OutOfIraq

Torture News Strike

Bob Fertik — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:25:34 -0400

Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer
Kansas City Star
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News

On 4/11/08, George Bush told ABC News he personally approved of the approval of torture - including waterboarding - by Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet.

Bush said, "Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

You would think a President confessing to war crimes would be on the front pages of all the nation's newspapers, and all over their editorial pages - not just on Countdown and The Daily Show.

You'd be wrong. The only newspapers that have covered the story are in the box on the right.

Is your newspaper missing from this list? Then let's work together to do something about it.

We're calling this action our "Torture News Strike."

Call the Editor of your local newspaper and tell him/her you are suspending your subscription until they give Bush's torture confession the serious coverage it deserves either in the news or editorial section, or preferably both.

If you get home delivery, then call the circulation department and tell them to suspend delivery until further notice. (If you buy at the newsstands, read something else.)

Want to connect with other activists who read the same newspaper as you? Read more...

1. Login to Democrats.com and look for a "Local" forum devoted to your newspaper, either under "state" or "county". If you don't see your newspaper listed, skip to (3) below.
http://democrats.com/local

2. Post a comment about your action and the editor's response in the forum.

3. If your newspaper isn't listed on your "Local" page, please add it:

Find the name and contact info for your newspaper's editor by opening the newspaper, using Google, or using this list:
http://www.mondotimes.com/world/usa/newspapers.html
click on your state
click on your local newspaper
Open Notepad and copy/paste the full name of the newspaper
Scroll down and look under "contact information" for the name of the editor
Copy/paste the editor's name into Notepad
Just above "contact information," click the web site
Find the main phone number and copy/paste into Notepad
Post this information on Democrats.com
Login and click http://democrats.com/local
If your newspaper serves an area smaller than your County, click the [Post] link next to "County" - if it serves more than one County, click the [Post] link next to "State"
For "Subject" use "Newspaper Strike:" and the name of your newspaper
For "Democrats.com Forums" choose "Hot Topics"
For "Body" copy/paste the Editor's name and phone number

4. Use the "Send" link below your local newspaper forum to invite your friends to participate.

Want to do more?

1. Write a letter to your local newspaper about Bush's torture scandal and the paper's failure to cover it. Also call your favorite talk shows.

2. Also sign our petition to Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture:
http://www.democrats.com/impeach-for-torture

Thanks for all you do!

To learn more about the Torture scandal, visit these links:

ABC News 4/11/08: Bush Approved Torture
Democrats.com torture news
Troutfishing (How you can fight, What about sexual torture)
Invictus
AmericanTorture.com
Emptywheel
White House Watch by Dan Froomkin (Bush OK'd torture meetings)
The Abu Ghraib Scandal and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq by John Cox
Died hanging from wrists and gagged, with over 25 rib fractures by bewert
Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere by Cooperative Research
The Green Light by Philippe Sands
Psychological Torture by US Forces, Physicians for Human Rights
Watch the new documentary: Standard Operating Procedure

Iraq Town Halls

Bob Fertik — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:07:15 -0400

Co-sponsors and speakers:
Progressive Democrats of America
Gold Star Families for Peace
Win Without War
AfterDowningStreet
FireDogLake
Hip Hop Caucus
Cities for Peace
Velvet Revolution
The Nation
The Backbone Campaign
Brad Blog
Clout on Air America
Willie Nelson Peace Research
Voters for Peace
Code Pink
Democracy Cell Project
Veterans for Peace
Global Exchange
Liberty Tree
Filibuster for Peace
The Young Turks on Air America
United for Peace and Justice
Brave New Films
Declaration of Peace

Speakers:
Iraq Veterans Against the War

http://iraqtownhalls.com

In April, Congress will vote to give George W. Bush and Dick Cheney another $102 billion for Iraq - unless we finally persuade our Representatives to Just Say No.

One of the best ways to persuade a Representative is to hold a town hall meeting and fill the hall with people who care and are willing to speak passionately. (Another way is to turn out a crowd for a town hall that your Representative is already scheduled to attend.)

So we're asking YOU and the 500,000 members of Democrats.com to organize Iraq Town Halls in all 435 Congressional districts on any day in April.

Check for an Iraq Town Hall already being planned in your district: To do this, you must be registered and logged in on this website. Once you are, go to http://democrats.com/local and look for an Iraq Town Hall announcement below the "Congressional District" heading. If you see one, open it and post a comment below it offering to help, or contact the organizers in whatever way they have suggested (they may have posted a phone number or Email address).

Start organizing an Iraq Town Hall using the tools on this website: If there's nothing yet being planned in your district and you want to start talking with others about planning a possible town hall, or if you're ready to post an announcement of an Iraq Town Hall, please Email us at: iraqtownhall@democrats.com We will walk you through the steps involved. To get started on your own (it's really not that hard) CLICK HERE.

For tips on how to make your Iraq Town Hall a success, READ MORE.

Getting Organized:

Ask at least one reliable friend to help you organize this event.

Ask local organizations to take part.

Reserve a convenient hall or auditorium.

You should hold your event with or without your Representative, so you can call and ask about their availability before or after you pick a date. Weekends are the most likely times for them to be available. We recommend calling the District Office (not DC office) of your Representative (you can find the # here) and ask for the scheduler. If your Representative won't give you a date promptly, pick one yourself - and leave an empty seat on the stage for your Representative.

Invite key speakers. A number of organizations are making speakers available for these Iraq Town Halls. Here is a list.

Reach out to community to participate: here are some outreach ideas.

Make a 1-page flyer (or use this one) and post it in busy locations (coffee shops, supermarkets, libraries, post offices, etc.)

Post your event on every community calendar you can think of (internet, radio, newspaper, etc).

Email and/or call local reporters (TV, radio, newspaper, blogs) to personally invite them to attend.

An Agenda for Your Event:

Your agenda will depend on whether your Representative attends, what key speakers attend, what groups are involved, etc. Here are some ideas:

Be aware of how your Representative has voted in the past on funding the occupation.

Be aware of how much total money the Iraq Occupation is costing: http://3trillion.org

Be aware of exactly what you can ask Representatives and Senators to do.

Come early to set up and bring all the items you need.

Test the sound system to make sure it works.

Bring video cameras to record the event for Youtube.

Set up tables in the back for literature from your allies.

Set up a table and chairs on the stage with a readable sign for each speaker, including your Representative - whether (s)he attends or not.

On the podium, tape a sign with your Representative's name and DC phone number in large letters so everyone can add them to their cellphone.

Set up a card table at the door with several clipboards for sign-in sheets. Ask for name, zip, email, and cellphone for texting.

Bring a cash box for contributions.

Greet reporters at the door, thank them for coming, and invite them to sit in the front and interview the speakers.

After the speeches, ask everyone to call their Representative and leave a message with their name and address and a simple demand: vote NO on $102 billion more for Iraq.

Form a committee to keep up the pressure on your Representative through grassroots events like honkathons, ironing-board letter-writing, anti-war film showings, tables at community events, etc.

Make a plan to pass local resolutions in support of ending current wars, not starting new ones, impeachment, and indictment.

Show videos of the Winter Soldier testimony available at http://ivaw.org

Display and discuss the financial cost to your district of the occupation of Iraq. Find figures at http://costofwar.com and multiply by 6 to approximate the full cost as calculated by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in "The Three Trillion Dollar War."

_______

Please post this graphic link to http://iraqtownhalls.com on your site:

Return to: http://iraqtownhalls.com

Calming the Fearful Mind

davidswanson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:48:37 -0400

By David Swanson

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who in 1964 was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., has published a new book of advice to Americans and to U.S. Congress members called "Calming the Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism."

Hanh's words of wisdom strike me as potentially of great value for a variety of types of conflict resolution, but of somewhat limited -- if still significant -- value for Congress or for U.S. foreign policy.

"If Congress doesn't engage in Right Action," claims Hanh, "it is because it doesn't have Right Understanding about the suffering within our own country and in the world."

To interpret this in a way that makes any sense at all, I think, requires finding it to be at best misleading. I've seen countless Congress members express deep and personal understanding of the suffering they are inflicting, even bringing themselves to tears, while proceeding to inflict more of it, justifying the contradiction in their minds by the supposedly greater good of staying in office by pleasing party, donors, and media, or the greater good of trying to advance their party by obeying its leadership's plan. Congress members could always be made more aware of the death and devastation they authorize, but they are not completely unaware of it or incorrectly informed about it. Primarily what they lack is a willingness to risk their careers in order to briefly do the right thing. If that's what Hanh means by "Right Understanding" he should probably have said so.

Hanh claims that the reasons the U.S. government cannot make peace with its enemies abroad are fear, anger, and despair. No doubt there are plenty of those emotions involved. Bush did express a desire to attack Saddam Hussein as retaliation for an attempted assassination of Bush's father. But nowhere does Hanh mention greed, wealth, power, or political calculation in this equation. Does Hanh imagine that the oil companies funding U.S. political campaigns would be appeased or the war-mad voters would put down their flags and yellow ribbons if Bush listened deeply and talked lovingly with Maliki? I don't mean that to sound absurd just because it's so hard to imagine such behavior from Bush. Such a thing IS possible. What I do think is absurd is the idea that U.S. presidents and Congress members are acting on their own beliefs and emotions as opposed to having their strings pulled. Maybe Hanh believes that proper breathing, mindful walking, and open communication can cut all the strings, but he does not describe such a process in his book.

That being said, I would indeed like to see Congress members meet with and communicate with each other in the ways that Hanh proposes, and I would love to see more liberals and conservatives learn these communications skills. Even those of us who don't think we are very often afraid or angry could learn much better ways to listen to and communicate with others who are. Our goal with a book like this should not just be to try to get right-wingers and racists to read it, but to really read and think about it ourselves. It may sound absurd to ask Congress members to sit in a circle and take turns picking up a flower in the middle in order to have a turn to speak, but deep and compassionate listening is no joke, and engaging in it in our communities is no small step toward influencing those in power in Washington to attempt it as well.

Hanh proposes a national conversation of a sort that would require a completely different communications system in place of the corporate media, but which would do a great deal of good if it could be created. I think Hanh is mistaken, however, to promote religion as a useful part of the process. One week after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Hanh published these words in the New York Times:

"Many people in America consider Jesus Christ as their Lord, their spiritual ancestor, and their teacher. We should heed his teachings … "

Hanh wrote these words in order to try to manipulate people into exactly the wisest behavior: restraint, nonviolence, and understanding. But he played on Americans' desire to obey a "lord," and the lords Americans eagerly chose to obey at that time were George Bush and Rudolph Giuliani.

It was by refusing to obey any authority that Hanh arrived at the wisdom he is trying to share, albeit in Buddhist and universal-spiritualist packaging.

"I lived in Vietnam during the war there," Hanh writes, "and I saw a lot of injustice. Many thousands of people were killed, including many of my friends and students. It made me very angry. One time I learned that the city of Ben Tre, a city of 30,000 people*, was bombarded by American aircraft because some guerrillas had come to the city and tried to shoot down American planes. The guerrillas did not succeed and afterward they left. In retaliation the U.S. bombed the entire city. The military officer responsible for this attack later declared that he had to destroy the city of Ben Tre in order to save it. I was very angry, but at the time I was already practicing Buddhism. I didn't say or do anything, because I knew that saying or doing things while I was angry would create a lot of destruction. I paid attention to just breathing in and out. I sat down by myself, closed my eyes, and I recognized my anger, embraced it, and looked deeply into the nature of my suffering. Then compassion arose in me.

"Because I practiced looking deeply, I was able to understand the nature of the suffering in Vietnam. I saw that both Vietnamese and Americans suffered during the war. The young American men sent to Vietnam to kill and be killed suffered deeply, and their suffering continues today. Their families and both nations continue to suffer. I could see that the cause of our suffering in Vietnam was not the American soldiers. The cause was an unwise American policy based on misunderstanding and fear.

"Hatred and anger left my heart. I was able to see that our real enemy is not man, is not another human being. Our real enemy is our ignorance, discrimination, fear, craving, and violence."

If a Vietnamese can see Americans that way, surely Americans can see the 9-11 attackers with equal calm and courage.

*Elsewhere in the book, Hanh says 300,000 [sic] houses, but I suspect 30,000 people is the more accurate description.

Rep. Waters Says Providing Additional Iraq War Funding in Time of Crisis is “Shameful”

davidswanson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:21:11 -0400

Washington DC— Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-35), Chairwoman and co-founder of the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus, issued the following remarks in advance of House consideration of the Defense Authorization for FY 2009, which authorizes nearly $70 billion in emergency war funding:

The Defense Authorization for FY 2009 to be voted on today under suspension of the rules is unacceptable. This package will give President Bush an additional $70 billion to continue the war in Iraq as he sees fit. We cannot give another blank check for the President’s war that the taxpayers just can’t cash.

The timing for this additional funding could not be worse. American taxpayers are facing a $700 billion bailout package to stem the crisis in the financial markets which has threatened to wipe out their savings, their homes and their jobs. In May, Congress granted President Bush’s request for $170 billion in war funding that was supposed to last well into next year. And last month, the Government Accountability Office reported that Iraq will generate an estimated $86 billion revenue surplus this year, primarily driven by the high price of oil being paid by Americans and others.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that language constraining the conduct of the war has been stripped from the House and Senate passed versions of the legislation. The measure does not include a ban on private interrogators in U.S. military detention facilities, does not include a freeze on the hiring of private contractors, and does not include congressional veto power over the planned security pact with Iraq.

It is an ominous coincidence that the price tag of the war in Iraq is nearly the same as the $700 billion price tag of the bailout package for the U.S. financial industry. I cannot in good conscience support additional funding for the Iraq War without a significant change in policy. The political reconciliation between Iraq’s competing factions promised to us by the Bush Administration has yet to materialize with an enormous American military presence occupying Iraq. The only acceptable solution remains fully funding the safe and swift redeployment of our troops from Iraq.

# # #

Ann Wright and David Swanson Discuss War and Bailouts

davidswanson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:09:09 -0400

MORE BELOW

Blood, Sweat, and Bailouts

davidswanson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:32:28 -0400

By David Swanson

Excerpted from remarks at an Augusta Coalition for Peace and Justice event at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, September 23, 2008.

Have you heard the latest news? John McCain is now in favor of regulating Wall Street. But, of course, local son Woodrow Wilson was reelected as a peace candidate. And candidate George W. Bush was opposed to nation building. Now he's borrowing money from China to build a nation in Iraq and another one here in the United States, except that Iraq has not so much been built as irrevocably destroyed, and nobody seems terribly confident that bailing out Wall Street will work.

And when I say "work" I mean succeed at doing exactly what proponents of the bailout do not want, and that is eliminating the need for more bailouts. Even with this one bailout not yet created, Barack Obama is already promising that it will succeed in the sense in which Naomi Klein's shock doctrine would define success. Obama has said he will not be able to spend what he'd planned on health care, education, infrastructure, and green energy. He has not, however, said he will have to even hesitate on his proposal to vastly enlarge the largest military the planet has ever seen.

This is how the game works. Some spending must not be questioned. Some spending must be sacrificed. For fiscal year 2009, our government has budgeted $653 billion for the Pentagon, and $150 billion for the military portion of other departments. But this budget includes a ludicrously low $38 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that those military occupations have had to be once again funded with an "emergency" supplemental to the tune of $162 billion. If you add the cost of veterans' benefits, plus 80 percent of the cost of interest on the national debt, you arrive at a total of $1.5 trillion. That compares to $1.2 trillion in non-military U.S. spending and debt payments. These figures do not include trust funds, such as Social Security, which are not part of the federal budget. And they do not include the proposed bailout now known as Paulson's Plunder.

But let's take a look at where Obama plans to cut. And, remember, this is by his own choice, even if not his own creation. He's voted hundreds of billions for war in Iraq, and he plans to vote hundreds of billions for Wall Street. Obama named education as an area for cuts. The federal department of education has a budget of $60 billion. For the kind of money that is being so recklessly tossed around in Washington this week, we could create the world's best schools from preschool through college, free to all students. Among other things, that would greatly benefit our economy but greatly damage the ability of politicians to push us around - we'd know better.

Obama says he'll cut back his infrastructure funding plans. The entire Department of Transportation runs on $71 billion, of which $800 million is for Amtrak. The bag of goodies for Wall Street bankers that they're busy tying ribbons and bows on could multiply Amtrak's budget a thousand fold. And it's the cost of infrastructure that is so excessive it must be slashed?

What about green energy? Well, the EPA spends $622 million on researching green energy each year. That wouldn't cover the sales price of 10 of the houses of the bankers we're bailing out in their time of need.

And the first place Obama said he wants to cut back in his new initiatives is health care. But there is no need for spending money on health care. We already spend more per capita than other nations and get less for it, because so much goes to that uniquely American pride and joy: the private insurance company. Here we are bailing out other insurance companies. The ultimate irony will come when we are asked to bail out health insurance companies, which wouldn't exist at all except for our misguided charity at the expense of the health and lives of millions of Americans who could be kept alive and well by single-payer health coverage.

Every time there's a new Cheney-Bush scandal, every time we discover that Dick Cheney lied to Dick Armey, or another top Iraqi informed the White House there were no weapons, or another missile kills another large family in Afghanistan, or the wars in Pakistan and Iran get out of control before we'd realized they'd begun, or we discover that Cheney's lawyer signed the Attorney General's name to an authorization to search Democrats' body cavities, or a chunk of the North Pole floats past the Republican convention, every single time this happens … there's a moment of thrilling fantasy in which we can imagine that the American people or their so-called representatives in Washington will snap out of their hypnosis and ship the whole damn kleptocracy to the Hague in wooden crates.

And the same goes for the latest proposal to steal a trillion dollars from our unborn grandchildren and give it to Wall Street. And here I thought the unborn were the only people these fascists did care about!

While I love the idea of clinging briefly to the notion that there really is something new here and that it will wake somebody from their slumber, I secretly have to wonder how exactly this differs from the past seven years and eight months. For that length of time, our government has enthusiastically gone out of its way to provide protection for (rather than from) predatory mortgage lenders, and to treat foreclosures as no more verifiably real than evolution or global warming. In March of this year Bush and his treasury secretary transferred a pile of public money to J.P. Morgan/Chase via the Federal Reserve to assume the liabilities and assets of Bear Stearns at a price not determined in the free market or via public bidding.

But borrowing money and throwing it at the people who least need it began before Cheney and Bush moved into their new public housing in 2001. Remember that Cheney had earlier served as secretary of "defense" and given Halliburton the contract to draw up a plan calling for giving more contracts to companies like Halliburton. Then Cheney had revolved out the revolving door to spend five years as the chief executive of Halliburton, during which period Halliburton had illegally done major oil and construction business with Iran, Iraq, and Indonesia, and had illegally sold nuclear technology to Libya. Cheney had then left his Halliburton job, along with a $33.7 million parting gift, to return to government as vice president, in which position he directed the Pentagon to grant no-bid contracts worth many billions of dollars to Halliburton. For at least two years as vice president, Cheney received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Halliburton in "deferred compensation." Of course, that was justifiable in terms of the public good: society might have collapsed had Cheney not piled up more riches.

But his riches and Halliburton's were a little crumb off the loaf of large-scale looting that has been the primary focus of our government all these years. While Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes called their book about Iraq "The Three Trillion Dollar War," they were being very conservative. If you read their book, you find that incredibly conservative calculations place the amount of money wasted at no less than five trillion dollars, and mounting, with no end in sight. And who gets that money? Well, certainly not "the troops" so cynically used to squeeze it out of those gelatinous masses of spineless goo that go by the name "House" and "Senate." And certainly not the Iraqi people. Nobody's been liberated, and nothing's been reconstructed. Over a million men, women, and children lie dead, but killing them didn't cost five trillion dollars. Most of that money has gone to war profiteering robber barons, the people who handle the financing of the debt, and China.

The as-yet-unsuccessful proposal to give our Social Security savings to Wall Street is part and parcel of this same scheme. The mission of our government simply is to transfer wealth from those who need it to those who do not, and the most absurd thing about this is the number of commentators who claim that George W. Bush is in some way a "failure." Most of us can just be grateful we have so little to lose, and give thanks to Nancy Pelosi for having taken impeachment off the table. She did so on May 7, 2006, and I would like to propose that the next Congress honor her wisdom by legislating a national holiday. Every May 7th from here on out let's celebrate by getting too drunk to stand up straight and going pheasant hunting with shotguns.

There does not seem to be any way we are going to avoid shelling out a major amount of money to save banks from the unregulated greed of bankers. Dean Baker and Doug Henwood and every person with any economic expertise whom I find credible predicts disaster if we don't.

But, as Baker pointed out on Democracy Now! yesterday morning, the bailout can punish those responsible rather than rewarding them. He suggested capping executives' salaries at $2 million. Even McCain wants to limit them to the U.S. president's salary (or perhaps raise the salary of the president?). I suggest firing chief executives without any payoffs or pensions.

The bailout can also be done without creating new dictatorial powers for the executive branch of our government. Treasury Secretary Paulson has asked for absolute power to hand out $700 billion as he sees fit. How much of that do you think will make it back into Republican electoral campaigns? How much into advertisements to buy off the corporate media? And how long before another $700 billion is needed, Social Security is sacrificed, and public schools are sold off to the lowest bidder?

There is a way to break through this corruption. We have to force our will on Congress. You can go to http://afterdowningstreet.org to find out where to Email, phone, fax, visit, and protest.

Congress must reject Paulson's Plunder and enact a plan with the progressive principles produced by the Backbone Campaign. You can find the full set of principles on my website. Here are highlights:

A. The people who caused the problem or profited most should pay for it

1. Highly compensated executives total compensation should be capped or taxed heavily as a condition for being bailed out.
2. Tobin tax on all transactions in Finance, Insurance and Real Estate including currency transactions.
5. Accountability - fire executives of failed companies as done in the UK, and abrogate their severance packages.
6. Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers.

B. Re-regulate to prevent this from happening again

C. Include Main Street in the bailout and invest in a new productive economy

1. Establish a moratorium on foreclosures, renegotiating mortgages or institute a rent-to-own plan to keep people in homes.
2. Create a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages, in productive jobs that add value to homes and communities.
3. Invest the taxes on speculation, executive compensation, and the surtax on the wealthy in clean energy, infrastructure, education, and health care.

Refusing to include any of these worthwhile things in this scam is being called a "clean" bill. I would call it a dirty bill.

Emma's Revolution

davidswanson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:04:25 -0400

Why Can't They Count Our Votes?
More Below.

Do What I Have to Do - Phil Ochs

Women Say No to War

Has Anybody Seen the Choir?

Peace Salaam Shalom

Keep on Moving Forward

Brand New Song

A War Criminal in Academia

davidswanson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:29:26 -0400

By David Swanson

The Miller Center on Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has invited a war criminal to speak on October 27, 2008, on the topic of "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism." Georgetown University employs the very same war criminal as a "Professor and Distinguished Practitioner in National Security Policy." Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has made him a "Belfer Center Visiting Scholar." And to Stanford University he's a "Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution." The man's name is Douglas Feith.

Feith was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2001 to 2005. Nine days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Feith drafted a memo proposing "deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq." Feith had signed the letter from the Project for a New American Century to President Clinton in 1998 urging him to attack Iraq. And in 1996 Feith had worked with Richard Perle on a report for then-Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu that advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Feith's work after September 11, 2001, quickly became the manufature of pseudo-evidence pretending to link al Qaeda to Iraq. Feith created, cherry picked, and distorted information, and pressured others to do the same, to help build a false case for an illegal war of aggression. And he didn't even do so from within an agency legally permitted to engage in so-called intelligence work. He did so from within the Pentagon where he set up a parallel intelligence operation with the role of producing what Cheney and Bush wanted but couldn't get from the other intelligence agencies. Feith's operation was called the Office of Special Plans.

In 2002, Feith and gang produced a slideshow purporting to show that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together and had been for years. The slideshow began by explaining why the legal intelligence agencies had it all wrong. Feith relied on a witness named Curveball who had spoken with the German government, which found him not credible. Based on the pretense that Curveball was providing good information, Feith claimed al Qaeda and Iraqi officials had met. And he made claims of this nature in presentations to the White House that he omited from presentations to the intelligence agencies.

Most of this has been documented in a report by the inspector general of the Department of Defense.

Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked with Feith in the Pentagon, has also spoken out about his crimes and abuses. She has spoken about this at an event organized by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, but as far as I know the Miller Center has never invited her to speak.

200 Years of Standing Up to U.S. War Lies

davidswanson — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:59:34 -0400

By David Swanson

Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., have edited a new collection of writings called "We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now." Read it and weep … and cheer. Weep because we've been lied into wars in very similar ways for two centuries and have had to discover the deception anew each time. Cheer because some people have been there to denounce the lies on the spot every time, and their ranks have steadily grown.

In 1812, taking over Canada was going to be a cakewalk. In 1846 Mexico had supposedly attacked the United States, whereas the opposite was true. Ending slavery was a belated excuse for the Civil War already underway (much like spreading democracy to Iraq), and it is likely that slavery would have ended swiftly had the South been allowed to secede in peace; slaves escaping north would have been escaping to another nation. In 1898 lies about the Spanish that would have made Fox News proud (including lies about the Maine, a ship that was actually blown up from within) helped launch a U.S. war to liberate Cuba, which however occupied Cuba instead of liberating it and occupied the Philippines for good measure, slaughtering people there by the thousands for years.

In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was reelected president on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War," and proceeded to set up an early version of the White House Iraq Group known as the Committee on Public Information whose mission it was to make Americans hate Germans. The lies (including about the content of the Lusitania) were so effective that they shaped the settlement at the end of the first world war, contributing to the rise of Nazism and the second world war. We entered that second war following an unprovoked attack by the Japanese, unless the threats we had sent the Japanese and the economic sanctions we had imposed on them count as provocation, and ignoring the fact that the U.S. Navy had been given, nine days before Pearl Harbor, orders to shoot down any Japanese planes and blow up Japanese boats it encountered.

The lies of the Cold War, and the Gulf of Tonkin, and the mythical babies taken out of incubators prior to the first Gulf War are still familiar to most Americans. What is unfamiliar to most Americans is the history of truth telling that has accompanied all these warmongering lies. If you want to be informed and inspired by this rich heritage, pick up a copy of "We Who Dared to Say No to War." Here we find Daniel Webster and John Randolph opposing the War of 1812, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln Denouncing the Mexican War, Stephen Crane and William Jennings Bryan opposing the war on Cuba and the Philippines, Robert M. La Folette and Helen Keller speaking against World War I, and many, many lesser known prophets for peace. And the endless wars against native Americans are not even included.

Henry Wallace and Robert Taft oppose the Cold War, while Wayne Morse and Philip Berrigan oppose the slaughter in Vietnam, along with many other eloquent voices. And the chapter on Iraq and the "War on Terror" is richer than any before it. Numerous other lesser wars might have been included as well, but this collection is a thing of beauty.

"Where is it written in the Constitution," asked Daniel Webster, "in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it?"

"[T]aking for true," said Abraham Lincoln, "all the President states as fact, he falls far short of proving his justification; and … would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him."

"I have agonized over this vote," said Congresswoman Barbara Lee on September 15, 2001, when she stood alone against launching an open-ended war on Afghanistan. "But I came to grips with it in the very painful yet beautiful memorial service today at the National Cathedral. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, 'As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.'"

While it's not included in the book, I want to add something sung by Pete Seeger:
"When will we ever learn?
"When will we ever learn?"

"Victory" In Iraq Belongs to ... Iran

Bob Fertik — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:05:03 -0400

We've known for years that the biggest winner in Iraq was Iran. After all, Iran sacrificed untold blood and treasure fighting Saddam's Iraq in the 1980's, and was delighted to see the U.S. capture and kill their nemesis Saddam. Better yet for Iran, Saddam's Sunni regime was replaced by a Shia regime with close ties to Shia Iran, led by Nouri al Maliki.

Bush and the Neocons wanted Chalabi to run Iraq, but had to settle for Maliki. As Maliki got closer to Iran, the Neocons wanted to stage a coup but quickly abandoned the idea. Today Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times reports U.S. influence over Maliki is practically nil, while Iran's influence is steadily growing.

"Unfortunately, the American government is not an active player in the Iraqi affairs as they were before. They participated previously in successful projects like national reconciliation and establishing the Sons of Iraq, but now they are only acting as spectators," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni bloc in parliament.

At the same time, Iraqi officials complain about the United States' failure to create a lasting foundation beyond its military presence. Iran has created more than $2 billion in trade with its neighbor, including fuel and electricity exports.

"The Iranians will stay in this place forever till the Judgment Day and the Americans will withdraw," said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior Shiite politician. "The Americans built their status on their military and their political viewpoints. They didn't try to find shared lines of interest or common ground. . . . The Iranians dealt with this matter in a more positive way."

Now that Iraq is permanently aligned with Iran, what's the point of keeping 150,000 U.S. troops there at a cost of $12 billion per month? Is it just to keep Maliki in power while he brings Iraq even closer to Iran?

McCain insists he would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until we achieve "victory." Sadly, the only "victory" in Iraq already belongs to Iran.

Update 1: Ned Parker's article also provides an update on the SOFA:

But Maliki and other Shiite leaders are juggling intense pressures, in part because of their close relationship with Iran. Maliki appears particularly leery of being branded an American puppet. This has been most prevalent in negotiations over the U.N. security agreement, meant to provide a legal mechanism for American troops to stay beyond this year.

"The prime minister has shown everyone he means business," said lawmaker Sami Askari, a close advisor to Maliki. "Not everything America wants, America can get."

The Iraqis are prepared to simply ask for an extension of the mandate of one year or less if Washington doesn't agree to Iraq's terms, said lawmaker Sheik Humam Hamoodi.

So far, the White House has balked at Iraq's demands for an unconditional U.S. troop withdrawal date and for Iraqi courts to have some jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers.

If Maliki is willing to extend the U.N. mandate until Bush is gone, that removes all pressure on Maliki from Bush to sign a SOFA Maliki doesn't like.

And it gives Maliki the upper hand in negotiations with the U.S., because only Maliki - not the U.S. - can request U.N. extensions.

So if Bush doesn't give Maliki the terms he wants, Maliki will simply wait to cut a better deal with Bush's successor.

U.S. troops are now serving in Iraq entirely at the pleasure of Nouri al Maliki. As long as our troops serve his purposes he will let us stay; as soon as we stop serving his purposes, he will send us home.

Update 2: Agence France Presse has more info on the stalled SOFA. Remember how many articles have been published quoting anonymous U.S. officials declaring the deal "done"? As I pointed out each time, U.S. officials were lying.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday warned that the contentious security pact with the United States was facing "serious and dangerous obstacles."

"There is very serious and dangerous obstacles to the deal," Maliki told a group of Iraqi television journalists.

"They (US negotiators) requested 10 to 14 days to respond to our demands and the time is over now. American negotiators have not responded to our proposals.

"If they implement our demand quickly, the deal will be signed soon, but if they refuse our demands, it will face obstacles and could lead to new negotiations."