The Rag Blog

Crimes against humanity don’t happen unless it is possible to commit them with impunity. Government corruption and gross imbalances of power will bring them closer to the edge of possibility. But the anticipation of impunity must be personal and social as well as legal and political. The perpetrators need to make sense of their crimes within a positive sense of themselves.

A shared sense of impunity that can pay for mass murder and torture chambers without self-reproach requires denial, distortion, and ignorance of swaths of reality. In totalitarian societies, the state handles these chores to try to keep the people unaware of its most criminal activities.

But in societies that enjoy relative freedom of the press, citizens encounter many unsavory facts that are impossible to deny directly. When “democracies” engage in war crimes, this knowledge pressures citizens to internalize a collective sense of impunity, which must be robust enough to neutralize incriminating truth as it appears.

Most informed US citizens are aware that their government runs a global network of secret detention centers where torture is routinely employed. They also know what this activity looks like, having seen photos of their troops’ bestial behavior at Abu Ghraib. If they followed the story, they know that this behavior was also reported at several other prisons and detention centers in Iraq, under policy directives from the very top of the Pentagon.

They know about the human rights horrors of Guantanamo and Bagram Air Force base, that the CIA runs a global ring dedicated to kidnappings, “extraordinary rendition”, and torture, that hundreds of our detainees have disappeared, and so on.

It is possible to know these things by reading big city newspapers. An objective observer could glean the general shape of these facts from network television news. The American public has been told. And the public has turned the page.

It’s also a matter of record that our government has orchestrated an international economic blockade against the occupied Palestinian Authority, while Israel withholds the PA’s tax revenues. After 15 months of this policy, an economy that aid experts had previously compared to sub-Saharan Africa has imploded. Social and civic services have ground to a virtual halt. (1) Diligent readers know that the Palestinians’ already high rates of malnutrition and food insecurity are now at alarming levels. Doctors warn that skyrocketing numbers of Palestinian children are being crippled for life by chronic malnutrition. (2)

The predictable (and predicted) result of economic siege against an occupied people has been burgeoning chaos and civil strife, eroding what is left of the rule of law in the occupied territories. The informed American knows that this is happening because, in the fairest elections yet seen in the Middle East, the Palestinian people voted for the wrong party.

Yet even the best-informed Americans will be hard put to think of a similar instance in history. When have great powers conspired to destroy the government and economy of a destitute people already crumbling under another power’s long colonial war?

To know about our government’s global gulag and remain silent requires a reckoning with snatching people and repeatedly subjecting them to depraved acts of torture, knowing that those who do not die will suffer lifelong physical and psychological torment.

This reckoning appears to turn on variants of a calculation; that our collective security is worth more than the cost to a few tens of thousands of foreigners of questionable race and religion. This quantifies and prioritizes an otherwise difficult problem, allowing us to minimize the crimes by rounding our sums.

We don’t notice that this pragmatic solution also fingers the people responsible for this inhumanity: us, the ‘collective’ whose security is so valuable that it’s worth committing torture every day of the week to protect it.

To know about the economic siege against the occupied Palestinian territories and say nothing is to acquiesce in crippling collective punishment of millions of poor people, for the crime of holding a democratic election.

Unlike our straightforward torture-for-security deal in the global reign of terror against terror, our justifications for the Palestinian siege are bureaucratic and symbolic.

Hamas is on our “terror list” and therefore beyond the pale of humanity. Before we will end the blockade, Hamas must kiss the three poisoned rings of obeisance: recognize Israel’s unique “right to exist” (as a “Jewish state” that refuses to recognize the rights of its current and former Arab residents), “renounce violence” (unlike Fatah, Israel, the US, etc.), and “accept past agreements” (the long sorry record of unreciprocated PLO concessions to Israel).

The public seems to accept this flimsy hypocrisy as reason enough to force Palestinian doctors to beg for syringes and bandages. (3) It goes down as easily as we close the cell door against the screams, to ease our pathetic fear of “terror”.

Objectively, the American public is much more responsible for the crimes committed in its name than were the people of Germany for the horrors of the Third Reich. We have far more knowledge, and far greater freedom and opportunity to stop our government’s criminal behavior.

But who is even asking the presidential candidates for their positions on torture and starving the Palestinians, or what they think of the respected study that found our war had killed as many as 665,000 Iraqis, as of almost two years ago?

Do we have any excuse for our abject failure to hold our leaders and ourselves responsible for our nation’s most heinous crimes?

If we cannot bring ourselves to say, “guilty”, then “innocent by reason of insanity” appears to be our only plausible defense before a future court of the world.

We will have to claim that our minds were not our own. The corporate media-government propaganda network had grown so ubiquitous that the people were essentially subjects in a mass brainwashing experiment. Unfortunately, the experiment was a success, so increasingly absurd versions of re-manufactured reality were implanted in the public mind.

At the time, some of us complained about cover-ups, lies, all the things we weren’t being told by the media. But the public already knew too much, so our values had already been subverted to accommodate us to our national life of crime. In the reality we were fed, deceit could be virtuous, “terrorists” could destroy us, only leaders could understand the world, and in “extreme” cases the normal questions of morality did not apply. This is why we were silent while “our” government committed these terrible deeds.

The argument has some merit. The elites of this country invented modern propaganda almost a century ago. Today the immense power of corporate-political “opinion formation” in certain reaches the public mind is undeniable. We need to understand how much this system has undermined the public will and dehumanized our lives.

However, to the extent that we as individuals still possess free will and are responsible for our own values, we have no excuse for our mute acceptance of these and other national crimes against humanity. Don’t we pay for them with our taxes, continue them with our votes, and support them with our silence?

James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net.

NOTES.

1. Occupied Palestinian Territory, Malnutrition in Gaza “as bad as Zimbabwe” says Clare Short Relief Web/Christian Aid, 1/30/2003

2. Poll: 10% of Palestinian children have lasting malnutrition effects Ha’aretz/Associated Press 4/11/2007

After gathering proposals during a six-week trip around the country, members of Bolivia’s National Constituent Assembly met on April 30, 2007, to present the proposals and draft recommendations for synthesizing these proposals into a new constitution. As in Venezuela, where a new constitution followed the swearing in of leftist president Hugo Chávez, hopes were high for constitutional reform in Bolivia that could alter entrenched inequalities and facilitate the inclusion of indigenous majorities into society.

But more than nine months after this process was initiated in Bolivia under President Evo Morales it has become delayed by debates over procedure, weakened by the exclusion of social movements, and bogged down in partisan conflicts. Is it possible for radical change to be achieved through constitutional reform? How does the Constituent Assembly in Bolivia compare to Venezuela’s? These are important questions to consider, especially as other leftist leaders in the continent such as Ecuador’s Rafael Correa are embarking on a similar process of rewriting the constitution.

The demand for a constituent assembly in Bolivia originally came from indigenous social movements in the east of the country who sought greater participation in decisions about land use and ownership, distribution of natural resources, and development policy. This demand for an assembly was taken up by social movements who participated in several protests and campaigns in the early 2000s against the privatization of water (the Water Wars) and for the nationalization of gas (the Gas Wars). After successive governments were forced to resign and Morales was elected in December 2005, he initiated the process of rewriting the constitution. There were demands for new articles to address issues of land distribution, resource management, and regional autonomy, among others. On July 2, 2006, there was a nationwide election of the 255 assembly representatives, who would be in charge of rewriting the constitution.

The failure of Morales’ supporters to gain a majority during the July 2 elections of the constituent assembly introduced certain constraints for progressive forces from the start. Morales’ party Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism, MAS) won 135 seats, which was 35 seats short of the two-thirds required in order to control the assembly. Further, the exclusive control by political parties over the electoral process meant that social movements leaders not belonging to political parties were left out of the assembly. In order to participate, social movement organizations needed to gather 15,000 signatures, fingerprints and identification numbers in the space of a few weeks, while political parties were automatically included on the ballot. Key movement leaders such as Oscar Olivera, who played an important role during the 2000 Water Wars, were not even included on the ballot. Requests from indigenous organizations to elect representatives to the assembly according to their own customs were rejected; the indigenous leaders who were elected belong to MAS or other political parties.

In August 6, 2006, the Constituent Assembly was sworn in. For six months, the Constituent Assembly was not able to achieve anything, as it was caught up in a procedural debate about voting, that was finally resolved on February 14, 2007. As the assembly now embarks on the deliberation process, it will also be strongly divided along partisan lines, as a two-thirds vote is required in order to approve each of the articles, and MAS and its aligned parties do not have these numbers. Many are concerned that MAS will be forced to water down its proposals in order to seek support from the opposition parties and fulfill the required two-thirds vote.

By contrast, the rewriting of the constitution in Venezuela, which began in August 1999, was not hampered by a divided assembly, as Chávez supporters won 125 out of the 131 seats in the assembly. Like in the Bolivia case, political parties dominated the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly. Chávez’s Movimiento Quinta Republica (Fifth Republic Movement, MVR) and allied parties who formed the Polo Patriotico (Patriotic Pole), won 120 of the seats. In order to speed up the process of deliberation, the assembly met in 22 commissions rather than a larger plenary. The new constitution was completed over the next few months and approved by referendum in December 1999.

Responsibility for the disaster of Iraq lies not only with the President of the United States, but also with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president needs expert and candid military counsel. Not yes-men in uniform.

Washington was briefly abuzz last week with the news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will not recommend the reappointment of General Peter Pace for a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates is instead nominating Admiral Michael Mullen for the post. The political classes reacted first with surprise and then with approval. The New York Times editorial page declared Mullen a “good choice.” Senate confirmation seems assured.

A better idea might be to abolish the position of JCS chairman altogether — and the entire JCS system along with it.

History will render this judgment of Pace, who succeeded General Richard B Myers as chairman in September 2005: As U. S. forces became mired ever more deeply in an unwinnable war, Pace remained a passive bystander, a witness to a catastrophe that he was slow to comprehend and did little to forestall. If the position of JCS chair had simply remained vacant for the past two years, it is difficult to see how the American military would be in worse shape today.

Softening history’s verdict will be this fact: Long before Pace arrived on the scene the JCS had established a well-deserved reputation as one of the most ineffective institutions in Washington. Dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs dates virtually from the moment in 1947 when Congress passed the legislation creating it. Trying to fix the JCS soon became a cottage industry. The widespread unhappiness with Pace’s performance, culminating in his de facto firing, affirms that these various reforms have failed.

Expectations that a permanent mechanism for providing military advice could improve the quality of civilian decision-making inspired the creation of the Joint Chiefs in the first place. After all, this had seemingly been the case during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt had created a precursor of the modern JCS whose members had collaborated effectively with FDR in successfully directing a massive global war.

The creation of a permanent JCS two years after the war was intended to replicate that success: drawing on the accumulated wisdom of their profession, the new Joint Chiefs would help the president and Congress maintain adequate but economical defenses, avoid unnecessary wars, and wage effectively those wars that proved unavoidable.

Measured by these criteria, over the course of six decades the Joint Chiefs of Staff have performed miserably. Attempts to fix the institution only introduced new varieties of dysfunction, culminating in the rise of General Colin Powell, the most talented — and most problematic — officer ever to preside over the JCS. After Powell, things would only get worse.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute announced the world’s top 10 military spenders for 2006 on June 11, 2007.

The list below shows the amount that each country spent on weapons in 2005 US dollars and the share of world arms expenditures.

1. United States, $528.7 billion, 46 per cent
2. Britain, $59.2 billion, 5 per cent
3. France, $53.1 billion, 5 per cent
4. China, $49.5 billion, 4 per cent
5. Japan, $43.7 billion, 4 per cent
6. Germany, $37.0 billion, 3 per cent
7. Russia, $34.7 billion, 3 per cent
8. Italy, $29.9 billion, 3 per cent
9. Saudi Arabia, $29.0 billion, 3 per cent
10. India, $23.9 billion, 2 per cent

06/16/07 “ICH” — — -Some people think that anyone who disagrees with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is either a bleeding-heart liberal appeaser, a George W. Bush hater, a blame America firster, an underminer of the troops, a traitor, or a geopolitical naif.

To those who see opponents of the war as fitting into one, several, or all of these categories, I say read this page. I will make no arguments herein, nor even commentary. I will twist no data nor spin any tales. I will even include some of the comments and arguments made by the administration and its supporters.

Instead of arguing against the war, I will try to offer a fairly complete account of the relevant facts one might wish to consider when evaluating America’s policy in Iraq. Especially for those who continually claim that they, more than others, have the best interests of the troops at heart – but actually for all citizens in a democracy – it is incumbent upon us to educate ourselves about this most important of national policies.

Those troops are being maimed and are dying on our behalf every day. The very least we can do is spend a brief amount of our time learning about this question so that we can decide whether their continued sacrifices are justified.

So, in that spirit – and as the Founders themselves said – “let Facts be submitted to a candid world”.

* Mesopotamia has long been a playground for great powers. The British invaded the area in 1917, causing a widespread revolt of the Iraqi people. Britain later ruled under a League of Nations mandate that produced the artificial creation of the country Iraq (and Kuwait), and continued to control oil production in the region. Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour said at the time, “I do not care under what system we keep this oil, but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that this oil should be available”.

* Saddam Hussein started his career as a political thug, on the payroll of the CIA during the 1950s and 1960s, torturing and murdering Iraqi leftists whose names were provided by American intelligence, and participating in an armed coup against the Iraqi government.

* In 1972, the United States conspired with Iran and Israel to support a revolt of the Kurdish people within Iraq against their government.

* In 1980, the United States provided encouragement, weapons, intelligence, satellite data and funding for Saddam’s Iraq to invade Iran, launching an eight year war – the longest and probably the bloodiest of the post-WWII era.

* During this war, Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to improve relations with Saddam. The United States then restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, despite the administration’s clear awareness that Saddam was using chemical weapons at the time.

* The Reagan administration also knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds rising up again against Baghdad (this was the incident George W. Bush would later repeatedly invoke, saying of Saddam, “He gassed his own people”), but nevertheless authorized expanded sales to Iraq of highly sophisticated equipment that could be used to manufacture weapons, only two months after the Halabja incident.

* George H. W. Bush equated Saddam to Hitler. But, in the wake of the 1990-91 Gulf War, after the elder Bush had encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rise up against the regime, he abandoned them, leaving them to be slaughtered by Saddam’s military, in many cases right before the eyes of US forces who were ordered not to intervene.

* The senior Bush had a chance after that war to occupy Iraq and topple Saddam. He chose not to because, in his own words and those of his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, “Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq … would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. …furthermore, we had been self‑consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post‑cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.”

* The younger Bush, George W., never asked his father for advice on Iraq. Instead, he said: “You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.” Bush has also stated, “I’m driven with a mission from God. …God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq…’ And I did.”

* George W. Bush gave twenty interviews in 1999 to Mickey Herskowitz, a friend of the Bush family contracted at the time to ghostwrite his autobiography. Bush was thinking about invading Iraq at that time, saying “‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander‑in‑chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz said that Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were shaped by Dick Cheney’s ideas, based on the power and glory Margaret Thatcher earned from her Falklands War: “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Herskowitz also reports this interesting note from his interviews with Bush: “He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake. That was one of the keys to being a leader.”

* During the presidential campaign of 2000, candidate Bush said very little about Iraq, and certainly never suggested the need for urgent action. Somehow, though, in just two years time – during which, if anything, Iraq actually got weaker, not stronger – Saddam and his country became a perilous and imminent threat that had to be addressed immediately.

* Former members of his own cabinet have revealed that Bush planned to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his administration, well before 9/11. All discussions were about the how of doing it, never about the why, the justification, the costs or the wisdom.

* Bush claims he is fighting a war on terror in response to 9/11. But in the first eight months of his administration, his own top terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, could not get a meeting of cabinet-level security officials to discuss terrorism. They finally met, one week before 9/11, and then the meeting was ‘hijacked’ into discussing Iraq instead. In 2004, Clarke said “Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re‑election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.” Clarke is a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, and also served in the administrations of Bush’s father, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

* Right after 9/11, according to Clarke, “The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’ He came back at me and said, ‘Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection’. And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report. It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again’.”

* Iraq was not in league with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, whom the administration blamed for the 9/11 attacks. As Richard Clarke put it, “There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever”. Indeed, the opposite is true. Al Qaeda is a Muslim fundamentalist organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the secular regimes ruling Islamic countries, precisely what Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was. Indeed, even the highly religious Saudi Arabia (from which 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers came, none of them being Iraqis) is under violent pressure from al Qaeda for not being theocratic enough.

* Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Even George Bush has now admitted this. However, over the last six years, and still to this day, Bush constantly conflates the two in almost every speech he gives, to the point where in 2003 sixty-nine percent of Americans came to believe that Saddam had been behind the 9/11 attacks. There can be little doubt that the administration used 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq, though they had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

Taguba knew his report would make him unpopular: “If I lie, I lose. And, if I tell the truth, I lose.”

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse. Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of the abuses depicted on the CD. It said that approximately ten soldiers were shown, involved in acts that included:

Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.

Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything—just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

On January 20th, the chief of staff at Central Command sent another e-mail to Admiral Keating, copied to General Craddock and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq. The chief of staff wrote, “Sir: update on alleged detainee abuse per our discussion. DID IT REALLY HAPPEN? Yes, currently have 4 confessions implicating perhaps 10 soldiers. DO PHOTOS EXIST? Yes. A CD with approx 100 photos and a video—CID has these in their possession.”

In subsequent testimony, General Myers, the J.C.S. chairman, acknowledged, without mentioning the e-mails, that in January information about the photographs had been given “to me and the Secretary up through the chain of command. . . . And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described.”

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’ ” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don’t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and I didn’t know.

“And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,” Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

In response to detailed queries about this article, Colonel Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an e-mail, “The department did not promulgate interrogation policies or guidelines that directed, sanctioned, or encouraged abuse.” He added, “When there have been abuses, those violations are taken seriously, acted upon promptly, investigated thoroughly, and the wrongdoers are held accountable.” Regarding early warnings about Abu Ghraib, Colonel Keck said, “Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has stated publicly under oath that he and other senior leaders were not provided pictures from Abu Ghraib until shortly before their release.” (Rumsfeld, through an aide, declined to answer questions, as did General Craddock. Other senior commanders did not respond to requests for comment.)

This is not a story about a woman who raised four children, sent one off to war, and collapsed one day in a fit of screaming at the news that he was dead.

This is not a piece to describe how that woman tried to stay awake for the next three days so as not to have to scream like that again after waking and then remembering that news.

There will be no attempt in this piece to comprehend the maddening indecency of the overgrown frat-boy president who sent her son to kill and die for lies and still had the gall to call her “Mom” and sits day after day– to this day –as the self-appointed, unrestrained king of the world.

This is not a piece about a woman who exposed her grief and her rawest nerves, who sacrificed a twenty-nine year marriage and time with her remaining children, to a country calloused to the daily loss of life and succeeded in stirring many to their feet, into the streets, and to the tops of their lungs.

This is not a piece about how this woman parked herself in the dusty heat of a ditch in Texas and said yes to enough speaking engagements and phone calls from soldiers and late nights with grieving parents to send her own life teetering near its edge because she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t give everything she could to prevent another mother from having to experience the loss that she knew.

This piece is not even about how her loss and her grief were not confined to her son, but extended each day further, to include the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, and further yet, to those cast in the impoverished margins of our planet–including the thousands of children dying each day from starvation–as the U.S. obscenely spends hundreds of billions on constructing and deploying the machinery of mass death.

Nor is this about the millions who learned this woman’s name, whose hearts broke with hers, but whose spirits were lifted and consciences were challenged by the way she seized the moral high ground and much of the spotlight from the world’s biggest liars and most pitiless killers because she was right and she was fearless–to hell with the odds.

This piece isn’t even simply about a culture that demonizes and attacks such a person, that makes their every word or slightest gesture grist for the dishonest mill of the small-minded bloggers, the jones for cruelty of the war-planners, and fascist propagandizing of the major media mouthpieces.

Nor is this about a society that props up mothers as “keepers of the flame,” a counter-balance meant to excuse the war-makers, only to turn on them and call them “whores,” should they dare to do more than weep silently.

This is not merely about this woman’s refusal to be corralled into “realistic” and empire-bound strategies like timetables or phased-redeployment, about her righteous refusal to excuse the funding of the war, about her simple and righteous insistence that the slaughter and torture of human beings stop right now.

And, no, this is not mainly about the many questions that she herself ran up against and has put straight up in front of the movement and that all too many don’t want to speak to. Like why the Democrats won’t bend to the will of the people, or what kind of system only allows for two sides of the pro-war position, or what to do about an American people who are well on their way to becoming Good Germans. Those questions are crucial and agonizing and there are answers to them that can be found or forged. And there is a need for a movement that encourages the debate to rage around these questions and insists on honestly and unsparingly confronting reality. A movement that insists on getting to, and telling the people, the truth.

No, throwing up your hands is never the right response. But to be perfectly honest, this piece is not about what Cindy Sheehan should be doing. Not when really there are 300 million other people in this country who each morning wake up with profound choices to make–and who make them every day, whether they know it or not.

So, no, this article is not about Cindy Sheehan.

This article is about you.

Reading on your computer screen. Smudging black ink off the newsprint in your hands. Breathing in and out, your chest rising even as the chests of other human beings who happen to have been born atop huge reservoirs of oil fall still, as their breath is stolen, as their land is ravaged, as their girls learn to fear their budding breasts and widening hips under the leer of the occupier’s eye, as their fathers lose their minds trying to comprehend the life-danger they’ve become to their own children for being of a different religion than their mother, as the psyche and politics and view of what kind of world is possible, as a whole country and region is forever marked by the apparent indifference of way too many Americans to their sustained destruction… as millions who are also heart-sick flirt with the devastating and impermissible comfort of throwing up their own hands and looking away from the war zone…

This article is about you–because frankly, there is not enough space and not enough time and not enough ink and not enough trees to make enough paper to hold all the ways that the roadblocks hit by a woman like Cindy are a sign of failure. Not of the failure of the possibility for change, nor the failure of those who put everything on the line to make all this stop, but the failure of a society that does not cherish and have room for a woman like her. And the failure of continuing on a course that does not fundamentally challenge the killing confines of the choices this system puts before us.

So, again, this is about you–whether you will hide behind and resign yourself because of the faltering of another or whether you will step into the breech.

This article is about what you think about and do when you wake up each morning. About whose lives you value and prioritize. About whether it is sufficient to register disapproval or whether you are responsible for stretching your limits, risking friendships and family if you must, confronting discomforting truths about this political system, and whether you will dare to inspire and challenge and set an example of living for and impacting something bigger than yourself.

This is about whether you know enough and have seen enough of other people’s sons and daughters dying in the service of empire to say without equivocation that all this must halt. This is about whether you will plunge into and confront the dead-ends that have led so many to disorientation–whether you will look deeper, consider radical solutions, even ones you might once have dismissed.

And, yes, it can seem at times like we are hurling our soft bodies and our embattled dreams up against cold rock, and like the forces aligned against us are made of impenetrable marble. But marble has fissures and faultlines and cracks deep beneath the surface and these can be located and the marble itself can be pried apart by the determined action of millions who dare. So I am struck again with the truth and the enormity of our choices captured in the final words of the World Can’t Wait Call: “History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.”

The war is still wrong.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Diverting sugar and maize for biofuels could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths from hunger worldwide, the United Nations’ food envoy warned on Thursday.

Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, accused the European Union (EU), Japan and the United States of “total hypocrisy” for promoting biofuels to cut their own dependency on imported oil.

Fears over climate change have boosted the demand for alternative fuels in wealthy countries, but the rise of biofuel has been criticized by some who say it will put a squeeze on land needed for food.

“There is a great danger for the right to food by the development of biofuels,” Ziegler told a news briefing held on the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“It (the price) will be paid perhaps by hundreds of thousands of people who will die from hunger,” he added.

However, a senior official at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said recently that biofuels were getting a bad press and that rather than being a threat to the poor, they could boost food production.

Ziegler said that more and more sugar cane plantations in northern and eastern Brazil were being used for biofuels, leaving less land for subsistence farmers.

Brazil is the world’s biggest producer of cane-based fuel ethanol, most of which is destined for the domestic market to meet rapidly growing demand from flex-fuel motorists.

In some regions of Mexico, the price of maize rose by 16 percent last year, because of rising demand for use in biofuels, according to the independent U.N. envoy.

“I can understand the Brazilian and Mexican policies which as very indebted countries want to earn hard currency….But from the point of view of the right to food, which must be the decisive one, it is a catastrophe,” Ziegler said.

Some 854 million people worldwide — or one in six — suffer from hunger, according to the sociologist and former Swiss parliamentarian who cited U.N. figures.

Ziegler said famine and chronic hunger were driving many in sub-Saharan Africa to risk their lives on rickety boats bound for Europe, often Spain’s Canary Islands or Lampedusa, Italy.

An estimated 2 million people try to enter the European Union (EU) illegally every year, and about 2,000 of them drown in the Mediterranean Sea, he said.

“Nobody knows how many thousands of other people have died trying to make the journey, but bodies regularly wash up on the beaches or fishermen catch them in their nets,” he said.

May was the worst month for US fatalities in Iraq since 2004, April the worst for British soldiers since the invasion. Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to Washington in the run up to the invasion is the latest establishment figure to call for a rapid US and British withdrawal. Piers Mostyn, for Socialist Resistance, asked GILBERT ACHCAR to provide a balance sheet on Bush’s last ditch “surge” of US troops since the New Year and recent developments in Lebanon.

Gilbert Achcar: It has been above all a surge in bloodshed and a major failure if we measure it by the Bush administration’s goal — nothing short of turning the whole Iraqi failure into a success story. That’s what they tried to achieve through the “surge”, chiefly through a lot of spin. But it very blatantly failed.

The major goal was to create conditions through which they would change the political alignments in Iraq and set up a new alliance that would be close to the US and enable Washington to better manoeuvre in the country. Moqtada al-Sadr was a chief target of this whole operation and we can measure its failure by the way he is now back and very much prominent in the news, after having vanished for a while.

PM: What is the significance of his re-emergence?

GA: I see it — above all — as an indication of the failure of the so-called surge. Knowing that the “surge” targeted him, al-Sadr went into hiding and instructed his followers to adopt a low profile and avoid any direct confrontation with US troops. He wouldn’t clash head-on with US forces as he did previously in 2004 at a very great cost. Then he came to the verge of being arrested or killed and his movement crushed militarily. So he carefully avoided a repeat of the same pattern this time.

He understood a very elementary lesson: that he shouldn’t face the US military frontally because they have overwhelming firepower and weaponry. Instead, when they attack, the right thing to do is to retreat to safe ground or even go into hiding. This is an elementary guerrilla tactic — and the Sadrists applied it quite successfully, also managing to manoeuvre politically quite shrewdly so that they maintained their political clout and even increased it, while the hatred for US troops sharpened as a result of the so-called surge.

PM: He recently made a speech which had a more nationalist anti-sectarian edge, does this signal any change?

GA: I think he probably came to the conclusion that it is high time for him to renew or resume the political stance that he had been following until late 2005 or early 2006. The February 2006 Samarra attack [a devastating Sunni sectarian attack on the Shia mosque there] was a watershed in the Iraqi situation. That is when the image of al-Sadr turned from one of non-sectarian Arab-cum-Iraqi nationalist into one of leader of a Shiite sectarian militia.

He is trying now to restore his previous image. He probably believes that the climate is right for a new attempt — after over a year during which the Shiites let off sectarian steam very intensively in response to the sectarian attacks they had suffered.

PM: Are you saying that the tit for tat sectarian escalation may have played its course and that Moqtada al-Sadr could return to a more nationalist discourse?

GA: Yes precisely. He probably feels that things can calm down now, at a time when it’s more urgent than ever for him to rebuild his image. He needs to reach out to the Sunni Arab Iraqis, because he understands that there is a major political operation going on of which he is a target.

The two Kurdish leaders have recently made statements warning against an ongoing “plot” that aims at overthrowing the Maliki government. The other man who stands at the centre of this “plot” is none other than former US-designated prime minister Iyad Allawi — the closest, most reliable stooge that the US and Britain have in Iraq.

So the situation is getting very sensitive right now. We are at a crucial turning point in the Iraqi situation, facing a decisive moment in the coming weeks and months. And that’s when Moqtada al-Sadr has decided to go back on the offensive politically, which is definitely a clever thing to do for him.

PM: Are there any signs of a response from amongst the Sunni opposition groups?

GA: Well there are. Al-Sadr’s new tone is generally welcomed by the nationalists –in contrast to the sectarians — among Arab Sunnis. If you put aside the al-Qaida type of anti-US anti-Shiite fanatics, there are two types of forces among the Iraqi Arab Sunnis: on the one hand, those chiefly spurred on by sectarian and anti-Iranian views, which are close to the Saudis and willing to make deals with the US against the Shiites.

And, on the other hand, those who consider the US as the main, most dangerous, enemy and who are therefore willing to make an alliance with anti-US Shiite forces — provided (as the fear of Iran is common to all Sunnis) these are forces that they deem to be independent enough from Iran.

That is the case of Moqtada al-Sadr. Although he has obvious links with Tehran, which backed him increasingly over the last few years, he retains a certain degree of political autonomy and is known to be fiercely independent. His followers don’t shy away from making statements criticising Iran. For instance, criticising the recent meeting between Iranian and US

representatives over the issue of Iraq as unacceptable meddling into Iraq’s affairs — as did various forces among the Sunnis.

PM: Given your earlier comments about the failure of the US surge and this sensitive critical political juncture you are describing, do you think we are heading for a crunch point later in the summer? A combination of perhaps a resurgent nationalist unity with the transparent failings of the American military offensive, leading to a decisive point where the Americans will have to change course radically or even withdraw?

GA: It can’t be so simple. I have been describing what al-Sadr is trying to do. I didn’t imply that he is going to succeed. He can certainly find a certain measure of success, but a major success allowing him to be the winner in this whole confrontation is quite difficult to predict at this point. He’s facing quite difficult conditions.

The Allawi operation is still going on. It is essentially an attempt at building a cross-sectarian political coalition using the lure of US support in order to topple the Maliki government and bring Allawi back to the helm as the “strong man” and saviour of Iraq. Although I wouldn’t bet one penny on the success of this operation, you can’t exclude it totally. You can’t exclude some kind of coup that would be backed by the US and the segment of Iraqi military forces that the US believes to be under their reliable control (if there are any actually).

What is certain though is that we will see crucial changes in the coming period. For the Bush administration, the ongoing “surge” is a double or quits operation. They are under intensive pressure in the US. Although we have seen how the Democrats have shied away from pressing forward the issue of a timetable for troop withdrawal — the issue of Iraq is prominent in the presidential election and US public opinion has become much opposed to the continuation of the war.

The Bush administration is playing what appears to be its last card. At the same time, the administration is covering its back by reaching out to Tehran — in a very limited way for a start — for a possible accommodation, as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton report.

PM: They don’t have another plan up their sleeves which they can pull out?

GA: I can’t see what it could be, other than the operation with Allawi. That’s the only trump card they could still use.

PM: Isn’t this plan to install a new strong man almost a return to the Saddam era, except under the control of a nominal Shia?

GA: A return to the Saddam era would be impossible. You can’t reinvent that dictatorship. The situation in Iraq is such that whoever tried to play “Saddam Two” would have a very hard time and would certainly fail. I don’t think that the mass of the Shiite population is ready to accept a new dictatorship, unless it comes out of their own ranks — and Allawi is widely perceived as a traitor, a former Baathist furthermore.

For them to accept a dictator who is backed by the US and appears to prevent the Shiites from reaping the fruits of what they have been waiting for ages — their empowerment as a majority — is quite out of the question, I believe. Iran, moreover, is also part of the game and it won’t accept a scenario of that kind, at least under the present conditions.

So I can’t see any winning strategy or winning card for the US in Iraq. The question is not whether the US can achieve victory or not. The failure is already there and is fundamentally irreversible. The problem is how much further harm they can do to Iraq by trying to implement crazy schemes that are doomed from the start.

PM: Turning to Lebanon, has the siege and bombardment of the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp been a relative sideshow simply involving a small Sunni fundamentalist group or does it have deeper connections? The American journalist Seymour Hersh has suggested that “Fatah al Ansar” was originally backed by the Lebanese government and that this is a sort of “blowback”.

GA: There are two kinds of “conspiracy theory” on this issue in Lebanon: on the one hand, the pro-US or “governmental majority” forces claim that “Fatah al-Islam” are manipulated by the Syrian services. They claim that the recent clashes were provoked in order to counter the international tribunal on the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri that Washington, Paris and London had just moved through the UN Security Council.

On the other hand, you have those, many of whom refer to the article by Hersh, who claim that “Fatah al-Islam” has been manipulated by the governmental majority itself, and behind them the Saudis and the United States.

There are only a few facts that can be taken as true. It is known, for instance, that the key leader of “Fatah al-Islam” had been jailed in Syria previously — so there is no solid ground to suspect that the Syrian regime stands behind his group, except for the fact that the situation flared up just after the UNSC voted on the international tribunal.

It is true as well that this brand of Sunni fanatical fundamentalism is usually linked to Saudi sources, whether official or unofficial. It might well be that, at some point, the Hariri bloc had a relationship with such a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist group, which adheres to an anti-Shiite sectarian tradition (and has eventually joined al-Qaida), with a view to a possible all-out confrontation with the Lebanese Shiites mainly represented by Hezbollah. But from that to infer that they are manipulating this group is also quite baseless.

I think that whatever ignited the confrontation, one thing is obvious: it has been immediately exploited for a very definite agenda. This was (1) to test the ability of the Lebanese army to confront other forces, starting with the easiest — Palestinians, against whom Lebanese Shiite and Sunni soldiers alike can be united with no major risk of split along sectarian lines; and (2) to get the army to enter this Palestinian refugee camp in Northern Lebanon and take control of it under the pretext of fighting this group.

This is why at some point Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, came out saying that he considered the penetration by the Lebanese army of the camp to be a “red line.” Why did he say so, despite Hezbollah initially expressing its solidarity with the Lebanese army? Because he realised that this Palestinian camp has become a testing ground for the ability of the Lebanese army to implement a task that is part of UNSC Resolution 1559 (sponsored by Washington, London and Paris in 2004) calling for the disarming of both the Palestinian camps and Hezbollah.

Nasrallah became aware that the battle of Nahr el-Bared is but a first step on a path that leads ultimately to the fight against his own forces. You can see that in the broad display of active solidarity with the Lebanese army in the ongoing confrontation: Washington is sending weapons and inciting all its allies to send whatever hardware the Lebanese army needs.

PM: More broadly what is the current state of play as we approach the first anniversary of last year’s war? Has there been any shift on the ground since the ceasefire?

GA: No, it’s been a complete stalemate. The situation is at a real dead end, which means that it is tense and dangerous. For months now, the country has been on the verge of a sectarian explosion, which could ignite new bloody fighting or even a new civil war.

Hezbollah’s strategy got bogged down completely. This is a result of the limitation inherent in their sectarian view of things, in their conception of power sharing among sectarian communities and existing power blocs. Through a series of clumsy positions, in which their alliance with the Syrian dictatorship played no minor role, they comforted the present sectarian division in this country between Shiites and Sunnis.

Although at some point, it appeared at the beginning of the Israeli offensive last summer that there was a reduction in sectarianism, it soon came back very strongly. Hezbollah’s sectarian nature made it easy for the Hariri camp to exploit Sunni sectarian feelings in very blatant ways. So the whole situation has got bogged down and the opposition has lost the political initiative that they had when they started their mobilisation at the beginning of last winter.

PM: When you say the opposition you mean the movement led by Hezbollah and Aoun against the pro-Western government?

GA: The Shiite Hezbollah and Amal, the Maronite General Aoun and many other smaller forces. In sectarian terms, that means the overwhelming majority of the Shiites plus a sizeable fraction of the Christians in alliance against the majority of the Sunnis, plus the majority of the Druze and another fraction of the Christians. This is the configuration of forces in Lebanon as it stands now — as sectarian as it used to be at the peak of the civil war.

06/13/07 “ICH” — — – It’s funny, in a sad sick almost perverse sort of way, but it seems the only people who listen to George Bush and take him seriously anymore is the insurgency. Several months after his royal hind ass made his now famous “bring em on” statement the insurgency issued their own proclamation saying in affect, we have brought it on do you have anything else you wish to say to us?

The on going political battle over Bushes insane surge, like Custer wishing for ten more men or Westmoreland’s asking for 500,000 more. It belies someone’s ignorance and inability to understand tactic’s and by thinking that what is needed is just more warm bodies to storm the enemy trenches they create a recipe for a blood bath and the certainty of defeat in Iraq.

The siege strategy was used during the crusades against the middle-aged castles of Acre the ultimate irony is the insurgencies battle plan was once used by Saladin the great, it was used by the Russians at Stalingrad and by McArthur in the South Pacific and by the Afghans against the Russians etc. You isolate your enemy and cut him off from resupply or make resupply so difficult that he has to use a disproportionate amount of troops to guaranty his supply lines.

The American forces in Baghdad’s Green zone have no airstrip and are fourteen miles from the airport through Baghdad’s winding ancient narrow roads. General Von Paulus in Stalingrad was promised the Lufftewaffe would keep him supplied but it was an idle boast. The Americans have a more powerful air force to be sure but also a greater dependence on fuel and commodities. The high tech war machine like all war machines is only as good as it’s supply and there is another possibility to consider.

Suspected Sunni insurgents bombed and badly damaged a span over the main north-south highway leading from Baghdad on Tuesday – the third bridge attack in as many days. The attack occurred 35 miles south of Baghdad and just six miles south of a bridge brought down on Sunday by what was believed to be a suicide truck bomber.

On Monday, a parked truck bomb destroyed a bridge carrying traffic over the Diyala River in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. There were no casualties, but vehicles were being forced to detour to a road running through insurgent controlled territory to reach important nearby cities.

Earlier in the month a bomb attack heavily damaged the Sarhart Bridge, a key crossing 90 miles north of the Capital

In March and April, three of Baghdad’s 13 bridges over the Tigris River were bombed. The attacks were blamed on Sunni insurgent or attempts to divide the city’s predominantly Shiite east bank from the mostly Sunni western side of the river but far more likely it was an attempt to negate the American strength in armored vehicles

Is the campaign against the bridges an attempt to lay siege to Baghdad? Or like Khe San a generation before an elaborate ruse to draw attention away prior to a larger coming Tet style offensive. In either case the surge has begun but it has been the insurgents who have surged rather than the US.

At Stalingrad the German panzers became almost useless in the narrow streets, this army like the Americans had been designed for lighting war not for urban street fighting. A thousand eyes kept the Russian army aware of every German move and allowed Russian snipers the choicest targets.

As the occupying power in Iraq the US is responsible for keeping the residents of Baghdad fed and watered. The millions of Baghdad will create just one more burden on US forces already overburdened. Thus the American surge is already defeated without the ability to move freely the already over stretched forces will become unable to support it’s outposts. They will fall one by one just like the firebases around Khe San and the crusaders castles in Lebanon.

At Khe San the US decided to use the massive force of B52 attacks but the focus had already shifted away from victory to self-defense. The enemy had captured something far more precious than a firebase they had taken away from the Americans the certainty of victory. As the North Vietnamese army slipped away and the US forces emerged from their bunkers to claim a hollow victory, a sucker holding the bag on a snipe hunt slowly realizing he has been had. To spend huge amounts of blood and treasure to defend a muddy hill top not for a victory but only to stave off defeat.

The American surge is the latest in an attempt to stave off defeat; the moral battle was lost long ago. The political battle a stalemate, between the forces of timid stupidity verses the forces of entrenched insanity. The greatest megalomaniac’s of the 20th century had drawn up battle plans for the conquest of England and one of the cornerstones of operation sea lion was in avoiding London. Even a madman knew a large metropolis would swallow an army, and as the tide turned at Stalingrad the mad man began to cashier his own generals.

For in his madness it could only be the generals who were not following his orders not the fatal flaw in his own tactics. The mad man brooded over his scale model of the new Berlin much like the current mad man broods over his scale model of what the Iraqi’s call Bush’s palace, the Vatican city sized embassy in Baghdad which will probably never be occupied or at best be used a last redoubt.

Von Paulus pleaded for permission to withdraw and was advised that where a German foot stood a German foot stayed. The politics of cut and run verses the personal pride of the leader, the madness of leadership who view military tactic’s as personal affronts. As Nathan Bedford Forrest succinctly observed “getting there firstest with the mostest.” In regards to our own current surge without the firstest the mostest becomes a mute point the mostest with the latest is a pointless exercise.

As the siege continues the US forces will become more dependent on helicopters for re-supply and will begin to lose them in greater numbers like Von Paulus they will assume a defensive position more interested in holding positions rather than taking. Will the US then call in B52 strikes on Baghdad to try and break the siege? Or will it try sending a reinforcing column to break the siege or will they finally admit the inevitable and withdraw?

BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.

American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.

American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants’ extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases, Sunni groups have agreed to alert American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps.

Hedy Epstein, 82, was born in Germany in 1924(1). She was the only child of parents who died in the Nazi extermination camps. She is a tireless worker for human rights and for the dignity of all people.

Hedy decided to visit Palestine in 2003. She returned terribly shocked with what she had seen there, women and children defenceless, Palestinians locked up into ghettos, an entire people brutalized.

She had learned to love the people that she met, and was determined to tell the world of the injustices she had seen. Palestinians were being dispossessed of their land, removed from the homes that they had lived in for centuries. Nothing that anyone has done, no protests that have been made, has made Israel stop its treatment of the Palestinians. In fact, it has become worse every time Hedy has returned.

So, she is joining other human rights advocates who are sailing to Gaza on the boat, FREE GAZA(2) to demand justice for the Palestinians, and a correction of 60 years of oppression by the Israelis.

Silvia Cattori: Your entire life has been devoted to justice. But, since 2003, you have increased that commitment by advocating for justice for the Palestinians. I understand you are going to take some risks to make the world aware of the crimes perpetrated against them!?

Hedy Epstein: I was invited to join the Free Gaza boat by the organizers, and I feel honoured that I was invited to join (3).

Silvia Cattori: Entering the waters of Gaza with Palestinian, international, and Israeli peace activists is sure to be a wonderful project; but it won’t it be full of tension? Are you not anxious about participating in such an expedition?

Hedy Epstein: Of course, I have some concerns. But, does life insure that nothing will happen to me? You know, tomorrow morning when I get out of bed, I might feel so sleepy that I’ll trip over my own feet and fall down and break my back. So what am I going to do, remain in bed for the rest of my life? No.

There are no guarantees in life. Perhaps no one should put herself in a situation that’s dangerous. But my participation is a small contribution that I can make compared to the sufferings that the Palestinians endure every single day. And, if by doing this, we can tell the world what is happening there, then it’s worth going. I’m 82 years old, and I have lived, most of the time, a good life. Let me make a contribution before it’s too late.

Silvia Cattori: This boat going to Gaza coincides with the 60th anniversary of the departure from Marseille of the EXODUS. Don’t you think it’s somewhat controversial to be in a boat sailing to the same place as the EXODUS?

Hedy Epstein: No. What I’m doing is what I believe in, and what I stand for. In some quarters, especially in the mainstream Jewish community, it looks like I’m a traitor, a “self-hating Jew”. Nonsense. I don’t hate myself. Several years ago, the editor of a Jewish weekly newspaper said to me that I shouldn’t have gone to Palestine. Instead I should have gone to Israel to volunteer in a hospital where people were being treated for injuries as a result of a Palestinian suicide bombing.

And I said I’d be happy to volunteer, but if I did help in an Israeli hospital, would he go with me to a Palestinian hospital and help people who have been injured as a result of what the Israelis have done? He was appalled. “In Palestine?” I said, “Yes, you can, I have been there, so you can go there also, and when you do that, then I will be happy to work in your hospital.” That was several years ago, and I have never heard from him yet.

Silvia Cattori: Why did you choose to advocate in a place where the Israelis are so opposed to your involvement?

Hedy Epstein: Let me give you a little bit of my background, so that you will know how I’ve gotten to where I am today. I was born into a Jewish family in Germany. When Hitler came to power, I was eight years old. My parents very quickly realised that Germany was not a safe place for them to stay and to raise a family. They were willing to go anywhere, and they tried desperately to leave. But they were NEVER willing to go to Palestine, because they were ardent anti-Zionists.

I didn’t understand at the time what Zionism was and what being an anti- Zionist was, but I did know that in the village where I lived, which is Kittenheim in South-West Germany, there was a Zionist Jewish group, and I was not allowed to participate in it. I was the only Jewish child in the village who didn’t become a part of that group. Since my parents were ardent anti- Zionists, even though I didn’t understand what this really meant, I was an ardent anti-Zionist also.

Then, in 1939, thanks to my parent’s great love for me, I was able to leave Germany on a children transport to England. When I left in May 1939, it was the last time that I saw my parents and other family members. They all died in the camps. I came to United States in May 1948, about the same time that Israel became a state. I had some mixed feelings about that event. On the one hand I was very happy there was a place for people to go who had survived the holocaust, who perhaps didn’t want or weren’t able to return to their places of origin, but on the other hand, remembering my parents’ ardent anti-Zionism, I was worried that somewhere down the road, no good was going to come of this. What that trouble might be, I couldn’t even imagine. But I was new in the United States, and there were new things to learn. So Israel was on the backburner and remained there for years.

In 1982, I received my personal wake-up call: the terrible massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in Lebanon. I needed to find out what the tragedy was all about, why it happened, and who was responsible. Then, when I found out, I needed to learn more about the history of what happened between 1948, when Israel became a state, and 1982 in Sabra and Chatila. When I was learning, I realized that I hadn’t paid attention to what was going on with Israel. And the more I learned and the more I understood, the more I became disturbed by what the Israeli government was doing, and doing in my name.