in effect issued 25,000 eviction notices to evacuees in Houston. Almost half have no health insurance because they lost their jobs in the storm; more than one in eight children have been going without prescribed medication. Contrary to Barbara Bush's infamous predictions, this is not working out very well for them. In this context, the New Orleans mayoral elections have particular significance. Whoever wins will have the task of mediating between organized people and organized money, and therefore shaping the priorities for rebuilding the city. But by almost any standard these elections are neither free nor fair. Fewer than half the city's residents have returned. Yet requests for polling stations to be set up in the major towns outside the state where many have resettled were rejected by the federal courts. "You're telling me they can do it in Iraq but they can't do it here?" said Walter Milton, a leader with the IAF. As a result, people have to either travel hundreds of miles to vote or organize a postal vote. The overwhelming majority of those most adversely affected are once again black and poor. So Jim Crow is on the ballot. But this is the New South with a new, more subtle, but no less effective, racism. Black demands for full citizenship no longer fall foul of the law of the land but instead the law of probabilities. They were more likely to be flooded, more likely to be displaced, the least likely to be able to return, and therefore the least likely to be able to vote. With organized people thus thwarted, organized money has asserted itself with great effect. The current mayor, Ray Nagin, was the candidate of big business. He came to power in 2002 with a minority of black support and the overwhelming backing of whites and the business community. But he rejected a plan by the Urban Land Institute in November. The institute presented a map with three "investment zones." The areas earmarked for mass buyouts and future green zones, and the last to be invested in, were overwhelmingly populated by African-Americans and the poor. New Orleans needed a smaller footprint, it said; but it would be big enough to kick out African-Americans and the poor. When Nagin balked at the plan, business looked for a new standard-bearer. Its favoured son this time is Ron Forman, head of the Audubon Nature Institute. But as a backup, business interests are also investing in the local political aristocracy in the guise of Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu, Louisiana's lieutenant governor, is the brother of Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana senator, and the son of Moon Landrieu, New Orleans's last white mayor, who left office in 1978. So the people have a vote, but business has picked both the incumbent and the two main challengers. Unlike Nagin, both Landrieu and Forman are white. With little to choose between the three on substantive issues, the decision may come down to the symbolism of race. Given everything that happened and continues to happen after Katrina, this is probably inevitable: given the needs of the city, it is regrettable. It will take more than melanin to rebuild the city; indeed it is an obsession with melanin that continues to destroy it. Only this time, no one is watching. Like teenagers discovering sex, the American media developed an intense fascination with the mundane facts of American life following the hurricane: namely, the glaring disparities in race and class that persist and pervade. Having gorged themselves on the undeniable evidence of glaring disparities in race and class, they soon got sick and went to sleep. Up in the mostly white and wealthy Garden District, the Boulangerie on Magazine Street offers a delicious choice of croissants. Down in the ninth ward they are still finding dead bodies - nine in March, some half-eaten by animals, plus a skull. But there is no dramatic backdrop to the systematic and systemic exclusions of African-Americans this time around. It's as though corpses have to be floating down the street and thousands stranded without food or water before racism is once more worthy of note here. "I came down off my rooftop and I walked through the waters," said Jeffers. "And now I feel like they're taking me back on to the rooftop." The organized people of New Orleans keep trying to move to higher ground: the organized money keeps trying to sell the land from under their feet. |
22.4.06
Big Business Sees A Chance For Ethnic and Class Cleansing
Mexican Consumers Plan ‘Great American Boycott’
More countries ought to follow suit. There is quite a few points to be made by boycotting america. Of course the Immigration issue is very high priority, but its a human rights issue globally. America has lost its United appeal and needs a wake up call, and I don't mean another fabricated "attack" mass murder of the public by our officials.
Millions of people throughout Mexico are threatening to turn their backs on US products and businesses on May 1 as part of a protest that is being dubbed “the great American boycott”.
Teachers, telephone operators, housewives and farmers are just a handful of the groups that have decided on the boycott as a way to support Latin Americans living in the US who have vowed not to turn up to work on May 1.
The protest in the US, called “a day without immigrants”, aims to put pressure on Congress to legalise the status of millions of undocumented migrant workers who have become a vital source of cheap labour for the US economy. Senators have been debating several proposals to reform immigration laws but have failed to reach a compromise.
The delay has led to increasing frustration among the Hispanic community in the US, and now it is starting to spread across the border.
In Mexico, by far the biggest source of cheap labour for companies in the US, the boycott is threatening to turn into a nationwide movement. Fernando Amezcua, a high-ranking official at the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME), says his organisation will raise the issue at its general assembly on Monday with the idea of urging its 60,000 members to participate in the protest.
He also says the SME is calling on a wider coalition to support the boycott, which he claims brings together about 10m members of unions, social groups and non-governmental organisations.
On the streets of Mexico City, the word is spreading. Cristina Robles, an elegantly dressed business woman who has just done the family shopping at Superama, a supermarket chain owned by US retailer Wal-Mart, says she will support the ban. “I am not going to buy anything American,” she says. “I know it is not easy because there are a lot of illegal immigrants but the US has to treat them the same as any other worker.”
Joaquín García Nava, owner of a corner cafe in La Condesa, a swanky neighbourhood in central Mexico City, agrees. “For me, the protest serves a double purpose: I get to support the immigrants and I also get to express my slightly anti-Yankee sentiments.”
In other regions, too, what started out as a grassroots initiative spread through e-mails is catching on. In Jerez, a town of about 60,000 in Zacatecas, a largely agricultural state to the north of the capital, residents have staged a number of demonstrations in parallel with those that have taken place in recent weeks throughout the US.
Antonio Pereyra, a local government official, says people feel strongly about the need for immigration reform in large part because of their increasing dependence on remittances – money sent home by immigrants in the US. “Every single family has at least one member working in the US and without the money they send back home every month many would not be able to survive,” he says.
According to Mexico’s central bank, the estimated 7m Mexicans living and working illegally in the US send their families back home more than $20bn (€16.28bn) a year, making remittances Mexico’s second-biggest source of foreign currency after oil.
Larry Rubin, who heads the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City, a body that represents US companies in Mexico, is sympathetic to those who are pushing for progressive immigration reform. But he argues that boycotting US products and businesses in Mexico is misguided. “It is totally the wrong approach because the US business community has been one of the most adamant supporters and lobbyists of a comprehensive immigration bill.”
China, Iran, Saudi, US Main Executioners: Amnesty
LONDON - More than 2,000 people were known to have been executed around the world last year, the vast majority of them in China, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
 A man looks at toy guns lined up inside a vending machine during a Control Arms campaign by Amnesty International in Madrid March 16, 2006. More than 2,000 people were known to have been executed around the world last year, the vast majority of them in China, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, Amnesty International said on Thursday. REUTERS/Susana Vera |
More than 20,000 people were on death row around the world, said the report, which repeated a call for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.
Amnesty said at least 2,148 people were executed in 2005 in 22 countries -- 94 percent of them in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States. That's down from 3,797 executions in 2004, but up from 1,146 in 2003.
"The death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights, because it contravenes the essence of human values, it is often applied in a discriminatory manner, follows unfair trials or is applied for political reasons," Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan said in a statement.
At least 94 people were executed in Iran, 86 in Saudi Arabia and 60 in the United States.
"As the world continues to turn away from the use of the death penalty, it is a glaring anomaly that China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the U.S. stand out for their extreme use of this form of punishment," Khan said.
China has carried out executions by shooting or lethal injection, Saudi Arabia by beheading, Iran by hanging or stoning and the United States by electrocution or lethal injection, Amnesty said.
Amnesty said its figures were approximate because of secrecy surrounding the death penalty. China refuses to publish official statistics on executions while Vietnam has classified statistics on the death penalty as a "state secret", it said.
But the rights group said with the addition of Mexico and Liberia, 86 countries had now abolished the death penalty for all crimes, compared with 16 countries in 1977, it said.
In China, a person can be executed for as many as 68 crimes, including non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drug offences, it said.
Amnesty said Iran was the only country it knew of that had executed juvenile offenders last year. The United States outlawed juvenile executions in March 2005.
Iran executed at least eight people in 2005 for crimes committed when they were children, including two who were still under the age of 18 at the time of their execution, it said.
War Costs Approach $10 Billion a Month
Military faces huge maintenance tab and spending to replace depleted equipment |
| by Jonathan Weisman |
| Annual war expenditures in Iraq will almost certainly come close to doubling since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat. The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise -- from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found. Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The Iraq invasion's "shock and awe" phase of high-tech laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long faded, but the costs of even those early months are just coming into view as the military confronts equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided and procurement costs it never expected. "We did not predict early on that we would have the number of electronic jammers that we've got. We did not predict we'd have as many (heavily) armored vehicles that we have, nor did we have a good prediction about what our battle losses would be," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "If you look at the earlier estimates of anticipated costs, this war is a lot more expensive than it should be based on past conflicts," said Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent defense think tank. The issue will be hotly debated next week when the Senate takes up a record $106.5 billion emergency spending bill that includes $72.4 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House passed a $92 billion version of the bill last month that included $68 billion in war funding. That comes on top of $50 billion already allocated for the war this fiscal year. The bill is the fifth emergency defense request since the Iraq invasion in March 2003. Senate Democrats say that, in the end, they will vote for the measure, which congressional leaders plan to deliver to President Bush by Memorial Day. But the upcoming debate will offer opponents of the war ample opportunity to question the Bush administration's funding priorities. At roughly $15 billion, personnel costs will actually drop 14 percent this year. But Pentagon officials and budget analysts point to a simple, unavoidable driver of the escalating costs -- the cost of repairing and replacing equipment and developing new war-fighting materiel has exploded. In the first year of the invasion, such costs totaled $2.4 billion, then rose to $5.2 billion in 2004. This year, they will hit $26 billion, and could go as high as $30 billion, Kosiak said. Total operations and maintenance budgets will rise 33 percent this year, while investment in new technologies will climb 25 percent, according to the Congressional Research Service. The helicopters, tanks, personnel carriers and even small arms "have required more maintenance than we planned for," said Gary Motsek, director of support operations at the Army Materiel Command. "We're working them to death." In the first years of the war, Army and Marine units rotating out of Iraq left behind usable equipment for the next units rolling in. But even the working equipment is now being shipped back to the Army's five depots, where they are refurbished and upgraded. Last year, the depots repaired and upgraded 600 helicopter engines. This year, they will see 700, Motsek said. A total of 318 Bradley fighting vehicles went through the depots in 2005; 600 will be cycled through in 2006. Last year, depot workers upgraded 5,000 humvees with new engines and new transmissions to support ever-heavier armor. This year, they will see close to 9,000. They also will have to patch up 7,000 more machine guns, 5,000 more tank tracks and 100 more M1A1 Abrams tanks. In 2001, the depots logged 11 million labor hours. Last year, that reached 20 million, and this year, it will total 24 million, Motsek said. And that is only the work being done in the United States. In and around Iraq, 53,000 people -- 52,000 of them contractors -- are maintaining and rebuilding lightly damaged equipment, a senior Senate defense aide said. Indian workers are refurbishing U.S. humvees for $6 an hour. "The equipment is wearing out five times faster than (in) normal operations," said Jeremiah Gertler, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former House Armed Services Committee staffer. What cannot be repaired has to be replaced. Procurement costs were a fraction of the initial emergency war requests, Kosiak said. This year, new equipment purchases will consume 20 percent of the war funds. Such costs were always there, Gertler said, but Bush administration officials and members of Congress put off maintenance and procurement expenditures to keep the war price tag down. |
In Terror War, Not All Names Are Equal
by William Fisher | ||
NEW YORK - A major government watchdog group is charging that Muslim charities are being shut down for supposedly backing terrorist causes, while giant firms like Halliburton are receiving the full protection of U.S. law for allegedly breaking government sanctions against doing business with Iran -- a country designated as a sponsor of terrorism. "There is unequal enforcement of anti-terrorist financing laws," says the Washington-based non-profit OMB Watch.
Since its assets are frozen, it lacks resources to mount a defence. And it has only limited right of appeal to the courts. So the government can target a charity, seize its assets, shut it down, obtain indictments against its leaders, but then delay a trial almost indefinitely. Kay Guinane, OMB Watch's director of Nonprofit Speech Rights, told IPS, "The real tragedy behind closure of Muslim charities is the fate of people in need of humanitarian assistance, who are doing without because the funds have been frozen by the U.S. and sit in the bank, benefiting no one." "The U.S. government could demonstrate its good faith by releasing these funds to other charities or aid agencies," she suggested. Thus far, OMB Watch says, the effort has resulted in the government shutting down five charities that support humanitarian aid in Muslim areas without disclosing any official finding that they were aiding terrorist organisations. There has only been one indictment, no trials, and no convictions. They include two Chicago-area Islamic charities, the Global Relief Foundation and the Benevolence International Foundation, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Texas, the Islamic American Relief Agency and the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. OMB Watch says that dozens of charitable groups have been investigated since 2001. The organisations shut down were not on any government watch list before their assets were frozen, it adds. The result is that Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government suspects of ties to terrorism. "Organisations and individuals suspected of supporting terrorism are guilty until proven innocent," it says. To support its claim that the government is applying the law unevenly and targeting Muslim-American groups, OMB Watch cites the government's "velvet glove" treatment of the Halliburton Corporation, a giant defence contractor once headed by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney. Halliburton has been under investigation by the Treasury Department, which oversees the terror-financing campaign, and the Department of Justice since 2001 for doing business with Iran, which is listed as a sponsor of terrorism. But, says OMB Watch, rather than seizing and freezing assets "pending an investigation", Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Justice Department sent an inquiry to Halliburton requesting "information with regard to compliance". Halliburton sent a written response explaining why it felt it was in compliance with the law. Halliburton's defence seemed to rest on the fact that its dealings with Iran were done through a Cayman Islands subsidiary, not its U.S.-based entity. Over two years later, in January 2004, OFAC sent a follow-up letter requesting additional information, to which Halliburton responded that March. In July of that year, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas sent a grand jury subpoena requesting documents and the case was referred to the Justice Department. On Sep. 22, 2005, the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives wrote to Pres. George W. Bush, asking that Halliburton be suspended from hurricane relief contracts for a host of reasons, including "dealing with nations that sponsor terrorism". The White House took no action and Halliburton received no-bid contracts valued currently at 61.3 million dollars, and growing, to provide clean-up, rebuilding and logistical assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Last year, an organisation called Halliburton Watch charged that the handling of the case against the company raises serious legal questions. For example, "If Halliburton were a charity, would its assets have been frozen like the U.S.-based Muslim charities?" "Even though little is known about the evidence OFAC relied on to freeze and seize assets of Muslim charities, it appears there is much stronger evidence against Halliburton -- what legal distinction is OFAC making. If U.S. charities formed Cayman Island subsidiaries, could they avoid the USA PATRIOT Act, IEEPA, and Executive Order restrictions on dealings with groups or countries linked to terrorism?" the group asked. Halliburton has also become the poster child for waste, fraud and abuse among U.S. contractors in Iraq. To date, it has received more than 12 billion dollars in contracts there, many of them on a no-bid basis. The company failed to account for 43 percent of its Middle East expenses, with one billion dollars of those being considered "unreasonable" and another nearly half-billion in the "unsupported" category, according to Defence Department auditors. Critics say the government's anti-terror financing campaign is a product of the paranoid Islamophobia that has gripped the U.S. since 9/11. They also say is has had its desired effect: to scare Muslim-Americans into abandoning one of the premier tenets of Islam -- giving to those in need. The government denies these charges, saying it is merely trying to cut off funding to a wide variety of so-called charitable organisations that funnel money to groups that practice terrorist tactics. The Treasury Department cites Pres. Bush's pledge to ensure "that Arab Americans and American Muslims feel comfortable maintaining their tradition of charitable giving". Meanwhile, Muslim charities report a precipitous decline in contributions. Contributions that do arrive come increasingly in cash from anonymous givers. And donors who happen to be Muslim are increasingly turning to the large household names like Oxfam and Save the Children, which may conduct programmes in predominantly Muslim areas abroad. Leaders of the Muslim charitable community in the U.S. have had numerous meetings with officials at the Treasury Department, and together developed a set of "guidelines" for charitable organisations and their donors. But these guidelines lack any specificity regarding Muslim philanthropy and could be applied to any charitable organisation. They also provide no safe harbour from being shut down. OMB Watch told IPS, "A group could comply 100 percent and still be shut down 'pending an investigation'." Leaders of the Muslim philanthropic community in New Jersey asked the Treasury Department at the start of Ramadan in 2004 to issue a "white list" of "approved" charities. But the request was denied. The government claimed it was impossible to fulfill. "Our role is to prosecute violations of criminal law," a spokesman said, adding, "We're not in a position to put out lists of any kind, particularly of any organisations that are good or bad." But government critics also claim that Treasury's campaign is reminiscent of the activities of John Ashcroft's Justice Department in the months following the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The government then launched its "Global War on Terror" by rounding up thousands of "Middle Eastern-looking" men and women, sending them to jail without charges or access to lawyers, holding many in solitary confinement, but accusing none of them with terror-related crimes, convicting no one, and ending up deporting some for non-criminal immigration violations. |
When GI Joe Says No
by Christian Parenti
A young former US Army sniper wearing a desert camo uniform, an Iraqi kaffiyeh and mirrored sunglasses scans a ruined urban landscape of smashed homes, empty streets and garbage heaps. His sand-colored hat bears a small regulation-style military patch, or tab, that instead of reading "Airborne" or "Ranger" or "Special Forces" says "Shitbag"--common military parlance for bad soldier.
This isn't Baghdad or Kabul. It's the Gulf Coast, and the column of young men and women in desert uniforms carrying American flags are with Iraq Veterans Against the War. They are part of a larger peace march that is making its way from Mobile to New Orleans. This is just one of IVAW's ongoing series of actions.
In all, about thirty-five Iraq vets cycled through this weeklong procession of 250. For the young, often very broke, very busy veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, this represents a fairly strong showing. But many casual observers, influenced by memories of Vietnam-era protesting, when veterans mobilized in the thousands, expected that US soldiers in Iraq would turn against the war faster and in greater numbers than they have. An estimated 1 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but so far IVAW has only about 250 members.
For many of the more activist IVAW vets, their political evolution did not follow the simple trajectory one might expect, from idealism at enlistment to postcombat disillusionment. In fact, many of them shipped off to war despite serious political misgivings. "I went to Iraq opposing the war," says Garrett Reppenhagen, the former sniper with the irreverent potty-mouthed patch on his hat. Reppenhagen served a year with the Army's First Infantry Division in and around the very violent city of Baquba. "I was reading Zinn's People's History and John Perkins's Economic Hit Man before I went."
What's that? Someone went off to be killed or maimed or possibly to kill "hajjis" despite being an antiwar leftist? And Reppenhagen is not alone. A recent Zogby poll found that 29 percent of soldiers in Iraq favored immediate withdrawal, which some see as a sign of an imminent crisis in military discipline. But the poll could be read in exactly the opposite fashion. If the Army and Marines can keep the disgruntled soldiers fighting and fighting, even 70 percent of troops could favor immediate withdrawal and it would mean nothing.
The question for peace activists thus becomes: How is it that antiwar soldiers continue to fight? And what does it really take for an antiwar soldier to resist? The answers lie largely in the sociology of "unit cohesion" and the ways the military uses solidarity among soldiers as a form of social control. Similarly, the peace activism of IVAW requires the spread of an oppositional form of loyalty and camaraderie.
Since 1973, when Congress ended the draft, the armed forces have been restructured using unit cohesion as a form of deep discipline. In other words, social control in today's military operates through a system that could be straight from a text by French philosopher Michel Foucault: Soldiers are managed not with coercion but with freedom. Because they join of their own free will, they find it almost impossible to rebel. Volunteering implicates them, effectively stripping them of the victim status that conscription allowed. Soldiers who would resist are guilt-tripped and emotionally blackmailed into serving causes they hate. During my time embedded in Iraq, I met several antiwar soldiers, but none of them considered abandoning their comrades. They said things like "you signed that paper" or "they got that contract"--as if contracts are never broken or annulled.
If veterans are supposed to be at the heart of the peace movement, then it would serve progressives to understand this new military culture. Understanding the world of the military is also important because it is a major force in the socialization of young working-class Americans. If you're 20 or 22 and you're not doing what many rich kids do (like a career-boosting summer internship in New York) or doing what some truly poor kids do (like going to state prison on drug charges), chances are you're learning about responsibility and adulthood, and escaping small-town or inner-city America, courtesy of the US armed forces. One of the key lessons you'll learn there is: Look out for your comrades, because they're looking out for you.
Since World War II military psychologists, sociologists and historians--most notably the army historian S.L.A. Marshall, who interviewed hundreds of combat veterans in the Pacific theater--have agreed that soldiers fight not for justice, democracy or other grand ideas but for the guy next to them. Unit cohesion is the real glue holding the US military together.
"I remember they had this formation to tell us we were going to Iraq," recalls Fernando Braga, a skinny, unassuming 23-year-old Iraq vet who is still enlisted in the New York National Guard. Braga, now a poet and student at CUNY's Hunter College, says he became politicized well before the war, when he helped his immigrant mother clean rich people's homes. "My company is really anti-authoritarian. Guys would regularly skip formations and insult the NCOs. So I thought nobody would go. But, like, everybody went!"
And since everybody went, so did Braga. "I had to go. I wasn't going to leave these guys."
It's worth recalling how badly military discipline broke down during the later stages of the Vietnam War, because those traumas shaped the thinking of today's military leadership and guided a wide array of important military reforms.
At the heart of the matter was the draft, which provoked a massive counterreaction that swelled the ranks of the peace movement but also salted the military with disgruntled troops whose increasingly disobedient ethos spread to many volunteers as well. By 1970 whole companies refused to go into combat, and enlisted men started "fragging"--that is, killing--their officers. Drug use and bad attitudes were rampant (Fort Hood, Texas, became known as Fort Head).
The group Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged dozens of protests. One action was a threatening and theatrical "search and destroy mission" that ran from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. When Nixon invaded Cambodia, the VVAW invaded DC in what the radical vets mockingly called "a limited incursion into the country of Congress." The culmination of it all was the Winter Soldier hearings, in which vets documented US war crimes.
Ending the draft excised much of the disgruntled element from the ranks, and by professionalizing the services, it has helped create a deepening military-civilian divide. Within today's all-volunteer military there is much more intense solidarity than during the Vietnam era. After Vietnam the military also improved its housing, wages, benefits, food and training; it reached out to the families of soldiers and modernized its disciplinary systems and promotions methods, all of which improved morale.
Another key difference between this war and Vietnam is the use of whole-unit rotations as opposed to individual rotations. In Vietnam a soldier was dropped into a unit for 365 days and then, if he survived, plucked out. In Iraq and Afghanistan, battalions (500 to 800 soldiers) train together, deploy together and come home together. During Vietnam the constant flow of men in and out of line companies fighting the war seriously undermined unit cohesion and camaraderie.
"When I showed up in Vietnam we were just parceled out to different platoons as they needed us. I was called the FNG when I showed up--the fucking new guy," remembers David Cline, a legendary activist and driving force within Veterans for Peace. "These kids today face a very different set of pressures."
Is a Vietnam-style collapse of military discipline imminent? Some peace activists think so, pointing to the estimated 400 US military deserters who have made their way to Canada, twenty of whom have applied for asylum, and the roughly 9,000 military personnel who have failed to report for duty since the war began (not all of them have been classified as deserters). Recruiting numbers, meanwhile, have flatlined.
Yet while today's military certainly faces a crisis of quantity, it does not have the Vietnam-era problem with quality.
During the Vietnam War the military had a sufficient number of troops--500,000 in country for much of the war. The problem was qualitative: low morale, rebellion, combat refusal, drug abuse, a crisis of conscience. Today's military is not falling apart Nam-style. Rather, it faces a crisis of size: Though expensive and hardware-heavy, the military is simply too small for the jobs at hand, and it is incapable of growing because too few recruits are joining up and too many veteran soldiers are leaving.
Despite growing cynicism about the Iraq War, indications are that morale, never super-high during prolonged combat, is not particularly low. Likewise, US training and equipment is among the best in the world. But 150,000 soldiers in Iraq, and 16,000 in Afghanistan--many on their second or even third deployment--is simply not enough. When one looks at special categories like translators, civil affairs and intelligence specialists, the staffing shortage becomes even more acute. Thus the small professional army remains disciplined and functional, while the "battle spaces" around it--Anbar province in Iraq or Kunar province in Afghanistan--spin out of control.
We hear often about the "economic draft"--the financial pressures that force young people to join the military. But there is also what could be called an "alienation draft" or, conversely, a "solidarity draft." The military offers not only jobs but also a type of belonging. "The military is like family, for a lot of people," says one vet. In many ways, the US military is a uniquely straightforward institution. Unlike society as a whole, it doesn't pretend to be a democracy--it's a hierarchy and makes no bones about that, but as such, it contains checks and balances, an appeals process and clear paths forward for promotion.
"The US military has one of the best affirmative action programs in the country," says Stan Goff, a twenty-six-year veteran of the US Special Forces, including the ultra-secret Delta Force. On the march to New Orleans, the rugged and compact Goff is playing the role of sergeant major, rallying the sleepyhead vets for the morning briefings, setting the tempo, always moving. "The other thing about the Army is that it's fair. If you know the regs you can work the system." Goff also points out that the highest-paid military general makes only about fourteen times what the lowest-paid grunt earns--compare that with private-sector pay discrepancies that reach ratios of 700 to 1.
Of course, other vets have stories of racism and broken promises. Demond Mullins is a New York National Guardsman, dance teacher and City University of New York college student who returned from Iraq only six months ago and is now active with IVAW. Mullins is embittered not only about losing a close friend in Iraq and seeing twenty-five others from his battalion wounded and almost getting killed himself when his Humvee hit a homemade bomb; he's also angry at being skipped over for promotion because he is black and about being lied to by his recruiter. "They still haven't given me any money for college."
Such stories aside, there are many ways the military avoids the intense racial and class segregation that marks much of American life. And the armed forces mix people of many different backgrounds.
"The military is one of the only places in America where black people routinely boss around white people," says Braga with a mischievous grin. Another white middle-class vet from the rural South once described to me how his "battle buddy," or assigned partner, in basic training was an ex-hoodlum who had been a homeless street kid in Mexico. "The dude was covered with scars from knife fights. I mean, where else would I have spent every waking minute with that guy, or he with me?"
This egalitarian mingling and the intense camaraderie, plus decent pay, housing for family and constant training opportunities, can make military life look a lot better than the atomized, segregated, economically stagnant world outside. And all of this creates a deep-seated sense of loyalty to the military, even among those who oppose its wars.
On the other hand, Cline, Braga and other activist vets all point out that unit cohesion can cut two ways: It works like Kryptonite to stop rebellion, but after a tipping point unit cohesion can serve to make rebellion even more intense.
To illustrate the point, Braga recalls the story of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, from Rock Hill, South Carolina. In October 2004 this Army Reserve unit (Braga worked alongside them at times) refused what they called a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel in a convoy of old, unarmored trucks. Eighteen drivers from the 343rd were arrested, but the media storm that followed--a whole company had openly refused orders!--helped pressure the military into delivering armor and retrofitting its trucks and Humvees. Similarly, when Reppenhagen the sniper joined IVAW, his spotter, the guy he'd spent a year with in Iraq, also joined--they remained a team.
The rebellion of the 343rd also pointed out the pragmatism of resistance. "Hey, protesting could save your life," says Braga. "I've seen it happen. The 343rd and that soldier who asked Rumsfeld that question about the body armor, those two things got the military to pay attention and buy decent armor."
If 1960s activism was fueled by disillusioned outrage, then today's activism is fettered by a type of world-weary cynicism. Braga says most of the guys in his unit assume the war is based on lies and that it's all about oil, but they won't get involved in peace activism because "They say, 'You can't change anything.' But if you read history you see that usually people already have changed things," he says. "Movements have made lots of things happen."
Christian Parenti, a frequent contributor to The Nation on international affairs, is the author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (New Press).
Torture Should Never Be U.S. Policy
by Louis Vitale
NEVER!
Revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-sponsored prisons have shocked the world. They also have brought the subject of torture and our country's participation in this practice into our consciousness. Perhaps even more shocking is the knowledge that torture has been practiced for years, right here in the Americas.
For the second time in the past four years, I find myself in a federal prison as a result of my protest against these inhumane policies. My country's involvement in torture was at the heart of my decision to leave my post as pastor of St. Boniface Catholic Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin district in order to speak out against these crimes.
I was arrested at the annual vigil and protest at Fort Benning, Ga., home of the School of the Americas, which has been renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The institute has trained Latin American military and police forces in counterinsurgency warfare for more than 60 years. Numerous graduates have been involved in documented human-rights abuses, including rape, torture and the massacre of innocent civilians in Latin America.
During the 1980s, I, and others from across the country, met with Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador. He told us that the lot of many of his countrymen in El Salvador -- especially those working on behalf of the poor for economic justice and democratic political change -- was "to be captured, tortured, disappeared and found dead." Shortly after our meeting, Romero was assassinated by graduates of the School of the Americas.
In 1996, after pressure by School of the Americas Watch and other human-rights organizations, the Pentagon was forced to release torture manuals that had been translated into Spanish and used in courses at the School of the Americas for at least a decade. I have interviewed many survivors of these horrendous tragedies, including some who were actual participants in the death squads. They told me that those involved in their training were U.S. military officers, some of whom were even present at the scenes of torture. After hearing this firsthand testimony, I and others committed civil disobedience at Fort Benning at the annual protest in November 2001. As a U.S. Air Force veteran, I wanted to speak out against the role my country had played in these atrocities. For this action, I was sentenced to three months in federal prison.
Last November, once again I joined 19,000 people at the gates of Fort Benning in the solemn vigil. Thirty-seven of us crossed onto the military base in a nonviolent witness of conscience. This time, we protested not only the history of torture at this place, but the apparent continuation of these practices by our own military in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay Naval Station or outsourced by U.S. agencies to other countries, such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan, according to Amnesty International. Survivors of torture in Latin America addressed the crowd at this massive gathering, and many asked the same thing, "Why are the same methods of torture now being committed by the U.S. military so similar to those that were used on us?"
I was tried and convicted of trespass and am serving my six months' sentence in Crisp County Jail in Georgia. During my time in prison, I have reflected on questions regarding these issues:
-- Will Congress hold an independent investigation (as recommended by Amnesty International and required in HR1217, legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., to suspend operations of the School of the Americas) into past practices and history of the School of the Americas, whose legacy still haunts the people of Latin America?
-- Will there be a responsible congressional investigation into U.S. policies that enable these cruel torture practices to continue in our own military services and agencies?
These activities have raised troubling questions for all concerned citizens. True democracy cannot be imposed by the use of force that breeds anger and desperation; but can be through policies that promote understanding, fairness and compassion.
Louis Vitale is a Franciscan friar of the Santa Barbara Province, and the former pastor of St. Boniface Catholic Church in San Francisco. He is co-founder of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service and a member of School of the Americas Watch (www.paceebene.org and www.soaw.org).Save the Internet
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
Congress is about to sell out the Internet by letting big phone and
cable companies set up toll booths along the information superhighway.
Companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending tens of millions
in Washington to kill "network neutrality" -- a principle that keeps the
Internet open to all.
A bill moving quickly through Congress would let these companies become
Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow -- and
which won't load at all -- based on who pays them more. The rest of us
will be detoured to the "slow lane," clicking furiously and waiting for
our favorite sites to download.
Don't let Congress ruin the Internet:
Rep. Joe Barton <http://www.savetheinternet.com>
Congress Sells Out
After accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from
big telecom firms, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is sponsoring a bill to
hand over the Internet to these same companies. He's not alone.
Where Does Your Representative Stand? <http://www.savetheinternet.com/=map>
Act Now: Save the Internet
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet/i73nxku49jnx8jd?>
*Tell Congress to Save Net Neutrality Now*
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet/i73nxku49jnx8jd?>
Our elected representatives are trading favors for campaign donations
from phone and cable companies. They're being wooed by people like
AT&T's CEO, who says "the Internet can't be free" and wants to decide
what you do, where you go and what you watch online.
The best ideas never come from those with the deepest pockets. If the
phone and cable companies get their way, the free and open Internet
could soon be fenced in by large corporations. If Congress turns the
Internet over to giants like AT&T, everyone who uses the Internet will
suffer:
* *Google users* -- Another search engine could pay AT&T to
guarantee that it opens faster than Google on your computer.
* *iPod listeners* -- Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering
you to a higher-priced music service that paid for the privilege.
* *Work-at-home parents* -- Connecting to your office could take
longer if you don't purchase your carrier's preferred
applications. Sending family photos and videos could slow to a crawl.
* *Retirees* -- Web pages you always use for online banking, access
to health care information, planning a trip or communicating with
friends and family could fall victim to Verizon's pay-for-speed
schemes.
* *Bloggers* -- Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and
audio clips -- silencing citizen journalists and amplifying the
mainstream media.
* *Online activists* -- Political organizing could be slowed by the
handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to
pay a fee to join the "fast lane."
* *Small businesses* -- When AT&T favors their own services, you
won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online
video, teleconferencing, and Internet phone calls.
* *Innovators with the "next big idea"* -- Startups and
entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big
corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web.
We can't let Congress ruin the free and open Internet.
*Let Congress Know that You Want Net Neutrality Now*
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet/i73nxku49jnx8jd?>
We must act now or lose the Internet as we know it.
Onward,
Robert W. McChesney
President
Free Press
www.freepress.net
P.S. Visit www.SavetheInternet.com <http://www.savetheinternet.com> to
contact your representative, learn more about this issue, and discuss
this campaign with other activists.
P.P.S. Tell your friends about this campaign
<http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet/forward>.
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for the Free
Press at:
http://action.freepress.net/freepress/join.html?r=77MST6F1mj1kE&
17.4.06
Documents Link Rumsfeld to Prisoner's Interrogation
"Questions raised about his knowledge of abuse
by Charlie Savage
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld closely monitored the late 2002 interrogation of a key Guantanamo Bay prison detainee at the same time that the prisoner was subjected to treatment that a military investigator later called ''degrading and abusive," according to newly released documents.
 U.S. President George W. Bush (R) speaks to the press alongside Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (C) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington March 28, 2006, following a scheduled Cabinet meeting. REUTERS/Jason Reed |
The intense attention Rumsfeld and Miller were paying to the interrogation raises new questions about their later claims that they knew nothing about the tactics interrogators used, which included a range of physically intense and sexually humiliating techniques similar to those in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq.
Over a six-week period, according to subsequent investigations, the detainee was subjected to sleep deprivation, stripped naked, forced to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access until he urinated on himself, threatened with snarling dogs, and forced to perform tricks on a dog leash, among other things.
Rumsfeld offered to resign after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in 2004, but President Bush rejected his offer. Rumsfeld is now under fire from many retired generals who have called for his ouster because of his handling of the Iraq war, but yesterday Bush again expressed confidence in the defense secretary.
The new documents cast further light on the period following the Sept. 11 attacks, but before the Iraq invasion, during which harsh interrogation techniques were developed at Guantanamo that later migrated to Abu Ghraib.
In the case of the Saudi detainee, a military investigation last summer concluded that the treatment of the prisoner crossed the line into abuse but stopped short of torture. The investigation also found that the tactics were covered by a list of vaguely worded guidelines that Rumsfeld had approved in early December 2002, then rescinded in January 2003.
The tactics -- which were approved for use on the Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani -- included forced nudity, prolonged isolation, standing for long periods, playing on ''individual phobias" such as dogs, and others designed to lower the pride and ego of the detainee.
The Sept. 11 Commission later concluded that Qahtani was an Al Qaeda member who probably would have been the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. In August 2001, he was turned away from Orlando International Airport by a suspicious immigrations officer while Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta waited in the lobby. Qahtani was later captured in south Asia and brought to Guantanamo.
The documents released yesterday, which the online magazine Salon obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and partially posted on its website, shed new light on a critical period in Guantanamo's history.
The newly released information included a sworn statement given to the inspector general by Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, an Army investigator who last year examined claims by FBI agents that they had witnessed ''torture techniques" on Guantanamo prisoners. Schmidt told the inspector general that Rumsfeld had been ''personally involved in the interrogation of one person" -- Qahtani -- and was ''talking weekly" with Miller about its progress.
But more than two years later, when Schmidt interviewed Rumsfeld about the treatment of Qahtani, the defense secretary expressed incredulity, saying: ''My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?"
Schmidt concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically authorize the ''creative" tactics, but that the vagueness of his instructions had allowed the abuses to occur. ''There were no limits," Schmidt said in his statement.
The international group Human Rights Watch yesterday called for a special prosecutor to investigate Rumsfeld and others who were involved in the harsh interrogations, saying the techniques used on Qahtani ''were so abusive that they amounted to torture." ''The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it's whether he should be indicted," said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. ''General Schmidt's sworn statement suggests that Rumsfeld may have been perfectly aware of the abuses inflicted on Qahtani."
A Defense Department spokeswoman e-mailed a statement insisting that the Pentagon ''did not have a policy that encouraged or condoned abuse," calling any suggestion to the contrary ''fiction." She did not respond to specific questions about the newly released report.
Since May 2004, when the photographs of the Abu Ghraib scandal were published, the military has conducted a dozen investigations into its treatment of detainees at its prisons in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The investigations have concluded that there was no deliberate policy of mistreatment, instead blaming numerous cases of abuse on rogue low-level interrogators, confusion over changing rules, and lax supervision. In one review, an independent panel faulted Rumsfeld for failing to set clear rules for interrogations. The most egregious abuses took place at the Abu Ghraib prison, where photographs showed US soldiers abusing detainees in the fall of 2003 -- shortly after Miller traveled from Guantanamo to Iraq and offered suggestions about how to improve interrogations.
Miller, who has denied suggesting the tactics seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs, is now working a desk job at the Pentagon. In an unusual move for a military officer, he has invoked his right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying in the court-martial of a soldier at Abu Ghraib.
In the documents released yesterday, Schmidt said he found Miller's account that he did not know what was happening to Qahtani ''hard to believe," given the general's frequent conversations with Rumsfeld about developments in the case.
The inspector general, however, did not find enough evidence to hold Miller accountable for the abuses of Qahtani.
But in his report last summer, Schmidt recommended reprimanding Miller for failing to adequately supervise the Qahtani interrogation. However, the leader of the US Southern Command, General Bantz J. Craddock, rejected Schmidt's recommendation, saying the interrogation of Qahtani did not violate military law. Prior to being named to head Southcom, Craddock was Rumsfeld's senior military assistant. 
Scientists Say They're Being Gagged By Bush
No doubt this is definitely true.
WASHINGTON -- Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.
Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.
These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.
"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He said that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."
Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.
Once in 2002, Milly said, Interior officials declined to issue a news release on grounds that it would cause "great problems with the department." In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' ''
Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.
"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."
Several times, however, agency officials have tried to alter what these scientists tell the media. When Tans was helping to organize the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference near Boulder last fall, his lab director told him participants could not use the term "climate change" in conference paper's titles and abstracts. Tans and others disregarded that advice.
None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.
The assertion that climate scientists are being censored first surfaced in January when James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times and the Washington Post that the administration sought to muzzle him after he gave a lecture in December calling for cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. (NASA Administrator Michael Griffin issued new rules recently that make clear that its scientists are free to talk to members of the media about their scientific findings, including personal interpretations.)
Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told the crowd.
NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher responded by sending an agency-wide e-mail that said he is "a strong believer in open, peer-reviewed science as well as the right and duty of scientists to seek the truth and to provide the best scientific advice possible."
"I encourage our scientists to speak freely and openly," he added. "We ask only that you specify when you are communicating personal views and when you are characterizing your work as part of your specific contribution to NOAA's mission."
NOAA scientists, however, cite repeated instances in which the administration played down the threat of climate change in their documents and news releases. Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy.
In 2002, NOAA agreed to draft a report with Australian researchers aimed at helping reef managers deal with widespread coral bleaching that stems from higher sea temperatures. A March 2004 draft report had several references to global warming, including "Mass bleaching ... affects reefs at regional to global scales, and has incontrovertibly linked to increases in sea temperature associated with global change."
A later version, dated July 2005, drops those references and several others mentioning climate change.
NOAA has yet to release the coral bleaching report. James Mahoney, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, said he decided in late 2004 to delay the report because "its scientific basis was so inadequate." Now that it is revised, he said, he is waiting for the Australian Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to approve it. "I just did not think it was ready for prime time," Mahoney said. "It was not just about climate change -- there were a lot of things."
On other occasions, Mahoney and other NOAA officials have told researchers not to give their opinions on policy matters. Konrad Steffen directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a joint NOAA-university institute with a $40 million annual budget. Steffen studies the Greenland ice sheet, and when his work was cited last spring in a major international report on climate change in the Arctic, he and another NOAA lab director from Alaska received a call from Mahoney in which he told them not to give reporters their opinions on global warming.
Steffen said that he told him that although Mahoney has considerable leverage as "the person in command for all research money in NOAA ... I was not backing down."
Mahoney said he had "no recollection" of the conversation, which took place in a conference call. "It's virtually inconceivable that I would have called him about this," Mahoney said, though he added: "For those who are government employees, our position is they should not typically render a policy view."
The need for clearance from Washington, several NOAA scientists said, amounts to a "pocket veto" allowing administration officials to block interviews by not giving permission in time for journalists' deadlines.
Ronald Stouffer, a climate research scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, estimated his media requests have dropped in half because it took so long to get clearance to talk from NOAA headquarters. Thomas Delworth, one of Stouffer's colleagues, said the policy means Americans have only "a partial sense" of what government scientists have learned about climate change.
"American taxpayers are paying the bill, and they have a right to know what we're doing," he said.
We are paying for many illegal, illicit tasks prompted by the Bush Regime.
US Firms Suspected of Bilking Iraq Funds
Are we supposed to be surprised?
Millions missing from program for rebuilding |
| by Farah Stockman |
| WASHINGTON -- American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq's government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors. Courts in the United States are beginning to force contractors to repay reconstruction funds stolen from the American government. But legal roadblocks have prevented Iraq from recovering funds that were seized from the Iraqi government by the US-led coalition and then paid to contractors who failed to do the work. A US law that allows citizens to recover money from dishonest contractors protects only the US government, not foreign governments. In addition, an Iraqi law created by the Coalition Provisional Authority days before it ceded sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 gives American contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraq. ''In effect, it makes Iraq into a 'free-fraud zone,' " said Alan Grayson, a Virginia attorney who is suing the private security firm Custer Battles in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former employees. A federal jury last month found the Rhode Island-based company liable for $3 million in fraudulent billings in Iraq. Even the United Nations panel set up to monitor the use of Iraq's seized assets has no power to prosecute wrongdoers. ''The Iraqi people are out of luck, the way it stands right now," said Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a watchdog group that helps US citizens file cases such as the Custer Battles action. Iraqi leaders, paralyzed by political deadlock in forming a new government, have so far made no formal complaint about funds that were paid out to dishonest contractors. But US officials say the need for Iraq to recoup the stolen money has become more urgent as it faces a budget shortfall of billions of dollars. The problem has become so acute that an interagency working group, which includes officials from the State Department and the Department of Justice, has been set up to try to come up with a mechanism to return the funds, according to two US officials who are involved. The issue dates to the earliest days after the March 2003 invasion, when US officials thought Iraqi money would cover the costs of reconstruction. As the Coalition Provisional Authority took control just after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it seized Iraq's oil revenues, money found in bank accounts and in Hussein's palaces, and the balance from the UN's oil-for-food program. The coalition ultimately controlled more than $20.7 billion in Iraqi funds. The money was deposited into an account called the Development Fund for Iraq, or DFI, which was set up, in the words of the US administrator at the time, L. Paul Bremer III, ''for the benefit of the Iraqi people." The fund represented the first cash reservoir US officials turned to as they worked to rebuild roads, bridges, and clinics. It carried fewer restrictions than the $18.4 billion in US funds appropriated around that time for reconstruction because those funds could only be used in ways designated by Congress. But the Coalition Provisional Authority lacked basic controls and accounting procedures to keep track of the billions in Iraqi money it was doling out to contractors, according to a series of audits issued in 2005 and 2006 by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a temporary office set up by Congress to oversee the use of reconstruction funds. One review of the files relating to 198 separate contracts found that 154 contained no evidence that goods or services promised by contractors were ever received, according to an April 2005 audit by the inspector general. In some cases, contractors were paid twice for the same job. In others cases, they were paid for work that was never done. In June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority handed power and control of the DFI back to an Iraqi government. By then, the coalition had spent or disbursed about $14 billion of the Iraqi fund on reconstruction projects and on the administration of the government, according to the audits. Among the contracts paid for out of the Iraqi fund was Halliburton's controversial no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure, worth $2.4 billion. The Pentagon's auditors found $263 million in excessive or unsubstantiated costs for importing gasoline into Iraq, but the Pentagon said in February that it had agreed to pay a Halliburton subsidiary all but $10 million of the contested charges. The special inspector general's investigations have resulted in the arrests of five suspects on criminal charges and is investigating 60 more cases involving alleged fraud and corruption in Iraq involving both US and DFI funds, according to James Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general. In addition, at least seven more cases against contractors have been filed in US civil courts under the federal False Claims Act, according to two private lawyers who have personal knowledge of the suits. The act, which dates to the Civil War, allows citizens to sue on behalf of the government when they suspect fraud in federal contracting. The cases are currently under seal until the Justice Department investigates them to determine whether the government will join the suit. The cases eventually could help the US Treasury recover hundreds of millions of dollars from corrupt contractors, according to Grayson, the attorney suing Custer Battles, the first such case to reach the courts and become public. But the False Claims Act has not helped Iraq. Last month, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that it only protects the US government from fraud and that the United States suffered no direct economic loss from fraud involving Iraqi funds. The result is a victory for American taxpayers, but a loss for Baghdad: In the first phase of the fraud claim involving Custer Battles, the jury ruled in March that the company should pay triple damages to the US Treasury for the $3 million it was paid for delivering a fleet of trucks that didn't work and old, spray-painted Iraqi cranes that were passed off as new imports. But the company, which has denied the charges in court and in other statements, does not have to repay any of the $12 million that came from the Development Fund for Iraq on the same contract, according to the judge's ruling. Grayson said the injustice surrounding wasted Iraqi funds has helped fuel the insurgency. ''The DFI was essentially treated as a 'slush fund' for various quasi-military projects, run by US contractors over whom Iraqis had no control," he said. ''Like a colonial power, the Bush administration took Iraq's oil money, and wasted it. The Iraqis well know that. That's one reason why they're shooting at US soldiers." Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, has urged the administration to repay Iraq for the money paid to Custer Battles. ''This was Iraqi money, and it should be returned to the Iraqi people," he said in a statement. The Justice Department, which is pursuing criminal cases against contractors, says there is a chance that Iraq eventually could receive some restitution. In February, Robert J. Stein Jr., a North Carolina man who issued contracts on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority, pleaded guilty to conspiring with at least three others to steal more than $2 million from the Iraqi fund. The money, earmarked for refurbishing a police academy and library in the town of Hillah, was spent on expensive cars, machine guns, jewelry; hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash was also smuggled into the United States. As part of a plea deal, Stein has agreed to pay $3.6 million in restitution, but Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said it is too early to say whether Iraq will receive the money as part of that deal. ''It is possible that some of the money could go back to the Development Fund for Iraq," he said. ''But that hasn't been determined yet." |
16.4.06
t r u t h o u t - MultiMedia
Many videos well worth watching including:
Iraq Vet: "We Will Not Abandon Another Generation of Soldiers"
A Film by Scott Galindez
Iraq War Veteran Charlie Anderson describes his anger at how the administration has treated those who have returned from Iraq. Charlie warns Bush that he will use his military training to fight against the war ... instead of a machine gun he will use the pen, microphone, and guitar as his tools.
Why Did We Go to War?
George Bush finally let Helen Thomas ask him a question after four years of ducking her. She asked him a simple question: "Why did we go to war?" Three years after the start of the war, he still has no answer that makes sense.
Dahr Jamail: Reporting on Iraq
A Film By Sari Gelzer
My favorite reporter
Video Allegedly Exposes Security Contractors Shooting Iraqis
Shocking footage of alleged attacks on random civilian automobiles in Baghdad, reportedly committed by US-funded "defense contractors." For further details, see: 'Trophy' Video Exposes Private Security Contractors Shooting Up Iraqi Drivers. This video first appeared on a web site that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services.
White Phosphorus is what the US Military used to literally melt this city of people, and the skin and flesh right off their bodies. Orders were to shoot and kill EVERYTHING.
Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre
A Film by Sigfrido Ranucci
RAINews24
11.08.05
WARNING: This video contains graphic and possibly disturbing footage.
We need more of these
A Day of Civil Disobedience
Washington, DC | 09.26.05
Plus World Can't Wait, Cindy Sheehen, Hurricane Katrina and many other videos of intersts of the extreme social injustice of the Bush Regime.
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says (04/14/2006)
Those words came out of my mouth since day 1. Cheney has authorized an awful lot of nasty things that should this country survive, leave him with his true and evil colors showing for generations to come...if we have generations to come. The Bush regime is working on that too, since you can't save your ass and your face at the same time.
Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.
The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.
There is a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed the vice president was deeply involved in the effort to undermine her husband. Hello? Thanks for getting a clue to the obvious.
The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.
The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.
Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else."
But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.
A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment.
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and the CIA leak investigation
On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."
Moreover, on July 12, 2003, the same day that Libby spoke to both Cooper and Miller, Libby and Cheney traveled aboard Air Force Two for the dedication of a new aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va. During the flight either to or from Norfolk, Cheney, Libby, and Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice president for public affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges and discredit him, according to federal court records, and interviews with people with first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three provided to federal investigators.
It has long been known that Cheney was among the first people in the government to tell Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. The federal indictment of Libby -- who has been charged with five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators in the CIA leak case -- states: "On or about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."
Fitzgerald asserted that just days before Libby divulged Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper on July 12, "Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate superior, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although contained in a public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and Libby had gone unreported.
The new disclosure about the CIA report further raises questions about the vice president's role in directly authorizing the leak of classified information outside the formal declassification process. Last week it was reported that Libby also testified to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of the effort to rebut Wilson's criticism, President Bush had authorized the leaking of portions of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate concerning purported attempts by Iraq to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has asserted that presidents have the constitutional right to declassify information. Although vice presidents haven't shared such authority, President Bush issued an executive order in March 2003 allowing Cheney to share such authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing, Libby has also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice President David Addington "opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amount to a declassification of the document."
Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an interview, however, that while there are executive orders that apparently allow the vice president "on his own to determine what to declassify and to whom," that authority should "not exempt him or anyone from exercising prudence or good judgment" in doing so. "You would want the president or the vice president to seek the views of the CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to make sure that there is no potential disclosing an intelligence source" or some other sensitive information.
Criticizing the decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said last week: "Leaking classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or silence your critics is not appropriate. If I had leaked the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the president be above the law? I am stunned."
In his grand jury testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing, Libby portrayed himself as a reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who took orders from higher ups. Libby "testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was during this time that Libby says he spoke to Addington on the matter.
Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, who tracks government secrecy and classification issues, said that Libby "presents himself in this instance and others as being very scrupulous in adhering to the rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If you take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is cautious and deliberative in his behavior.
"That is almost the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it comes to disclosing Plame's identity," Aftergood said. "All of a sudden he doesn't play within the rules. He doesn't seek authorization. If you believe his account, he almost acts capriciously. You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so dramatically, if he is telling the truth that this was not authorized and that he did not talk to higher-ups."
Libby has insisted that the vice president never authorized or told him to discuss Plame's identity. Although Libby discussed Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003 -- the same day he says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE and the CIA report -- Libby insists the two actions are unrelated.
The new disclosure also raises the question whether President Bush or his aides knew that Cheney may have been deciding on his own to authorize the leaking of classified information. Senior government officials said that top Bush aides -- including then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett -- were not aware that Cheney had authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger mission. These officials raised the possibility that Bush himself was unaware at the time of Cheney's action.
Regarding the release of Plame's name and CIA employment, a senior administration official said that even if Cheney did not directly authorize Libby to leak the information to the press, the vice president might have set a climate in which his aides viewed it as routine to release classified information whenever it served their purposes.
The administration was interested in discrediting Wilson because the former ambassador asserted in his op-ed piece that he found no evidence in Niger to substantiate Bush administration claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from that country. Wilson alleged that the administration had misrepresented intelligence by making that claim in its case to go to war with Iraq. Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby leaked Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper.
Cheney and other Bush administration officials also believed that the CIA debriefing report might undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe was inconclusive on the uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the persons he was able to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence information before undertaking the trip.
In reportedly directing Libby to disclose portions of the March 2002 CIA report on Wilson's mission, Cheney apparently kept in the dark a number of administration officials who were working to declassify that very same document.
According to Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in the place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide information contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12 [Libby] discussed Ms. Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time)."
The purported Wilson cable refers to the classified CIA debriefing of Wilson, according to sources who have read the document. Wilson never himself authored a cable on his Niger mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which sent Wilson to Niger in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report based on Wilson's debriefing by intelligence officers. The report did not name Wilson, or even describe him as a former ambassador, but rather as a "contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record" to protect the-then covert nature of the trip.
The report was then "widely distributed in routine channels," according to a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. It is unclear whether Cheney or his office received the report at the time it was distributed, or sometime later.
But two government officials with first-hand knowledge of events said during the summer of 2003, Libby and other White House officials sought any reports and other classified information regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided at that time.
A relatively small amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed some aspects of the debriefing described in the document. But other portions remained highly classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the report, two senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement.
The federal indictment of Libby states: "On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of Libby and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and 'Joe Wilson' on the documents."
It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name handwritten on it by someone in the Vice President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report, but the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly was indeed the one with the handwriting.
Cheney, Libby, and others wanted to leak and declassify portions of the report because they believed that it would undercut the perception that Wilson's mission had disproved the allegations definitively that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger, two senior government officials said in interviews.
Among other things, Wilson had agreed only to interview former Nigerien officials, instead of current ones, so as not to step on the toes of the State Department or its then-ambassador to Niger, and he was disadvantaged in his inquiries, the two senior government officials said.
In an interview, Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview current Nigerien officials because the then-U.S. ambassador was conducting her own inquiry, and a decision was made for him to speak to former Nigerien officials while the ambassador made her inquiries of the current government.
"When I arrived in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought that she had already debunked the allegations with current Niger officials," Wilson said. "We agreed then that I would speak to former government officials, who I knew better than she did because I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White House, and thereafter. So that was the division of labor."
Wilson also said that the ambassador told her that a "four-star Marine general had also already talked to current officials, and that he too had concluded and reported that he believed there was nothing to the allegations."
-- National Journal correspondent Shane Harris also contributed to this report.
