Rush Limbaugh Gets $400 Million Deal

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Rush Limbaugh: Not just blowing smoke.

“I’m Not Retiring Until Every
American Agrees With Me”
July 3, 2008

On his radio show Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh commented on the news of his astronomical new contract estimated at $400 million. Limbaugh told his audience, “I’m not retiring until every American agrees with me.” The deal pays Limbaugh to keep dishing his views through 2016.

The New York Times has more on how Limbaugh’s windfall stacks up against other conservative hosts.

Mr. Limbaugh is not the only radio star who is busy pumping his franchise. Sean Hannity, the country’s No. 2 host according to Talkers Magazine, is in contract talks with his current syndication company, ABC Radio, as well as Premiere, for a potential three-way deal, according to two sources close to the negotiations. They requested anonymity because the deal had not been signed.

Glenn Beck, another popular host, signed a new contract with Premiere last year that will pay him $10 million a year through 2012.

Mr. Hannity and Mr. Beck each appear on radio while hosting television shows, writing books and staging nationwide tours. Other media personalities, including Oprah Winfrey and Mr. Seacrest, also have radio engagements that feed into their cross-platform brands. But Mr. Limbaugh sticks to his self-proclaimed “golden E.I.B. microphone” — E.I.B., for excellence in broadcasting — and his associated Web site.

Source. / The Huffington Post

Also see Rush Limbaugh: Radio’s $400M man / By Jessica Heslam / MediaBiz / BostonHerald.com

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McCain Denies Roughing Up Sandinista

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. and his wife Cindy McCain attend a press conference in Cartagena, Colombia, Wednesday, July 2, 2008. Photo by Fernando Vergara / AP.

Incident detailed by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss
By Beth Fouhy / July 2, 2008

CARTAGENA, Colombia — John McCain denied a Republican colleague’s claim that he roughed up an associate of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on a diplomatic mission in 1987, saying the allegation was “simply not true.”

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., told a Mississippi newspaper that he saw McCain, during a trip to Nicaragua led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., grab an Ortega associate by his shirt collar and lift him out of his chair.

The Republican presidential contender, who is known for his hot temper, was questioned about the alleged incident at a news conference Wednesday here. He noted that at the time, he had been asked to co-chair a Central American working group in the Senate with Democrat Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and had made several trips to the region in that role.

“I had many, many meetings with the Sandinistas,” McCain said. “I must say, I did not admire the Sandinistas much. But there was never anything of that nature. It just didn’t happen.”

His comments did not square with Cochran’s detailed recollection of the alleged incident.

“McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,” Cochran said in an interview with The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. “But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever …

“I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, ‘Good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission.’ I don’t know what had happened to provoke John, but he obviously got mad at the guy … and he just reached over there and snatched … him.”

Asked why Cochran raised the incident now, his spokeswoman, Margaret McPhillips, told The Associated Press on Wednesday:

“I think Sen. Cochran went in to as much detail Monday as is necessary to make the point that, though Sen. McCain has had problems with his temper, he has overcome them.”

“Decades have passed since then and he wanted to make the point that over the years he has seen Sen. McCain mature into an individual who is not only spirited and tenacious but also thoughtful and levelheaded,” McPhillips added. “He believes Sen. McCain has developed into the best possible candidate for president.”

Cochran, who has complained about McCain’s temper before, said only a handful of senators took part in the trip, including former Sen. Steve Symms of Idaho. He said he didn’t know who the man McCain grabbed was except that he was an associate of Ortega.

The newspaper posted the audio of its interview on its Web site.

Lorne Craner, 49, a former foreign policy aide to McCain who took part in the trip to Nicaragua, told The Associated Press that he doesn’t recall the incident Cochran described.

“Honestly, if my boss had grabbed a foreign government official like that and lifted him up I would certainly remember that,” said Craner, who is president of the International Republican Institute, which McCain chairs.

Craner said he also doesn’t recall whether the senators met with Ortega during the trip but believes they met with the Sandinista government’s foreign minister or interior minister. He said the trip was one of several to Nicaragua made by McCain and other members of Congress around that time.

McCain has battled for years with Cochran, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, over pet projects or “earmarks” inserted by committee members into spending bills.

McCain sought to smooth things over with Cochran this year after the Mississippi senator said the idea of McCain as the GOP presidential nominee sent a chill down his spine.

Ortega, who once allied himself with Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union, headed the leftist Sandinista government and battled U.S.-backed Contra forces in the 1980s. He won re-election as Nicaragua’s president in 2006.

Source. / AP / The Huffington Post

Go here for video of Sen. Cochran discussing the incident.

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Journalist Dahr Jamail Discusses the Media and the Occupation of Iraq

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Journalist Dahr Jamail

Reporting from a sense of duty and mission…
by D.Tyhacz / July 3, 2008

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning freelance journalist. His reporting from Iraq has earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and four Project Censored awards. His stories have been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, DemocracyNow.com, Al-Jazeera, and The Guardian to name a few, and he’s appeared on NPR and is a special correspondent for Flashpoints.

A fourth-generation Lebanese-American, Dahr Jamail grew up in Houston. He has spent a total of eight months in Iraq, and in the Middle East, and he’s reported from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, as well as the region for five years. He has a new book out called Beyond the Green Zone which is a chronological collection of his dispatches from Iraq. His reporting is un-apologetic, and he isn’t afraid to go where the story is.

JNOW: You arrived in Iraq in the Winter of 2003 as a freelance journalist a few months before the fall of Falluja. What were your first impressions upon arriving there?

My first impressions upon arriving in Baghdad in November 2003 were largely chaos and lack of reconstruction. The streets were jammed, there was no order to anything, already most Iraqis I spoke with were complaining of lack of electricity and water, and there was much confusion. While most Iraqis I spoke with had no illusions about what the invasion and occupation were really about, they still had hoped for some improvements, regarding the promises of reconstruction and a better life.

Not only were there no signs of this happening, seven months into the occupation, things were going backwards. It was a time of a mixture of hope for a better future, fear of an uncertain future, and a growing concern for the chaos that appeared to rule the day. It is also important to mention that I had only been in Baghdad a few days before hearing about U.S. soldiers/mercenaries torturing Iraqis in U.S. detention facilities up and down the country.

JNOW: Your book Beyond The Green Zone consists of compiled writings from your time spent in Iraq. Was the ritual of writing these articles a combination of therapy and/or a sense of mission?

My initial reporting from Iraq was more from a sense of duty and mission. Beyond the Green Zone was more of a personal catharsis. It was a difficult book to write, in that several people in the book are now dead, and most of the others I knew in Baghdad have become refugees in Syria or Jordan. The contrast of the Baghdad I knew in the early chapters of the book to what that city has become today is shocking. Yet writing the book certainly was therapeutic, and was instrumental in helping me deal with my own PTSD from my time in Iraq and other war zones. It was only by writing the book have I been able to reconcile much of what I saw and where it has led Iraq, in addition to helping me move on into continued reporting from the Middle East.

JNOW: You’ve reported on some of the dialogue by the current Presidential candidates regarding Iraq, and you’ve noted their “silence” on this issue. Do you see this changing in the months leading up to the election?

I really don’t. The bottom line is this: until Obama, McCain, and Clinton address the need to change the U.S. National Security Strategy and the goals for the U.S. military outlined in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, both of which are clear about U.S. control of the natural resources of key countries in the Middle East and the shipping lanes of said resources, it’s a mute point. The fact that most mainstream reporters choose not to ask these questions of the candidates, and instead allow them to gloss over Iraq without giving a firm timetable for withdrawal, and whether or not they intend on providing compensation to the Iraqi people. I expect this to become even more heavily censored as the election nears.

JNOW: The website JustForeignPolicy recently reported that 1.2 million plus Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion. Why hasn’t the mainstream US Media done their part in reporting this?

One could write a book about this question, and some have, like Noam Chomsky with Manufacturing Consent. To answer this one must look at the fact that the mainstream media (ie-corporate media) in the U.S. is owned by many of the same corporations which back the power brokers in D.C. For example, when we have weapons manufacturers funding and/or owning a media outlet, like NBC being owned by GE, it doesn’t exactly behoove GE to have a national television network airing footage of what happens when their products destroy human beings. Then we have direct state pressure on the media….exemplified by the edict from Rumsfeld that the media stop showing pictures of coffins of U.S. soldiers after the Washington Post printed a photo of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers. Most of the media have complied with this edict, and continue to do so to this day.

Then, worst of all, we have the most insidious form of censorship-self-censorship by the “journalists” within the corporate media. They have learned not to pursue stories that their editors/owners of the outlet will likely not run…so they simply stop covering them. This would apply to the lack of coverage of the fact that over one million Iraqis are dead, in the last five years, as a result of U.S. foreign policy.

JNOW: Do you see reporting on the Middle East becoming less of a taboo-subject for our media here or do you see it becoming more of a challenge in the years to come?

I think it will become more of a challenge in the coming years. Because I think the trends I just mentioned will increase with time, in addition to a continued projection of U.S. power deeper into the region. When the U.S. (or Israel) begins to bomb parts of Iran, and the region is set aflame, I expect we’ll see broad-brush stroke type of “reporting”, but still no critique of why the Quad. Defense Review report calls for “full spectrum dominance” by the U.S. military across the globe, or why it’s alright for the U.S. to occupy a foreign country or two half way around the world, and certainly no discussion about the lies and manufacturing of consent we’ve seen leading up to this bombing to date.

I believe it’s a lost cause to attempt to reform the mainstream media of the U.S. This is media that has been bought and sold, and is filled, with few exceptions, of journalists who lack a clear idea of what real journalism even looks like. What happened to monitoring the centers of power? What happened to asking the tough questions and not letting the power-brokers dodge them? What happened to sticking with a story? The answer is simple-the media have become more concerned with turning a profit than with conducting legitimate journalism. And nowhere is this as apparent as in the “coverage” they provide of the Middle East.

JNOW: Regarding the war in Iraq, has the US media blurred the lines between “news” and “entertainment” in your opinion?

Of course. First-why is it called a “war”? It’s an occupation. But war sells, occupation does not. War is sexy. Occupation is oppression and repression. Look at the “coverage” of the invasion. It was like watching a video game. The pundits and so-called news anchors were cheerleaders for war. I remember, clearly, several times watching “journalists” on TV drooling over slick computer graphics of helicopters, missiles, and jet fighters. Showing that, and not showing real war-headless bodies, dead babies, destroyed cities…is propaganda of the worst kind. How can one glamorize war?

JNOW: The former US Press Secretary Scott McClellan is now claiming the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war. What is your opinion on this matter & the White House reaction?

It’s always in the memoirs, isn’t it? What if McClellan had stood up at a press conference he was holding and say this then? But now, it’s nice media for him and it’s shot his book right up to the number one seller on Amazon. He issues his critique now when it costs him nothing. I still feel it’s good that he has come out and said this, but he doesn’t appear to take any personal responsibility for being the lead propagandist. Why not? And the White House reaction of snubbing him and dismissing it-par for the course.

JNOW: What would you like to see happen regarding the US media’s journalistic approach to Iraq and the Middle East in general?

Real journalism would be a good start. Asking various members of this and the first Bush Administration pointed questions about international law. Showing the occupation-showing what the inside of a Humvee looks like after the four soldiers in it have just been hit by a roadside bomb (it looks like spaghetti sauce with bits of skin). Show the dead babies and report, repeatedly, the fact that it is likely that well over one million Iraqis have been killed by the invasion and occupation, and that half of all U.S. taxpayer monies go to fund a military that has more funding already than every other country on the globe’s militaries combined.

People here need to see, read and feel the stories of the human beings who are affected by U.S. foreign policy. And they need a clear picture of what it is costing this country-both in terms of human lives, financially, and world standing (lack thereof).

As journalists our job is to report what is happening as accurately as possible. That means reporting on the occupation of Iraq every day, because that is what is happening. Scores of Iraqis are dying every single day, and it is because of the U.S. occupation of their country. It is not our job to report, instead, on stories that sell, and stories that are sexy, or stories that we think the viewer/reader/listener might prefer to hear about. That’s what movies and Hollywood are for, not journalism.

JNOW: You’ve recently won some prestigious journalism awards this year. What are your plans for the future in terms of reporting?

I’m currently working on a book about resistance within the U.S. military to the occupation of Iraq. In addition, this winter I have plans to return to the Middle East…where specifically will be determined by what happens with U.S./Israeli policy regarding Iran.

For more on Dahr Jamail, you can see his website here.

Source. / Journalism Now

Also see “The So-Called Success of the Surge” by Dahr Jamail / The Rag Blog / March 17, 2008

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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The Uniqueness of Israel’s Democracy

Posted on July 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Mohammed Omer

From Triumph to Torture
By John Pilger / July 03, 2008

Israel’s treatment of an award-winning young Palestinian journalist is part of a terrible pattern

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel”.

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza’s borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. “Where is the English pound you have?”

“I realised,” said Mohammed, “he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn’t have it with me. ‘You are lying’, he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.’ He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now.’ He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

“As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was “suspected” of smuggling and “lost his balance” during a “fair” interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with “beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation”. Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC’s Alan Johnston.

The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer’s treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: “This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life … I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy. Perhaps they do now.

Source / Z-Net

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From the "Why Aren’t We Surprised?" Department

Posted on July 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Police ‘Torture’ Videos Spark Uproar
By Traci Carl / July 2, 2008

MEXICO CITY – Videos showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a U.S. adviser created an uproar Tuesday in Mexico, which has struggled to eliminate torture in law enforcement.

Two of the videos – broadcast by national television networks and displayed on newspaper Internet sites – showed what Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero described as training for an elite unit that must face “real-life, high-stress situations,” such as kidnapping and torture by organized crime groups.

But many Mexicans saw a sinister side, especially at a moment when police and soldiers across the country are struggling with scandals over alleged abuses.

“They are teaching police … to torture!” read the headline in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.

Human rights investigators in Guanajuato state, where Leon is located, are looking into the tapes, and the National Human Rights Commission also expressed concerned.

“It’s very worrisome that there may be training courses that teach people to torture,” said Raul Plascencia, one of the commission’s top inspectors.

One of the videos, first obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man’s nose – a technique once notorious among Mexican police. Then they dunk his head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats. The man gasps for air and moans repeatedly.

In another video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer has an exhausted agent roll into his own vomit. Other officers then drag him through the mess.

“These are no more than training exercises for certain situations, but I want to stress that we are not showing people how to use these methods,” Tornero said.

He said the English-speaking man was part of a private U.S. security company helping to train the agents, but he refused to give details.

A third video transmitted by the Televisa network showed officers jumping on the ribs of a suspect curled into a fetal position in the bed of a pickup truck. Tornero said that the case, which occurred several months earlier, was under investigation and that the officers involved had disappeared.

Mexican police often find themselves in the midst of brutal battles between drug gangs. Officials say that 450 police, soldiers and prosecutors have lost their lives in the fight against organized crime since December 2006.

At the same time, several recent high-profile scandals over alleged thuggery and ineptness have reignited criticisms of police conduct. In Mexico City last month, 12 people died in a botched police raid on a disco.

The National Human Rights Commission has documented 634 cases of military abuse since President Felipe Calderon sent more than 20,000 soldiers across the nation to battle drug gangs.

And $400 million in drug-war aid for Mexico that was just signed into law by President George W. Bush doesn’t require the U.S. to independently verify that the military has cleaned up its fight, as many American lawmakers and Mexican human rights groups had insisted.

The videos may seem shocking, but training police to withstand being captured is not unusual, said Robert McCue, the director of the private, U.S. firm IES Interactive Training, which provides computer-based training systems in Mexico.

“With the attacks on police and security forces in Mexico that have increased due to the drug cartel wars, I’m not surprised to see this specialized kind of training in resisting and surviving captivity and torture,” he said.

Source / America On Line

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Does This Sound Familiar, Or What ??

Posted on July 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraqi policeman Amjed Najen lost his leg in a bombing. “When I lost my leg, I lost my future,” he said. Photo: Michael Kamber for The New York Times

Wounded Iraqi forces say they’ve been abandoned
By Michael Kamber / July 1, 2008

BAGHDAD — Dawoud Ameen, a former Iraqi soldier, lay in bed, his shattered legs splayed before him, worrying about the rent for his family of five.

Ameen’s legs were shredded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in September 2006 and now, like many wounded members of the Iraqi security forces, he is deeply in debt and struggling to survive. For now, he gets by on $125 a month brought to him by members of his old army unit, charity and whatever his wife, Jinan, can beg from her relatives. But he worries that he could lose even that meager monthly stipend.

In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans. But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government.

A number of the half-dozen badly wounded Iraqis interviewed for this article said they had been effectively drummed out of the Iraqi security forces without pensions, or were receiving partial pay and in danger of losing even that. Coping with severe injuries, and often amputations, they have been forced to pay for private doctors or turn to Iraq’s failing public hospitals, which as recently as a year ago were controlled by militias that kidnapped and killed patients — particularly security personnel from rival units.

No one knows the exact number of wounded Iraqi veterans, as the government does not keep track. In a 2006 report by the congressional Research Service, Major General Joseph Peterson, the American commander in charge of Iraqi police training, said that in just two years, from September 2004 to October 2006, about 4,000 Iraqi police officers were killed and 8,000 were wounded.

That number does not include soldiers in the Iraqi Army, who are far more numerous than the police and, Iraqi commanders say, have suffered injuries at a far greater rate.

In a February 2006 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, the report states, Donald Rumsfeld, then the secretary of defense, said that Iraqi security forces were being killed and wounded at “roughly twice the rate of all coalition forces.” If that rate held up, the number of wounded Iraqi veterans might well surpass 60,000.

Iraqi government officials say that the wounded are being treated well, and that a law providing for veterans’ care is being drafted. In the interim, they said, wounded veterans would receive their full salaries from the Ministry of Defense.

“The wounded soldiers from the MOD still get their salaries after the incidents, depending on the reports from the medical committees,” said a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Staff Major General Muhammad al-Askari. “We are waiting for the Service and Pension Law for the veterans from the Iraqi Parliament, but they still get paid during that time.”

The veterans interviewed for this article disputed Askari’s statement and said they were paid only a fraction of their salaries, or nothing at all. They described the government’s treatment of them as at best indifferent and at worst vindictive.

On the day United States forces arrived in Baghdad in April 2003, Hussein Ali Hassan, a sergeant in Saddam Hussein’s army, was hit by a tank round. With his legs crushed and burns covering much of his body, Hassan was taken to a Baghdad hospital, where his left leg was quickly amputated.

But in the chaos that broke out after the fall of the Hussein government, the staff fled the hospital. “The looters stole beds and ripped the pipes from the walls around me,” Hassan said.

His friends and family cared for him until the staff trickled back. Weeks later, after doctors told him the hospital was rife with infectious bacteria, his family hastily took him home.

An Italian organization was arranging a visa so that Hassan could fly to Italy for care. But with violence rapidly mounting in the fall of 2003, the group closed its doors before the visa request could be completed.

In need of more surgery, Hassan borrowed money and embarked on a series of operations at Al Jabechi, a private hospital in Baghdad, eventually spending about $13,000 of his own money, he said.

“I could have waited months in the public hospitals, and the care is very bad there,” he said.

Hassan says that in the five years since he was wounded, his repeated requests for a disability pension have been ignored. Two weeks ago, however, he learned that he had been awarded a pension of about $165 a month for his 23 years of military service (though nothing for medical care and no acknowledgment that he is disabled, he said).

Read all of it here. / International Herald Tribune

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In Accordance with Iraqi Law and Not Freely

Posted on July 3, 2008 by RagBlog


US agrees to scrap immunity for security guards in Iraq: FM

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi foreign minister said on Tuesday that Washington has agreed to scrap immunity for foreign security guards in Iraq, moving the two countries closer to signing a long-term security pact.

“The immunity for private security guards has been removed. The US has agreed on it,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP after briefing Iraqi MPs on the controversial US-Iraq security pact which is being negotiated.

The US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad, Mirembe Nantongo, declined to comment. “We do not comment on the contents of ongoing negotiations,” she said.

The lifting of immunity for foreign private security contractors has been a longstanding demand from Iraqi lawmakers in the deal that would govern a long-term military arrangement between Baghdad and Washington.

Without immunity foreign security contractors can be prosecuted for crimes under Iraqi law.

Foreign security workers have since the 2003 US-led invasion operated virtually outside the law, neither subject to the Iraq legal system nor to US military tribunals, a right which infuriates Iraqis.

“The Iraqis have been suffering because of this,” said Mahmud Othman, an MP who attended Tuesday’s closed-door session.

The increasingly common practice of outsourcing military contracts has drawn fire from critics who charge that the guards are no more than trigger-happy mercenaries.

About 100,000 private security contractors work in Iraq.

Their immunity is a sensitive issue after an incident in which security guards from the US company Blackwater shot dead 17 Iraqis in broad daylight in Baghdad last September.

Blackwater says its guards reacted in self-defence.

The firm is one of the biggest private security contractors operating in Iraq and provides security to US embassy officials in the violence-wracked country, including ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The US State Department earlier this year renewed Blackwater’s licence to work in Iraq despite opposition from Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

US President George W. Bush and Maliki agreed in principle last November to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in Iraq by the end of July.

The agreement aims to set down the ground rules for a continuing US troop presence after the UN mandate for foreign forces stationed in Iraq expires in December 2008.

The talks appeared to reach a deadlock last month amid strong opposition from Iraqi political factions and with some Shiite leaders denouncing the proposed agreement as “eternal slavery” for the country.

Othman, the MP, said that the lifting of immunity for both foreign and US troops was still under discussion.

The US military’s right to capture, detain and imprison Iraqis is also a sore point, Othman said.

Other concerns surround the number of military bases which Washington will maintain in Iraq.

“Zebari said that once the negotiations are crystallised the agreement would be presented to parliament,” Othman told AFP. “It is up to the parliament to accept it or reject it.”

Iraqis oppose a large American troop presence on their soil, but want a guarantee from Washington that the United States will defend the country from foreign invasion.

Othman said ministers also insisted at Tuesday’s session that US forces carry out security operations in “accordance with Iraqi law and not freely.”

Copyright © 2008 AFP.

Source / AFP

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FOX News Does it Again!!

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

(Above)Screenshot of Fox & Friends featuring the photo it used of Jacques Steinberg, with the original photo on its left. Comparing the two photos, it appears that the following changes have been made: Steinberg’s teeth have been yellowed, his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further. / Media Matters.

Fox News Airs Altered Photos of ‘NYT’ Staffers;
Times Calls it ‘Disgusting’
July 2, 2008

NEW YORK — The Fox News channel has gained wide attention today in the blogosphere for airing photos of two New York Times staff that appear to have been doctored to portray the Times men in an unflattering light.

The photos depict New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg with yellowed teeth, “his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further,” according to a statement today by Media Matters for America. The other image, of Times television editor Steven Reddicliffe, with similar yellow teeth, as well as “dark circles … under his eyes, and his hairline has been moved back,” according to the Media Matters statement.

The photos appear to have been flattened or extended using photoshop tools.

On Wednesday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade aired the photos while discussing a piece in the June 28 edition of the New York Times. The piece pointed out what the newspaper called “ominous trends” in Fox News’ ratings.

Neither Steinberg nor Reddicliffe were reachable for comment Wednesday. But Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton called the Fox photo work “disgusting,” and the criticism of the paper’s reporting “a specious and meritless claim.”

…a comparison of the photo of Reddicliffe used by Fox News and the original photo suggests that Reddicliffe’s teeth have been yellowed, dark circles have been added under his eyes, and his hairline has been moved back. / Media Matters.

“It wasn’t a hit piece,” Sifton told E&P. “It was straight news. This was a hit piece by Fox News. It is beneath comment.” Asked if the paper planned to respond to Fox’s actions, he said no: “It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it.”

In his TV spot, Doocy called the Times report, written by Steinberg, a “hit piece” ordered up by Reddicliffe. The pair then made reference to Reddicliffe’s tenure as editor of TV Guide owned by Fox News’ parent company, News Corporation, which ended in 2002. Reddicliffe was hired by the Times in 2004.

The anchors cited a brief item from the Web site of Radar magazine, quoting a blog called FTVLive, which stated that Reddicliffe “is still bitter about losing his gig at … TV Guide” and “sends his attack dog Jacques Steinberg out — that fellow right there, the writer for The New York Times — to do these hit pieces. So, he essentially is his attack dog. His — his poodle, if you will.”

The broadcast than showed an image of Steinberg’s face superimposed over a picture of a poodle, while Reddicliffe’s face was superimposed over the man holding the poodle’s leash.

As of this afternoon, neither Fox News or News Corp. had made a public statement on the matter

To read the initial Times story, go here.

Source. / Editor and Publisher

From the July 2 edition of Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: And before we go today, something’s been bugging me. A couple of days —

KILMEADE: Well, go back outside.

DOOCY: We will. A couple of days ago, when most newspapers in America were doing these positive stories about how Fox News Channel, once again, number one —

KILMEADE: Like the LA Times.

DOOCY: — for many, many years. There was a hit piece by somebody in The New York Times. The writer was a fellow by the name of Jacques Steinberg, and he’s been doing a bunch of attack stories on Fox News Channel. Well, there’s some backstory to it, and that is this: His boss, the guy who assigned him to this, is a fellow by the name of Steven Reddicliffe, and Mr. Reddicliffe actually used to work for this company. He worked — I think he was the editor in charge of TV Guide until circulation went down under his tenure —

KILMEADE: Right.

DOOCY: — something like, 40 percent. So, he got fired, and according to Radar Online, this guy has had an ax to grind.

KILMEADE: Yeah, he does, because, I think, Steve, according to reports — according to Radar and another online magazine — he was making close to a million dollars here, and now with his new job —

DOOCY: Yeah.

KILMEADE: — he’s making significantly less. How about a tenth of that?

DOOCY: So, anyway, Radar says he’s had an ax to grind, and that’s why he sends his attack dog Jacques Steinberg out — that fellow right there, the writer for The New York Times — to do these hit pieces. So, he essentially is his attack dog. His — his poodle, if you will.

KILMEADE: So —

DOOCY: Oooh! Very, very nice.

KILMEADE: — Radar Online has unlocked the mystery. And there you go, because that story was oddly in the Arts section of The New York Times, in the Sunday Times.

DOOCY: Anyway, we just thought we’d — cute. I wonder if he’s going to show him at Westminster this year.

KILMEADE: I’m not really sure. We know a beagle won last year, and this — he’s dressed as a poodle.

–S.S.M. / Media Matters for America

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Run the Flag Up The Pole, Boys…

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

U.S. percentage of the world’s military spending. Source. / armscontrolcenter.org. Click to enlarge.

There’s a little GI Joe in all of us
By Duncan Echelson / The Rag Blog / July 2, 2008

How military service suddenly qualifies someone for sainthood or instant faux respect is beyond me.

Telebob

We are forgetting all those war movies, GI Joe comics, “Green Beret” songs, and war hero novels we all read and were exposed to from a very young age. Plus the many hours of playing war with plastic guns that make sounds.

This stuff gets programmed into us at a very young age. So where the flag is run up the flag pole we have automatic responses.

This is the military-industrial complex of the subconscious and it takes much conscious analysis to get free of it and even then in moments of stress and fear, it is easy to lapse back into unthinking flag waving and hero worship.

(Bring out the bloody shirt, boys, there’s money to be made!!!)

After Sept 11, when practically the entire nation had fears of imminent attack from wild eyed Islamic fanatics, we wanted heroes to protect us: hence Bush in military garb, the firm jawed Giuliani, Afghanistan, Iraq……….etc.

This tradition of raising the soldier-warrior to a status that makes us weepy eyed and sentimental is ancient and deeply rooted. Mix that with an annual trillion dollar-plus expenditure and it is a very explosive mix that the politicians keep serving up. (A fair potion of that money gets put into the propaganda machine — most of which is disguised as entertainment and news)

Now look at the graphic representation of our military budget (above) compared to the rest of the world.

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Bush Urges Expanded Drilling Of Alaskan Wildlife

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Hole in one! Workers near Alaska’s Lake Teshekpuk take a core sample from a grizzly bear cub. Image courtesy The Onion.

Drilling of polar bears, grizzlies, porpoises planned

WASHINGTON, DC — Following a recent ruling by a U.S. District Court that blocked the sale of 1.7 million acres of federally protected caribou, President Bush urged Congress Tuesday to pass an appropriations bill that would enable expanded drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s animals.

“There are over 100 billion tons of untapped, domestic wildlife lying beneath, on, and above the surface of Alaska’s North Slope region,” said Bush during a White House press conference. “We have an obligation not only to our society, but to future generations, to begin drilling these polar bears, grizzlies, harbor porpoises, Roosevelt elks, sea otters, muskrats, and snowshoe hares immediately.”

According to Secretary Of The Interior Dirk Kempthorne, who recently toured the Lake Teshekpuk area with a team of bio-mineralogists, one in four animals drilled in early tests have shown positive yield.

“We can achieve our goal without disturbing the delicate balance of the ecosystem,” said Kempthorne, looking on as rig operators took exploratory core samples of 20 bearded seals in order to gauge the mammals’ interior density. “But if the government opens up the nearly 200 species of birds, fish, and marine and land mammals to public drilling, the U.S. would be capable of churning out over 9.3 billion barrels of wildlife each year—more than three times the amount we currently drill.”

Wildlife prospectors in other parts of Alaska applaud Bush’s position, saying that, if funding is increased, drillers will be able to tap larger, higher-yield animals such as grizzly bears and musk oxen.

“The technology is there, but there’s little economic incentive to drill anything larger than timber wolves,” said Cal Fowler, an independent prospector and former wildcat driller. “With more federal money we can invest in necessary hardware, such as more durable annular diamond-impregnated drill bits, which can bore two-inch diameter holes deep through a solid bull-walrus midsection in seconds.”

Drill foremen have already begun digging shallow exploratory holes through the surface flesh of over 5 million animals to provide workspace for the drillers and their equipment. Once this step is complete, an electrical generator powered by a large diesel engine will plunge rotating carbide-steel-tipped drill bits through the animal, boring through the skin, bone, or blubber at speeds of up to 6,500 rpm. The drillers will then guide the direction of the borehole using top-drive rotary steerable wellbores, which allow them to drill through targeted areas in the wildlife with incredible precision.

Walking through a field of steadily pumping Canada lynx, Fowler defended wildlife drilling as “one of the most environmentally responsible methods of drilling,” saying that it is a renewable resource, and the ecologically sensitive wildlife refuge is almost completely unaffected since pre-existing environmental laws ensure that the drilling of individual animals will not damage the environment.

Energy giant ExxonMobil has already begun to widen its wildlife-drilling efforts in response to the Bush Administration’s stance.

“We have set up an offshore production platform capable of efficiently extracting over 15,000 Arctic grayling fish from the Beaufort Sea each day, and then drilling them,” ExxonMobil Chief Engineer For Wildlife Drilling Operations Frank Salinas said. “And advances in horizontal directional drilling may soon allow us to simultaneously drill through two arctic foxes three miles apart.”

“It’s an exciting time to be in the wildlife-drilling field,” Salinas added.

Bush’s call for more wildlife drilling has come under fire by alternate wildlife-use advocates, who call his policy shortsighted.

“The administration should be encouraging research into viable new technologies,” said Sylvia Hermann, chairman of Advocates For Cleaner-Burning Fauna. “The energy produced by solar generators could be used to incinerate vast herds of moose, even in the coldest winter months. Wind-produced electricity could electrocute Beluga whales in their own habitats, with no need for offshore drilling, and hydroelectric dams could be used to drown grizzly bears. Perhaps one day geothermic heat could be harnessed to broil entire wildlife-rich regions alive.”

Continued Hermann, “It’s vital that we preserve the arctic wildlife so that our children, and our children’s children, will still have animals to drill when they grow up.”

The Bush administration is also proposing the creation of a Strategic Wildlife Preserve, a series of 15-million-cubic-meter above-ground tanks that would store an emergency supply of over 700 million tightly packed animals.

Source. / The Onion

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Hot Shots and Classic Takes

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Thanks to Kathy Doyle / The Rag Blog / Posted July 2, 2008

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What Scott McClellan (and Jay Rockefeller) Didn’t Tell Us

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


The Story Behind George Bush’s Lies
By Richard W. Behan / July 1, 2008

Long accused of signature dishonesty, the Bush Administration now stands twice indicted, by Scott McClellan’s book and by two damning reports from Jay Rockefeller’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—the “Phase II” documents. These sources confirm beyond any doubt the Bush Administration, with propaganda and outright lies, deliberately misled the U.S. Congress into authorizing war.

That is the truth, but not the whole truth, and the backstory is no less appalling.

As much as seven months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Administration was deeply involved in planning and mobilizing for the invasion and military occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the activity was remotely related to Osama bin Laden or counterterrorism of any stripe.

This is the fundamental truth, it is beyond dispute, and it is fully documented.

The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were premeditated, hegemonic wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to gain the geostrategic control of Middle Eastern energy resources. Bald acts of unprovoked military aggression, they are direct violations of the charter of the United Nations. The wars are therefore international crimes, but they were not undertaken until the horror of September 11, 2001 provided a spectacular smokescreen. A fraudulent label–the “war on terror”—was concocted to disguise the premeditated violence, and it was quickly unleashed.

The facts

Iraq

Beginning in 1992 and spanning the two Bush Administrations, repeated written proposals to invade Iraq were prepared and issued. Four men who served in both Administrations—Richard Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad—were the source of the first proposal (expressly seeking “…access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil”) and direct participants in the iterations to follow. Herein is the story of the origin and development of the Project for the New American Century and its tragic ideology of American global hegemony.

(For an excellent treatment of this history, see “Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and Their Blueprint for U.S. Power,” in the Christian Science Monitor, June, 2005.)

On January 20, 2001, 29 members of the Project for the New American Century joined the incoming Bush Administration at the highest levels—notably including Richard Cheney as Vice President, Libby as his Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, and Wolfowitz as Rumsfeld’s Deputy. The PNAC triumphed when the National Security Council ten days later, on January 30, legitimized the invasion of Iraq.

(Read an account of the meeting in Ron Suskind’s book, The Price of Loyalty: the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill.)

Four days later, on February 3, 2001 the Security Council received a top-secret memorandum from a “high level official.” The memo “…directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with [Richard Cheney’s] Energy Task Force as it considered the ‘melding’ of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: ‘the review of operational policies toward rogue states’ such as Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.’”

(Quoted from Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport,” in The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.)

By early March, 2001, Cheney’s Energy Task Force was studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and tanker terminals, and lists of the foreign oil companies—none of which were American or British majors—negotiating with the Hussein regime for exploration and development rights.

(See the maps and the lists.)

At least a year before the invasion, the State Department was designing the deconstruction of Iraq’s nationalized oil industry.

(Source: Gregg Mutitt, Crude Designs: the Ripoff of Iraq’s Oil Wealth, The Platform Group, UK.)

Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of American and British oil companies, drafted a “hydrocarbon law” for Iraq, codifying the State Department’s design.

(See Gregg Mutitt and Erik Leaver, “Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil,” in Foreign Policy in Focus, July 18, 2007.)

In January of 2007 President Bush, in announcing the troop surge, demanded as a mandatory “benchmark” the enactment of the hydrocarbon law by the Iraqi Parliament.

(See a at transcript of the speech.)

Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco are now poised to profit immensely from 81% of Iraq’s undeveloped crude when the hydrocarbon law is passed.

(Source: Joshua Holland, “Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil,” published on the website of AlterNet, October 16, 2006.)

Meanwhile, the UK Independent reported on June 21, 2008 the imminent signing of three $500 million contracts with Exxon/Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco by the Iraqi Oil Ministry. These are repair and technical “service contracts” covering some of Iraq’s largest oilfields. The companies can elect to be paid in crude oil.

(See “Big Oil Returns to Iraq,” by Patrick Cockburn, the UK Independent, June 21, 2008.)

Afghanistan

Upon taking office, the Bush Administration brushed off explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Counterterrorism was nowhere on the new Administration’s agenda. (Read Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.)

Instead, throughout the spring and summer of 2001 the Bush Administration, on behalf of the Unocal Corporation, was negotiating with the Taliban for pipeline rights-of-way across Afghanistan. A rich package of foreign aid was offered, but the negotiations failed.

(See Wayne Madsen, “Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team,” CounterPunch, November 1, 2004, and Paul Sperry, Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism.)

Finally, after threatening the Taliban—“Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs”—the Bush Administration notified Pakistan and India it would attack Afghanistan “before the end of October.” This took place five weeks prior to the events of 9/11.

(Sources: Anon., “Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence,” , and Larry Chin, “Parts I and II: Players on a rigged chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the Afghanistan pipeline,” Online Journal, March, 2002.)

On October 7, 2001 the “carpet of bombs” was delivered to Afghanistan as threatened and on schedule. Mr. Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal consultant, was soon installed as President of the country. The first U.S. ambassador was John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president. He was succeeded by Zalmay Khalilzad, another former consultant for Unocal. (See “Oil War III: the Engineering of Oil Profits Through War and Arbitrary Monetary Standards,”; and “Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence,” cited above.)

On February 8, 2002, four months after the carpet of bombs, Presidents Hamid Karzai and Perves Musharraf sign an agreement for a pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan.

(See “U.S. Afghan Aid Package Fuels Pipeline Politics,” in Asia Times Online, May 29, 2002; and Crude Politics cited above.)

Within a year an oil industry trade journal reports the Bush Administration is standing ready with financing to build the pipeline and to protect it with a permanent military presence. (See Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, February 23, 2003.)

On June 22, 2008 the Toronto Sun reported the signing of a “major deal” by Afghanistan to build an $8 billion, 1,680km pipeline, called “TAPI.” (The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline.) Construction will begin “…once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian, and NATO forces.” (See Eric Margolis, “These Wars Are About Oil, Not Democracy,” Toronto Sun, June 22, 2008.)

The objectives of the “war on terror,” were twofold, we were told: to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and to effect a change of regime in Iraq.

But the trademark deceit of the Bush Administration was involved here, too. Osama bin Laden could have been brought to justice easily and without armed conflict, and regime change in Iraq could have been achieved with equal facility.

Awaiting on his desk when George Bush took office was a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. (This had been negotiated by the Clinton Administration after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.) Intent on the invasion and military occupation of Afghanistan, however, the Bush Administration rejected the handover three times before 9/11 and twice thereafter. (The tragic speculation: with bin Laden in custody early in 2001, could 9/11 have been avoided?)

(Sources: Anon., “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand bin Laden Over,” UK Guardian Unlimited, October 14, 2001; Andrew Buncombe, “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Surrender bin Laden,” the UK Independent, October 15, 2001; Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, “How Bush Was Offered bin Laden and Blew It,” CounterPunch, November 1, 2004.).

Saddam Hussein, hoping to forestall warfare, yielded a series of increasingly attractive concessions to the Bush Administration, finally offering to leave his country for exile in Egypt. Intent as well on the invasion and military occupation of Iraq, the Administration ignored the offer.

(Sources: George Monbiot, “Dreamers and Idiots: Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan,” The UK Guardian, November 11, 2003,; and Anon., “Llego el momento de deshacerse de Saddam,” El Pais (Spain), September 26, 2007. This is a transcript of a conversation between George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar in Crawford, Texas, February 22, 2003. The President acknowledges the prospective exile, but vigorously rejects it, declaring, “We will be in Baghdad at the end of March.”)

The truth

Plainly there is a huge disconnect between the incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But the Bush Administration knowingly and dishonestly joined them into the fraudulent conflation known as the “war on terror.”

This is not a “war on terror.” Afghanistan and Iraq today are occupied countries, administered by puppet governments and dotted with permanent military bases securing the energy assets. Not a by-product of the Bush Administration’s warmaking, this was its purpose.

The Congress is at least vaguely aware. The Defense Authorization Act of 2008 included a Section 1222, prohibiting expenditures for the “permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

President Bush nullified Section 1222 with a signing statement.

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on various websites over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration. The work is summarized in an electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available in PDF format

Source. / truthout

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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