The Rag Blog

When the Pentagon rolled out its new Iraq product line-the re-minted counterinsurgency doctrine of winning “hearts and minds” that had been shelved after Vietnam-branded it “the surge” and anointed Gen. David Petraeus as chief product spokesperson in early 2007, the main question was: who would buy?

Clearly not the Iraqis. The past year has included two of the bloodiest months of the Iraq war, a government in complete chaos and a persistent Darwinian nightmare for average Iraqi’s attest to the lack of Iraqi consumers for the new product. It may as well have been a cyanide-soaked toy from China.

But there is one market that has proven receptive-the U.S. Congress and especially centrist Republicans and Democrats like Brian Baird (D-Wa) who came back from a recent Pentagon-hosted trip to Iraq declaring a conversion worthy of St. Paul on the road to Damascus.

Formerly a war critic–Baird had voted against authorizing the Iraq War and still believes that the invasion of Iraq “may be one of the worst foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation”-he now claims he has seen the light and firmly opposes withdrawal from Iraq. In a feverish media blitz, with appearances on CNN, NPR and MSNBC among others, Baird declared that evidence from his recent trips to Iraq convinced him that “the situation has at long last begun to change substantially for the better” and “our troops and the Iraqi people themselves, deserve our continued support and more time to succeed.”

Baird’s conversion to Brand Petraeus and the Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency strategy must be seen as symptomatic of the broader consumption of the new product-line by many Congressional Republicans and Democrats. The media spectacle surrounding Gen. Patraeus’ and Ambassador Crocker’s highly anticipated visit to Washington DC last month was all whimper and no bang. Even though the overwhelming empirical evidence demonstrated the abject failure of the “surge” in Iraq, once Petraeus boarded the return jet to Iraq, the Democrats dropped their once fiery rhetoric about ending the war, fired off a few ineffectual resolutions and conceded the battle-space to Bush’s plans for a decades-long occupation of Iraq along the lines of what Bush fondly refers to as the “Korea model.”

Mission accomplished.

The Petraeus visit and the subsequent Democratic cave-in reveals that the real target of the newly minted counterinsurgency strategy was never the Iraqi people but rather the American public. The widely publicized adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and the marketing of Patreaus as its guru is pure information war. It was concocted to simulate the appearance of a new strategy in Iraq and thereby create a new narrative of hope and progress in order to sell an endless Iraq occupation to the American public.

One doesn’t need to read the late French philosopher Jean Baudrillard on simulated realities to catch the drift of how politics is played in the age of Bush. In an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article, the journalist Ron Suskind quoted an unnamed aide to President Bush:

“The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actorsand you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

But one should take a quick look at The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual rushed into print this summer by University of Chicago Press with a forward by Gen. Patreaus to understand how our Empire is simulating “new realities” as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed against the American public.

According to the Field Manual, classic counterinsurgency doctrine maintains that conventional military force will never defeat an insurgency because the primary goal of an insurgency, as classically stated by Mao, is political-to win over a population against a government or a foreign occupation. Hence, the heavy application of military force against an insurgency will be counter-productive by creating new grievances that help it gain popular support. Therefore, the first rule of counterinsurgency is to drive a wedge between insurgents and the broader population by winning their “hearts and minds” through addressing popular grievances and winning the war of ideas through better propaganda.

The Bush administration was never truly serious about employing this strategy in Iraq-to do so would require assuaging Iraqi demands for a US troop withdrawal and foreswearing permanent military bases and control over Iraq’s oil. Instead, the Bush administration has employed classic counterinsurgency doctrine to quell the only insurgency it has a chance to defeat: the overwhelming American popular support for withdrawal from Iraq that was given a Congressional mandate in the November 2006 elections. Having learned its own lessons from Vietnam, the Bush administration knows that a primary threat to its permanent war in Iraq is a Congressional cut-off of the funds that are its lifeblood.

So in response to this threat, and in line with classic counterinsurgency doctrine, the Bush administration devised a marketing campaign to simulate a new strategy and promote the Brand Petraeus “surge” in Iraq in order to drive a wedge between the insurgency that mattered (growing Congressional support for withdrawal) and the will of the American people. The means were simple. Create a cult figure out of Patraeus, flood the media with stories of progress on the ground, and carefully nurture Congressional fence-sitters to prevent a majority for withdrawal emerging as a viable force within Congress.

And one of the most effective tools in the arsenal has been the brief and tightly controlled codels (short for congressional delegations) who are shown only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration wants them to see, which includes Potemkin village-like displays of security progress and soldiers who plead with them not to let the war have been in vain.

“Spin city” is how Rep. James Moran (D-Va) described his most recent trip to Baghdad as part of a congressional delegation. “The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated,” he told the Washington Post on August 31. One U.S. soldier, Staff Sgt. Josh Campbell, who was ordered to pay Iraqi shopkeepers to open their stores for these congressional visits, told the Washington Post (Sept. 4) “personally, I think it’s a false representation. But what can I say? I’m just doing my job and don’t ask questions.”

It is precisely on the basis of two such codel’s in the past year that Congressman Brian Baird converted from moderate critic to an evangelical proponent of Patreaus and “the surge.” Baird has insisted that he was completely free to meet with whomever he wanted in Iraq-a bizarre claim if one considers the options for travel in Iraq alone-but his nearly word for word repetition of Bush administration talking points upon his return indicates that he swallowed the entire sales-pitch.

To take just one example, just as the Bush administration was concocting increasingly apocalyptic scenarios about the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq-chaos, mass murder, regional war, terrorist attacks on the US and the like-Baird was offering his own shrill hypotheticals to the editorial board of The Olympian newspaper:

“What happens to you and you and me morally if we withdraw and there’s wholesale slaughter? What happens if a Shi’a theocracy takes over and progressive independent women who are currently in the region are suddenly all forced into burqas and they can’t go to school and ­ and they’re stoned to death for learning to read? What happens if we allow that?”

In another meeting with constituents, Baird speculated that if the US withdrew, Al-Qaida would become empowered and “then begin operations on the United States. Is that worth an American life to try and prevent that? I believe it is.”

Never mind the fact that the odious “burqas” are only worn in Afghanistan and that no Iraqi women have ever been stoned to death for learning to read. That might be true of Saudi Arabia, but Baird is not calling for its invasion.

The fact of the matter is that all these claims are the stuff of fantasy. There will be no genocide or terrorist safe haven in Iraq after the US leaves. Iraq after an American withdrawal will look very much like Iraq today-a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war fought along the seams of its Sunni and Shiite Arab zones, each ruled by rival militias and gangs. Iraq’s Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaida, and in fact, in this Darwinian context al-Qaida would likely be destroyed as local Sunni militias assert their control.

Nevertheless, Brian Baird’s conversion to war supporter and his repetition of the Bush administration’s more outlandish talking points is notable as the purest expression of the counterinsurgency strategy being waged today against the American public and its representatives in Congress. And given the increasing unlikelihood of any Democratic-led effort to truly end the war in the near future, one must consider it a success thus far.

This leads to a few preliminary conclusions.

Certainly war opponents would do well to drop simplistic and moralizing slogans against the war and focus more on dismantling the phony narratives of sophisticated marketing campaigns that tout the successes of counterinsurgency and the dire consequences of an American withdrawal. We are operating in the age of information war and simulated realities, and the Empire knows very well that people support wars on the basis of symbols, emotions, stories and fantasies, all of which have proven to be more powerful than the most rational discourse. Take a look at Baird.

But ultimately, as in any insurgency, war opponents have to re-mobilize the widespread popular support for withdrawal into a broad-based and assertive movement that makes its own realities, and doesn’t rely upon Congressional Democrats but rather gives them no place to hide if they continue to support the Iraq occupation, in any form. Only then, in Mao’s felicitous phrase, will the insurgents–proponents of withdrawal in Congress–be able to “move among the people like a fish in the sea” and turn off the spigot of permanent war.

The occupation in Iraq will begin to end on the day that Democrats — and responsible Republicans — in Congress decide to stop meeting the demands of the Bush-Cheney administration for more money to fund their imperial endeavor along with the massive war-profiteering by administration-linked firms such as Halliburton and Blackwater.

This is a simple reality. But it remains one that most members of Congress, including many Democrats who should know better, fail to recognize.

The essential document in the current Iraq debate is a letter of commitment, now endorsed by 89 members of the House, that says the signers “will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during FY08 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq before the end of President Bush’s term in office.”

In an important new letter to President Bush, the 89 representatives — 88 Democrats and Texas Republican Ron Paul — say, “More than 3,800 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 28,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

“We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.”

10/17/07 “Washington Times” — — -A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq’s faulty justice system.

“We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis,” Mr. Prince told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. At least 17 of 20 Blackwater guards being investigated for their roles in a Sept. 16 shooting incident are still in a secure compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone and carrying out limited duties.

Two or three others have been allowed by the State Department to leave the country as part of their scheduled rotation out of Iraq and are expected to return.

“In an ideal sense, if there was wrongdoing, there could be a trial brought in the Iraqi court system. But that would imply that there is a valid Iraqi court system where Westerners could get a fair trial. That is not the case right now,” said Mr. Prince.

Mr. Prince also expressed his disappointment that the State Department has not come to the company’s defense, even though it has never lost a State Department client in years of protecting them.

“For the last week and a half, we have heard nothing from the State Department,” said Mr. Prince. “From their senior levels, their PR folks, we’ve heard nothing — radio silence.

“It is disappointing for us. We have performed to the line, letter and verse of their 1,000-page contract,” he said. “Our guys take significant risk for them. They’ve taken a pounding these last three years.”

A number of Blackwater contractors, most of whom come from military and law-enforcement backgrounds, have been killed in action or grievously wounded in Iraq while running more than 16,500 security missions in the past three years.

Iraq’s government, outraged by the Sept. 16 incident in which up to 17 Iraqis were killed as Blackwater staff tried to clear a crowded traffic circle, has accused the U.S. firm of unprovoked and random killings. Blackwater says its men were defending themselves after coming under fire.

The State Department has since ordered that cameras be placed in Blackwater security vehicles and that Diplomatic Security agents accompany Blackwater staff on missions. Mr. Prince said his company had recommended both those steps in 2005 and that the proposals were “buried” by the department.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded yesterday that Blackwater leave Iraq and pay $8 million to the family of each of the 17 victims. Iraqi Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim said the American guards responsible should stand trial in Iraq, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Mr. Prince, a 38-year-old former Navy SEAL, said if there was any evidence of wrongdoing, his employees could be tried in the United States by a jury of their peers under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

He said the hostility toward Blackwater was partly driven by partisan politics from the Democrat-led Congress and the news media.

“The far left was unsuccessful in attacking [Army Gen. David H.] Petraeus and defunding the war, forcing a pullback of the U.S. troops,” he said. “I think part of the strategy might be to undermine some other part of the support infrastructure, and that would be contractors that are an important part of the supporting package there in Iraq.”

He said the scrutiny by Congress, which Democrats say is aimed at better oversight, may have backfired.

“What has happened in the last six to nine months is we’ve seen the U.S. government, [Department of Defense] in particular, awarding a lot more work to non-U.S. companies … because it is harder to drag those guys before Congress,” Mr. Prince said.

“And there is less oversight, there is less accountability, there is less visibility into those operations.”

Mr. Prince has been caught in a partisan crossfire since shortly after last year’s election, when a trial lawyer targeting Blackwater lobbied then-House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, for hearings on the “extremely Republican” company.

Mr. Prince emphasized that his guards are proven professionals, recruited on the basis of their prior military, special operations and law-enforcement experiences.

“They go through extensive vetting, training, 160 plus hours of security training, psychological evaluations, security clearances, background checks” and cultural training, he said.

BAGHDAD, 17 October 2007 (IRIN) – Barira Mihran, a 36-year-old mother of three, scavenges every day in other people’s dustbins in Baghdad for leftovers on which to feed her children.

Widowed and displaced by sectarian violence, the unemployed mother said she had no other way of providing for her children.

“In the beginning it was very difficult. I never imagined that one day I was going to be forced by destiny to feed my children from the remains of other people’s food,” Barira said. “We always had good food on our table when my husband was alive but since he was killed in August 2005, my life has gone from bad to worse.”

“My children are under age and so cannot work or beg in the streets,” she said.

“Sometimes you have to fight for a dustbin. Many women know which houses have good leftovers and so they wait for hours near the houses until the leftovers are thrown in the bins outside. Then you can see at least 10 people, women and children, running to get it, and I will be in the middle of the crowd, for sure,” Barira added.

Survey

Barira, an educated woman, has now joined hundreds of other mothers who rummage through rubbish bins for food to feed their children, according to the Baghdad-based Women’s Rights Association (WRA), which conducted a survey of displaced families and people living on the streets in 12 provinces (excluding the Kurdistan region) between January and August 2007.

Mayada Zuhair, a WRA spokeswoman, said the survey showed an increase of 25 percent, since the previous survey in December 2005, in the number of mothers who fed their children either by scavenging in people’s rubbish bins or by becoming sex workers. Of the 3,572 respondents, 72 percent were women (mainly widowed) and of these 9 percent said they had resorted to prostitution and 17 percent said they scavenged for food in dustbins and at rubbish tips. The survey was published and distributed to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local government offices.

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) – The price of an Iraqi life, for purposes of compensation for the families of civilians killed by Americans, can be as low as $500 and as high as $8 million. It depends on who does the assessment.

On the low end, $500 was paid to the brother of a man caught in a firefight outside the gate of his house.

The $8 million is what the Iraqi government is demanding for the families of each of the 17 people it said were killed when private security contractors guarding U.S. diplomats opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square on September 16.

In between those poles, payments are frequently in the $3,000 to $5,000 range. High-profile victims whose death might have an impact on U.S.-Iraqi relations command more.

Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi’s bodyguard, Raheem Khalif, for example.

He was shot dead last Christmas Eve by a drunken contractor of the U.S. private security company Blackwater, whose men were also involved in the September shooting. The incident raised fresh questions over the use of civilians in roles previously carried out by the U.S. military.

One of the most remarkable quotes from a U.S. official on conditions in Iraq, five years into the war, has come in an email discussing the size of compensation for the bodyguard.

Made available during a Congressional hearing early in October, the email said:

“The…Charge d’Affaires (acting ambassador) was talking some crazy sums at first. Originally, she mentioned $250k and then later on $100K…I think that a sum this high will set a terrible precedent.

“This could cause incidents with people trying to get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their family’s future.”

SUICIDE-BY-AMERICAN?

Excuse me? Suicide by provoking an American to shoot you?

Is there so little prospect, so little hope, so little confidence in the future, so few opportunities that the only way to provide long-term for a family’s future is through a U.S. compensation payment for your death?

The email was sent by a Special Agent of the Diplomatic Security Service in Baghdad after he discussed the matter of the dead bodyguard with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

The desperation suggested in the notion of suicide-by-American is at odds with the official view of the Bush administration, which has been seeing slow but steady progress towards stability and reasons for Iraqis to hope for a brighter future.

In the case of the bodyguard, the State Department, for whom Blackwater works under a $600 million-plus contract, eventually suggested $15,000 but according to Blackwater’s chief executive, Erik Prince, the company actually paid $20,000.

Now, the widow wants more.

CONDOLENCE AND COMPENSATION

There is no structured procedure for making claims in cases involving armed American civilians.

No court, either in Iraq or in the U.S., has dealt with an Iraqi national seeking compensation for death from a U.S. private security contractor. The companies operate in a legal no-man’s land where they have been virtually immune from prosecution.

The U.S. military, in contrast, have dealt with compensation claims for more than half a century, under a 1942 law, the Foreign Claims Act.

It distinguishes between condolence payments, paid without recognition of fault “as an expression of sympathy and good will” and compensation, which acknowledges military wrongdoing. The $500 for the man shot outside his house was a condolence payment. (Such payments are usually limited to $2,500).

But even for outright compensation, the sums are modest by Western standards, according to documentation on hundreds of cases from Iraq and Afghanistan the U.S. Army released to the American Civil Liberties Union recently.

One document lists $5,000 paid for a wrongful death and $5,200 for damage to the vehicle involved in the incident that caused the death. A human life worth less than a car.

“Iraqi blood has become the cheapest thing in Iraq,” noted a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most respected Shiite religious leader.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants the price of Iraqi blood reviewed. The $8 million per person his government is demanding for the Blackwater victims dwarfs the “crazy sums” the Baghdad diplomat had suggested for settling the bodyguard case.

But the new demand is likely to go through the same process of severe shrinkage as the old.

If not, to follow the logic of the Baghdad email, there might be yet another complication in an already complex and dirty war — soldiers and contractors having to learn to spot Iraqi family fathers wishing to die for U.S. compensation.

Amid the controversy over Blackwater and other private security contractors in Iraq, the media have paid little attention to the role of these contractors in Afghanistan. The Afghan government started what has been reported as a “crackdown” on these contractors last week. AP:

Echoing a growing problem in Iraq, Afghan authorities have started to crack down on lucrative but largely unregulated security firms, some of which are suspected of murder.

Two private Afghan security companies were raided this week, and at least 10 more contractors – including some protecting embassies – will soon be closed, police and Western officials told The Associated Press.

The government is also proposing new rules to tighten control over such companies _ including some Western contractors _ amid concerns they intimidate Afghans, disrespect local security forces and don’t cooperate with authorities, according to a policy draft document obtained by AP.

These contractors attracted attention during the Afghan presidential campaign in October 2004 when one of President Karzai’s DynCorp bodyguards (since replaced by Afghans) slapped Afghanistan’s Minister of Transport in the face (a grave insult) when he approached the President during a campaign photo opportunity in Northern Afghanistan. A CIA contractor was convicted of misdemeanor assault for beating to death an Afghan detainee who turned himself in for questioning voluntarily. A contractor for USPI who shot dead his Afghan translator in 2005 was secretly spirited out of the country and never prosecuted. And these are a few of the incidents reported in the international press.

These incidents are serious enough. But there is an even more serious political issue: private security contractors are corrupting the Afghan police and administration. They have hired, armed, and trained militias that were supposed to be demobilized and disarmed, enabling them to persist and profit as part of the “private sector,” awaiting the spark that will set off another civil war.

In my article Saving Afghanistan, published in Foreign Affairs last December, I reported:

One former mujahideen commander, Din Muhammad Jurat, became a general in the Ministry of the Interior and is widely believed — including by his former mujahideen colleagues — to be a major figure in organized crime and responsible for the murder of a cabinet minister in February 2002. (He also works with U.S. Protection and Investigations, a Texas-based firm that provides international agencies and construction projects with security guards, many of whom are former fighters from Jurat’s militia and current employees at the Ministry of the Interior.)

Since that article was published, Afghanistan’s erratic Attorney-General, Abdul Jabbar Sabet (himself also accused of corruption), issued an arrest warrant for Jurat and attempted to dissolve his security firm. The result was the beating of Sabet by Jurat’s supporters. Jurat, a native of the Panjshir Valley, is a former commander of Ahmad Shah Massoud, while Sabet, a native of Nangarhar in Eastern Afghanistan, was a member of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami while working for Voice of America Pashto service in the 1980s. Afghans interpreted this incident variously as ethnic politics, factional struggles, government attempts to marginalize the mujahidin, the strength of corrupt mafias, and weakness of the state (or perhaps all of the above).

Word on the street about this week’s crackdown is equally complex. As the Afghan “street” now has access to internet and Skype, its rumors travel quickly. Word on the street is that rather than a sincere “crackdown” on private security firms, the government’s actions are more similar to its counter-narcotics actions: use of the government by one criminal group to suppress its competitors. The stories circulating involve beneficiaries of US Department of Defense contracts from favored Afghan families and huge payoffs to Afghan officials. I do not know how true these stories are. But I do know that the complete opaqueness of the contracting process makes it impossible to even try to refute them.

When I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 1, 2007, Senator John Warner (R-Virginia) asked about corruption: wasn’t corruption a part of the culture in Afghanistan? Was the U.S. imposing alien standards? I explained that, while corruption occurred in Afghanistan as in every society, Afghans believed that the unprecedented level of corruption today was largely due to the foreign presence, not their culture. First of all, Afghans do not believe that the international drug problem is caused by greedy Afghan farmers. They think it is due to the global demand for illicit drugs and a policy regime that disproportionately punishes the weakest and poorest parts of the supply chain. Second, they see, if we do not not, the links among US security contractors, Afghan militias, and corrupt officials. They see the armed groups that destroyed their country remobilized and paid by a politically connected “private sector” subsidized by the U.S. government.

Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton think a tough line on Tehran will sell politically. They could be right.

Oct. 17, 2007 | Future historians may conclude that the key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign was not Iraq, but whether the United States should go to war with Iran. Sparring over Iran dominated the Republican debate in Dearborn, Mich., last week, while a Senate resolution condemning Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as terrorists divided the Democrats, some of whom (including Sen. Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) feared that it might give Bush a pretext to launch another war. Unexpectedly, Tehran has emerged as a preoccupation of candidates — as a litmus test for attitudes toward war and domestic security.

The Republicans are competing to see who can wax most bellicose. The two candidates with the greatest need to compensate for their socially liberally pasts, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have been extra warlike. Giuliani in particular seems to be running for velociraptor-in-chief.

In an ABC interview on Sunday, Giuliani made fun of Romney for saying during the Dearborn debate that he would seek the advice of counsel before launching a war on Iran. Moderator Chris Matthews had asked, “If you were president of the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities?” Romney had replied that the president “has to do what’s in the best interest” of the country “to protect us against a potential threat.” He said nothing about needing a congressional declaration of war; indeed, he was clearly suggesting that for him to strike Iran it would suffice to get a legal opinion that such an act did not require a formal declaration of war.

During his Sunday interview, Giuliani attempted to portray Romney’s brazen end run around the Constitution as evidence of wimpiness. “That’s one of those moments in a debate,” he told ABC News, “where you say something and you go like this [wiping his mouth with the back of his hand] … wish I can get that one back.

“Basically, right out of the box,” Giuliani continued, “first thing, you’re faced with imminent attack on the United States, I don’t think you call in the lawyers first. I think maybe the generals, the ones you call in first, they’re the ones you want to talk to.”

But Matthews, of course, had not asked Romney what he would do were the U.S. attacked. His question concerned a sudden U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, and whether the president should seek congressional authorization for such an act of war.

During the debate itself, Romney also took heat for not mentioning the need for congressional authorization, although the rebuke came from a lonely voice out of the GOP’s isolationist past. “You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Paul declared flatly that the Constitution was clear and that Romney’s talk about consulting attorneys was “baffling.” He also maintained that “the thought that the Iranians could pose an imminent attack on the United States is preposterous.” When Giuliani shot back that Sept. 11 had been such an attack, Paul interrupted him. “That was no country,” snapped Paul. “That was 19 thugs. It has nothing to do with a country.”

Sen. John McCain tried to present himself as the voice of reason in the debate, saying, “Of course you want to go to Congress; of course you want to get approval.” Last spring, however, when badgered by a belligerent audience member at a South Carolina campaign event about how long the U.S. should tolerate Iran’s alleged bad behavior, McCain had been caught on camera singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb/ Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit “Barbara Ann.” If any major Iranian political figure had made a similar jest about striking the U.S., it would not have been quickly forgotten in Washington. McCain’s ditty, and the relative lack of controversy about it, speak volumes about the aggressive mood in the U.S.

Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on the planet’s sole superpower. The third-world regime is led by a genocidal commander-in-chief who serves a global conspiracy; to stop him, the president of the superpower might be compelled, after a quick chat with a lawyer and a few bars of a golden oldie, to launch an aggressive war. (And even the part about a conversation with an attorney is seen by some of the candidates as an abdication of manhood.)

Perhaps because of his chest-thumping contest with Giuliani, Romney especially has shown a talent of late for putting the ignorant in fear-mongering. During the Dearborn debate, Romney alleged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had “spoken about genocide,” and said it was important not to “allow that individual to have the control of launching a nuclear weapon.” In an ad released after the debate, in a clear attempt to out-Giuliani Giuliani, Romney declaimed, “It’s this century’s nightmare, jihadism — violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism.” He told the cameras that the fundamentalists’ goal is to establish a “caliphate,” and wanted to “collapse” countries such as the United States as part of that goal. “We can and will stop Iran,” he added, “from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has never advocated “genocide,” and his expressed wish that the “occupation regime over Jerusalem” (i.e., the Israeli government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated.

“You’re A Whole Different Person When You’re Scared” ~~ Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson

10/16/07 “ICH ” — — My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs, in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny was in a race for his life. As he shot by, the tortoise called out lazily, “Think you’ll make it?” The rabbit, looking neither to the right nor left, shot back desperately — “I gotta make it…”

Bernie says Bush is running scared. So scared he’s “pantin’ like a lizard…”

Pantin’ like a lizard? Hah. Having been raised in New Mexico with me, Bernie should know that Bush is panting because, well, that’s what lizards do…Especially the venomous gila monsters, who are fun to chase, but only a fool would try to catch one. That’s why the few Democrats out there who appear to be chasing Bush are, in reality, just trotting along in his wake. I suspect they fear the holocaust he is capable of inflicting if they catch him.

For six long years, Bush has “water-boarded” all who oppose him — especially those in Congress — with a steady stream of 9-11. Each speech is laced with visions of 9-11 — 9-11 horror just over the horizon, 9-11 around each corner, 9-11 behind each tree. “Fear Itself” is the only option on the Bush-Cheney table, and they have used it relentlessly, not only to wage genocidal war in order to gain control of the world’s resources, but to seize dictatorial power and to control the quivering masses. Constant and repetitive warnings and false-flag alerts, evidence of plotters and planners skulking among us, hateful ideologies swirling above us like mushroom clouds — is it any wonder our elected representatives, once inside the Kingdom of Fear, lose all sense of direction, the ability to reason?

In his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” former vice president Al Gore shines the light of truth upon this Orwellian prison of fear in which we are held captive. In fact, Gore says more in his Introduction than most people can manage to get across in an entire book. He says there is a “connection between the withdrawal of reason from the public sphere and the resulting vacuum that is filled by fear, superstition, ideology, deception, intolerance, and obsessive secrecy as a means of tightening control over the information that a free society needs to govern itself according to reason-based democracy.”

Bernie says that sounds good, but as far as he’s concerned, they’re all just a bunch of spineless hypocritical weasels. “Something ain’t right here,” Bernie said. “These Democrats are different from the ones we sent up there. We elected them to do the two things they promised to do — stop the massacre in Iraq and impeach the shallow, warmongering fool who lied us into his greedy war. They’ve been there nearly 11 months and they refuse to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their treasonous lies or the massive destruction that gets worse every day. Blood keeps gushing from the sands of Iraq. Bodies keep piling up.”

Bernie glared at me as he headed for the door. “Are they really scared, or are they just playing politics?” he asked. “Either way — how do they sleep at night — how in the hell do they sleep at night?”

If I knew the answer to that question, I’d know why my hero, Sen. Russ Feingold, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate in early October wherein he urged his peers to take a stand and insist the $150 billion war-funding bill include a timeline for beginning to withdraw troops because, he said, “There have been more than 3,600 killed in Iraq…”

I was aghast. Perhaps Feingold overslept that morning. Had he bothered to check, he would have discovered that, as he spoke, more than 3,800 of our soldiers and marines had been killed. He might even have mentioned the more than 37,000 injured and more than 21,000 suffering from disease and other medical problems. No matter how you stack them, that’s a lot of bodies piling up…

I’d know why another of my heroes, Rep. John Conyers, who had been out there hugging the peerless David Swanson and the courageous Cindy Sheehan — holding meetings in basements, whipping up articles of impeachment — suddenly shut up, backed off, and dove under his desk when the polls closed. Freaked out — after 21 terms in Congress!

I don’t know if House droid Nancy Pelosi experiences fear; if she sleeps, or even blinks, but her strident insistence that she alone is the Decider on impeachment is a power grab indicating either her ignorance of, or contempt for, the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 leaves no wiggle room, but is a mandate — “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Pelosi’s mantra that “impeachment is off the table” mirrors Bush’s 9-11 broadside, and is clear evidence that she is far more concerned with politics than with the faceless, invisible bodies that keep piling up because of her inaction. In a recent interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Pelosi said she is determined that Bush will not escape his legacy. “This war is Bush’s war and it’s Cheney’s war. And now,” she said, smacking her lips in delight — “this war is the Republican’s war…”

So there you have it. When Pelosi and other members of Congress were sworn in after the 2006 election, 2,761 American uniformed military had been slain. In the ensuing 11 months, while Democrats were caving in, kissing ass, and giving Bush everything he demanded to expand his war, an additional 1,072 of our young men and women have perished. With 13 months remaining for this administration, one must wonder how many more innocent Iraqi citizens and American military must die in order for Pelosi to write Bush’s legacy with their blood…

If Democrats in Congress actually read that document which they swore to “support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic,” they would know that any member of the House can start impeachment proceedings by (are you listening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich?) merely tossing a resolution in the hopper for referral to the appropriate committee.

There is good reason for Americans to be scared, for as George Orwell said, “It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous…The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects.” It’s them against us — a greedy corporate cabal protected by a cruel and sinister Dick Cheney and Bush, a vicious, brainless jackass who endowed himself with “wonder-working” masturbatory power to torture and kill at will.

I once read that the Constitution is our birth certificate. If we are to remain a legitimate republic and escape this Kingdom of Fear, we must impeach both of these illegitimate warmongers. We must resist being fatigued into compliance with murder and into relinquishing our freedoms.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote so succinctly just prior to the 2004 elections, “We are down to nut-cutting time,” and, again, with Warren Zevron, Thompson admonished — “If you can’t run, walk…If you can’t walk, crawl…But don’t look down…It’s a long, long fall.”

Let us begin.

(Date of publication unknown)– — – Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.

O’neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts – of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it’s because they want them in Lebanon.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses – provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

[It should be well understood] that the powers proposed to be surrendered [by the Third Congress] to the Executive were those which the Constitution has most jealously appropriated to the Legislature. . . .

The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war . . . the power of raising armies . . . the power of creating offices. . . .

A delegation of such powers [to the President] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.

The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them, is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.

The separation of the power of creating offices from that of filling them, is an essential guard against the temptation to create offices for the sake of gratifying favourites or multiplying dependents.

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater’s actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better war.

Many politicians are aiding this alchemy. Rhetoric from a House committee early this month audibly yearned for a better war at a highly publicized hearing that featured Erik Prince, the odious CEO of Blackwater USA.

A congressman from New Hampshire, Paul Hodes, insisted on the importance of knowing “whether failures to hold Blackwater personnel accountable for misconduct undermine our efforts in Iraq.” Another Democrat on the panel, Carolyn Maloney of New York, told Blackwater’s top exec that “your actions may be undermining our mission in Iraq and really hurting the relationship and trust between the Iraqi people and the American military.”

But the problem with Blackwater’s activities is not that they “undermine” the U.S. military’s “efforts” and “mission” in Iraq. The efforts and the mission shouldn’t exist.

A real hazard of preoccupations with Blackwater is that it will become a scapegoat for what is profoundly and fundamentally wrong with the U.S. effort and mission. Condemnation of Blackwater, however justified, can easily be syphoned into a political whirlpool that demands a cleanup of the U.S. war effort — as though a relentless war of occupation based on lies could be redeemed by better management — as if the occupying troops in Army and Marine uniforms are incarnations of restraint and accountability.

Midway through this month, the Associated Press reported that “U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad’s demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear to be working on how to fill the security gap if the company is phased out.” We can expect many such stories in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, we get extremely selective U.S. media coverage of key Pentagon operations. Bombs explode in remote areas, launched from high-tech U.S. weaponry, and few who scour the American news pages and broadcasts are any the wiser about the human toll.

With all the media attention to sectarian violence in Iraq, the favorite motif of coverage is the suicide bombing that underscores the conflagration as Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. American reporters and commentators rarely touch on the U.S. occupation as perpetrator and catalyst of the carnage.

One of the most unusual aspects of the current Blackwater scandal is that it places recent killings of Iraqi civilians front-and-center even though the killers were Americans. This angle is outside the customary media frame that focuses on what Iraqis are doing to each other and presents Americans — whether in military uniform or in contractor mode — as well-meaning heroes who sometimes become victims of dire circumstances.

Many members of Congress, like quite a few journalists, have hopped on the anti-Blackwater bandwagon with rhetoric that bemoans how the company is making it more difficult for the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq. But the American war effort has continued to deepen the horrors inside that country. And Washington’s priorities have clearly placed the value of oil way above the value of human life. So why should we want the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq?

Unless the deadly arrogance of Blackwater and its financiers in the U.S. government is placed in a broader perspective on the U.S. war effort as a whole, the vilification of the firm could distract from challenging the overall presence of American forces in Iraq and the air war that continues to escalate outside the American media’s viewfinder.

The current Blackwater scandal should help us to understand the dynamics that routinely set in when occupiers — whether privatized mercenaries or uniformed soldiers — rely on massive violence against the population they claim to be helping.

Terrible as Blackwater has been and continues to be, that profiteering corporation should not be made a lightning rod for opposition to the war. New legislation that demands accountability from private security forces can’t make a war that’s wrong any more right. Finding better poster boys who can be touted as humanitarians rather than mercenaries won’t change the basic roles of gun-toting Americans in a country that they have no right to occupy.