Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Bully Boy Butt Wipe

I just noted Wally's error message and Elaine did a quick post and ended up with the same basic message:

550 Could not open:
Read-only file systemblog/14/35/13/likemariasaidpaz/
archives/2007_01_21_likemariasaidpaz_archive.html

I tried to type just like she read it to me. (Also did that with Wally.)

Especially after the problems with posting at The Third Estate Sunday Review, I think we're all sick of it. Blogger/Blogspot needs to get its shit together.


I'm going to note Jane Bright's "When Will We Know That Enough Americans Have Died?" and it's a question C.I. always asks in the "And the war drags on" posts:


What's the magic number for the American people? It wasn't 249. My son was the 249th American killed. He was killed in July 2003 when over 70% of the American people still supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since Evan was killed 2,806 more American men and women have died in the "war on terror," according to the conservative estimates of the Department of Defense.
When Evan was killed no one suspected the enormity of the loss we were going to experience. The enormity of our loss remained within our family and grouping of friends. Everyone assumed that only a few hundred soldiers would die and that the loss of a few hundred soldiers was going to be just a drop in the bucket. My son's life was valued as that - a drop in the bucket. After all, what's a few hundred, or as of today's body count, a few thousand American lives when it comes to keeping America safe in the "war on terror?"
My question to the American people is this: when is enough, enough? At what point do we, the voters, taxpayers, consumers and owners of this immoral occupation bring a halt to the carnage?
Because of the deaths that occurred this weekend 27 American families will have one or two uniformed military personnel show up at their door. If the messengers have not already met with the families they will do so some time today. Mothers and wives will scream, "No, it can't be, it's a mistake" as they fall to the floor or bend over double in pain, excruciating pain.

Be sure to read C.I.'s "Watada, Olson, press" and Wally & Cedric's joint-post can be read here , it will show up at their own sites at some point when Blogger/Blogspot fixes the problem).

Elaine was going to talk about Bully Boy's State of the Union tonight (before we both couldn't log into our accounts). So I'll note it a bit.

First off, Dems, Repubes, stop applauding. At graduations they tell you to hold your applause to the end. Same thing should go with the Bully Boy.

He was his usual idiot. His illegal war created the sectarian division but he didn't want to take responsibility for his own policies. He offered this lame line, "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in." No, it's the quagmire you got a nation into, it's the destruction you unleashed on Iraqis. Don't include me in your illegal war Butt Wipe.

Then he started nonsense about "it is still within our power to shape the outcome of the battle". He lied. At least half the public now gets that. "Our power" is to impeach his ass and send him to prison. No pardon, straight to prison and Cheney can be his cellmate.

I'll be in DC this weekend and I hope you're going to that to say "NO!" to the war but if you're not able to, I hope you're got something planned in your area. Let's send the message: "Stop the war! Bring the troops home." And maybe we can picket The Nation next with a "Be Honest" sign?

Check out Rebecca's "what will become of sarah olson!!!!!!!!!" because it's hilarious and it's also hard hitting. Ehren Watada is facing six years in prison, Sarah Olson's maximum punishment is six months. So who is the media jerking off over? Sarah Olson.

The best thing about the court-martial starting may be we don't have to hear from Sarah Olson ever again. Her moment of 'fame' will pass. (As Rebecca points out, C.I. is sympathetic to Olson. The community isn't. I think the "in fairness" moment of including her today was in keeping with who C.I. is and I love C.I. but no more Olson, I've already asked that on a phone call tonight.) (For visitors, C.I. has never made Olson the story. C.I. knows the story is Ehren Watada and you'd be hard pressed to find a single week that Watada's not been mentioned at least five times in months.)


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, January 23, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Ehren Watada discusses his upcoming court-martial, another helicopter crashes in Iraq, calls for the unproduced NIE begin as the Bully Boy attempts to sell his escalation in and continued war on Iraq, and questions arise over his repeated alarmist talk of Iran.


In June Ehren Watada became the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Today, he spoke to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about what he's facing ins February 5th court-martial at Fort Lewis. Watada explained the process by which he came to his decision: assigned to Iraq, he began doing the research required of him. (Yesterday on WBAI's Law and Disorder, Carolyn Ho walked people through her son's awakening. In addition to archived broadcasts at either link, Rebecca's written of the speech at her site.) His research provided him with information and, from that infomation, he was left the reality that the war was illegal and immoral. At which point he had to decide what to do and he tried to handle the matter privately but the military repeatedly refused to do so. Only after months of that did Watada go public. In his August Article 32 hearing (similar to a grand jury), his attornies (a military attorney and a civilian attorney) were allowed to present a defense. 'Judge' Head has disallowed that for the court-martial scheduled to be held at Fort Lewis on February 5th.

Amy Goodman asked, in light of that ruling, "what is heard in the court, that you just refused to show up?" Watada answered, "Correct. It will simply be. It will be a non-trial. It will not be a fair trial or a show of justice, in any sense. I think that they will simply say, 'Was he ordered to go? Yes. Did he go? No. Well, he’s guilty.' And that also goes for the conduct unbecoming charges: 'Did he make those statements? Can we verify that? Yes? Okay, he’s guilty.' And then it will be pretty much a disciplinary hearing -- in terms of how much punishment should we give this lieutenant." There will be strong defense offered despite the fact that Watada faces up to six years in prison if convicted of all charges. Now the military has a roll of who made the deployment and who didn't and they have transcripts and audio and video of Watada's statment. If he's not allowed to explain his reasons, it's a matter of "yes" and "no." That's really not a defense and "Judge" Head really isn't a judge. (That's me, not Watada for any 'researches' for the prosecution.)

Watada declared that "there's tremendous support out there. I think it's unfortunate that we haven't been able to get into the national media as much as we wanted to. And therefore, the more east you go, the less people know about the case. And I think, just looking at how much support I've received in Washington state and back home in my home state, in Hawaii, there are a lot of people who are coming out. And not just people on one spectrum of the political ideology, but people from the mainstream. They are all coming out -- the unions, the interfaith groups, the students, universities. They are all coming out to support. And I think that's just a testament to how people feel about the war and the policies of this administration."

There is a lot of support. There is, however, very little coverage in media big or small. There are exceptions and it's usually the same group we've learned to look for coverage of what matters. Yesterday on Free Speech Radio News and The KPFA Evening News, Martha Baskin reported on the Citizens' Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq held in Tacoma, Washington last Satruday and Sunday noting that while a 'judge' had "ruled that" Watada "could not raise the legality of the war in his defense" the hearing did just that attracting experts from legal and military fields, "military families and veterans". Richard Falk was heard, in the report, testifying that, "It is our role as citizens to protect those who are brave enough . . . who refuse to participate in an illegal war."


Another issue in the court-martial of Ehren Watada is whether or not journalists should participate in the proceedings as witnesses for the prosecution. Emily Howard spoke with journalists Sarah Olson and Norman Solomon yesterday on KPFA's Flashpoints. Olson will not discuss her "legal strategy." She has stated, on air, to Laura Flanders she wouldn't testify and she has played mum on that with others. However, as noted on Sunday, she has not stated that she supported Watada 100%, she has just stated that as a journalist it is her job to cover the news and her sources are sources and neither an endorsement or a rebuke.

Speaking with Howard yesterday, Olson made her strongest case yet.

She did that by first starting with Ehren Watada who is facing the court-martial and whose stand is what the military is interested in and wants to punish. ("The crux of this trial," as Howard pointed out.) Having established Watada's stand, Olson then connected it to other war resisters who had come forward by name (and noted that Flashpoints interviewed Ivan Brobeck -- they were the only outlet to do so when he returned to the US from Canada to turn himself on election day in November with an open letter to the Bully Boy). Why does whether she testifies or not in the court-martial matter?

As Olson and Solomon outlined it (very clearly) who are war resisters going to talk to? If they're under the impression that any reporter they tell their stories to will then be called before a court to testify against them, that will produce a chilling effect on free speech and prevent a free press from the ability to keep citizens informed. That is the purpose of the free press, as veteran DC journalist Helen Thomas noted on yesterday's Democracy Now!, not providing with you commercials of products that will 'enhance' your life, informing citizens so that they can make their decisions and contribute within a democracy.

Norman Solomon noted that the Pentagon is "worried about people not only thinking for themselves but speaking up" so it is "trying to intimidate" people into silence and that this is "a contradicition between the myth of the military defending our 'freedoms'" and trying to supress freedoms.

Olson, who faces six month in jail and/or a fine if she refuses to testify, declared, "When you look at the number of people who are taking steps to actively express their opposition to this war I think that is has become it has grown to a point it's not something that can be ignored or . . . can or should be ignored. And I think it's very important as journalists . . . that we are able to cover this perspective and this growing number of active dutry Iraq war vetrns and soldiers who are in opposition to this war. It's becoming more and more relevant as the days go by."

Olson is correct -- Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Robin Long, Ryan Johnson, Chris Teske, Tim Richard and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.

In Iraq . . .

Bombings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports two car bombs in Baghdad (Sheikh Omar neighborhood and Karranda neighborhood) that killed five and left 11 wounded while, in east Baghdad, an IED wounded 3 police ofiicers; in the province of Basra an explosion killed one person, and, yesterday, two British soldiers were injured in yet another rocket attack "on the British consulate downtown Baasra city".Reuters reports three Iraqi soldiers wounded in a car bombing in Sinjar, nine injured in a car bombing in Mosul, a woman dead and two children wounded from mortar attacks in Iskandariya, and six dead from mortar attacks (nine wounded) in Suwayra.


Shootings?

Yesterday a school teacher (female) was gunned down on her way to work. Today, CNN reports another attack on an educator -- a professor was gunned down on his way to work as well (northern Baghdad). The BBC reports five Iraqi police officers were shot dead in Mosul. Reuters reports that educators were attacked in Tal Afar as well -- two teachers shot dead,
that two Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in Falluja, and that two people were shot dead near Kirkuk (with another wounded).

Corpses?

Reuters reports a corpse discovered in Mussayab today and five discovered yesterday (four in Rutba and one in Iskandariya).

Also today the US military announced: "An 89TH Military Police Brigade Soldier died Monday of wounds suffered after an improvised explosive device exploded next to his vehicle north of Baghdad" and they announced: ".One Marine assigned to 1st Marine Expeditionary Force died Sunday from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in the Multi National Division-Baghdad area of operation, south of Baghdad. One Soldier assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 died Monday from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in Al Anbar Province."


In addition to the above five Americans, employees of the Blackwater security firm, are dead.
CBS and AP report that helicopter was shot down citing an "Iraqi defense official" who states a machine gun was used to shoot the helicopter down. This echoes the Washington Post's eye witness who stated a machine gun was used to shoot down the helicopter carrying twelve US troops, Saturday in Baghdad. The US military has presented the crashes and crash landings repeatedly as though they were mechanical failures (which some may have been) but it's also true that helicopters can be shot down -- with guns, no rockets needed. That was very clear during Vietnam and it's amazing how so many in the press corps seem to either be unaware of that point or choose to ignore it as one crash after another (until recently) resulted in press 'reports' that read like military press releases (and some were).


In news of reality versus Operation Happy Talk, the press can't contain their giddyness (with few exceptions) over the supposed 'crackdown' finally going on with militias and the people in leadership (or portrayed as such) of them being caught. As has been pointed out earlier this month, the detentions (in the past) can best be termed "catch and release" (one Republican senator even denounced them as such). Commenting on one wave of Operation Happy Talk in the press, the BBC's Anderw North notes: "it is still not clear how significant the senior Mehdi Army figures now in custody are." And Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that a US led operation in the Salah Ad Din province Monday night led to the arrest of "the chief of Tikrit local council Aarif Jabbar Motar and Sheikh Khaleel Al Ejili, a member of the Muslim Scholars Association and the imam of Omar Bin AL Khattab mosque. The two men were arrested in the house of the Iraqi army intelligence officer Captain Maeen Al Dulaimi." Hammoudi also reports that one of the two arrested as they attempted to negotiate the release of both Dr. Basim Al Jishi and Sheikh Hamid Ugab and that Ugab "had been released early morning today." Was there a point to arresting him, or any of the others, besides the giddy press 'reports' that help continue Operation Happy Talk?

If so, does it counter the fact that the people's response was a 1,000 plus demonstration against these arrest? Or does it just further inflame the tensions?

Meanwhile, same topic (Operation Happy Talk versus reality), the usual War Hawks among the press have passed off escalation as the answer (see Michael R. Gordon) and few questions have been asked by others whether this was a 'strategy,' a 'technique,' or just sop tossed out to try fool the public? David Morgan (Reuters) reports: The Bush administration came under fire on Tuesday for its failure to produce a key intelligence report that casts doubt on whether the Iraqi government is capable of taking steps to ensure the success of President George W. Bush's strategy. The classified document, known as a national intelligence estimate, would represent the 16-agency espionage community's consensus views on the stability of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government and prospects for controlling sectarian violence in Iraq. U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte's office was ordered by Congress to produce the document in late September, but is not expected to do so until after the Senate takes up two measures opposing Bush's plan to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq to try to quell the violence." That would be the report that former CIA analyst Ray McGovern (writing at Consortium News) noted: "So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do. With 'sham-dunk' former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,500 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years. The Old Mushroom Cloud The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House’s warnings of a made-in-Iraq 'mushroom cloud,' remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously."

Finally on this topic, the Bully Boy gives his State of the Union speech tonight. In it, he is again expected to sound the alrams on Iran. But Alexandra Zavis and Greg Miller (Los Angeles Times) report that there are claims but little proof: "But there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found. In his speech this month outlining the new U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush promised to "seek out and destroy" Iranian networks that he said were providing "advanced weaponry and training to our enemies." He is expected to strike a similar note in tonight's State of the Union speech. For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration hasprovided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement."


In DC, the Senate Armed Services Committee went through the motions of a hearing on whether or not to confirm David Petraeus, nominated by the Bully Boy, the Lt. general would become the new commander of US troops (and Iraqis, be honest) in Iraq. BBC reports that he told the committee: "None of this will be rapid. The way ahead will be neither quick nor easy. There undoubtedly will be tough days. . . . The situation in Iraq is dire. The stakes are high. There are no easy choices. The way ahead will be very hard. . . But hard is not hopeless." Hard does not mean hopeless, Petraeus declares. (Gordo gets giddy at the thought.) And soft doesn't mean happiness, as many women could explain. He did and a song and dance and the senators acted as though they were doing a probing examination. Or maybe it was supposed to pass for 'symbolic.' The senators occassionaly asked a difficult question (Ted Kennedy) but after almost four years of a war that continues to kill Iraqis, Americans, British, . . . that just didn't cut it anymore than the 'symbolic' measure Senators Carl Levin, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel are pushing. The most obvious question went unasked: "Why is the US in Iraq? What pupose does the US presence serve?"


As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) reported today, US Congress Representative Maxine Waters will be attending the demonstration in DC this weekend and is urging other members of Congress to do likewise. Informations on these demonstrations in DC this weekend can be found at CODEPINK's Bring the Peace Mandate to D.C. on J27! activities will also be taking place in communities around the country. Saturday, Laura Flanders will be broadcasting live from DC to cover the demonstrations on RadioNation with Laura Flanders.

In addition Anthony Arnove, author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal, will be speaking in DC this weekend on Saturday the 27th at Busboys and Poets at 5:00 pm while those in the NYC area might want to check out this Sunday event -- from The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Joan Mellen lecture on JFK assasination 1-28-07" which I meant to note last week but didn't have time (we will be noting it, Monday through Friday, in the week leading up to the Sunday event):

We'll be noting this again in January, but we'll note it right now. Author Joan Mellen will be speaking Sunday, January 28th at 7:30 p.m. in NYC at the 92nd Street Y (92nd Street and Lesington Avenue). Mellan, a professor at Temple University and the author of seventeen books, will be presenting a lecture on the JFK assasination . . . and beyond. Tickets are $25.Mellen's latest book is A Farewell to Justice which probes the assasination of JFK. She was a guest on Law and Disorder November 7, 2005. And the March 15, 2006 broadcast of KPFA's Guns and Butter featured her speech "How the Failure to Identify, Prosecute and Convict President Kennedy's Assassins Has Led to Today's Crisis of Democracy." You can also read a transcript of that speech here.
Again, that's Sunday, January 28th, 7:30 p.m. the 92nd Street Y in NYC.

mikey likes it










Posted by at
550 Could not open: Read-only file systemblog/60/1/6/thedailyjot/archives/2007_01_21_thedailyjot_archive.html

If you see this, I am posting. I couldn't get in and Wally's getting that message and Cedric's got a similar one. Rebecca can't even log in (like me) and Elaine can't either. I'm still trying to get ahold of Kat.
Posted by at

Monday, January 22, 2007

Law & Disorder, Anthony Arnove, Michael Schwartz

Monday. This is from today's snapshot and I want to pull out for the start:

Ann Wright: Now that's kind of the heart of it all, isn't it? The conduct becoming an officer? The ability to think. The ability to take care of your troops, to keep them out of harm's way, to explore with your chain of command what's going on, why are you having to do certain things? Trusting in your chain of command that you're asking questions that your seniors are asking, are asking, are asking . . .
And I think what we we see in the case of Lt. Watada is that the entire chain of command has failed starting with the four-star generals that were the advisors to the Secretary of Defense and the president, with General Myers, the chief of staff, [. . .] who was such a weak chairman of the Joint Chiefs that he did not question it, he was a toady of the Bush administration.
We did have one four-star general who spoke out -- General Shinseki, chief of staff of the army -- who questioned. He actually didn't question the war, he questioned the number of troops -- how the war was going to be prosecuted. Our generals in the chain of command have not acted as they should have and it's just kind of gone all the way down. The questioning that really goes up and down in the military because there is a dynamic part of the military it's just not one monolythic group there's a lot of debate going on in the scenes and behind the scenes. [. . .]
For the Lt. to be the one that is carrying the load on questioning the war is a little unfair. There should have been people much higher up that were questioning, as they are now, the retired generals are questioning, but that's a little late. [. . .]
It's hard to question sometimes even though you know it's your responsibility and your obligation to do it. But we see here that we've got very few people in the military who are openly questioning but then you look at the polls in newspapers that are being taken of the service members in Iraq and, what is it, 75% of them say we shouldn't be there. So there is an underground movement of the military itself. They're not the ones that can stop wars from beginning but they're the ones that ultimately are the ground fodder for it and what they start saying, "It's not worth my life anymore" that's when these things will start slowing down. And then it's up to us as civilians be going to our Congress to demand that the Congress stop funding the war. If you want to support the troops bring them home, stop the funding of the war.

I really respect Ann Wright and I wanted everyone to think about what she's talking about before I got to anything else.

Now let's talk about WBAI's Law & Disorder. I'm going to focus on the first section with
Anthony Arnove and Michael Schwartz and Rebecca's planning to grab the second half (with Carolyn Ho -- the mother of Ehren Watada). Geoff Brady is the producer of the show and he did a set up for the show today at the opening where he talked about a lot of things. I'm grabbing from his intro to note that he called the kangroo court-martial Watada's facing Feb. 5th a "mere formality" because the judge has stripped Watada of the right to argue a defense (he can't talk about why he decided not to deploy to Iraq) and Brady noted that Watada's actions were "his courageous stand against the Iraq war" -- I know that last part may be real obvious but when you consider that the first time The Nation printed Ehren Watada's name it was in a sentence calling him a coward, I think we need to note the obvious and the real left. (By the way, I have something to note from C.I. at the end of this part.)

So Arrnove and Schwartz talked about the illegal war and covered a huge number of topics. Arnove was talking about how you had to watch yourself and not fall into the Shia and Sunni thing the press promotes because the problems in Iraq stem from the "conflict between an occupation and those under an occupation." Comparing it to Vietnam, he noted that it's a bit more at stake for the bullies because they're focused on the oil and "setting up a client regime."

To excuse the massive failure that is the illegal war, the 'hot' thing to do is to turn it around and blame it on the people who were invaded. He noted that this blaming came from lots of groups
"including among people who are calling themselves, critics, opponents of the war which is this racist idea that we went in to help the Iraq people, to bring democracy . . . but we just didn't realize how 'backwards' they were" and that "'democracy' could not take roots in the hostile" terrain.

Since Katha Pollitt is convinced that the peace movement is lying to the people (I thought that was The Nation's job?), let me address her crap of "Withdrawing from Iraq may be the right thing to do, but it won't mean peace, at least not for Iraqis." That's prefaced with "Be honest." (Thanks to C.I. for that. Ma threw out all of our copies of the rag after the decision was made that until The Nation gets a spine, it never comes back in our home.) That's all of her point seven in "Happy New Year!" in the Jan. 22nd issue. That's all she has to say on Iraq. And yet she still manages to get it wrong.

Before I go on, let me make it easy for Nation readers, here's my point seven: "Be honest. Talking about Iraq, the peace movement and war resisters takes courage, there's little out there, at least for The Nation."

Arnove's addressed this point repeatedly, that violence doesn't stop the minute US forces leave. But US forces breed the violence and when they leave, a big source of the hostility is gone. F**k! I just got something. [I've deleted this in case we need to use it at Third or keep a 'round in the chamber.] Okay, so Phony Pollitt writes a column where she gets one whole wopping sentence about Iraq in -- is that the most she's written since Jan. 2006 about it? Probably. She didn't write about war resisters. She didn't even write about Watada. She didn't write about Abeer. Maybe she was too busy driving to the polls in August?

But if she'd listened to the show today, she would have heard this addressed. Turn off the NPR!
If she'd listened, she would have heard Schwartz making the points that need to be made and he didn't have to say, "Number seven . . ." But then he was being honest.

Now let me note that Alan Wolfe, whom Polltt gives a shout out to, is a stupid idiot. Everyone in the community knows that. They know how stupid Wolfe is. When we were doing the editorial, C.I. was half with us and we asked who Alan Wolfe was and C.I. sighed and said "Brock!" And we all remembered. I'm looking for it online right now.

This is from a roundtable at The Common Ills:

Dona: Well, this may not help, I grabbed the book section. Where you will find yet another book containing text previously printed in the paper and here it is reviewed by the paper in a full page review.

C.I.: Good Lord. Can the paper stop pushing their own writers? Who reviews that nonsense?

Dona: Alan Wolfe.

Jim: "For the record," a stream of curse words are not being included in this transcript.

C.I.: These are the kind of things that make me wish I hadn't made this a work environment safe site. I would love to let fly on the know nothing who knew nothing about David Brock's book. The one who slammed David Brock for not knowing that Chris Matthews was against the war when Brock, in fact, writes that in the book that Wolfe was supposed to be reviewing?

Ty: You know your bylines.

C.I.: On that, the review is notorious within the community. I've probably read hundreds of e-mails on that since The Common Ills started up. So let's be clear here. The Times pays someone to review a book. They turn in a review where they criticize an author for not addressing an issue that is in fact addressed in the book. And yet, they turn around and hire this person who may not have read the book for the first assignment, or else didn't read it closely enough, or else lied, or else just can't retain what he read. That is crap. He was hired to review books, Brock was only one [book, there are several reviewed in the "New Pamphleteers] in his lame ass review, and he couldn't do that job, he wasn't up to it. There needs to be accountability. This wasn't a mistake or a typo. This was a case of someone not doing the work they were hired for. That should keep you from being hired to review a book again.
But the Times never corrected the mistake. You can go to the review today, I think it's called "The New Pamphleteers" or some such nonsense, and you'll still see the mistake. They should be embarrassed. People should boo and hiss Alan Wolfe on his campus. They should say, "Hey professor, you're so big and mighty on ethics and religion but you took money without working for it!" There was not an excuse for the mistake to make it into print. The man obvioulsy didn't read the book. He probably skimmed it, and probably the others he was reviewing as well, and he made a HUGE mistake. Readers of the paper complained repeatedly. The Times never corrected the mistake. Again, you can pull up the review, they're free of charge at the web site, and you can see that the mistake still stands without a correction. They were told, the corrections dept. was repeatedly told, Okrent was informed repeatedly. Members have forwarded countless e-mails on they sent to the paper on this. The paper has had no interest in correcting their mistake. They should be ashamed and embarrassed. And I'm sorry but David Brock needs to do a Media Matters thing on that. He needs to demand a correction. Until he does, the paper won't correct it. They'll continue to ignore the readers. If David Brock, the author, points out, as we've done here in December, the page that Chris Matthews and there's another one, maybe Pat Buchanan, appear on, and that Wolfe got it wrong, the paper will correct it. Until then they are happy to repeatedly ingore multiple complaints by readers over this issue while maintaing that they have a new policy with regards to corrections and getting praise, mind you, for their new openess to corrections.

Now, here's more on that from another entry at The Common Ills:


So let's take the book review that has thirty of you still upset: Alan Wolfe's "The New Pamphleteers." It appeared in the July 11th Sunday Book Review. There's been plenty of time for the Times to issue a correction but the paper has failed to do so. Calls, e-mails and letters have resulted in no correction.

What needs to be corrected?

Read the following two paragraphs closely:

Brock's previous book, ''Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative,'' his 2002 mea culpa for gutter-shouting from the conservative side, was engaging and informative. Too bad, then, that he now seems blinded by the left. ''The Republican Noise Machine'' is as petty in its discussion of people as it is sloppy in its handling of facts. Unable to keep an insult in his quiver, Brock gleefully announces that the Catholic theologian Michael Novak had his thesis rejected at Harvard and that the political scientist Abigail Thernstrom did not get academic tenure, factoids that are either irrelevant (anyone familiar with the academy knows what thesis committees can be like) or wrong (Thernstrom rejected a full-time academic career).

Brock also fails to grasp the conflicts that have emerged within right-wing punditry since he served in its ranks. Chris Matthews was not a supporter of the war in Iraq and Bill O'Reilly has serious questions about it. Lou Dobbs now sounds like Dick Gephardt when he discusses outsourcing. Andrew Sullivan's position on gay marriage is anathema to many other conservatives. Conservatives may well have shared a party line when they were out of power, but now that they have an actual president advancing their worldview, their ideas suddenly have consequences -- and turmoil is the inevitable result. Libertarians attack Bush's statism; fiscal conservatives, his big spending. This kind of behavior among liberals is called political suicide.

Did you note the emphasis? Let's go to the book Wolfe is supposed to have read to review it:

During the George W. Bush era, [Chris] Matthews distinguished himself as the lone host of a cable talk show who opposed the Iraq war, joining hands with both the liberal Left and some members of the Far Right, such as Pat Buchanan (p. 240 of The Republican Noise Machine).

We can quibble over Bill O'Reilly's "serious questions" (if they're so serious, why did O'Reilly admit he was wrong about the war on ABC's Good Morning America -- when pressed to do so -- and not on his own show?). But the fact is Wolfe makes the claim that David Brock doesn't realize some on the right are against the war. Brock is aware of that and notes Pat Buchanan. Wolfe asserts that Brock doesn't realize that Chris Matthews didn't support the war. Right there on page 240 of Brock's book is Brock addressing that issue. The book Wolfe was supposed to have read before reviewing it.

Translation, Wofle is wrong and the Times has addressed this matter by ignoring it.

That's the crappy writer (who writes for The New Republican) that Katha Pollitt's praising and ha-ha on her, he made an idiot out of himself (and slammed the left while attacking the right) Sunday. That's funny because she's griping, in that new year column, that the left applauds the right. I'd say the left wasting time on left-posers is more damaging.

Now new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:


Editorial: On the useless who know better -- this was not the planned editorial. We had one and I hope we'll rework for this weekend. We had an illustration of the Bully Boy but couldn't post it and without the illustration, since he was the point, we needed something new at the last minute. (Hello! is a program that posts pictures. C.I. and Rebecca have always used it because it's set up to work with Blogger/Blogspot. It went dead. It no longer works with Blogger/Blogspot. They didn't send out e-mails. It was time to send the illustrations and C.I. logs into Hello and gets "Blogger is dead." Rebecca logs into her account and gets the same message. So we lost out on all the planned illustrations.) C.I. didn't realize we were addressing Katha. C.I. was trying to find a new program to use and Jim would ask questions or say, "Ava, C.I. give me an opening here." And they would. They weren't really paying attention. :D (They did a great job.) We all wrote this.


TV: The new Steve McQueen? -- Ava and C.I.'s latest. Roar!! See that's what real feminists can do. They don't need to publish a numbered list, they can actually think for themselves.

Roundtable -- we worked forever and ever on this. And to make sure everyone's most important point got in, they scanned the notes (taken by Ava and C.I.) and e-mailed them to all of us on the phone so we could look over t and say what part we said was most important to us.
This is pretty amazing. Tony said that to me today and I thought it was good but we went into the campus library to read over it and I think it really is amazing. It's dealing with so much and it's a HELL OF A LOT MORE than The Nation's done in the whole year of 2006, if you ask me.
Kat has strong words on Katha Pollitt.

Phoning It In, Sailing Along -- Katha Pollitt, you are everywhere! :D

Mailbag -- This is one of the features we had an illustration for and really wanted it to go up with the feature. At past one a.m. C.I.'s time, C.I. put it in early this morning. I think C.I. got thirty minutes sleep yesterday.

Another confession to the rape and murder of 14-ye... -- just catching people up on Abeer.

The Nation Stats -- Is Katha Pollitt happy with the number of women published by The Nation? If so, she must not be paying attention -- it's basically 4 times as many men as women that are published as of the issue we're noting here. Woo-hoo! How proud that must be.

Highlights-- Cedric, Kat, Betty, Wally, Rebecca, Elaine and me pick out highlights.


The roundtable took FOREVER! And then came the problems with the images and then came having to do a new editorial and having to lose another feature because we needed an illustration for it too.

Okay, Friday, I wrote about Rebecca's mother-in-law's opinions of Katrina vanden Heuvel. You know, if you read the roundtable, I did try to get a response on that from C.I. I didn't. I still don't have one. But Sunday, I was told to get a pen and write something down and I could use if I wanted to. Here it is.

C.I.: Everyone's entitled to their opinions. Had I been asked of my opinion of Katrina vanden Heuvel, as a person, I would've noted her sense of humor which includes a laugh that can warm a room. People rarely note her sense of humor so that's what I would have emphasized. Others may feel differently and that's their right. What's always stood out to me, about the person, was the sense of humor -- one of the most important assets anyone can have.

So that's C.I.'s response in full. I don't even know if C.I. read the post but I was told, "No, I'm not mad. You shared someone's opinion. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. But everyone can look at the same person, movie, painting, whatever and see something different."

Okay, this is from Paul Craig Roberts' "Only Impeachment Can Prevent More War:"

Everyone knows that Bush's Iraq "surge" will not work. Even the authors of the plan, neoconservatives Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, have emphasized that the plan cannot work with any less than an addition of 50,000 US troops committed to another three years of combat. Bush is only adding 40% of that number of troops, and Defense Secretary Gates speaks of the operation being over by summer's end.
On January 18 a panel of retired generals testifying on Capitol Hill slammed Bush's surge plan as "a fool's errand." Even the easily bamboozled American public knows the plan will not work. Newsweek's latest poll released January 20 shows that only 23% of the public support sending more troops to Iraq and that twice as many Americans trust the Democrats in Congress than trust Bush.
A majority of Americans (54%) believe Bush to be neither honest nor ethical, and 57% believe that Bush lacks "strong leadership qualities."
Nevertheless, Bush defended his surge plan, telling a group of TV stations last week, "I believe it will work."
Bush is correct that it will work--indeed, the surge is working. We have to be clear about how the plan works. It does not mean that 21,500 more US troops will bring order and stability to Iraq. The surge is working, because it is deflecting attention from the Bush Regime's real game plan.
The real game plan is to orchestrate a war with Iran and to initiate wider conflict in the Middle East before public and military pressure forces the Bush Regime to withdraw US troops from Iraq.
Two US carrier attack groups have been deployed to the Persian Gulf. US missile systems are being sent to oil producing countries to counter any incoming missiles from Iran should any survive the US attack. Israeli pilots have been training for an attack on Iran. US war doctrine has been changed to permit pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries. US attack aircraft have been deployed at bases in Turkey. A neocon admiral who attends AIPAC events has been made commander in chief of US forces in the Middle East. Obviously, the ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the focus of the Bush Regime's new military deployments. The Bush Regime is focused on attacking Iran.
In CounterPunch (January 16) Col. Sam Gardiner reports that the Bush Regime has put into operation a group led by National Security Council staff whose mission is to create and foment outrage against Iran. Col. Gardiner details various signs of the Bush Regime's escalation and indicates some of the final deployments that will signal an imminent strike on Iran, such as "USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria" in order to position them for refueling B-2 bombers on their way to Iran.

Check out Like Maria Said Paz for Elaine's thoughts tonight. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, January 22, 2007. Chaos and violence continue with over 100 Iraqis reported dead, Bully Boy tanks again in the polls (on a 'reality' show, we could vote him off the island by now), the people prove they don't need the approval of 'judge' to argue Ehren Watada's case in a citizen tribunal on the illegal war held this past weekend, Kurdish forces make like many Iraqis in the military and self-check out, and -- what do you know -- with an eye witness who talked to the press this weekend an unnamed US military flack finally grunts - yeah, maybe they do shoot down US helicopters in Iraq.


Starting with US war resister Ehren Watada, On February 5th, Watada faces a court-martial. "Judge" Head has 'ruled' that Ehren Watada cannot explain the reasons he reached his decision to deploy to Iraq, he cannot explain which orders he honored in his refusal to fight in an illegal war and he cannot really present his case. Saturday and Sunday, Citizens' Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq was held in Tacoma, Washington and there, in a hearing by, for and of the people, the arguments could be made and were.

Among those testifying were Ann Wright (retired from the State Department, retired US army colonel) who was asked about the duty of Ehren Watada

Ann Wright: Now that's kind of the heart of it all, isn't it? The conduct becoming an officer? The ability to think. The ability to take care of your troops, to keep them out of harm's way, to explore with your chain of command what's going on, why are you having to do certain things? Trusting in your chain of command that you're asking questions that your seniors are asking, are asking, are asking . . .
And I think what we we see in the case of Lt. Watada is that the entire chain of command has failed starting with the four-star generals that were the advisors to the Secretary of Defense and the president, with General Myers, the chief of staff, [. . .] who was such a weak chairman of the Joint Chiefs that he did not question it, he was a toady of the Bush administration.
We did have one four-star general who spoke out -- General Shinseki, chief of staff of the army -- who questioned. He actually didn't question the war, he questioned the number of troops -- how the war was going to be prosecuted. Our generals in the chain of command have not acted as they should have and it's just kind of gone all the way down. The questioning that really goes up and down in the military because there is a dynamic part of the military it's just not one monolythic group there's a lot of debate going on in the scenes and behind the scenes. [. . .]
For the Lt. to be the one that is carrying the load on questioning the war is a little unfair. There should have been people much higher up that were questioning, as they are now, the retired generals are questioning, but that's a little late. [. . .]
It's hard to question sometimes even though you know it's your responsibility and your obligation to do it. But we see here that we've got very few people in the military who are openly questioning but then you look at the polls in newspapers that are being taken of the service members in Iraq and, what is it, 75% of them say we shouldn't be there. So there is an underground movement of the military itself. They're not the ones that can stop wars from beginning but they're the ones that ultimately are the ground fodder for it and what they start saying, "It's not worth my life anymore" that's when these things will start slowing down. And then it's up to us as civilians be going to our Congress to demand that the Congress stop funding the war. If you want to support the troops bring them home, stop the funding of the war.

Amy Rolph (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports that David Krieger ("chairman of the tribunal") opened Saturday's proceedings by noting, "We believe that Lt. Watada's contentions about the illegality of the war deserve a full and fair hearing." The Associated Press reported over 400 people were present on Saturday alone. Also appearing was Ehren Watada. Hal Bernton (Seattle Times) reports that Watada declared "Judge" Head's decision to disallow a defense in the court-martial to be "a travesty of justice. That it is a violation of our most sacred due process, and indeed it is un-American." Rolph notes that US war resister Darrell Anderson was also among those offering testimony about what he witnessed in Iraq and the "training that dehumanizes Iraqis". Though arguments can't be made in the court-martial, they were made in in Tacoma. John Nichols (The Nation) blogs at The Notion that: "It appears that the prosecutors do not want to provide Watada with an open and fair forum in which to explain his arguments against the war." Of course, what the prosecution wants or doesn't only matters if the "Judge" rules and he did so when he released his decision on Tuesday of last week.

In a speech given at the Church Center for the UN on December 8th by Watada's mother, Carolyn Ho, (broadcast on WBAI's Law and Disorder today) she explained how her son began researching Iraq in June of 2005 (one year prior to his going public), the basic research to get to know the country he was going to be deployed to, and, as he studied and studied, he came across the shaping of intelligence, the Downing Street Memos exposing that intel was being fixed, the phoney WMDs claims . . . In January of 2006, she received a call from her son who explained that he had decided he wouldn't deploy to Iraq when the time came. On June 7, 2006, Carolyn Ho recounted, "the day before his 28th birthday, he went public and announced his decision not to deploy when the unit went to Iraq." Key point: "I don't believe that my son has committed any crime and that he should be serving any time,"

Also on Saturday, Ehren Watada spoke at the Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bremerton. David Vognar (Kitsap Sun) reports that over 70 people turned out to hear Watada explain how. in June, he came to be the first US officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq -- Watada threw the responsibility back to the people noting, "It is the American people who have the power to end this war, but only if they have the will to do so."

Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Robin Long, Ryan Johnson, Chris Teske, Tim Richard and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.

Saturday, Patricia Sullivan (Washington Post) reported on the January 15th death of Oliver V. Hirsh:

In 1968, Mr. Hirsch was a 22-year-old enlistee from Bethesda, stationed at Almaden Air Force Station in California, where he was a radar instructor and held the rank of sergeant. He joined eight other military men, representing the four branches of the services, who publicly refused to go to Vietnam and chained themselves to ministers at a chuch in Northern California. Their arrests for desertion were a media spectacle, with polic cutting their chains and removing them from a Communion service. The incident also served as one of the early indications that opposition to the war came not just from campuses but also from soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who were serving in the ranks.

Hirsh was among the war resisters sharing their experiences in David Zeiger's Sir! No Sir! which is now available with bonus footage including Camilio Mejia, Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda discussing "the movement then and now." (Also note the DVD of the film is available free of charge to active duty and deployed soldiers.)

Yesterday was also a signifcant day for war resisters. Patrick Maloney (Canada's London Free Press) noted that Sunday was the thirty year anniversary of Jimmy Carter's pardoning of draft dodgers: "An estimated 50,000 came to Canada, of whom about half remain. Now, in a quiet echo of an earlier generation's anti-war sentiment, the War Resisters Support Campaign is noticing growing interest in Canada as a haven for U.S. soldiers destined for Iraq."

Today, Dan Balz and Jon Cohen (Washington Post) report on the latest Washington Post poll (Washington Post-ABC News) which finds "48 percent of Americans calling the war the single most important issue they want Bush and the Congress to deal with this year. No other issue rises out of the single digits. The poll also found that the public trust congressional Democrats over Bush to deal with the conflict by a margin of 60 percent to 33 percent." And symbolic measures won't build that trust for the Democratic Party, nor will doing nothing. Someone might also want to share those results with independent media -- it will no doubt be a surprise for a great many who ignored Iraq throughout 2006 -- as well as those who tried to sneak it into some fawning coverage of some politician.

In Iraq today . .

Bombings?

Assel Kami (Reuters) reports "[t]wo simultaneous car bombs" which struck "a busy market in central Baghdad." BBC reports 88 dead with 160 more injured. Some of those injured will not recover (die) and some of the dead have likely not been recovered which is why Kami earlier reported 67 dead and 142 injured bu noted "the death toll of 67 could rise." CBS and AP note the immediate aftermath: "body parts strewn on the bloodstained pavement, along with DVDs and compact discs as black smoke rose into the sky." AFP quotes one of their photographers: "There were so many victims they were piled up on wooden market carts, the wounded on top of the dead, and hauled to ambulances and police vehicles. Improvised rescue workers made their way through the carnage amid the cries of those wounded." Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that an "interiro ministry source" states that one car involved was left running with the driver of the car telling "people nearby that he was just buying things and would return very soon."

Al Jazeera notes: "A few hours later at least 12 people were killed and more than 40 were wounded when a bomb exploded in a market in the village of Khalis, near Baquba." AFP reports it as a "bomb placed in a vegetable cart" combined with a mortar attack. Reuters notes that already the death toll on the Khalis bombing has risen -- 14 people dead. Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports a mortar attack "on a primary school in the Sunni stronghold neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, killing a woman waiting for her child and wounding eight students". Reuters notes a boming in Mosul that took the life of a woman left four people wounded (two were Iraqi soldiers and they note: "Two more soliders were killed when troops went to the scene to recover the casualties.") and they note a mortar attack "on a house in the Amil district in southwestern Baghdad" that claimed one life and left another wounded.

Shootings?

CBS and AP report that a teacher "was on her way to work at a girls' school" in western Baghdad when she was shot dead and the man driving the car she was in was also wounded. Meanwhile, CNN reports that a police officer and a police acadmy lecturer were shot dead on their way "home in eastern Baghdad." Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports three shootings -- in Baghdad a "Sunni tribal chieftain" was shot dead in one attack and an employee of a cell phone company was shot dead in another while, in Mosul, an attack left an oil employee dead. Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "a liquor shop owner [Christian] in AL JAMAAIAT area 8km west of basra" was shot dead today "after some clerics in basra warned the liquor shop owners that they should stop selling liquor in basra."

Corpses?

CNN reports 29 corpses were discovered in Baghdad today.

In addition, Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspaper) reports that an attack or attempted kidnapping took place when "unknown gunmen tried to storm inside the house of the deputy governor of diyala ABDUL AZIZ AL JUBORI" -- two body guards were wounded "but the deputay governor was not inside the house." A kidnapping took place in Baqubua, Reuters reports: "Khaled al-Sanjari, a local government offical in Baquba," was kidnapped "while he was on his way to work" and the kidnappers "set the office on fire".

As Damien Cave (New York Times) and Borzou Daragahi (Los Angeles Times) reported this morning, at least 27 US troops died over the weekend in Iraq. The 27 number stops with the two marines who died Sunday in Al-Anbar Province. On Saturday, a US helicopter was shot dead. Everyone on board died, all were American soldiers. The BBC notes today that AFP and CNN have reported (today) that an anonymous US military official has stated it's possible that the helicopter was shot down by "a shoulder-fire missile". This after denying -- as they've done with every crash -- that anything was shot down (they've even insisted -- Willie Caldwell, the Giddiest Gabor in the Green Zone, has been especially insistant -- that only coalition forces have those capablities in Iraq -- so note that "a shoulder-fire missile" is possible, according to the US military). Ernesto London (Washington Post) reported Sunday (actually Saturday -- which is when the article first made it online, it was "20 dead" in the headline, now downgraded to 19) that Arkan al-Mujamai told the paper "that the helicopter was shot down by a group of Sunni Muslim insurgents, one of whom is his uncle." al-Mujamai stated that "a heavy machine gun" was used.

The 27 deaths include an attack in Karbala. Leila Fadel and Hussam Ali (McClatchy Newspapers) report: "On Saturday, a civil affairs team of American soldiers sat with local leaders in Karbala's provincial headquarters to discuss security . . . A convoy of seven white GMC Suburbans sped toward the building, breezing through checkpoints, with the men wearing American and Iraqi military uniforms and flashing American ID cards, Iraqi officials said. The force stopped at the police directorate in Karbala and took weapons but gave no reason, said police spokesman Capt. Muthana Ahmed in Babel province. A call was made to the provincial headquarters to inform them an American convoy was on its way, said the governnor of Karbala, Akeel al-Khazaali. But the Americans stationed inside the building . . . had not been informed" because this wasn't a military patrol and, in the attack that followed (grenades, mortars, gunfire), 5 US troops were killed and 3 more wounded. If you've forgotten, a tremendous amount of money was spent on new Iraqi uniforms and a huge publicity push came with that stating that no longer would the resistance or militias be able to impersonate -- that's disproven today and was always disproven because those uniforms don't come off some Mosul sewing machine, they're taken by people working within the forces. Today, the US military announced: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier assigned to 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was killed Monday when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle while conducting combat operations in Ninewa province.


On WBAI's Law & Disorder, a discussion by Anthony Arnove and Michael Schwartz was also broadcast today. Many topics were covered. [Mike will be covering this tonight at Mikey Likes It!; Ruth and Rebecca passed on L&D and held the phone up for quotes included.] They spoke, in particular, about the racism at play -- which includes the attitude of those 'sorry' Iraqis who just don't appreciate the illegal invasion the US administration has 'gifted' them with, that those 'bad' and 'backward' Iraqis are just lacking abilities since they can't 'build' a 'democracy' in the midst of the US' illegal occupation, and the racism that forgets who created the secetarian divide (the US). The racism -- that urge to cast 'the other' -- is why they US administration believes that they can recruit more Iraqis to 'pacify' Baghdad and Al-Anbar Province. Schwartz noted that as soon as US troops aren't assinged with Iraqi troops, Iraqi troops melt into the area and disappear -- the desertion rate from the Iraqi army that's rarely noted, especially now when Bully Boy's escalation depends on believing the lie that more US troops on the ground will solve the trick. The admiinstration also believe they can bring the Kurds easily into the Iraqi military. Leila Fadel and Yaseen Taha (McClatchy Newspapers) reported at the end of last week that it wasn't working out quite that way: "Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem" and they quote Anward Dolani ("former peshmerga commander who leads the brigade that's being tranferred to Baghdad") declaring: "The soldiers don't know the Arabic language, the Arab tradition, and they don't have any experience fighting terror." If the news of the Kurdish troops doesn't convey how no one wants to fight the illegal US war, Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily (IPS) report on the latest in souther Iraq where "Shia Arab tribes in the south" are joining the resistance. Jamail and al-Fadhily quote Jassim al-Assadi declaring: "People here have always hated the U.S. and British occupation of Iraq and remembered their grandfathers who fought the British troops with the simplest weapons."

Anthony Arnove, author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal, will be speaking in DC this weekend:

*January 27, 5 pm, Washington, DC (with Kelly Dougherty) Busboys and Poets http://www.busboysandpoets.com/blog_events.htm

Arnove will be among many in DC on the 27th. From CODEPINK:

Bring the Peace Mandate to D.C. on J27!
On Election Day voters delivered an unmistakable mandate for peace. Now it's time for action. Join CODEPINK in a national march to D.C. on January 27-29, to send a strong, clear message to Congress and the Bush Administration: The people of this country want the war and occupation in Iraq to end and we want the troops home now! See our latest actions, and click here for details.























mikey likes it
Posted by at

Friday, January 19, 2007

Help Wanted: The Nation's in need of direction

Friday at last! Hope everyone's excited.

I asked C.I. about something and I wanted to put it up here because Leigh Ann had e-mailed me about it. "And the war drags on" last night has some strong comments by Micah (all of which I agree with). Leigh Ann wondered if C.I. was irritated by them? There's a section missing from that entry. It was on another topic. Someone else's opinion (which also agreed with Micah) but C.I. couldn't remember if those were to be shared so C.I. e-mailed the person back while waiting to post and didn't hear back in time. That got pulled for that reason. No, C.I. wasn't ticked off at Micah or at Micah's comments. Micah wanted them up and C.I. notes that Micah called the time of death on The Village Voice (Micah's basically calling the time of death on The Nation) in the entry.

Here's Micah's comments on The Nation, it's:

crap and I'd say worse but I know you'd edit me. It's crap. Who has the power? We do. But what crap are they pushing off on readers again? 'Plead and wait for a savior!' They're the most useless, cowardly piece of crap on the left. While they stay silent on Ehren, they do offer up a look at the monies spent on college sports. Where is the leadership at that magazine? It has gone down the toilet each year. It is an embarrassment to the left that this is our magazine with the highest circulation. Katrina vanden Heuvel needs to step down as editor immediately because she has led that magazine into Crap City. It won't address the war in it's pages, it won't cover Ehren, it's the most useless crap in the world and I'm as sick of her inspirational sermons as I am the photo of her on her blog. I think Rebecca made this point but only an idiot, when the country was going to hell, would waste everyone's time with "Sweet Victories" columns. If she wants to be a romance writer or Marianne Williams, I urge her to go do it. Just quit the magazine before you destroy it any more. The magazine will not do a story on Ehren, that thing [sidebar] wasn't a story, but they'll tell you about the sports rackets at colleges. I've had it with vanden Heuvel and her inept leadership. I've had it with the touchy-feely crap. I've had it with the useless articles and the useless editorials. If you're not a Democrat in Congress, the magazine's not written for you. I'm 24 years-old, I don't need to know who's the cutest is Congress or this other Tiger Beat crap. It's an immature, cowardly magazine and that has happened as she has taken over. Katrina vanden Heuvel needs to go. Her immaturity and lack of courage shines through every page of the magazine.

I couldn't agree more. Did they ever correct the factually challenged Christopher Hayes (he basically called John Kerry racist and cited Kerry's DNC speech -- only problem is, that quote is not in John Kerry's DNC speech -- Hayes is quoting an ad for Iowa, we covered this weeks ago at The Third Estate Sunday Review)?

I blame Katrina vanden Heuvel as well. Rebecca's mother-in-law hates her and says C.I. would as well if C.I. "didn't always stick up for the underdog." She and her husband and one of Flyboy's brothers and his wife were over tonight because she said we should get together for a study group while Rebecca's not able to go to the one at my house. She said, Rebecca's mother-in-law, that Katrina vanden Heuvel lacks the strength and guts to run a magazine and what's happening is that the sort of rejects (like Christopher Hayes but he's not the only one) who migrated slowly to The New Republic(an) before it went completely in the toilet are coming to The Nation. She says it's because Katrina has no focus. (I should point out that she hates her and hates her personally. She knows the woman.) (I should also point out that C.I. knows Katrina vanden Heuvel and likes her. So opinions may vary.) She says Katrina's always had an "immature mind so no one was surprised when the marriage took place" and that it's like a humming bird, darting here and there and never landing. Elaine and I have both noted how the magazine tries to turn everyone into a Democrat and Rebecca's mother-in-law was talking about how that went to Katrina and is the biggest "character flaw of a woman who never knew how to stand up for anything."

She's sure that a thing C.I. wrote this year referred to others as well, how they wouldn't stand up for Ehren Watada because they'd had every blow cushioned in life, but she said it applies to Katrina as well and she printed that up and showed it to friends throughout Conn. "where we all had loud, repeated laughs." Micah should talk to her because she holds Katrina more responsible than even Micah does.

She was talking about how cowardice and the easy path were what she saw Katrina's entire life being (except for the tacky public moment that she says even C.I., if pressed hard, would have to agree was tacky and embarrassing to the entire family). She said outside of the fact that Katrina's considered slow by most in her set, the other thing they laugh the loudest about are her "Tobacco tales" meaning when Katrina tries to prove how "real" she is by sharing tales of visiting her in-laws.

I'm writing about this because Rebecca said if she wrote about it, she knows C.I. would be furious. Elaine's already noted she doesn't care for Katrina (she only knew the woman when she was a child and Elaine would say "didn't really know her then"). Rebecca's mother-in-law says Katrina makes those visits sound like she traveled to "Tobacco Road" and had to use an outhouse and that everyone laughs at them behind Katrina's back.

I thought (and even asked), "Should I feel sorry for her?"

Rebecca's mother-in-law said no because "she's gone from useless to damaging." (C.I. knows that Rebecca's mother-in-law loathes Katrina. Rebecca's mother-in-law is an old family friend of C.I.'s family.) She feels that everyone bent over backwards to prop Katrina up and it's time for people to be honest about what a dive The Nation has taken. (She said I could put all this up but asked to read it first because she knows some things would result in a call from C.I. asking, "Do you think you maybe crossed the line?" So if you think there are strong words here, you have no idea what I'm leaving out.)

She's been after Rebecca to write about this for weeks and weeks but Rebecca said, "C.I. would be so mad at me." I asked, "Would C.I. be mad at me?" Rebecca, her mother-in-law and Elaine all agreed that I could write it and C.I. would just "roll the eyes." :D I'm like a puppy. :D Elaine bit her tongue in "How The Nation isn't cutting it" because she knew C.I. would be upset.

If you're wondering why I'm writing about, read Micah's comments. This shit is damaging the efforts to end the war. Today you got Prissy Chris Hayes whining about an e-mail smear against Obama but you don't have one damn word up about Ehren Watada. Obama is a US Senator. That's The Nation today. Rushing to defend (and kiss ass) the powerful and abandoning the people who need help.

So as this happens over and over, as The Nation continues to ignore war resisters over and over, the question has to be why? Katrina calls the shots so maybe people should ask her. (I'd love to put in so much more right here!)

They need to ask her. They need to demand that she step up to the plate or she step down. The Nation is becoming useless. Even C.I. will state that much. We're hoping to do a roundtable on the peace movement at The Third Estate Sunday Review this week and if we do, I will these points because there is no direction to the magazine (unless cowardice counts as a direction) and it's time to start calling out the people who prolong the war by being cowards.
But, as Rebecca's mother-in-law pointed out, with the circulation losses, The Nation probably won't be the left magazine with the highest circulation for much longer.

Oh, one thing she said to put in, The Nation cruise -- what an embarrassment. "In WWII, on the homefront we made do with much less. The Nation's summer cruises suggest the country's not at war and are just the sort of social emphasis as opposed to real activity that has been a hallmark of Katrina vanden Heuvel."

I'll also include something else she wanted noted, C.I. didn't have blows cushioned. C.I. could have taken the easy road but instead refused to. Rebecca was "Amen"ing that noting all the times C.I. was offered bribes (from parents) in college just to switch to a journalism major. Elaine said to toss in that one reason she chooses the causes she gives to carefully is because C.I. gave away everything and started from scratch at a time when the left was supposedly going to change the world. "A lot of people talked big but all they did was repeat what the ones they were railing against did." I was kind of surprised by that because I didn't know C.I. then (wasn't even born probably) and I just know the C.I. that doesn't have to worry about money today. Rebecca says all of that was earned from scratch and "no one cushioned blows for C.I." I knew C.I. was active and had heard some of the bribe stories from college (C.I. worked through college and didn't have to, all it would have taken was saying, "Okay, I'll major in journalism" and everything would have paid for) so, even though I already respected C.I., I really had this huge increase in respect.

And when C.I. took care of my college tuition, C.I. never told those stories just said that I should accept it and it wasn't worth getting into debt to get a degree if I had another alternative. I'll say thank you again and bet this is the thing that I will hear about from this entry -- the thing C.I. will complain to me about. But I do appreciate that. That wasn't just nice. My brother is the perfect example of that with all his student loans debts. That would be me six months after I got my degree too (that's when the grace period expires) but C.I. took care of all of that for me and I am very grateful.

All I knew was C.I. busted ass in college working two to three jobs each semester, getting good grades (Rebecca says "amazing grades") and being active on campus (in just about every organization and at all of these protests). And I just kind of assumed that after getting the masters, money was never again a problem. (That will be the other thing C.I. may gripe about. C.I. never says "I have a masters" -- it's always just "college.") So to build up something and be so committed to change that you basically give away everything just amazes me.

I don't think I'd do that. (Elaine didn't. She said she loves C.I. for that but the whole time she was saying, "They aren't going to change anything. They just want to be the 'insiders.'") C.I.'s attitude was "I can always make more" and C.I. proved that.

So you've got two people with breaks, C.I. and Katrina. One works to change things and the other writes about iPhones? One goes around the country speaking not to promote a product but to raise awareness and the other can't even write about war resisters?

One gave away money to the cause and the other writes about economic justice despite a very high profile legal battle. (That was longer but Rebecca's mother-in-law said if I didn't edit that reference down, she would get a call from C.I.) One's genuine and the other is paralyzed by what people might think. One has 'social standing on their own and the other gets in on a grandparent and a questionable father." (Rebecca's mother-in-law told me to put that.)

So Katrina vanden Heuvel isn't cutting it. She's made her way on the money of others and she's given nothing back but token 'inspiration.' She needs to step up to the plate or step away from The Nation. One more thing Rebecca's mother-in-law told me I could put in after she read over this was, "School girl crushes do not make for fascinating reading and adults, stunted or not, look silly when they continue to write like school girls."

So if The Nation doesn't do a major change, don't be surprised in ten years when it's The New Republic(an). And you can blame Katrina vanden Heuvel for that.

(I will add in here that C.I., if asked for comment, would probably provide many strong comments about Katrina vanden Heuvel's abilities. And C.I. does know her so they might be accurate.)

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" and I was joking about that because it was written really quick (C.I., Ava and Jess were on campus and people kept coming up while C.I. was trying to write the snapshot to talk about Iraq) it's a "partial snapshot". C.I. said, "I can go back in and fix it." I think it's fine the way it is:

Friday, January 19. 2006. Chaos and violence continue, but speculation is so much more fun for the mainstream press; war resisters stand up and some stand with them; General Casey uses weasel words;



Starting with news of US war resister Ehren Watada who, in June 2006, became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Watada faces a court-martial February 5th and the 'judge' has stripped him of the right to present a strong defense. Arguments that can't be made in a kangroo court can be made by in the real world at Citizens' Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq which starts tomorrow and concludes Sunday at the Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus (10:00 am to 4:00 pm each day). As Michael Gilbert (The News Tribune) reports "a lineup of speakers will make the case that the war and the ongoing occupation are illegal under international and U.S. law, and that an officer such as Watada has a duty to disobey orders to take part in it." Zoltan Grossman tells Gilbert that "the event will take the shape of a congressional hearing" and notes that those participating include the following: Denis Halliday, Ann Wright, Francis Boyle, Daniel Ellsberg, Darrell Anderson, Harvey Tharp and Nadia McCaffrey.

While some stay silent (The Nation) Peter Michaelson (BuzzFlash) steps up, "The world is upside down, and one brave first lieutenant tries to set it right. The U.S. war in Iraq is illegal and immoral, says 1st Lt. Ehren Watada. In thus choosing reality over fallacy, and refusing to deploy to Iraq with his Stryker brigade, the 28-year-old Honolulu native faces six years in the brig when his court-martial begins next month at Ft. Lewis near Seattle." Peter Michaelson and BuzzFlash stood up. FYI, BuzzFlash is offering Peace buttons and Howard Zinn's A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Also standing up, of course, in support of Watada is Iraq Veterans Against the War have set up Camp Resistance and Portland IMC has audio of Dennis Kyne and Darrell Anderson speaking about Camp Resistance. Anderson spoke of how they were camping outside Fort Lewis, "That bus is parked right there and it's not leaving until the trial is over, not till February." Anderson noted the positive reaction from soldiers at Fort Lewis, "They see the bus, they know who we area. After six days, we had soldiers honking, soldiers rolling by in their civilian clothes and screaming out the window. And I remember like, wow, I was just coming up here for Watada and Suzanne Swift and I didn't think the soldiers were going to . . . I never heard of soldiers power fisting anti-war guys. And that's when it hit me, that they're done. They're not going back for a third time. 'Cause that's where I'd be if I didn't go AWOL, I'd be at my third tour right now. Three years in Iraq, three years. Could you imagine Vietnam vets, could you imagine going back to Vietnam three times? Three years and you don't come back from that. You go to Iraq, but you don't come back."

As Ehren Watada's February 5th court-martial approaches, this week the US military announced their decision to charge Agustin Aguayo with desertion and missing movement which carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Watada, Aguayo, and Anderson are part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Kyle Snyder, Agustin Aguayo, Ivan Brobeck, Darrell Anderson, Ricky Clousing, Aidan Delgado, Mark Wilkerson, Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.

From CODEPINK:
Bring the Peace Mandate to D.C. on J27! On Election Day voters delivered an unmistakable mandate for peace. Now it's time for action. Join CODEPINK in a national march to D.C. on January 27-29, to send a strong, clear message to Congress and the Bush Administration: The people of this country want the war and occupation in Iraq to end and we want the troops home now! See our latest actions, and click here for details.


In Iraq today?

Bombings?

Reuters reports a bombing of a butcher's shop that killed the butcher in Hilla. Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad bombing ("at AL ELLWIAH intersection in KARDA") that killed a police officer and left another dead, a mortar attack ("near haifa street") that killed 2 and left 3 more wounded, another martar attack ("bayaa area western Baghdad") that left one person injured and a mortar attack that killed a woman and wounded 3 more people. Kim Gamel (AP) reports that a Shi'ite mosque was bombed "in sourthern Baghdad" (before the bombing, two guards of the mosque were killed).



Shootings?

CBS and AP report that "a man working for the Ministry of Tourism and Archaeology Affairs . . . was shot to death near his home in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad." Reuters reports three shot dead in Falluja (Iraqi soldier and two ex-police officers), a Sunni preacher was shot dead in Kirkuk, and an attack on a minibus left two wounded in Hilla. Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that, in Tikrit, a vehichle was stopped an official checkpoint, the car contained 4 family members and began accusing one ("OMAR") of having fake identification but they waived them on only for them to be stopped by "unknown gunmen" immediately after who wanted to know which one was Omar "and killed him immediately and stabbed his other brother" leaving his sister and mother to drive to the hospital in Tikrit.

Corpses?

Mohammed al Awsy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 17 corpses were discovered in Baghdad today ("1 yarmouk, 2 amil, 1 aour, 2 zaafaraniyah, 1 selakh, 1 kamaliyah, 4 rahmaniyah, 1 bayaa, 1 shurta khamsa and 3 in dora. some were tortured and handcuffed").


In addition to the above, today US military announced today: " A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died when an improvised explosive device detonated on a patrol in a northwest section of the Iraqi capital Jan. 18" and the BBC reports that six British oldiers were wounded following an attack utilizing rockets and mortars ("on the Basra Palace camp").

In legal news, on Thursday, three US troops confessed and to review that:

*Hashim Ibrahim Awad who was the grandfather kidnapped and then murdered last year (April). Eight US service members were charged. They are known as the Pendleton Eight. Four had already confessed to their involvement. Yesterday, Trent Thomas became the fifth with his plea agreement.
*Three Iraqis, on May 9th, were detained by US troops, placed in plastic handcuffs, released (handcuffs cut off) with the intent to kill them ("Kill them all" is what some defense lawyers argued their clients were told). Four US troops were charged with this. William B. Hunsaker confessed (and was sentenced) earlier this month, Juston R. Graber also confessed to his involvment this month. Raymond L. Girouard maintains his innocence. Yesterday, Core Clagett entered a plea agreement. (It should be noted his attorney, Paul Bergin, has his own problems these days.) So that's three out of four having admitted guilt.
*Abeer is the one Megan says she can follow but just to recap for anyone who is confused -- three admissions of guilt in three different war crimes took place yesterday -- Abeer Qasim Hamza (14-years-old), Hadeel Qassim Hamza (five-years-old, Abeer's sister), Qassim Hamza Raheem and Fakhriya Taha Muhasen (her parents) were all killed on March 12, 2006. In addition Abeer was gang raped before being killed. Those charged in the incident were Steven D. Green (to be tried in a civilian court because he had left the military before the war crimes were learned of), Jesse Spielman, Bryan Howard, James P. Barker and Paul Cortez. (Anthony W. Yribe was not charged with participating -- he was charged with failure to report the crimes, dereliction of duty.) Green has entered a plea of not guilty in a federal court. James P. Barker confessed in court in November (and named Cortez as a co-gang rapist). Paul Cortez confessed yesterday but his attorney maintains Cortez was an 'oberserver.' Was he an observer in rape?
Barker's testimony was that it appeared Cortez was raping Abeer but, from his statements, he wasn't able to determine penetration. (Wasn't able to determine it from his angle. Whether Cortez penetrated or not, he took part in the gang rape, according to Barker, because Barker confessed to how they took turns holding Abeer down during the gang rape.)

Meanwhile Robert Gates visits Iraq and calls the current climate a "pivotal moment." Meeting up with the outgoing George Casey ("top American commander in Iraq"), CBS and AP report that Casey declares: "I think it's probably going to be the summer, late summer, before you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their neighborhoods." Is that what you think? Casey's not done with feelings checks or predictions, Robert Burns (AP) reports that escalated troops (the 21,500 Bully Boy wants to send into Iraq) COULD be back "home by late summer". COULD. A weasel word.

"Casey, didn't you say US troops would be back home by late summer?"

"No, I said could."

Meaningless weasel words meant to comfort and lull a public that's enraged by an illegal war with no apparent end. AP reports that Nancy Pelois (US House Speaker) has declared Bully Boy "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder."

CBS, CNN and the whole mainstream press report that Muqtada al-Sadr's top aide was arrested, this following yesterday's reported arrest of Shi'ite fighters, and that al-Sadr is now in hiding fearing for his life and moving his family around while stating that a holy period of Muharram (the new year -- short answer). al-Sadr is quoted stating that no attacks will be initiated by him during the holy period (however, a response would be another issue) but when it is over, "we'll see." How much of this is true, how much of this is the sort of jerk-around we were once supposed to believe during Vietnam (remember Henry Kissinger really, really wanting to have those Paris Peace Talks -- at least publicly?), who knows.

More importantly, what Nouri al-Maliki is willing to go along with (not order, he doesn't have the power to order) at this minute and after more troops are on the ground is also a question mark.


Most importantly, Baghdad is a city.

Al-Anbar Province and Baghdad are where Bully Boy wants to send the bulk of esclation. As Webster Tarpley and Bonnie Faulkiner discussed Wednesday on KPFA's Guns and Butter, house-to-house, blah, blah, blah (the kind of nonsense that makes Michael Gordon light headed) creates a flank, you have less power to move in a city (tanks, et al). Tarpley compared it to the desperation measures of Hitler when commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front against Russia.


As people get exicted over who may have gotten arrested and who may not have, what al-Sadr might have said or not, what al-Maliki might do or not, what COULD happen this summer, it seems (yet again) some basic realities are being ignored. Noting one reality is Warren P. Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers): the illegal war "hasn't turned out the way advocates of the Iraq invasion had hoped or the way Bush and [U.S. Secretary of State] Condi Rice had predicted." Nor the way the New York Times and many others predicted either.

For more reality, Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, will be speaking tomorrow as well as next Saturday:

*January 20, 7 pm, Chicago, IL (with Jeff Engelhardt) University of Illinois-Chicago Contact: Adam Turl, 773-567-0936, adamcturl@yahoo.com

*January 27, 5 pm, Washington, DC (with Kelly Dougherty) Busboys and Poets http://www.busboysandpoets.com/blog_events.htm














Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)