The Rag Blog

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan – an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed – that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.

“The Department of Defense’s increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army’s transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force – which was accelerated after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 – and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

Estimating how many bullets US forces have expended for every insurgent killed is not a simple or precisely scientific matter. The former head of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, famously claimed that his forces “don’t do body counts”.

But senior officers have recently claimed “great successes” in Iraq, based on counting the bodies of insurgents killed. Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, said 1,534 insurgents had been seized or killed in a recent operation in the west of Baghdad. Other estimates from military officials suggest that at least 20,000 insurgents have been killed in President George Bush’s “war on terror”.

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO’s figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. “How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don’t know,” he said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — This much is agreed upon: at least six Iraqis died overnight Saturday when American attack helicopters pounded a cluster of homes in a dusty, nondescript neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad.

But the story of why those homes were targeted and who was killed depends on the storyteller.

The U.S. military said the dead were insurgents and the homes in the Husseiniya district probably served as weapons depots; troops observed seven or more secondary explosions after the air assault. By the military’s tally, six fighters were killed and five wounded.

Iraqi residents told a different version: the dead came from two Shiite Muslim families who lived in an area controlled by the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The bodies pulled from the rubble, locals say, were ordinary parents killed with their children in the middle of the night. Locals counted 11 corpses – two men, two women, and seven children. Another 10 were injured. Some Iraqi authorities put the death toll as high as 18.

In Iraq, where new bombings occur before authorities can even investigate the previous day’s violence, the truth about Husseiniya might never come to light. Roadblocks erected around the neighborhood prevented reporters from reaching the scene.

“Lies, lies, lies,” sputtered Salam al Rubaiye, 35, a computer technician who lives in Husseiniya and works in Sadr City. “The Americans always try to change the truth, especially when it concerns the Sadrists,” the collective name for followers of the Mahdi Army commander, cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Rubaiye visited the scene of the air strike twice Saturday. He first showed up early in the morning when, he said, volunteers were still digging the corpses of women and children from the rubble. Later, he brought a camera and snapped 14 photos.

They showed several piles of cinderblock where homes once stood. The interior of a severely damaged home showed only the detritus of family life: a potted plant, a wall hanging, a refrigerator, an electrical generator. “For Sale” was written in Arabic on the only surviving wall of one home.

Rubaiye also e-mailed two short cell-phone video clips that showed at least seven bodies swathed in blankets, some with grayish feet sticking out at the ends. Two of the bundles were tiny, as if they shrouded young children.

Residents said they’d finished retrieving the dead by 8 a.m., and that two young girls were still missing.

“I took out with my own hands the bodies of two young children, two men, two adult women and four little girls,” said Bassem al Musawi, 30, who lives in the neighborhood. “I don’t know why the Americans bombed these homes. I know one was the house of Abu Mustafa. He’s a very poor man with only one boy and the rest of his family are girls. And he didn’t even have a rifle.”

In an e-mail response to questions on the incident, an American military spokesman wrote that U.S. troops had come under small-arms fire from gunmen in the area just before midnight. The troops “returned fire and attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged the structure the gunmen were firing from.”

When three of the gunmen fled into another building, the military statement continued, “attack aircraft dropped a bomb on that structure and observed at least seven secondary explosions, likely caused by explosives and munitions stored inside the building.” Iraqi police who inspected the site reported to the Americans that the home was destroyed, six insurgents were killed and five wounded.

Presented with the dueling accounts, both sides modified their versions.

Iraqi residents acknowledged hearing gunfire before the air strikes. And the U.S. military no longer insisted that only militants perished, though a spokesman emphasized that the air raid was a self-defense measure.

“The adversary is ruthless and puts no value on human life and will endanger innocent civilians – women, children – by hiding and cowering in buildings they take over,” read a statement from Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, spokesman for U.S. forces north of Baghdad.

Burials were planned, though it was unclear who had custody of the bodies. By late Saturday, there were plans for a large Mahdi Army demonstration to accompany the expected funeral procession.

“They say they target the terrorists, so where are they?” asked a 45-year-old Husseiniya resident who identified himself only as Abu Ghufran. “Most of the dead are women and children. There is no justice in this life.”

07/21/07 “ZNet” — – How many pipe bombs might it take to end U.S. democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago. The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on September 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident” or if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the president’s arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for “making martial law easier.”

It took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to destroy one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the permission of Congress. But there was a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from Insurrection Act to Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act. The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”—and such “con- dition” is not defined or limited.

These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist “incident” could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.

The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors’ control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.

The story of how Section 1076 became law demonstrates how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the Administration signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it.

The Katrina debacle appears to have drowned Washington’s resistance to military rule. Bush declared, “I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people.”

His initial proposal generated only a smattering of criticism and there was no “robust discussion.” On August 29, 2006, the Administration upped the ante, labeling the breached levees “the equivalent of a weapon of mass effect being used on the city of New Orleans.” Nobody ever defined a “weapon of mass effect,” but the term wasn’t challenged.

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision, along with committee chair Sen. John Warner (R-VA). Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) openly endorsed it and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), then-chair of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent.

Every governor in the country opposed the changes and the National Governors Association repeatedly and loudly objected. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on September 19 that, “We certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,” but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article in the December issue on how the provision became law with minimal examination or controversy. A Republican Senate aide blamed the governors for failing to raise more fuss: “My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices. If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day.”

Thus, the Senate was not guilty by reason of form letters. Plus, the issue was not on the front page of the Washington Post within the 48 hours before the Senate voted on it. Surely no reasonable person can expect senators to know what they were doing when they voted 100 to 0 in favor of the bill? Apparently, they were simply too busy to notice the latest coffin nails they hammered into the Constitution.

This expansion of presidential prerogative illustrates how every federal failure redounds to the benefit of leviathan. FEMA was greatly expanded during the Clinton years for crises like the New Orleans flood. It, along with local and state agencies, floundered. Yet the federal belly flop on the Gulf Coast somehow anointed the president to send in troops where he sees fit.

“Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. Perhaps some conservatives believe that the only change when martial law is declared is that people are no longer read their Miranda rights when they are locked away. “Martial law” means obey soldiers’ commands or be shot. The abuses of military rule in southern states during Reconstruction were legendary, but they have been swept under the historical rug.

Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree. The Bush team is rarely remiss in stretching power beyond reasonable bounds. Bush talks as if any constraint on his war-making prerogative or budget is “aiding and abetting the enemy.” Can such a person be trusted to reasonably define insurrection or disorder?

Bush can commandeer a state’s National Guard any time he declares a “state has refused to enforce applicable laws.” Does this refer to the laws as they are commonly understood—or the laws after Bush fixes them with a signing statement? Some will consider concern about Bush or future presidents exploiting martial law to be alarmist. This is the same reflex many people have had to each administration proposal or power grab, from the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001 to the president’s enemy-combatant decree in November 2001 to setting up Guantanamo prison in early 2002 to the doctrine of preemptive war. The Administration has perennially denied that its new powers pose any threat even after evidence of abuses—illegal wiretapping, torture, a global network of secret prisons, Iraq in ruins—became overwhelming. If the Administration does not hesitate to trample the First Amendment with “free speech zones,” why expect it to be diffident about powers that could stifle protests en masse?

On February 24, the White House conducted a highly publicized drill to test responses to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) going off simultaneously in ten American cities. The White House has not disclosed the details of how the feds responded, but it would be out of character for this president to let new powers he sought to gather dust. There is nothing to prevent presidents from declaring martial law on a pretext than there is to prevent them from launching a war on the basis of manufactured intelligence.

Senators Leahy and Kit Bond (R-MO) are sponsoring a bill to repeal the changes. Leahy urged his colleagues to consider the Section 1076 fix, declaring, “It is difficult to see how any Senator could disagree with the advisability of having a more transparent and thoughtful approach to this sensitive issue.”

He deserves credit for fighting hard on this issue, but there is little reason to expect most members of Congress to give it a second look. The Section 1076 debacle exemplifies how the Washington establishment pretends that new power will not be abused, regardless of how much existing power has been mishandled. Why worry about martial law when there is pork to be harvested and photo ops to attend? It is still unfashionable in Washington to worry about the danger of the open barn door until after the horse is two miles down the road.

07/21/07 “ICH” — – -It’s about time Americans faced the truth.

A Marine not only convicted of conspiring to commit kidnapping, larceny, and making false statements; but the murder – MURDER – of an innocent Iraqi man, was given his sentence. He is to receive a reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.

THIS is what America has become.

It is now considered “bad conduct” to murder an unarmed man, knowingly return to the scene to fabricate the appearance of self-defense and hide the facts after the fact.

Murdering an innocent Iraqi is now considered “Bad Conduct.”

In 2004 my husband, a ten-year US Army veteran, made a conscious decision to no longer participate in war – he spoke openly of the bad conduct of his commanders in giving orders to soldiers in his unit which not only jeopardized the lives of innocent Iraqis, and children, but also those of the soldiers he served with.

For his decision to no longer be part of the destruction, wanton killing, and unjust, immoral action this war has shown itself to be, my husband was accused of being a deserter, faced trumped up, fabricated charges of intentionally missing his unit’s movement, and when the first court-martial attempt failed, was handed additional trumped up charges of larceny for combat pay his command erroneously placed in his paycheck. During a second court-martial attempt he was found guilty of missing movement or not getting on a plane and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, loss of all pay, reduction in rank and a dishonorable discharge.

A veteran with ten years of honorable service, who took a stand to no longer participate in an action in which murdering innocents is acceptable is now considered “Dishonorable.”

How low do you intend to go, America?

How far are you going to let your values dip before you stop the slide?

We don’t need to see the documents “executive privilege” is denying us the right to see. Their content is evident in the actions of our military courts – Justice in America no longer has a conscience, and the travesty continues as Americans sleep through the reality of what it is they are about to lose.

The United States Congress spent an entire night – wasted an entire night – in a public display of ridiculous bantering over a war which has now caused the deaths of almost 4000 US military personnel and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians – CHILDREN are dying every day in Iraq because of what this country has allowed to happen, and our Congress has the foresight to remember to place cots in the Senate chambers in case one of the illustrious elite might grow weary of their repetitious “pillow talk” and need a rest.

I am weary of the talk – the Iraqis are weary of the talk – and I know for a fact that American soldiers are weary of the talk.

There are some who, while wearing our nation’s uniform, have committed horrendous crimes in this war, and in a great many instances have received little more than a slap on the hand for their actions. Hundreds of thousands more soldiers have served honorably under the most horrendous conditions, fighting against their instincts for survival to maintain morality in their actions in the most difficult circumstances. They deserve better than to see those who cannot control themselves face so little consequence for their lack of character.

The administration that sent our military to war has become nothing more than a dictatorship in emperor’s clothing and our congress is clearly displaying how little backbone they have when it comes to defending the truth in the hallowed halls within which our Constitution is supposed to still matter.

The American people seem to live in a stupor as our soldiers continue to be sent to war – our congress can’t seem to find it in themselves to get up off their cots and realize that our military needs a rest too, as do the Iraqi citizens who have seen their country devastated beyond recognition by the maniacal whims of an administration that is lost in its love for self-aggrandizement and its need for public recognition regardless of whether their behavior is even remotely recognizable as human.

Where is America’s Conscience?

This country has become such a nation of followers, addicted to letting someone, anyone else make their decisions for them as long as they can continue on in their hazy stupor, wrapped in the illusion of living a celebrated life, carefree and requiring no responsibility for their actions.

Why is this administration still allowed a shred of credibility?

Why are we still acknowledging any of the members of our congress as being capable of representing any truth in their actions?

The truth is that none of our government officials are willing to admit to a mistake. None of our government officials are willing to take a stand to acknowledge that their role in sending our soldiers to war was instrumental in the greatest mistake imaginable. Our government officials continue to hope that a “surge and a prayer” will bring victory to the glittery false promises they so boldly made as they sought to assure a fearful nation to put their trust in leaders who have yet to come to terms with the true meaning of responsibility; and the war drags on as more soldiers die and more families face their loss in the heart of a nation whose beat yields a very hollow sound.

Our soldiers and their families deserve better and it is past time for American citizens to take a stand to defend the laws they have expected our soldiers to fight for in their name.

Our government leadership stands with their hands over their hearts crying crocodile tears as they tell story after story of the “brave soldiers and families” who continue to sacrifice so greatly in this country’s name – doing so with all the feeling of the new robot baby introduced as the latest “must have toy” soon to be all the rage in every American household.

Our military families stand with their hands empty and their hearts heavy as they struggle to make it through a memorial service trying to find meaning in the cause for which their loved one died –grasping at believing the words of the politicians when they are told this sacrifice has been worth the loss, simply because they don’t want to believe they lost their loved one for nothing.

America doesn’t know their loss – America knows talk. America knows drama. America knows politics.

America hasn’t the first clue about loss – and so Americans continue to lose, and soldiers continue to die while the games of politicians are acted out on the nightly news in dramatic displays of understanding with the depth of a two inch mud puddle.

Americans haven’t the first idea what it means to sacrifice – and Americans don’t care whether there was a reason for our soldiers to die or not, as long as they are not the ones who must look in the mirror and face what they have become – a nation without a conscience.

I watched soldiers board buses in the middle of the night, somber and teary eyed, even in their strength, as they left to invade a country in a war which even then made little sense. I watched them hold their heads high as families stood in the distance until the buses were no longer in view, and felt the emptiness of the darkness we were left with, wondering whether one of those men would be the first to die in a war whose cause has still not been defined.

I have walked across the sidewalks lined with almost 400 trees now, in the middle of Fort Stewart’s parade grounds; trees planted to remember lives lost. I’m sorry but I don’t see that to be an equal exchange and the memory of a lone soldier kneeling beside the base of one tree to leave a note for someone who had been so much more than a friend represents a loss this country can’t seem to comprehend.

Our soldiers deserve better than a congress that is willing to spend an entire night in a debate of futility.

Our soldiers deserve better than an administration that cares more about defending its right to hide its incompetence from us than it cares about even its own humanity, as it orders our soldiers to a war that has become nothing more than another act of covering the tracks of a leadership that has clearly demonstrated its inability to lead.

Our soldiers have been stranded in a country that is now decimated and in danger of becoming lawless because American citizens have sat idly by and allowed themselves to be led toward becoming a nation of lawlessness, and there is no end in sight unless American citizens step up and defend the laws which have given them their freedom for over two hundred years.

Where is your conscience, America?

Monica is the wife of Sgt. Kevin Benderman, a ten-year Army veteran who served a combat tour in Iraq and a year in prison for his public protest of war and the destruction it causes to civilians and to American military personnel. Please visit their website, www.BendermanDefense.org to learn more.

Last week the telluric social explosion that Peru is incubating reached its higher point when strikes and popular protests against Alan García’s government virtually paralyzed all departments and big cities on the country.

Nobody should be surprised. It was totally foregone. But it surely has taken aback both García and his pals, unable on their arrogance to gauge the socially irreversible uneasiness that they have sowed. It is just not possible to make fun of people as local oligarchy, imperialism and their servants in Peru have been doing for so long without paying for the consequences.

During the last decades Peruvians have experienced a very traumatic social process. Their historical conquests have been snatched from them one by one, including the national usufruct* of their most important natural resources – a usufruct that was achieved by the nationalist and extremely paternalistic military government of Velasco Alvarado. It must be said: the notable advances then reached on sovereignty, independence and social justice could not be explained without the social sensibility that the most radical generals had acquired. But this sensibility was due to the impact made upon their conscience by the heroic popular struggle they were ordered to repress, as the most honest and patriotic from them recognized.

The recent protests not only shine for their mass-scale and extension but for having been able to articulate multiple local struggles for peasants demands, construction of roads, defence of environment and other social issues, with regional labour strikes and entire cities taken over by nonconformists who often blocked freeways and took over airports, rail terminals and buses. The protests were agglutinated by the combative schoolteachers union’s general strike against the approval of a Bill intended to privatize education and also by strikes by miners, textile workers and departmental contingents from Peru’s Central General of Workers against the prevailing labour slavery: working days of twelve and fourteen hours without a Sunday rest, wages of hunger and terrible work conditions. The rejection of ALCA, promoted by García behind the nation’s back – so betraying one more of his campaign promises in abject genuflexion before George W. Bush – was an omnipresent factor during the strike.

Workers and peasants, together with dissimilar popular detachments, have been a decisive factor on the events with the support of both left-wing parties and Ollanta Humala’s Partido Nacionalista Peruano (Peruvian Nationalist Party). This announces promissory unitary perspectives to the cycle of struggles now open in the Andean nation, especially if they succeed in coordinating on a large front.

The rebellion’s detonating factors have been García’s failure to keep his electoral promises, his subordination to both transnational capital and the US as well as the existing obscene social inequality – while at the same time the government proclaims the success of economic growth – an 8 percent in 2006. The addition of votes obtained in 2006 by García and Humala during the second electoral round shows that a majority of electorate reject the neo-liberal model. In fact García had recognized that “it [the neoliberal model] has gone as far as it could go” and that it was necessary to change it, although once he hold office he has deepened it.

For years Peruvians have been suffering a mountain of offences, intensified by the corrupt, submissive and repressive Fujimori Administration, which happily sold off public companies and granted the most advantageous conditions to foreign investments. President Toledo followed later the same path. He, Fujimori and García were all demagogic and mendacious when they promised everything to the people during their electoral campaigns.

It is obvious that regarding García, people have reached the point of no return. It is confirmed by the message alert Peruvians have just sent him before the end of his first year in office. After his election I wrote the following:

“He is committed to Washington … so no one should expect … more than neo-liberal continuity … and most probable he won’t be able to finish his mandate as he will be toppled … by a people’s coup.”

I now maintain what I then said and I make it extensive to several pro-Yankee Latin American governments, from Rio Grande to Patagonia.

Note from the author:

*Huayco (from Quechua language): avalanche of material on the hillsides swept along by the water down the bottom of the valleys, entombing everything.

*Usufruct: “the right of enjoying all the advantages derivable from the use of something that belongs to another, as far as is compatible with the substance of the thing not being destroyed or injured.” (dictionary.com)

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

Please note: Reprints of this translation may be published on the condition that the author and original source (Axis of Logic) be cited. We also ask that the article appear without modification, linked to the original source. Thank you!

About the author: Angel Guerra Cabrera is a leading Cuban journalist who regularly appears on La Jornada (Mexico).

Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts — a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War — by quoting the “strong words” which open Roberts’ latest column: “Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”

“I don’t actually think they’re very strong,” said Roberts of his words. “I get a lot of flak that they’re understated and the situation is worse than I say. … When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] … there’s no check to it. It doesn’t have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. … The American people don’t really understand the danger that they face.”

Roberts said that because of Bush’s unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election.”

However, Roberts emphasized, “the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling.” Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. “Something’s in the works,” he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

“The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists … are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events,” Roberts continued. “Chertoff has predicted them. … The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. … You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda’s not going to do it, it’s going to be orchestrated. … The Republicans are praying for another 9/11.”

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn’t about to happen. “If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it,” Roberts replied. However, he added, “I don’t think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective,” pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

“Americans think their danger is terrorists,” said Roberts. “They don’t understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. … The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren’t able to perceive that.”

Roberts pointed out that it’s old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. “It’s so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power,” he said. “There’s no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. … Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. … A person like that would do anything.”

You might gather from a cursory examination of the wire services that “the Pentagon” has attacked Senator Hillary Clinton for requesting a briefing for her committee from the Department of Defense on contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq.

But as Fred Kaplan of Slate pointed out, it was a specific bureaucrat who criticized her, undersecretary of defense for planning Eric Edelman. Edelman wrote to Senator Clinton (text at Talkingpointsmemo):

‘ Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. … Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risk in order to achieve compromises of national reconciliation. ‘

Edelman moved into government in the Reagan era, as RightWeb explains. He was close to Richard Perle, among the inventors of the warmongering Neoconservative ideology. In 1992 he was part of the Neoconservative team (which included Paul Wolfowitz) that co-authored a security doctrine for the United States that aimed at perpetual hegemony and implied perpetual aggression to prevent the emergence of “peer” powers.

He served as Dick Cheney’s national security adviser in the early zeroes and, along with convicted felon Irv Lewis Libby, was heavily involved in getting up the fraudulent and illegal Iraq War.

He was then sent as ambassador to Turkey to shore up that front in the war effort, after the Turkish parliament denied the US military permission to march through Anatolia into neighboring Iraq. He was denounced by Turkish commentators for behaving in Ankara like a colonial viceroy rather than like an ambassador. And then when arch-Neocon and then deputy secretary of defense Doug Feith was forced out under a cloud after one of his subordinates was caught spying for Israel, Edelman was installed as his successor. In other words, Cheney arranged for one Neoconservative to replace another.

Lest anyone doubt Edelman’s conversion to the Neoconservative cause, it should be remembered that when the Government Accounting Office lambasted Feith’s open interference in intelligence analysis and his practice of actually briefing his superiors on intelligence (which is forbidden to and probably illegal for defense department bureaucrats), Edelman wrote a long defense of Feith’s corrupt practices and forced the GAO to drop actual policy recommendations for ensuring they did not recur.

In my view, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates should have fired Edelman on the spot, since his subordinate was basically announcing his commitment to the kind of shady and illegitimate practices that Feith (whom then Secretary of State Colin Powell called ‘a card-carrying member of the [Israeli] Likud [Party]’) and his allies such as Cheney used to drag the United States into an Iraq War.

So, Hillary was not criticized by a military officer. No evidence Edelman knows one end of an M-16 from another. She was not criticized by a Defense Department veteran. Edelman is just a recently installed understudy to Feith.

Who was she criticized by? Just one of the last Neoconservatives who hasn’t yet been forced out of office because he abused the public trust or who hasn’t yet slid into a criminality fostered by sublime arrogance.

By implying that Clinton is a traitor, Edelman inserted himself into a presidential campaign on the Republican side. That is not a legitimate role for the third man in charge of the Pentagon.

Edelman knows the score and knew exactly what he was doing. Gates now has a second opportunity to do the right thing and fire Edelman. Otherwise, his already difficult task of restoring morale to the Pentagon will be complicated by the realization on the part of many DoD employees and military personnel that the Pentagon is once again being deployed for petty partisan purposes that leech out the meaning and morale of their institution.

A US Marine convicted of plotting to murder an Iraqi civilian outside Baghdad last year escaped a jail sentence for his crimes, the military said.

Trent Thomas, who was found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap and murder Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania on April 26 last year, hugged his family after receiving a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.

The 25-year-old former lance corporal, who has been held in detention since the allegations first surfaced last year, could have faced a life prison sentence for his role in Mr Awad’s killing.

On Thursday prosecutors had recommended Thomas be jailed for 15 years in order to send a message to other Marines during a hearing at the Camp Pendleton base outside San Diego.

Mr Awad, a 52-year-old father of 11, was taken from his home in a late-night raid by eight US servicemen and killed before the Marines involved covered up the incident to make it look as if Mr Awad was an insurgent planting a bomb.

The killing is one of a series of incidents that have tarnished the reputation of US forces in Iraq.

In closing arguments, military prosecutor lieutenant colonel John Baker had told the jury that the evidence presented had “proven to you that Corporal Trent D. Thomas is a murderer.”

“Corporal Thomas failed when he contracted to take part in this conspiracy and to cover up and lie,” Lt-Col Baker said.

“This is a plan to kill somebody in cold blood. They (the squad members) were a mob. Vigilante justice is against the law. He (Thomas) might as well have put a signature on a death warrant.”

However, defence lawyers said Thomas’s judgment had so been impaired by post traumatic stress disorder and brain damage following three tours of duty in Iraq that he went along with the plot.

Five other servicemen had already pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to lesser charges in connection with the incident.

One of the five, Robert Pennington, was jailed for eight years in February after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping – the same charges Thomas had denied but was convicted of.