Where is Law and Disorder?

Tuesday and I was having a pretty semi-good day. Elaine and I had fun today and I thought I'd talk about that a little and a new CD and some other stuff and then I made the mistake of checking the e-mails.

So let me gripe. Lesley wrote to say, "I was going to listen to Law and Disorder, but where is it?" The site's down. I have no idea why. I called Tony who's smarter about websites than me and his guess is it is one of two things: (1) the show decided to do away with their website or (2) they forgot to pay their bill. That was "forgot," not didn't pay. That can happen and maybe that's what it is. I'm sorry Lesley was going to listen for the first time and couldn't. I'm glad she wrote. She's been reading awhile and I've never heard from her before. (She was talking about all the stuff and I only remembered writing about 1/2 of it.) So I'm sorry Lesley couldn't hear it. I was going to recommend a way for her to hear it but I can't. Why not?

Here's my beef, my gripe. WBAI has a website. It archives sort of. (It takes them down after 90 days which is just nonsense.) But it can't even get the programs right. If C.I. recommends the archives, you've seen C.I. type something like "It's under Building Bridges" or something like that because they never put the special broadcasts under that title. I thought it was automatic and that's why. But it's not automatic. I was going to say, "Go listen to the WBAI archives, Lesley and you can hear it." You may be able to. If you hunt around. They've got "Joys of Resistance" listed as the Monday program when it should be Law and Disorder. Okay, title's wrong. Fine. Tony goes to listen and, guess what, it's not Law and Disorder. It's Democracy Now!

Why does WBAI do archives if they're that useless? Seriously. If you can't have the right program under the right title, and if you can't even have it under the right hour, why do you do archives? It is supposed to be some damn puzzle? A brain teaser? It may be under "Out FM" and it may not be. I don't have time to play around, Tony doesn't have time to play around.

So I don't know what's going on Lesley. As far as I know, I'll be talking about the show on Thursday (the CD should arrive in the mail tomorrow). That's really all I can tell you tonight.

What else has me mad? Cowardly, chicken shit Democrats who wanted to hold office but don't want to do any work. Read Wally's "THIS JUST IN! DEMS DESTROY THEMSELVES!" and Cedric's "Their own worst enemy" which is funny (like it's meant to be) but it's funny because they're making fun of the Democrats (who deserve it). What the Democrats are doing isn't funny.

So what's good? Elaine and I both played hooky for a little more than half the day. We ended up getting Bright Eyes' Cassadaga CD. I really love it and we were listening to it in the park (we met half-way so no one had a longer drive between our cities). Elaine really has to plan ahead to play hooky and she had to keep office hours for two sessions this morning because she wasn't able to reschedule them even with us planning this four weeks ago. So I went to work and cut out early and then hit the road after getting her the Bright Eyes CD. She got it for me too so that was pretty funny. I asked C.I. what would be good for a picnic and was told a salad and fruit was all Elaine was probably going to eat. C.I. goes, "Get something with meat for yourself if you want, but she's just going to want a salad." So I go, tell me what she likes and I'll make a huge salad.

So I used butter leaf and what's the other. I'm forgetting but those two and a little iceberg. Carrots, radishes, dried cranberries, walnuts, red onions and tomatoes. C.I. goes, "She'll kill me for passing this on but 'junk food' for her is Kraft's Green Goddess salad dressing. That is her candy. She doesn't usually put it on her salad but when she does, she goes wild with it." C.I. wasn't kidding! :D She really loves it. I'd never had it before and it's pretty good but it really is like candy to Elaine. :D So we met up at the park that was the closest park at the halfway drive for both of us and listened to the new Bright Eyes on the jam box during the picnic and it was a pretty nice day.

Could you imagine what it would be like if we didn't have public parks? You know some on the right would like to get rid of them. I always loved parks growing up and still do. When I was little, my favorite thing wasn't the slide or the swings, it was the merry go round. I'd get on that even if it was just me and I had to push and push all by myself to get it going.

We had the park all to ourselves for most of the time. There were a few people probably at the lunch hour but that was really it for the longest and I was thinking, "Don't people go to parks anymore?" Then, probably around 2:30, this woman brought her little kids to the park and then, when school got out, there were all these kids there.


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

Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, Sara Rich continues to tell her daughter's story, the same Congress that won't end the war doesn't listen to the story of Suzanne Swift, and the lies that led to an illegal war are explored.


Starting with the final section of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" on yesterday's Flashpoints:

Meanwhile, there's little indication from London or Washington that the occupation will end any time soon. In London a confidential planning document drawn up by the Defence Ministry, called the "Operational Tour Plot," was obtained by the London Telegeraph which today disclosed that British troops will be serving in Iraq and throughout the Arab gulf at least until 2012. And finally in Washington, Congressional Democrats made it perfectly clear they have no serious intention of bringing the war in Iraq to an end before they can capitalize on it in time for the 2008 presidential elections. After a week's recess and backtracking on the non-binding and loophole laden timeline legislation which permits the Bush administration to continue the war in until the next presidential term Democratic leaders retreated even further than they did during the legislative debate. Among the retreaters Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee told ABC's This Week that, "We're not going to vote to cut funding." He said that after a veto "There's a number of options. Either we can keep the benchmarks part of the bill without saying that the troops must begin to come back and if that doesn't work what we will leave will be benchmarks for instance which would require the president to certify to the American people that the Iraqis are meeting the benchmarks for political settlement which they have set themselves." And that's some of the news of this Monday April 9, 2007 from exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoints.

Flashpoints is archived at its own website and at KPFA (which right now is having archive problems and has archived nothing since early Monday morning) and airs live from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Monday through Friday online and over the airwaves of KPFA, KFCF, KPFB and other stations. (A full transcription of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" appears in Hilda's Mix today.) Knight was speaking, first, of the news from the UK. Sean Rayment (Telegraph of London) notes approximately half "of the country's armed services have now served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003" and that the revelations that UK forces will be in Iraq through 2012 and that report is "in marked contrast to a statement made by Tony Blair in Feburary giving the impression that British troops would remain in Ira for less than two years." On the earlier issue of the Democrats caving, as Joshua Frank (CounterPunch) notes, "The Democrats may not have enough votes to overturn a Bush veto, but they certainly have enough to filibuster the war-funding bill, which at this point is the only way to stop this god-awful disaster. One brave Democrat could take a stand, filibuster, and 40 more senators could then abstain from breaking the filibuster. That is all it would take. Bush would then have to be the one to compromise and produce a plan that was acceptable to the 41 Senate Democrats who want to end the war. But of course, we are more likely to see Dick Cheney drinking margaritas with Cindy Sheehan on the White House lawn before we'd witness this scenario play out." Tabassum Zakaria and Richard Cowan (Reuters) report that Bully Boy has "invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House next week" to discuss the non-binding, toothless Congressional measure. That is the same measure he has stated he intends to veto and that Senator Carl Levin says, if he vetos, Democrats will immediately rush to fall in line (no power of the purse for Levin).

From the madness of the governments
To the vengeance of the sea
Everything is eclipsed
By the shape of destiny
So love me now
Hell is coming
Could you do it now?
Hell is here
Little soldier, little insect
You know war, it has no heart
It will kill you in the sunshine
Or just as happily in the dark
-- "No One Would Riot For Less" written by Conor Oberst, off Bright Eyes' Cassadaga

Turning to the topic of war resistance, Paul Rockwell (CounterPunch) offers an open letter to Major General Charles Jacoby Jr. where he reviews the court-martial of Ehren Watada. In June 2006, Watada became the first officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In February of this year, he became the first officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy. Rockwell notes that the court-martial ended in a mistrial over the objection of the defense, argues that "now is a good time to drop all the charges against the Lieutenant, to bring closure to a trial that, in my opinion, should never have taken place" and concludes that "history will vindicate the courage of Lt. Ehren Watada." Pretrial motions are currently scheduled for May 20th through 21st and the court-martial for July 16th. Watada is represented by the Seattle based Carney Bradley Spellman and his attorneys are Kenneth Kagan and James Lobsenz.



Ehren Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Joshua Key, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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.


At a rally to show support for Ehren Watada, Sara Rich (AfterDowningStreet.org) writes, she and her daughter Suzanne Swift turned out to show their support and Swift asked, "Mom, where are the kids my age? Where is my generation?" Rich goes on to tell her daughter's story, sexually abused and harassed for the apparent 'crime' of thinking a woman could serve in the military, Swift was betrayed by the very system she attempted to defend. As Rich explains, her daughter did not self-check out because of an objection to the war but to save herself when the military refused to do so. Rich: "Confronting imminent redeployment she went AWOL. Later the Army would contend that she went AWOL because of her mother's political beliefs. I only wished it was that. If it was because of my political beliefs she never would have gone to Iraq the first place. Then they tried to say it was because of her own anti war beliefs. That would have been a dream come true. But the truth was that my daughter went AWOL out of pure fear; fear of what her command had done to her in the first deployment and rejection of being treated like a 'deployment whore' again. This was not a decision it was a reaction."

Though Suzanne Swift's reaction was perfectly normal, even before you get to the fact that she suffers from PTSD, not only was she abandoned by the military command that damn well should have prevented what she went through, the US Congress -- all those brave talking Senators, male and female -- sat on their collective asses which apparently kept their lips from moving. The military conducted a whitewash investigation (that still found validity and confirmation in some of Swift's charges), her offer was sign a paper saying she lied or face a court-martial. Swift was court-martialed, stripped of her rank, sentenced to 30 days and then placed back in the same system that not only did not refuse to ensure her safety, but failed to after she sought help. To repeat, Congress sat on its collective ass. That's Hillary Clinton, that's Carl Levin, that's Barbara Boxer, that's Russ Feingold, that's Susan Collins, that's Mr. uber-goodness Joe Lieberman.

Rich concludes, "It is amazing to me how much we have to be thankful to the Army for. They tried to break my daughter down and shut her up, and in the process created a strong advocate for women around the world. Imagine if they had done the right thing and protected from MLester in the first place or given her an immediate medical discharge when our attorney contacted Ft. Lewis right after she went AWOL and was diagnosed with PTSD. How simple and right it could have been. But the US military did not understand what they were doing or Suzanne's fortitude." A number of Congressional members who are also attempting to campaign for president have issued the "If only we knew then what we know now . . ." junk to excuse their support for an illegal war. What's their excuse for doing nothing about Suzanne Swift? She should have received an honorable discharge. Congress should have immediately initiated hearings into what women serving in Iraq are actually having to endure. It's not too late for that nor is it too late to push for Swift to get the honorable discharge she more than deserves.

Rich offers that the people her daughter's age are waking up to the realities and will be showing up at protests in greater numbers. In Iraq yesterday, hundreds of thousands participated in a Najaf rally against the occupation of the nation by foreign forces. Hiba Dawood (Free Speech Radio News) reported by speaking with Iraqis (an apparently novel and new thing to do when you consider how few others bothered to do so) taking part in the protest. One man noted 4 years have passed since the occupation of Iraq and what happened? Hundreds of thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were wounded and arrested. They humiliate the Iraqi homes every day. The Constitution says that the Iraqi homes are protected but they invade homes anytime they want. We have to always remember Abu Ghraib and the abuses that has happened there including the sexual abuse against Iraqi women and the killing of those Iraqi women with their families." Ahmed Ali states: "The demands in this demonstration are different than the ones we had in 2005, for example. Then people demanded the condemnation of Saddm Hussein and called for the total and immediate departure of the occupation forces. Today, we demand that there should be at least a timetable set up for troops to leave. Our other demand is that want people in the occupying countries in the removal of their military forces from Iraq."


Following yesterday's cry for foreign forces to leave, the war drug on with all the violence that entails.

Bombings?

AFP reports: "A woman veiled in black and strapped with explosives blew herself up outside a police station in Iraq on Tuesday, killing 16 people, many of them volunteering to joing the polic eforce" in Muqdadiyah. CNN reports a Baghdad bombing targeting Baghdad Univeristy that killed at least six college students and left 11 more injured. CBS and AP report that "a rocket slammed into a schoolyard basketball court, killing a 6-year-old boy. AP Television News videotape showed children's backpacks and books still open on classroom desks, covered with shattered glass and debris. Blood was pooled on the dusty tile floor." -- the count given is 17 wounded. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports two other mortar attacks in Baghdad that resulted in one death and four wounded.


Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) notes an Iraqi soldier was shot in Kirkuk and, in Baghdad, an ongoing clash between Iraqis and US & Iraqi forces has left one Iraqi soldier dead and four injured and that "an eyewitness" says "one American reconnaissance aircraft was shot down." CNN notes that the US military states that "minor damage" was done to a helicopter which did not, according to the US military, crash.

Corpses?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 9 corpses discovered in Baghdad.

Today the US military announced: "Three MND-B Soldiers died and another was wounded when an improvised explosive device and secondary explosion detonated near their patrol in a southeastern section of the Iraqi capital April 9. " And they announced: "A Soldier assigned to Multi-National Force-West died Monday while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." On the tenth day of April, ICCC is reporting that 45 US service membrs have died in Iraq so far this month. 3292 since the start of the illegal war. 3292 dead. Why?

The mythical mushroom cloud that Condi and Bully Boy pushed? The 16 words in the State of the Union 2003 address (a Constitutional duty of the office of president): "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That lie was explored today by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!), La Repubblica's Carlo Bonini and the Washington Post's Peter Eisner -- excerpt:


Amy Goodman: So we're back to the day that President Bush made his statement within the State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's attempt to get uranium from Africa.

Peter Eisner, what role did the CIA play in this statement?

Peter Eisner: The CIA actually had attempted to block the statement by President Bush relating uranium purchases in Niger. And, in fact, three months before the State of the Union message, on October 7, 2002 -- strangely, the same day that Rocco Martino handed over the documents to Elisabetta Burba -- President Bush was scheduled to deliver a speech in Cincinnati, and the draft of that speech said pretty much what he ended up saying in the State of the Union message. That was, that the British had found that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. The CIA was given routinely a copy of that text in advance and argued that that sentence about uranium should be removed. There was quite an argument between the lower CIA officials and White House staff, including Stephen Hadley, at the time the assistant National Security Advisor, now the National Security Advisor, once Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State. Finally, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, had to intercede on October 7 and demand that the White House remove the sentence describing uranium purchases in Niger. It was quite a dust-up. As a result of that, the White House, burned, decided that in the interim it would not provide advanced text of presidential speeches to the CIA to avoid having to withdraw information that it didn't want to withdraw. So, the day before the State of the Union message, no one at the CIA had seen the text of the State of the Union message, until the night before. Someone just mildly passed a draft text to George Tenet during a meeting, which was not the normal procedure for vetting a document. And basically everyone at the CIA was surprised when President Bush uttered that statement, which had already been excised three months earlier. The response by the White House staff was, "Whoops! We forgot."

Amy Goodman: And yet, what happened? This was still before the President's address?

Peter Eisner: Well, in effect, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, the day before, received the text, handed it off to an aide, and nobody took a look at it. It could have been stopped, but usually, you know, days before, as the text is being prepared, written, analyzed, someone would look at it. In this case, they didn't, although the Bush administration did have allies elsewhere in the CIA that were kind of giving them cover to be able to make this statement, while a vast majority, I would say, of the intelligence community in the United States did not believe for an instant that Iraq was trying to buy uranium or that Iraq was trying to restart its nuclear program.

Carlo Bonini is the co-author of Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror. Peter Eisner is the co-author of The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Cases for War in Iraq. Amy Goodman is the co-author of Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back and she will be speaking at Faneuil Hall in Boston next Monday (April 16th) with Howard Zinn -- event begins at 7:00 pm.


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Bright Eyes

Third, Carter, more

It's Monday. I've got two things and then the usual Monday review. So let's hop in and all pray Monday passes quickly.

Okay, help me out here because I'm confused. This is from Scott Horton's "President Carter: Bush Ordered Me Not to Go to Damascus:"

More evidence of the White House's partisan manipulation of relations with Syria emerged yesterday, as President Jimmy Carter told a gathering in New York about his recent request to visit Syrian President Assad. The former president stated:
"I have known President Bashar al-Assad since he was a college student, and I thought it might be helpful if I went and urged him to support the peace process in the Middle East. But for the only time in my life as a former president, I was ordered by the White House not to go."

How does the White House order Jimmy Carter not to go somewhere? I think Carter means that he was urged not to go, that he was told it would be better not to go. If he was ordered, "ordered," not to go, I think he needs to explain that. I'm not defending Bully Boy and I'm sure there was strong arming going on. I just don't think the Bully Boy has the Constitutional power to order Jimmy Carter not to go. If he did "order" it, I'm very interested in how. By the way, Horton has a link in that to another site. Since I do not endorse sweat shop labor (using anyone to make crappy t-shirts or to churn out crappy campaigns), I removed the link. If you're interested, access Horton's article and you'll find it. But be careful of those Dem-Moonies who say they're all about the kids of today but just want to yoke us to campaigns and claim, "Look at our power!"

And to read an idiot and cluster-fucker, click here (you'll go to Common Dreams and won't get cooties). Read the comments and laugh. Hillary's health plan! Ha. Tell it to someone not from Boston where the movement started, where Hillary latched onto it, where she pretended she wanted input from the doctors and nurses and then sold out to insurance industry in her "private" meetings. What a little liar. Remember when Brian Monty-head used to link to his buddy Ezzie all the time and gush over Ezzie's looks when not bragging about their "clusterfuck." Monty-head built a new gas bag -- and not a better one. Don't believe the hype on Hillary and health care. She sold out to the insurance industry and no re-writing will ever change that. Again, that movement started in my area. Litte Ezzie doesn't know what he's talking about. (Maybe his brains got damaged in the clusterfuck?)

Okay, let's talk The Third Estate Sunday Review:

Truest statement of the week -- Ruth is so funny! It's true and it's really funny. Dad thinks this was a great choice.

A Note to Our Readers -- It's up, not the "sketch" but the full note. Jim said they did it after midnight Sunday. Jim covers everything pretty well so I'm not sure how much I'll have to write.

Editorial: Shameful -- Do people know who was shameful? I guess it tells you how closely you follow the news on whether you know or not. I like this editorial.

TV: The not-so-universal White Boy blues -- This is funny. Ava and C.I. said it wasn't, but it's really, really funny. And I like how they tie things together from the past and from today.

Talking with Ruth -- Great interview with Ruth and she's right that we don't need to be telling people to stop dreaming, stop fighting and settle.

Your Guide to the Horse Race -- C.I. really did not want to do this. I mean, groaning, complaining. I think Rebecca and me suggested it and C.I. was "No, no, no." But Jess wanted to do it so C.I. went along (and really contributed to it). I think this is pretty important. Election cycle after election cycle, we're all supposed to have amnesia and forget the pattern, year after year.

Roundtable -- I loved this. I know some people didn't. I know C.I. didn't want to do it. But I think it's one of the best roundtables we ever did. I love what Jess said. We all do and we all support Jess. But I think the fact that he was obviously ticked off by B.S. Somerby led a lot of people to think, "Oh . . ." about the roundtable. I think it's great. (And I'm delinking from B.S. after I post this entry.) And I also loved this part:

Wally: Yeah, there "big question" is a negative. Are students today more narcissitic? Than whom? Than the lazy adults at The Nation who think their crap is worth reading? It was the sort of attention getting question that everyone ignored. A strong argument can be made that the rag has promoted the notion of apathy in young people today than anything else on the left or 'left.' The real apathy is to be found in supposed grown ups who can't tackle the war crimes against Abeer. When Katrina vanden Heuvel comes down from her cloud, or falls off, and addresses the real world, I'll worry about apathy in my generation. While she's getting giddy over three men, I'll just laugh at her weak ass mind and realize that it's important for some to have money to buy themselves a seat at the table.

I'll probably pull more stuff from it throughout the week but I'm going with that first.

The Nation Stats -- When a woman's in charge of magazine, do you expect it to only print one woman writer for every four men? No? Well why does The Nation have that figure?

The winners are -- Congratulations to the winners of the Green Party contest. Use this link and check out the video.

Highlights -- Cedric, Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Elaine and me did this and did it real quick.

Message from Jim, Dona and Ty -- Jim, Dona and Ty explain the template change and the hold up.

So that's it from me and here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, April 9, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqis march in Najaf, Democratic leadership caves again, and Winnie Ng told the truth.


Yesterday, Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called followers to take to the streets and protest the occupation of Iraq by foreign fighters. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted this morning, "Hundreds of thousands of Shiites are staging a massive anti-U.S. demonstration in the holy city of Najaf to call for the withdrawal of US troops. Shiites from around Iraq have traveled to Najaf to take part in the protest to mark the fouth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis to stop cooperating with U.S. forces." CBS and AP report that the Najaf rally lasted three hours, chants included "Get out, get out occupier!" and "Yes, Yes to Moqtada! Occupiers should leave Iraq!", that Iraqi soldiers -- wearing their uniforms -- "joined the crowd," and that US military flack and apparently fact challenged Steven Boylan pointed to the demonstrations against the United States and sighed that it couldn't have happened "four years ago" -- apparently alleging that Saddam Hussein would not have tolerated anti-US demonstrations. Boylan wasn't the only having trouble with the truth. Khaled Farhan (Reuters) reports that White House National Security Council spokesperson Gordon Johndroe also hailed the protest against the US forces as a sign of freedom and anticipates "much more progress". Saad Fakhrildeen and Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report that US and Israeli flags were burned in the protests. File it under "Spin that." As AFP notes of the difference in the demonstrations four years later, "Gone are the euphoric April 9 cheers of 'Good, Good, Bush' praising US President George W Bush for ousting the regime. Angry chants of 'Down with Bush' are a frequent background to brutal Shiite and Sunni sectarian strife."

Turning to the topic of war resistance, Dave Zirin discussed with Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) today one of the more famous war resisters, Muhammad Ali: "And, you know, going back to that Kinshasa fight, I think it's a great example of the redemptive power of Muhammad Ali, because by that time he was somebody who, you know, had returned to the world of boxing, had fought off through the Supreme Court a five-year prison sentence given down to him by the federal courts, an outrageously high sentence for a draft resister at the time, and by the end, after that fight, he was named 'Sportsman of the Year' by Sports Illustrated. So he makes this amazing journey from being the most vilified, hated athlete in the history of the United States -- and I don't think there's any contention about that -- to becoming a figure of reconciliation, who was invited by Gerald Ford to the White House to shake hands. And that's the thing about Ali, is that he was always bound up in the rhythms of the social movements of the day." Denying the social movement today in the New York Times, Paul von Zielbauer writes that self-check outs result soley from PTSD and the military lowering the standards of who is recruited -- no one, to read von Zielbauer's clampdown of an article, ever self-checks out because they are opposed to the war and he gets that point across, in article noting the increase in court-martials, by refusing to speak to any one who has been court-martialed or to any one who self-checked out and went to Canada. Someone who does suffer from PTSD and did self-check out because he turned against the illegal war after serving in Iraq is Joshua Key.

Last month, three men claiming to be Canadian police visited the home of Winne Ng who provided housing for Joshua, Brandi and their children early on when they went to Canada. Winnie Ng maintained that they identified as Canadian police but she suspected they were the US military. The three men were looking for Joshua Key and asking questions about him. Jeffry House, Key's attorney, immediately contacted the military which has not yet -- one month later -- bothered to return his calls. That certainly gives the impression that the US military was not interested in speaking to Key. But what of Winnie Ng who one 'helper' suggested might be lying? The Candian police swore none of their police officers had visited her home. It was suggested, by 'helpful' that Ng might have made it up or be lying.

Winnie Ng was not lying. At the end of last week, The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that Canadian police were now admitting one of their police officers visited Ng's home. In addition, who accompanied them? Two US military members. The Canadian police maintains that the two men were never presented as police officers. That claim is as believable as their earlier claim that they knew nothing about, that no police officer visited Ng's home, go down the list. Ng told the truth. It's the Canadian police which continues to change their stories. In one of the few moments of truth in his article, von Zielbauer notes that the military is upping their quest for those who self-check out. Until futher information is furnished, the possibility that the US military was there no to speak with Joshua Key but to attempt to take him back to the US remains a strong one.


Joshua Key is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes
Ehren Watada, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 US Congressional news, how does one cave after Democratic leadership in both houses pass non-binding, toothless legislation, that does not enforce ALL US troops leaving Iraq and that funds all of Bully Boy's requests and then some? Count on the Democratic leadership to find a way. As Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) observed today, "Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a key Democratic leader has given new indications Democrats are prepared to back down on their call to cut off war funding if President Bush vetoes a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Speaking on ABC Sunday, Armed Services Committee chair Senator Carl Levin said: 'We're not going to vote to cut funding, period.' Levin said a veto would lead Democrats to consider removing language calling for the withdrawal of troops." Guest Laura Flanders, host of RadioNation with Laura Flanders and author most recently of Blue Grit, noted that the Democratic leadership "had to be dragged kicking and screaming" to the topic of the illegal war and spoke at length of how the right-wing fuels the Republican Party while the Democratic Party is more inclined to run from their own base. (This is one of the themes of her new book Blue Grit, another theme is the power driving change is on the ground in local areas, not in DC.) More on Democratic leadership caving can found at BayouBuzz which also notes US Senator Charles Schumer's caving remarks. While Democratic leadership caves in the face of a threatened veto (one they knew of all along), Evelyn Pringle (CounterPunch) observes that "what is clear, is that Bush plans to leave our troops dying in a war without end indefinitely, and therefore, its up to American citizens to rescue these young men and women in the only way possible, by insisting that Congress cut off funding for Iraq to force Bush to get them out of that hellhole."

And in Iraq today?


Bombings?CBS and AP report a Baghdad mortar attack that left one person dead and two more wounded. Reuters notes: "A roadside bomb wounded four civilians when it exploded near a U.S. military vehicle in the southern city of Diwaniya."
Shootings?

Reuters notes two people (thought to be on their way to take part in the Najaf protest) were shot dead after they left Iskandariya, that Jalal al-Daini ("tribal leader") was shot dead in Khalis and that two suspect "al Qaeda militants" were shot dead by the police in Hit. CBS and AP note a civilian and a police officer were shot dead in Baghdad while clashes in Burnitz left at least 30 injured.


Corpses?

Reuters reports 17 corpses discovered in Baghdad, 1 near Kirkuk and 1 in Mahaweel. Note that frequent embed Lauren Frayer (AP) reports 25 corpses discovered in Iraq. That would make the total count 35. What? Frayer gives 7 for the corpses discovered in Baghdad and trumpets that the 7 (a wrong number) is "only the second time the number of sectarian assassination and torture victims had dipped that low in the course of the Baghdad security operation". Lay back in your stupidity Frayer, luxuriate in it, and ignore the snickers.


This past weekend, as Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted, the US military announced
the deaths of 10 US service members.


And on the troops who will be sent to Iraq shortly, Peter Spiegel (Los Angeles Times) reports that the four Army National Guard brigades being sent to Iraq ("entire Guard units") are "alerts to brigades in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and Oklahoma involves about 13,000 soldiers, who will begin their return to combat in December. The staggered deployments will extend into early next year. All four brigades had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005." On Camp Pendleton the news is being closely watched since recent returnees (last month) were informed they were now stateside and that, for the next six months, the US military would be pulling from east coast.

Meanwhile, the long praised (and softballed) Kurish region may soon receive more critical reporting. AFP reports: "The United States criticized Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani Monday for threatening to fuel Kurdish separatist fervor in Turkey amid a spike in tensions between the neighbors."

Finally, at Micah's request, we're reposting something from Friday's snapshot. While listening to Talk Back with Hugh Hamilton on WBAI today, Micah heard a caller bring up last week's disclosures but was unsure of them. Micah reports a follow up caller (Micah wasn't able to get on air) mentioned that the topic was discussed on Hardball; however, he (both callers were male) was unaware of print coverage and one caller seemed to think a report was being released this week. (Host Hugh Hamilton knew nothing of the government report and repeatedly asked if it even covered anything new -- yes, it did cover something new.) The report was released last Thursday. The Washington Post did a lengthy piece on it and others covered it as well. From Friday's snapshot:

Turning to other lies of war, R. Jeffrey Smith (Washington Post) reports today that a US Defense Department report (declassifired yesterday and written by Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble) states the obvious -- in 2002 the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both knew the claims that Saddam Hussein had a links to al Qaeda were incorrect. Smith notes the report was released yesterday, "on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq 'before we ever launched' the war". Dick Cheney's remarks are not merely 'incorrect,' they are lies. Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports that "The Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA each 'published reports that disavowed any "mature, symbiotic" cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' the inspector general's report found." AP notes that US Senator Carl Levin "requested that the Pentagon declassify the report prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate."



iraq
the new york timespaul von zielbauerjoshua key
democracy now
r. jeffrey smith
the washington post
laura flandersradionation with laura flanders

Narco News, global warming

Friday! The weekend! :D It'll be gone before we know it! So enjoy it while you can can or, like one of Dad's favorite songs says, "Get it while you can." (That's Janis Joplin.)

Today's was a busy and fun day. Tony and I did the intro for the speech in class. And the speaker? C.I. That was so cool. C.I. had already been speaking today and goes, "I am so sorry, I don't know what I'm supposed to talk about." :D I did e-mail the topic Wednesday! :D So I go it's "Why We Speak Out" and C.I. goes, no problem. And me and Tony had to signal the time so C.I. would know the pace. It really went over well, I mean really well. For someone who said they didn't know what they were going to talk about, that was really suprising. It was funny and it was serious. The last three minutes were about reaching out both to local groups and about to the people around you. "Affirmation and information" are important and you can do that and should do that (this is a paraphrase) with your friends but you also need to be reaching out to those who aren't involved yet. Nina, Tony and me got a plug for our group (which is tonight) and how it started (there wasn't enough coverage of Iraq so we started the real Iraq Study Group in 2005) and it was just a really great speech. Then it was like pile on the questions for the rest of the hour. Or that's what people in class thought. :D I knew what was coming which was not just answer a question and next, but getting the people asking to talk about what they're seeing, doing and feeling. It was really great. C.I. had to do two speeches right after but -- yeah, I begged -- now is here and will be taking part in our study group tonight. So I'm rushing.

Rebecca's not sure how much there will be on Gonzales tonight so I told her we could team up and pick two things from Democracy Now! and discuss them quickly. So check out her site for what she thinks of what we picked out.

"UN Warns Poor Will Suffer Most Because of Climate Change"
A new United Nations report on climate change warns that global warming could cause more shortages of food in Africa, more severe weather events in Europe and the United States, the decimation of coral reefs and the disappearance of the ice caps. The report is being released today at a major conference on global warming in Brussels. Experts said the poorest people in the world will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change.
Australian scientist Roger Jones: "The two biggest areas of risk for impacts, are the biodiversity and water. And amongst that, we see lots of other vulnerabilities. Some low-lying areas are vulnerable to sea level rise and to extreme events of course. And in particular, drought and fire, I think, are some of the two biggest risks that we see."The report was written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which groups the work of 2,500 scientists from the around the world.
UN Under-Secretary General Achim Steiner: "I think we today know that the series of impacts that are associated with climate change can not be isolated in terms of one phenomenon or another. A warmer winter may be one phenomenon that we will observe, but in fact, also in the richer countries in Europe and North America, we will see other effects that are associated with this. More extreme weather events, floods... These are all impacts that are part of the reality of living with climate change."

So if your my age, put yourself 40 or 50 years into the future and think about what that's going to look like and how people our age are going to be watching us and thinking, "You screwed it up for everyone." They're not going to be blaming the ones who are already dead and gone. They're going to be blaming the older ones still around like us.

Is that the kind of world you want? People fighting over water, hurricanes and tornadoes all over the place, food shortages? That's what's coming if we stay on this road.

"Report: AP Fires Correspondent Covering Oaxaca Uprising"
The Associated Press has reportedly fired a Mexican correspondent named Rebeca Romero due to her pro-government bias in her coverage of last year's populist uprising in Oaxaca. This according to a report on the website Narco News. In January, Narco News revealed that Romero had violated the AP's code of ethics by accepting payments from the Oaxacan state government for advertisements on her personal website. Before her stint at the Associated Press, Romero had worked as a press secretary for the Mexican federal attorney general. For much of the conflict in Oaxaca U.S. newspapers relied solely on Associated Press articles written by Romero. A review of Romero's coverage by Narco News showed a consistent pattern of sensationalizing protester violence while sanitizing state violence through misreporting. Romero never published a single article that attempted to explain the protesters" motivations.

You know what I think of? After the fact that Narco News does good work, I think, "Gee, there's no Democrat in that story." Which probably means most of the so-called left will ignore it. It's not about a campaign. It's not the media beating up on some Democrat. It's about the very real corrupt system of journalism but 1/2 the online 'left' seem to think the only press problems are when Bill Clinton is made fun of.

This is something Tony passed me from Richard W. Behan's "The Complicity of Congress in a Criminal War:"

The US Congress has gone beyond compliance with George Bush's illegal war, and is now technically an accomplice-it is assisting with full knowledge in the perpetration of a crime. Congress has attained this status through two grave errors, one of omission and one of commission.
The Error of Commission
The Iraq Accountability Act passed the House as H.R. 1591 and slightly differently as S. 965 in the Senate. The versions await reconciliation in conference committee. Both bills set deadlines for troop withdrawal, both appropriate the money the President requested for prosecuting his war, and both require the Iraqi Parliament to pass its "hydrocarbon law," to enable the sharing of oil revenues among the Iraqi people.
Revenue sharing surfaced publicly when President Bush announced his troop surge initiative on January 10. It was one in a series of mandatory “benchmarks” he established for the Iraqi government to meet. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy," Mr. Bush said, "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." On the surface that is a benign, compassionate thing to do for a war-torn people.
As usual, it seems, Mr. Bush was consciously deceiving us. He failed to tell us the whole truth. The Iraqi hydrocarbon law also privatizes 81% of Iraq’s currently nationalized petroleum resources, opening them to "investment" by Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, and two British oil companies, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell. (For further details, see Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil.") These companies expect to sign the rarely used and notoriously profitable contracts called "production sharing agreements" which guarantee them extraordinarily high profit margins: they might capture more than half of the oil revenues for the first 15-30 years of the contracts' lifespan, and deny Iraq any income at all until their infrastructure "investments" have been recovered.
So the Iraqi people will share among themselves all the revenue from 1/5th of their country’s oil reserves. But they will get only a fraction from the remaining 4/5ths, where the American and British oil companies expect to generate immense profits. (Read more in Crude Designs, Greg Muttitt, ed., a report by the UK’s Platform Group.)

It's a strong article and Congress is now an accomplice. There's a lot of people pretending and cheerleading, but it's an accomplice. That's it for me tonight. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday, April 6, 2007. Chaos and violence continue in Iraq, lies of war get exposed but Cheney continues to lie, the US military aids a terrorist group (designated as such by the US State Department) in Iraq -- aids and escorts, and airstrikes hit the Diwaniya province.

Starting with war resistance, approximately 40 US war resisters have self-checked out, moved to Canada and filed paperwork to be legally granted asylumn in Canada. (Approximately 40 have filed papers, hundreds have gone to Canada and are not attempting to go through the legal process.) Reuben Apple (Eye Weekly) notes that war resisters appearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board to argue their case are prevented from saying "We think this killing is unlawful" and they "are asking our Federal Court of Appeal for the right to say" those six words. Apple notes that attorney Jeffry House -- who represents many war resisters -- is a Canadian citizen today because of the country's policies during an earlier illegal war (Vietnam) when a real prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, didn't cower before Tricky Dick Nixon but instead declared, "Canada should be a refuge from militarism." Tricky Dick's response to that statement and policy was to call the Canadian prime minister an "asshole" and Trudeau's comeback was that he'd "been called worse things by better people."

Apple notes war resisters Ryan Johnson ("wake up and get involved with something, nuclear disarmament, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the War Resisters Support Campaign, anything, because it's the people that can end this"), Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key: "Two weeks ago, three big men in trench coats, claiming to be 'Toronto police,' came with questions to the home of Winnie Ng, a campaigner who once hosted Key. According to Toronto Star reports of the incident, it seems American military authorities would like to speak with Key. If they want to discuss The Deserter's Tale with its author, they can go to his next talk, or they can call his lawyer, Jeffrey House. Key has legal status in Canada as a refugee claimant, and officials should tell the American government that our police, if those men were our police, are not their messengers."


Earlier this week, Monday, on Canada's Gorilla Radio, host Chris Cook interviewed the War Resisters Support Campaign's Lee Zaslofsky on the topic of US war resisters in Canada. Zaslofsky spoke of what was known and what wasn't known -- such as Kyle Snyder was detained by Canadian police (and that was on the US military's orders though Zaslofsky didn't note that) but he was not deported. During this "mistaken arrest," Snyder was told he was being deported. (He legally cannot be deported.) Cook noted that when a war resister appears before the Refugee and Immigration Board, they are not appearing before a group of people, the board has one person designated to hear that case. Like attorney Jeffry House, Zaslofsky came to Canada during Vietnam as a war resister. Zaslofsky noted that Synder's status in Canada has changed as a result of the fact that he is now married. (That would be to Maleah Friesen, whom Zaslofsky didn't note.) As Friesen's spouse, Snyder has more avenues available to Canadian citizenship. March 19th, Zaslofsky noted, Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey were before the Federarl Court of Appeals and are awaiting a decision which, if necesarry, Zasolfsky states, "We'll appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada."

Snyder, Key, Hinzman and Hughey are part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Ehren Watada Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 war resistance to reality as we dig into some of the lies of the illegal war. From yesterday's Flashpoints:



Robert Knight: Also in Iraq, a spokesperson for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is today denying reports that Sistani rejected a new draft law that would allow former members of the Baath party to retain or regain government employment. Sistani's Beriut based representive, Hamed al-Kafaf said, "What some news agencies said, quoting who they described as an aide to al-Sistani about his position on the de-Baathification law was not true." Recent reports that Sistani was against the draft law can be traced to a meeting earlier this week between Sistani and the prevaracating US intelligence asset Ahmed Chalabi who heads the so-called de-Baathification commission and who remains dead set against an easment of the anti-Baath legislation imposed by the occupation forces. Sistani's representative added, "We are surprised by attempts trying to get the Shia clerical establisment involved in a case which is the speciality of constitutional organizations."
And in other news, the overnight release of 15 British sailors by the Iranian government has generated mixed signals in what some say was a quid pro quo that in regard to the 5 Iranian diplomats who were seized last Janurary by American forces in Iraq. Iranian media reported overnight that an Iranian diplomatic official would be allowed to meet with the five diplomatic detainees. But Secreatary of Defense Robert Gates said today that the Bush administration was not planning to release the five who were abducted in a raid on the Iranian consulate's office in the northern Iraqi city of Ibril.
And in a related note, a captain among the detained British sailors who were released was revealed to have admitted that there mission the Shaw al abray waterway between Ira1 and Iran, unsurprisingly did indeed involve elements of intelligence gathering Britain' s Murdoch owned Sky News is reporting today that Sky News went on patrol with Captain Chris Air and his team in Iraqi waters close to the area where they were arrested and just five days
before the crisis began, in an interview recorded the Thursday before the seizure that happened two weeks ago, Captain Air stated to the interviewer that his crew's assignment was "To gather intelligence. If they do not have any information because they're there for days at a time, the people on the boats can share it with us. Whether it's about piracy or any sort of Iranian activity in the area obviously we're right by the bufferzone with Iran." And that's some of the news of this Thursday April 5, 2007. From exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoinsts.

Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) notes today that "British Defense Secretary Des Browne defended the intelligence operation. Browne said it was important to gather intelligence to 'keep our people safe'." Goodman also noted that Sky News sat on the story "until the release of the sailors."


Turning to other lies of war, R. Jeffrey Smith (Washington Post) reports today that a US Defense Department report (declassifired yesterday and written by Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble) states the obvious -- in 2002 the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both knew the claims that Saddam Hussein had a links to al Qaeda were incorrect. Smith notes the report was released yesterday, "on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq 'before we ever launched' the war". Dick Cheney's remarks are not merely 'incorrect,' they are lies. Peter Speigel (Los Angeles Times) reports that "The Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA each 'published reports that disavowed any "mature, symbiotic" cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' the inspector general's report found." AP notes that US Senator Carl Levin "requested that the Pentagon declassify the report prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate." Strangely in the face of Cheney's lies about terrorism, Michael Ware (CNN) reports that the US military is currently protecting a non al Qaeda group in Iraq that the US State Department has "labeled a terrorist organization" -- Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) -- and that "[t]he U.S. military . . . regularly escorts MEK supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf." Why? MEK is an anti-Iranian group. Ware reports that the Iraqis government wants the group out and quotes Iraq's National Security Minister Shirwan al-Wa'eli stating, "We gave this organization a six-month deadline to leave Iraq, and we informed the Red Cross. And presumably our friends the Americans will respect our decision and they will not stay on Iraqi land."

Returning to the topic of the lies that led to war, they were lies in real time -- scary lies to some -- they're sad lies now. Another popular lie is "if only we knew then . . ." US Senator and 2008 presidential candidate Chris Dodd tells that sweet little lie: "Had we known before the war what we know today -- that there were no weapons of mass destruction; that there were no links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda; that there was no imminent threat from Iraq to America's security or vital interests -- Congress would never have considered, let alone voted to authorize, the use of force in Iraq." A comforting lie to some, but a lie nonetheless. In October 2002, (PDF format warning) US House Rep Dennis Kucinich provided an analysis of the US administration's false claims and noted, among other things: "There is no proof that Iraq represents an imminent or immediate threat to the United States. A 'continuing' threat does not constitute a sufficient cause for war. The Administration has refused to provide the Congress with credible intelligence that proves that Iraq is a serious threat to the United States and is continuing to possess and develop chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. Furthermore there is no credible intelligence connecting Iraq to Al Qaida and 9/11." The analysis makes the point repeatedly: "There is no credible intelligence that connects Iraq to the events of 9/11 or to participation in those events by assisting Al Qaida. . . . There is no connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11." 125 Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq war resolution. Kucinich, who is running for President, was among the 125.

To suggest that 'we were all wrong' is to replace one lie with another. Professor Francis Boyle was interviewed by Bonnie Faulkner for the March 28, 2007 broadcast of KPFA's Guns and Butter and he shared the experience, from March 13, 2003, of joining former Attorney General Ramsey Clark for a meeting with Congressional Democrats where the subject was impeachment of the Bully Boy and how impeachment could stop the war. Though there was strong interest in that, an appearance by John Podesta deralied it as he screeched that doing so would hurt the Democrats 2004 election chances. As Kat notes of that interview, Boyle and Clark "were both getting their cabs" after and Boyle asked Clark what had happened? Clark explained that Democratic leadership wanted the illegal war. Boyle also discussed the meeting with Dori Smith for Talk Nation Radio in May 2006 (link takes you to audio and transcript via Information Clearing House) where he noted: "The main objection" to impeachment "was political expedience and in particular John Podesta was there. He had been [Bill] Clinton's White House chief of staff. He stated he was appearing on behalf of the Democratic National Commitee and that as far as the DNC was concerned it was going to hurt their ability to get whoever their candidate was going to be in 2004 elected President if we put in these bills of impeachment. I found that argument completely disingenuous when the Democrats had no idea who their candidate was going to be in 2004 as of March 2003."


From Howard Zinn's A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (City Lights Press), pp. 199-200:


Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war nor trust Bush and his administration, and evidence of official deception has become old news, we might ask: why were so many people so easily fooled?
The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans -- members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen -- rushed to declare their support as the president was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.
A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation in February 2003 to the UN Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech that may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his "evidence": satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with adminiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled "Irrefutable" and declared that after Powell's talk "it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction."
The truth was that a small army of UN inspectors could not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A large army of 100,000 soldiers marauding through the country could not find them. But back in February 2003 the White House said: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Vice President Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press: "[W]e believe Saddam has in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." On March 30, 2003, Rumsfeld said on ABC TV: "We know where they are." And Bush said on Polish TV: "We've found the weapons of mass destruction."
The only weapons of mass destruction in Iraq turned out to be ours: bombs and missiles raining down by the thousands, cluster bombs spewing out deadly pellets, the arsenal of the greatest military power on earth visiting destruction on yet another country.
Self-determination for the Iraqis becomes an ironic claim as the new officialdom, headed by wealthy exiles, is flown by U.S. planes into Iraq and positions of power. In Vietnam there was a similar claim as Ngo Dinh Diem was flown into Saigon to rule South Vietnam in the interest of U.S. hegemony in Southeast Asia.

Which brings us back to the points Robert Knight was making earlier about Chalabi. On Tuesday, Edward Wong (New York Times) reported that Ahmad Chalabi was stating that al-Sistani was opposed to allowing former members of the Baath party to rejoin the government (Wong notes that Chalabi heads up the commission and that it was "set up L. Paul Bremer III, the American pro-consul who governed Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. Mr. Bermere's very first order was to purge former Baathists from the government, a task that Mr. Chalabi's commission pasisonately carried out"). On Wednesday, Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported that: "An official spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani distanced the ayatollah from reports published Monday and Tuesday saying that the marjiay, the most senior Shiite clerics, disagreed with the plan, which was proposed jointly by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and President Jalal Talbani." Which begs the question why any serious outlet would take a word from Chalabi's mouth seriously? The exile who helped sell the war is attempting to position himself back to the top of the puppet regime. But, as Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) notes today, Chalabi's got competition from another US backed exile: "Some politicians say they believe the talk of a new parliamentary alliance is a cover for an attempt by Allawi to take another run at ruling Iraq. Allawi was installed as interim prime minister in mid-2004 by the U.S.-led government in Iraq, but he was swept from office by the groundswell of support for religious parties in January 2005." That's Iyad Allawi a one time prime minister of Iraq who was then and is now also a citizen of Britain. Allawi and Chalabi aren't only exiles (heavily funded before the illegal war with US tax dollars), they're also related. The current puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki (emphasis on "current") is another exile who returned to Iraq only after the US invaded. Which must mean that around kitchen tables across Iraq, children are being told, "Clean your plate, spend some time in exile, and some day you can grow up to be Prime Minister."



Bombings?

Most attemtnion is on Ramadi today where a bombing has claimed multiple lives. CBS and AP report the death toll at "at least 27" and many more are wounded from "A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas [who] crashed into a police checkpoint in western Ramadi". CNN notes at least 30 wounded and that two police officers are among the dead. AFP calls it "the biggest chemical attack by insurgents in Iraq since the invasion" and notes that it took place "next to a market and residential buildings".

Reuters notes a Hawija bombing that left four police officers wounded, two Kirkuk bombings that left six people wounded and mortar attacks in Baghdad which killed three and left five wounded.

Al Jazeera reports that "in the city of Diwaniya, Iraqi and US forces clashed on Friday with fighters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia leader in a major operation. . . . Residents and an Iraqi security source in Diwaniya said a curfew had been imposed and that troops were blocking streets and conducting house-to-house searches." DPA notes "at least 30 men were killed and many others wounded" and that "US military aircraft flew over the city and all roads were sealed off . . . The local authorities also imposed a curfew all over the city." Steven R. Hurst (AP) reports: "Dr. Hameed Jaafi, the director of Diwaniyah Health Directorate, said an American helicopter fired on a house in the Askari neighborhood, seriously wounding 12 people as the assault began." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) reports, "A man named Jassim, from Sadr's Diwaniyah office, said that U.S. troops had entered the city before dawn from three locations with tanks and helicopters flying overhead, taunting the Mahdi army fighters. . . . He claimed that two civilians had been killed by snipers as they tried to go to work" which the US military denies. AFP notes at least one dead and that "Polish aircraft dropped leaflets over the city ordering local police officers to stay home, warning that anyone who went out with a weapon will be considered a target, a military spokesman confirmed."


Shootings?

Reuters reports Sheikh Ghazi al-Hanash was shot dead in Mosul, three police officers were wouned by gunfire in Baghdad, Sheikh Karim Omran al-Shafi was injured in an attack in Hilla, and two people were shot dead "in the Amil District in southwestern Baghdad."



Corpses?

Reuters notes four corpses discovered in Tal Afar. As noted in yesterday's snapshot, the corpse of Khamail Khalaf was discovered yesterday. Bloomberg News reports: "An Iraqi reporter for a U.S.-backed radio station has been found dead in Baghdad after going missing two days ago. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said on its Web site that the body of Khamail Khalaf was found with bullet holes in her head and wounds on her body" and the article notes she had worked for RFE "since 2004." This was noted yesterday but she has been reported as a TV journalist -- which she was until the start of the war.

Finally, on Thursday, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now!) explored the latest developments in governmental spying "a secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain and question a group of protesters in a downtwon parking garage in April 2002. Some of the protesters were interrogated on videotape about their political and religious beliefs." Excerpt:


Amy Goodman: We're also joined by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney and co-founder of Partnership for Civil Justice. Mara, talk about the significance of this, of the years of denial that the FBI were involved.

Mara Verheyden-Hillard: Well, as Nat said, the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department have steadfastly held that it didn't happen. We believe our clients. We know that this happens. We have evidence in other cases of FBI involvement in intelligence gathering on political protesters. And in discovery request after discovery request, in sworn responses in hearings before the court, over and over again, the FBI, the MPD have done everything they can to suggest that this is somehow complete fabrication. And we have sought for years, as well, to get a particular document, the document that now places the FBI squarely at the scene of the arrests and doing intelligence gathering. And that's the running resume. It's a document that indicates, line by line, what the MPD and federal police and other law enforcement agencies are doing during protests. We've been able to obtain them in virtually every protest case we're litigating in D.C. And in this case, they actually told us it didn't exist, and they swore it didn't exist -- and now we know why. This document says very clearly FBI intelligence is on the scene and the protesters are being questioned. And the only way this finally came up is they gave it to us the one business day before a deposition we were taking of one of the MPD members who's responsible for developing this document.

Juan Gonzalez: And what has been the response of the law enforcement officials who kept saying that they didn't have any records of this?

Mara Verheyden-Hillard: Well, we want a response. We have filed a motion for sanctions with the court. As well, the FBI has filed a motion to dismiss themselves from the case. We don't see that there can be any basis for their dismissal -- and this situation is really important, because we think it's sort of the tip of the iceberg. We think it's one tentacle coming up that's quite visible of a larger operation. The questions that they were asking protesters, the questions about who were you with, what are your political beliefs, where are you staying -- associational, political questions -- that's programmatic questioning. It's not random questioning. It's the kind of information you collect when you're building a database, an associational database and a network database of information. And it's all purely political. It's all First Amendment-protected political activity, political association.

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Law and Disorder

Thursday! Almost the weekend and Leigh Ann and Beau both wrote to say that time moved so fast for them too. Leigh Ann's got a cousin she's close to who always complains about how slow everything's going and he doesn't follow the war (she does drag him to protests and started that this year -- her resolution for the year was show up with more than just herself). So she said she thinks my grandfather's right. (He'll love hearing that and he may read it here before I get time to tell him.)

Okay, it's time to talk Classic Disco like I try to do once a week.

Classic Disco?

Mike, you've never talked Classic Disco! Bump bump bump, do the hustle!

:D

"Classic Disco" is the name of WBAI's Law and Disorder.

I thought that was a one time thing and it keeps happening. I asked C.I.'s friend (who burns each week's episode for me) if he was putting it on there. He said he wasn't. But when I put it in my computer drive and the player matches the CD with information, it shows up as Classic Disco. :D That always cracks me up. Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith are the hosts. Did I spell Dalia's name wrong recently? If so, my bad. I was probably copying that from a snapshot C.I. dictated to a friend who spelled it that way.


So the show opened with Dalia and Michael Ratner discussing the first military tribunal for a Guantanamo prisoner. Dalia said that it was "nothing short of horrorifying" and talked about how David Hicks' hair was "halfway down his back" to cover his eyes so he could sleep bcause "they keep the lights on his cell 24 -7 so he can't sleep." Now Rumsfeld was supposed to write up the rules and never did, remember that.

Hicks goes in with three lawyers and he points out all the lawyers the prosecution has and says his are going to need some help. The judge disagrees and strips him of one lawyer right there claiming that she's in the reserves and not on active duty (Michael called that crap -- in nicer words). Now remember the rules aren't written. Another lawyer brings that up and the Judge is all 'Oh, I know about this, I'll write the rules.' He just needs the lawyer to sign on to them and the lawyer says, besides the fact that Rumsfeld was supposed to write the rules, he can't agree to something that's not even written yet. The judge has now gotten rid of two attorneys. So Hicks is left with one lawyer (Morey) and that's among the things he was thinking about when he decided to plea. Michael Ratner pointed out that Hicks has been held since January 11, 2002. Five years and counting he has been a prisoner. He's Australian and he's got kids in Australia so if he hadn't pleaded and had been convicted, he could have gotten 20 or more years in prison and never seen them before. Michael thinks he'll serve a little time in Australia (it's supposed to be 9 months, I think) and get some credit for time served and then be set free.

Dalia pointed out that Hicks was being charged for his actions from December 2000 to December 2001 and that "the armed conflict did not begin . . . until October 2001. What is interesting about the military commissions is that they backdate the war on terror . . . so that offenses committed before October 1" can become charges.

She also wondered, "When did the CIA stop giving aid to the Taliban? . . . Can we backdate it to some of the" US officials who gave support to the Taliban?

Now I agree with Dalia but I should note that if The Nation was reviewing that statement they would call her 'emotional' as they did with the two women who wrote books about Afghanistan that dealt with the realities. The male reviewer loved the book by the guy who saw the fun and madness in the journey but the women were "emotional". The reviewer also bragged about going to a whorehouse in Afghanistan. That's the kind of crap you get in The Nation. And when that review ran this year, you need to remember that the editor and publisher was Katrina vanden Heuvel who apparently has no problem with a man doing that to two women (one was the NPR reporter who left NPR to try to help out in Afghanistan, the other was a writer The Nation often publishes and I forget both their names).

Dalia's right and I agree with her but I'm just offering that because maybe you're sick of The Nation (who isn't?) and if you are, you can listen to Law and Disorder and hear the stuff The Nation tries to cover up. Yes, the rag let the reviewer deny the CIA connection. Ava and C.I. steered the Christmas weekend edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review (and that was a strong edition) and led on "The Nation's Slap In The Face to women." Those of us who were working on the edition were talking about providing research and all on how this was a lie (that the CIA didn't fund the Taliban) but C.I. and Ava came up with using Gore Vidal because his two books that mention this were published by . . . Nation Books (the magazine's book imprint) and they remain the ONLY BESTSELLERS the imprint has had. Here's a taste of that piece:

Now we could go to Greg Palast or the BBC to show what a fool Peter Bergen is. But this garbage appears in The Nation. So maybe the better question is why did The Nation publish Gore Vidal's Dreaming War in 2002 (it remains one of the few bestsellers the imprint Nation Books has ever seen -- gag books and joke books don't generally have long shelf lives)?
If Bergen's correct then Gore Vidal's entire book is wrong. Not only did The Nation publish Vidal's book, it continues to sell the book -- without corrections.
So which is it? Is centrist and hack Bergen correct or is Gore Vidal? Is The Nation going to stand with a writer of merit (Vidal) or the personal friend of someone at the magazine?
The tawdry crap Bergen churns out doesn't belong in The Nation.
The long-winded, non-review also contains a familiar subtext: women's rights don't matter. Feminists engaged in the Afghanistan issue in the 90s, trying to get a non-responsive Congress and administration to pay attention, will remember that message. It's back today and Bergen's selling it. For some strange reason, Bergen's selected to review three books on Afghanistan.
Apparently, The Nation knows of no women qualified to address the topic of Afghanistan so they had to go with a self-proclaimed 'terror expert.' (Strange, in and of itself, when you consider that The Nation regularly tells readers the so-called war on terror is bunk.) For future reference, here's three women who can address the topic quite well (and much better than 'centrist' Bergen): Weeda Mansoor, Sunita Mehta and Fariba Nawa. That's just three, there are many others.

I love that feature. Same edition, Ava and C.I. started "The Nation Stats" which is a feature whenever an issue arrives that covers the fact that the left magazine (or "left") headed by a woman (Katrina vanden Heuvel) barely publishes women. (It's currently 3.8 men for every woman so you can round that up to 4 men for every woman.) Ava and C.I. get credit on that because they were in charge that issue (Jim, Dona, Jess and Ty took Christmas off), because a number of feminists started raising the issue of lack of representation for women at The Nation in the fall of 2006 and C.I. did a really hard hitting piece (for the gina & krista round-robin) covering the lack of women in 2006, and because everyone at Third (Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.) were in agreement that they needed to do this and follow it through the year so that we would have totals for the full year. Which is what we have going on now. By the way, I mentioned yesterday that we'd be addressing the crappy Nation article on the SDS at Third. We still will in some way but C.I. links to a great article in the snapshot (it'll be at the end of my post) and let me give credit that won't get credited otherwise. C.I. outlined a piece and the points Bernadine Dohrn makes were pretty much the same. That's not a surprise because Dohrn was in the Weather Underground and SDS (and she's written a great article). But now we're scrambling to figure out how to address it. But we will. That article was crap.

So back to Law and Disorder. Donna Lieberman was a guest and she is with the NYCLU. She was on discussing the 2004 police harassment, spying of peaceful protestors for the RNC convention in NYC. They even went out and interviewed/spied on people months before the convention. They were spying on Billionaires for Bush (which is a parody group) and on musicians who were taking part in concerts. And claiming that they weren't spying and if they did it was just on people who were 'dangerous types'. So that got exposed and she was on to discuss it. I like her as a guest. She's been on before. And they didn't just spy in this country, they went to Canada and more. This is the NYC police department. If Bloomberg wasn't a Republican, do you think they would have gotten away with it? I don't. They bent all the rules leading up to 2004 and by then they were willing to just break them. And they didn't just go around as police trying to intimidate people, they posed as activists and stuff. (If you're a community member, remember the two columns C.I. wrote on this. If you're not a member, somewhere at The Third Estate Sunday Review, we used one of those experiences for half a short story -- probably in the 2006 fiction edition which was probably in June. We're already gearing up for the fiction edition this week. And wait, it's the week after the fiction edition. Cedric had a great idea for a short story and nobody used it. So the week after, C.I. and Cedric roughed it out and the rest of us wrote it and it combined that and C.I.'s thing. But we are working on the edition some. Thinking about it to be ready. C.I.'s got an opening line for a short story and Ty had something happen, something he and C.I. observed, and that's going to be another short story. What happened in 2005, the first year they did a fiction edition, was that it was a last minute thing but they grabbed stuff they'd all done. They pulled stuff from old journals of C.I.'s and Dona's and stuff they'd written for other stuff and just expanded on it and had a great fiction issue. They did not like the 2006 fiction issue and that's why we're already supposed to be thinking about it so we're not struggling -- like we were -- on a Saturday night to suddenly come up with all these ideas.)


Now after that, they had a bit of comedy before the last segment. I liked it. Dad did too but my sister said, "Tell the joke!" :D What was going on was Michael Ratner was reading funny court moments from a book that is called Disorder in the Court. And he would get to laughing so hard that he would need a laughing break to get it out. I thought that made it funnier. Dad did too. But Ratner should watch out for the angry teenager who is pissed because she is semi-grounded demographic! :D My sister's lost phone and other privl. She did something stupid (but not criminal) and Ma and Dad grounded her. Her whole attitude is "I'm too old for this!" My attitude is, "You are too old to do something that stupid!" :D So this week (she's ungrounded Friday night if she doesn't screw up before then) is all about her storming room to room and nothing's ever good enough for Goldilocks. :D That music isn't good. That TV show is lame. This doesn't taste right. People are making too much noise outside. She's got one complaint after another. She heard Dad and me laughing as we listened to the CD and stormed in determined to to make everyone as miserable as she is. (She hates it when I write about her but she wouldn't shut up while we were trying to listen and I go, "You know I blog about this, so you better be quiet or you're going to be in my post." She stomped out of the room screaming, "I DON'T CARE!" :D) So if Michael Ratner wants to win over that demographic he'll need to (a) laugh less and (b) agree to represent her in family court so she can fight her grounding sentence. :D

It really was funny, that segment. I hope they find a way to do something like that again and I would say they should do it just like it was this time. It's hard to tell you and make you laugh, probably. But it was questions asked in court during cross examination and like one thing was if the doctor was sure the victim was dead before the autopsy was performed? The lawyer was asking stuff like did you take a pulse and these other questions and the answer was always "no" and then at the end the lawyer asks how the doctor knew the victim was dead and the doctor says because the victim's brain was in a jar on a shelf. :D (That one resulted in my sister screaming, from the other room, "That is not funny! That person is dead! They do not have a brain!" :D)

Donna Lieberman was back for the last segment and Deborah Small of Break the Chain joined them. They were discussing the fact that people are being stopped on the streets of NYC. It's targeting minorities (Latinos and African-Americans) and increasing the number of arrests for minor things. Now not only is that wrong but they then put all this information in the NYC police database and it doesn't end there because then it's accessible all over the country by all these people in the government. So they're profiling (bad enough) and then creating these secret files. This is like the files that Hoover kept on "enemies" like John Lennon and other people and it also reminded me of their story they did a few weeks back (maybe last week) on the phone companies and how these files were being kept on people.

Now if it seems like the first segment got the most attention from me, that's because I was all eager to type! :D I loved all the segments but that was a strong one and, most importantly, I was writing about it first! So that's Law and Disorder and it airs on many stations but you can hear it Mondays at 10:00 a.m. on WBAI. Anytime at the Law and Disorder website. C.I.'s friend gets a big thank you from me for burning each week's episode for me. I was talking to C.I. about it and going on about how I would have my own Law and Disorder library! :D C.I. said, "If you don't loan them out." C.I. does (which is fine with C.I. -- attitude is, "If someone can use it in a paper or just for their own enjoyment and knowledge, great.") and there are probably 5 that C.I. has now from 2006. The others have gone off on their own life. That's why C.I.'s friend uses the discs that you can write over. :D He says that's great if someone's listening but if they're going to end up recording over it, forget it. :D

Three people e-mailed to say "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" by Judy Collins is a great recording. Susan also e-mailed about that. She's a big music lover in the community and she gave me her suggestion for CD to get but said if C.I. had a different suggestion, go with that "because C.I. knows you better than I do." True, but Susan and C.I. both suggested the same thing, Judy Collins' Forever. It's a double disc anthology and it has that on it and the Marat/Sade thing I love and Susan said "So Early, Early In The Spring" (which I did know because of Dad, but didn't know it was on that collection). C.I. said I had to hear "Pirate Jenny and "Bird On A Wire." And as soon as I post this, I'll be listening to that. I gave Tony money for it because he was running around doing errands and he's here now, we're going to eat a pizza and prepare for an into we have to do for tomorrow's class.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" and read Bernadine Dorhn's article, it's great:

Thursday, April 5, 2007. Chaos and vionce continue in Iraq,the 15 British soldiers are returned to England but the Iranian diplomats remain held by the US military, a US helicopter is shot down, both the British and the US military announce the latest death tolls, and can a moment be seized?

BBC reports on the return to England of the 15 British soldiers who were captured by Iranian's when the British were in disputed waters off the coast of Iraq. Released after nearly two weeks, the five Iranian diplomats that the US kidnapped in a January raid on a diplomatic consulate (recognized as such by the Kurdish government -- and still recognized as diplomats by the Iraqi government) are still being held. Edward Wong (New York Times) reports that Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, stated, "It was not a clanestine operation. . . . They operated with the approval of the regional government and with the knowledge of the Iraqi government. We were in the process of formalizing that liaison office into a consulate." Wong also notes that 200 Kurdish soldiers attempted to prevent the five diplomats from being taken off by the US military back in January.

Turning to news of war resistance, Ehren Watada has new legal representation. Watada, the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq and the first to be court-martialed (in a court-martial Judge Toilet ruled a mistrial over the objection of the defense) is no longer represented by Eric Seitz. William Cole (Honolulu Advertiser) quotes Seitz stating, "I think the way to put it is I'm not representing him anymore and he's found another firm" and Bob Watada (Ehren's father) stating, "I have the highest opinion of Eric Seitz. But it's Ehren's decision." Hawaii's KNDO notes that Watada's next court-martial is scheduled for July 16th. Whether it will go foward or not is up in the air because double-jeporady should have attached when Judge Toilet (Lt. Col. Head) declared a mistrial, over defense objection, in the midst of the trial. Cole notes Watada is now represented by Carney Badley Spellman in Seattle. Fort Lewis is in Seattle so that is one plus (Seitz resides in Hawaii). Another is the strong lawyers working for the firm such as Jim Lobsenz. AP notes "Watada is currently assigned to an administrative position at Fort Lewis." Earlier this week, Paul Rockwell (Berkeley Daily Planet) summarzies Watada's case thus far and notes that "Watada never volunteered -- no soldier volunteers -- to violate human rights, to violate American treaties, to destroy the sovereignty of nations, to participate in aggression. A contract to break the law has no legal standing."


Ehren Watada is a part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Joshua Key, Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake 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 today, another helicopter has gone down. The Times of London reports that the downing took place "this morning after coming under fire in a Sunni militrant stonghold south of baghdad, an Iraqi army officials said. AFP reports that "four personnel on board a US army helicopter were wounded and 'evacuated' when it crashed south of Baghdad. Five others on board were safe". CNN reports that an unnamed US military official has stated that the helicopter "appeared to be damaged by small-arms fire" and notes that 8 helicopters "have been shot down or forced to make hard landings" since January 20, 2007. Hard landings? Sweeter word for "crash." AP provides a list of 9 helicopter incidents (beginning on January 20th) leading up to today's which, they note, resulted from "an anti-aircraft heavy machine gun" according to an "Iraqi official."

That was only one incident of violence reported today.

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports five IED explosions throughout Baghdad that killed 3 people and left 7 injured, and two Baghdad mortar attacks left 4 people dead and 10 wounded. CBS and AP report a car bombing in western Baghdad that left "at least six guards" of "a Sunni Muslim television station" injured. This comes as Reporters Without Borders issues their statement condeming the kidnapping and beating of journalist Nabaz Goran who was kidnapped and assaulted by "five men in military uniforms" in the city of Ebril. On the attack on the Baghdad TV station, Reuters notes one person was killed and a total of 10 were wounded.Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports that "a young man" was shot dead and another wounded in Muqdadiya "near one of the internet cafes and playing centers" while an attempted kidnapping of a student in Baghdad left one security guard at Mustansiriyah University dead and 4 more injured. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports: "A three-year-old child was felled by a sniper's bullet as he sat in his grandather's lap in a car at a south Baghdad intersection, police said. A security guard at Yarmouk Hospital, which receives a steady stream of bloodied victims, said he broke down in tears when he saw the tiny body." AFP reports that seven Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in Mosul. Dean Yates and Ross Colvin (Reuters) cite an "army source" (presumably Iraqi army) who says that the soldiers had been surprised in their sleep. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) also notes a rocket attack "near a high school and police station in Kanan" which left 4 children wounded.


Corpses?

AFP reports that Khamael Muhsin's corpse was found today. Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times) reports Khamel Muhsin was an "Iraqi radio announcer" who had last been seen "Wedensday in west Baghdad." Reuters reports five corpses were discovered in Baquba and the corpses of two women were discovered "on the main road between Diyala and Wasit province". Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports eleven corpses discovered in Baghdad and that a total of 22 corpses were discovered in Baquba.

Now let's stop for a moment to note that Khamael Muhsin was found dead and two other women were found dead. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) adds to the body of reported violence against women by noting that two teachers (women) and their driver disappeared "three days ago" and Badra police were attempting to determine whether the two missing women were the corpses (heads only, according to Issa) discovered between Diyala and Wasit province. Issa also notes that "a principle of a primary school and her assistant were kidnapped by insurgents near one of the banks in Baquba before the eyes of a combined security patrol." Team all of that up with the three explosions Issa reports "in front of the Institute of Teachers for Girls" in Kirkuk. But let's all pretend that women aren't targeted simply due to their gender.


Today, the US military announced: "A MND-B Soldier died when the patrol was attacked by small arms fire in the southern outskirts of Baghdad April 3. The unit was conducting a dismounted patrol when the attack occurred. One other Soldier was wounded in the attack."And they announced: "An MND-B Soldier died April 3 when a patrol was attacked with small arms fire in an eastern section of the Iraqi capital. The unit was conducting a presence patrol in the area when the attack occurred." And they announced: "While conducting a combat security patrol, two MND-B Soldiers died and three others were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated in a southern section of the Iraqi capital April 4." And they announced: "While providing escort security for another unit, two MND-B Soldiers died and another was wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated north of the Iraqi capital April 4. In recent weeks, this unit has successfully found numerous weapons caches and detained several targeted insurgents within their area of responsibility. In a separate incident, an MND-B Soldier died when a patrol was attacked with small arms fire in an eastern section of the Iraqi capital. The unit was conducting an area reconnaissance mission when the attack occurred. No other Soldiers were wounded during the attack."
AFP puts the count of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war at 3261, Reuters puts it at 3,264 and ICCC puts it at 3265.

And the UK Military annonced, ""It is with deep regret that the Ministry of Defence must confirm that four British soldiers and a civilian interpreter have been killed in Iraq today, 5 April 2007. The five were killed in a roadside bomb attack against a Warrior patrol west of Basra this morning. Next of kin are being informed and no further details will be released until this process is complete. " Why the British government begins sentence number two with "The five were killed . . ."? Typo? One more they haven't reported yet? Who knows?
The AFP count for British soldiers who have died in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 140, Reuters also goes with 140, as does ICCC.


Al Jazeera reports that the attack also claimed the life of "a civilian translator". Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) reports, "British authorities were trying to determine the nationality of the interpreter who was killed. He was not an Iraqi, and contrary to news service news reports he did not appear to be from Kuwait".

Turning to the US Congress, Tuesday on Free Speech Radio News, Leigh Ann Caldwell reported on the latest talk of a new Senate bill regarding the war: "Responding to Bush's veto threats to the $124 billion war supplemental, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Russ Feingold have come up with a backup plan, a plan that goes further. It would stop funding US combat missions on March 31st of next year. It's important to note though that troops would remain for security reasons and to fight al Qaeda in Iraq." (Thank you to Micah and another member who both transcribed Caldwell.) On the measures passed by the House and Senate previously, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch) observe, "Although nothing of any significance actually happened on March 32, to read liberal commentators one would think we'd witnessed some profound upheaval, courtsey of Nancy Pelosi's skillful uniting of the various Democratic factions. What she accomplished in practice was the neutering of the antiwar faction. . . . Will Congressional opposition to the war now get stronger, anchored by Pelosi's bill? Not likely. The window of opportunity for that flew open right after the election when antiwar forces roared in outrage after being snubbed by Pelosi and Reid, who omitted the war and the Patriot Act from their must-do agenda. Instead, the Democratic leadership chose merely to appear to oppose the war while continuing to fund it. This they have now achieved, amid the satisfied cheers of the progressive sector."

United for Peace and Justice is advising "We Must Seize the Moment:"

As people of the United States, taking action to right these terrible wrongs is our greatest responsibility. Join us in letting our elected representatives know that we want the war to end and the troops to come home now!
Congress is now on recess, giving us an opportunity to take our message directly to them in their homes offices: Start bringing the troops home from Iraq now, bring all the troops home in 2007, and no war in Iran! The House of Representatives will be on recess March 31-April 15, and the Senate from March 31-April 9. Now is the time to make our voices heard. Click here for ways to take action.
Scheduled a meeting with your reps? Please post it on our events calendar.
Suggested reading on the supplemental:
Are We Politicians or Citizens? by Howard Zinn
UFPJ Talking Points: Opposing the Iraq Supplemental & Iran Threats by Phyllis Bennis
And CODEPINK is asking that we stop the purchase:

Don't Buy Bush's War! "CODEPINK believes that not one more dollar should be appropriated for continued war and occupation, and will continue to push the position that Congress should only fund the safe, orderly and rapid withdrawal of all troops by the end of this year." Read more of CODEPINK's response to the passing of the supplemental bill. We will continue our broad and exciting Don't Buy Bush's War Campaign. We need to flood the offices, halls, sidewalks and streets of Congress with people opposed to the war from now through this Fall. We're asking for your help to get people to Washington DC and to do similar actions locally. CALL CONGRESS: we're also asking you to call and email your member of Congress telling him or her to stop buying Bush's war. Watch the Washington Post's film about this campaign.

Those who don't see the urgency in ending the war quickly should read Deborah Sontag's (New York Times) article on Iraq veteran Sam Ross who returned from Iraq blind and missing a portion of his left leg and was left to address mental and emotional issues arises from his time in Iraq and his injuries with no help or assistance from the government that so gladly sent him into an illegal war.

Finally, though the plan is still to address the idiotic article in The Nation (noted last Friday), Bernadine Dohrn (writing at CounterPunch) has already done so: "Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing article in The Nation about the vibrant and growing student movement. He transforms the tough challenges of movement-building into a set of tepid forumulas about what not to do. The new wave of student activism in American and around the world is a hopeful development worthy of our active participation and respect." As noted last week, for those not interested in musings from the faux set, check out Doug Viehmeyer's article "Steppin It Up: The New SDS" (LeftTurn) about the SDS.

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mikey likes itthe common ills
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free speech radio news
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