The Rag Blog

Every American who voted Republican shares responsibility for the great evil America has brought to the Middle East.

The evil that America brought to Iraq transcends the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of the lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis.

The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.

The reasons given for the American invasion of Iraq have been exposed as lies, revealing America as either a country of fools and idiots or of war criminals. Worldwide polls show that America is no longer regarded as a guiding light but is tied with Israel as the second greatest threat to world stability.

The nuclear-armed Russians, alarmed by America’s gratuitous aggression and interference in Russian and Middle Eastern internal affairs and by Bush’s aggressive withdrawal on June 13, 2002 from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, no longer see the US as a partner in peace but as a dangerous militaristic aggressor. The chance for understanding and trust with Russia has been destroyed by the stupid Bush administration. The White House Moron, who cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, believes he can run over Russia.

Former CIA director George “Slam-Dunk” Tenet writes in a new book, At the Center of the Storm: My years at the CIA that Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives caused America to invade Iraq without ever holding a serious debate about whether Iraq was a threat. Tenet writes: “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.”

Every British ambassador in the Middle East warned the Government that invading Iraq would be a “nightmare” and turn popular opinion against the West, a former envoy has told The Daily Telegraph.

Sir Ivor Roberts, now the president of Trinity College, Oxford, saw a selection of the telegrams sent by Britain’s envoys in the Middle East when he served as ambassador to Ireland before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

As Britain and America massed their forces on Iraq’s borders, these telegrams to the Foreign Office contained the ambassadors’ considered advice on the wisdom and likely consequences of going to war. Some were circulated to every British envoy in the European Union and reached Sir Ivor’s desk in Dublin.

To the best of his memory, the assessments offered by Britain’s representatives in the Muslim world were unanimous. “Every ambassador in a Middle East post accurately predicted what a nightmare invading Iraq would be,” he said.

“The telegrams I saw were full of doom and gloom about the consequences.”

Sir Ivor did not “check them off one by one”, but believes that every ambassador “from the Arab world or the Muslim world was anticipating how disastrously it would play in their countries at both public and government levels”.

Sir Ivor did not see all the secret telegrams emerging from Britain’s embassies in the Middle East. But British ambassadors in EU countries were on the Foreign Office circulation list for “quite a large amount of traffic”.

LONDON – Britain‘s defense secretary during the Iraq war says London underestimated Vice President Dick Cheney ‘s influence, adding another voice to the growing view that the U.S.-led coalition failed to plan properly for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein ‘s ouster, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

But Geoff Hoon, who was defense secretary in Prime Minister Tony Blair‘s government from 1999 until 2005, said intelligence officials had believed Saddam was amassing weapons of mass destruction and that the allies did not lie about why they went to war.

“Maybe we were too optimistic about the idea of the streets being lined with cheering people. Although I have reconciled it in my own mind, we perhaps didn‘t do enough to see it through the Sunni perspective. Perhaps we should have done more to understand their position,” Hoon was quoted as saying.

Even when Blair and President Bush agreed on some matter, “sometimes … the decision actually came out of a completely different place.”

He did not cite any examples of decisions apparently reversed by Cheney.

“We certainly argued against,” Hoon was quoted as saying. “I recall having discussions with (U.S. Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld, but I recognized that it was one of those judgment calls. I would have called it the other way. His argument was that the Iraqi army was so heavily politicized that we couldn‘t be sure that we would not retain within it large elements of Saddam‘s people.”

However, Blair again rejected that poor planning was the cause of the violence in Iraq.

Hoon defended the decision to go to war on the basis of intelligence that believed Iraq was building up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction — intelligence he now accepts was wrong.

There are more than a few people who are not sure the geographic state of the United States can survive the remaining terms of the current government. It is, after all, perhaps the most corrupt, dishonest, and destructive government in its history.

Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, now says that he has proof that the Veep was behind the forged documents that helped bring the invasion of Iraq. And George McGovern thinks that this administration will not last out to the end of the term. Last week, articles of impeachment against Cheney were introduced.

There must be some way to get out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
– Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

BAGHDAD – It’s noon on Sunday right in front of the Adhamiyah wall – the now infamous symbol of the Pentagon-devised Baghdad gulag. On Muhamad al-Kasem highway, a few battered cars and vans stop, their occupants curious to examine this prime stretch of “ghettoization”.

Behind lies Adhamiyah, one the key arteries of the Red Zone and privileged heartland of Sunni Arab guerrillas. The streets are littered with all sorts of debris, some blocked by tanks, some blocked by the usual blast wall slalom. The road to Abu Hanifa Mosque – where the Sunni Arab resistance was born on April 8, 2003, a little over a week after the “liberation” of Baghdad – is also blocked. It was in Abu Hanifa that a 3,000-strong demonstration assembled last week to protest against the wall. Adhamiyah is virtually encircled by US forces, but their checkpoints are always mobile.

A few minutes later we are still close to the heart of Adhamiyah, on al-Mashatil Road, one of its main streets. We are unembedded, non-Hummer convoy-transported, non-Kevlar protected, and not surrounded by 100 soldiers and circled overhead by three Black Hawks and two Apaches, like US presidential candidate John MacCain in his recent visit (“Hello, habibi!”) to Shorja market (the next day 21 merchants and workers at the market were ambushed and murdered). We are just three journalists – two Iraqis, Abdel and Fatima (their real identities should be protected) and one foreigner, his head in a keffiah, all aboard a civilian Toyota stuck in traffic.

There’s a checkpoint ahead. Incoming traffic has to slow down in front of a Hummer of the Iraqi Defense Forces. A soldier is talking to the driver of a van. Suddenly there is a shot. The soldier falls to the ground, right before our eyes, screaming in pain. He is not dead instantly. His companion, by the Hummer, takes some time to react, then also starts shooting. People duck in their cars; general wisdom is that if these were US troops, they would be shooting at random and every car would be sprayed with bullets.

Some cars hit reverse and join our traffic flow. Chador-clad women pedestrians speed across the boulevard in panic. At first we thought the shot came from a sniper on the roof of a house on our side of the boulevard. But sniper shots are silent. Soon we realize the Iraqi soldier was shot from a passing car. Abdel quips, “If we had this image, AP [Associated Press] would buy it for US$100,000.” Welcome to Adhamiyah.

Ten minutes later, we are arrested.

Life under surge

The day had already started under high tension, as US jets around 9:00am bombed positions supposedly held by Islamic Emirate of Iraq guerrillas in explosive Dora, south Baghdad. We stop by the recently bombed Sarafiya bridge over the Tigris, which links the al-Qasra side of Sunni Adhamiyah to Shi’ite al-Altafiyah.

CLEVELAND (May 1) – A static-filled recording of war protesters yelling, followed by a voice and gunfire, was released Tuesday by a survivor of the Kent State University shooting who claims the tape proves a military order was given to fire on demonstrators.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” said Alan Canfora, 58, one of nine students wounded during the National Guard shooting. Four students were killed in the 1970 shootings, which followed several days of protests over the Vietnam War.

Canfora played two versions of the tape – the original and an amplified version – in which he says a Guard officer issues the command, “Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!”

To the casual listener, the word “point” can be heard followed by the sound of shots being fired. There is no indication on the tape of who said the word.

The tape, played to a group of reporters and students at a small university theater, was given to Yale University for its Kent State archives in 1979 by an attorney who represented students in a lawsuit filed against the state over the shooting, Canfora said. He found out about the tape six months ago while researching the shooting.

The first British soldier ever convicted of a war crime was officially dismissed from the Army on Monday and sent to jail to serve out a one-year sentence for the inhumane treatment of civilian detainees in Basra in 2003.

Following the hearing, a member of Payne’s legal team indicated that the condemned soldier, reportedly feeling abandoned by the Army and his superiors, may be ready to talk about others involved in the abuse of prisoners.

The case originated from Payne’s time stationed at the Basra Detention Center, where he and other soldiers enacted harsh treatment on detainees under their supervision, beating one to death. Baha Mousa had evidence of ninety-three separate wounds after his death. Six other soldiers were cleared of charges in Mousa’s death.

Payne himself was earlier cleared of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice by a court martial, but admissions he made during those proceedings led him to be charged with war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.

This “liberation” has done us in.
There is not one person I know who has not been affected and whose life has not been altered, read – forever changed by so much “liberation”.

You don’t even have to be an Iraqi. This “liberation” has served as a perfect mirror reflecting the moral bankruptcy of some and the resilience of others…

Those who are faithful to Iraq – the concept of it – (now we are talking about concepts since the Reality of what was Iraq is something of the past!), those who are close to Iraq in spirit and mind lose sleep too…

I have received tons of mails from all over the world. Africa, India, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA.

Those who are close to Iraq in spirit feel alienated from their peers. They suddenly feel out of place, they suddenly no longer feel as if they belong to what was deemed a “familiar” environment. This “liberation” has affected them too…
Seems they, too, are as unable to handle so much “freedom”…
But they are a minority. I like to call them the “feeling” minority. These people and all honors to them have not lost the capacity to feel…Praise them for they have become a rare breed.

Some write to me expressing their own pain, some write to me telling me how they feel strangers in their own land and some write to me thanking me for “freeing” them with my anger…giving them that inner space and permission to express the repressed taboos of the “politically correct”, to formulate their own anger vis a vis the lies and the deceptions…
And they write to me expressing their disgust.

Something about this Iraqi “liberation” is viscerally disgusting…

Something about it, something out of this world… Something unseen before, something unfathomable…

As if all the dirt and the scum of the Earth has risen to the surface like the sewage of the streets of Baghdad…

As if this Earth has not stopped vomiting all of its foul bitter acid bile …covering the whole land of Ur with it.

Never, at least not to my knowledge, has a “liberation” produced so much human filth…
Never has a “liberation” managed to generate so many death mercenaries and contractors being paid up to 5’000 dollars a day with the sole aim of exterminating…and “pacifying”.
Never has a country been so openly plundered and pillaged right in front of everyone’s eyes and to the utter silence of its spectators…
Never have so many atrocities of an unspeakable kind, not even seen in the worst horror films go by under an aura of such great detached indifference…

When I mention that cadavers are deliberately left lying in the streets until they are bloated by death or chewed at by wild dogs, I am not believed…I am called extraordinary with extraordinary claims.
I am told, surely the civilized world will not allow that!?. I am then asked to prove it.
Like do you want me to send you a corpse by DHL or should I ask one of the mercenaries of Blackwater Inc. to carry one in his suitcase, courtesy of the Crusaders?

When I write to “friends” that some children are seen playing football with the skull of a dead man, something that has been confirmed by the Arab League Ambassador to Baghdad, I am told that I need psychiatric help…Surely no “liberation” will drive children to play ball with heads ?!

When I am told, that some members of a sectarian militias like the Badr Brigades or Mahdi Army of Iran presented a sunni woman with her baby boy roasted and on platter delivered in front of her doorsteps…I say to myself surely this “liberation” cannot give birth to so much cannibalism…and that maybe I do need psychiatric care after all.

When am told that an elderly woman waiting for her son in some street in Baghdad is presented with a plastic bag with her son in it in pieces…I feel I am watching a third rate horror show…and maybe I am having audible hallucinations.

But this is the reality of the Iraqi “liberation”.
All these base, bestial, sadistic, psychopathic impulses have been unleashed and encouraged to flourish…

Iraq , the mirror of the West’s “suppressed” bestiality? I leave you to ponder on this one.

Let’s be clear about what it is — when it comes to “withdrawal” from Iraq — that the President will veto this Wednesday. Section 1904(b) of the supplemental appropriations bill for the Pentagon, H.R. 1591, passed by the House and Senate, mandates that the Secretary of Defense “commence the redeployment of the Armed Forces from Iraq not later than October 1, 2007, with a goal of completing such redeployment within 180 days.” If you’ve been listening to network TV news shows or reading your local newspaper with less than an eagle eye, you might well be under the impression that — just as the phrasing above seems to indicate — a Democratic-controlled Congress has just passed a bill that mandates a full-scale American withdrawal from Iraq. (Reporters and commentators regularly speak of the Democrats’ insistence that “American troops be withdrawn from Iraq.”) But that’s only until you start reading the exceptions embedded in the bill.

Here are the main ones. According to H.R. 1591, the Secretary of Defense is allowed to keep U.S. forces in Iraq for the following purposes:

1. “Protecting American diplomatic facilities and American citizens, including members of the United States Armed Forces”: This doesn’t sound like much, but don’t be fooled. As a start, of course, there would have to be forces guarding the new American embassy in Baghdad (known to Iraqis as “George W’s Palace”). When completed, it will be the largest embassy in the known universe with untold thousands of employees; then there would need to be forces to protect the heavily fortified citadel of the Green Zone (aka “the International Zone”) which protects the embassy and other key U.S. facilities. Add to these troops to guard the network of gigantic, multibillion dollar U.S. bases in Iraq like Balad Air Base (with air traffic volume that rivals Chicago’s O’Hare) and whatever smaller outposts might be maintained. We’re talking about a sizable force here.

2. “Training and equipping members of the Iraqi Security Forces”: By later this year, U.S. advisors and trainers for the Iraqi military, part of a program the Pentagon is now ramping up, should reach the 10,000-20,000 range (many of whom — see above — would undoubtedly need “guarding”).

3. “Engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with global reach”: This is a loophole of loopholes that could add up to almost anything as, in a pinch, all sorts of Sunni oppositional forces could be labeled “al-Qaeda.”

An Institute for Policy Studies analysis suggests that the “protection forces” and advisors alone could add up to 40,000-60,000 troops. None of this, of course, includes U.S. Navy or Air Force units stationed outside Iraq but engaged in actions in, or support for actions in, that country.

Another way of thinking about the Democratic withdrawal proposals (to be vetoed this week by the President) is that they represent a program to remove only U.S. “combat brigades,” adding up to perhaps half of all U.S. forces, with a giant al-Qaeda loophole for their return. None of this would deal with the heavily armed and fortified U.S. permanent bases in Iraq or the air war that would almost certainly escalate if only part of the American expeditionary forces were withdrawn (and the rest potentially left more vulnerable).

No less strikingly, in an era in which the “privatizing” of state functions is the rage, the enormous mercenary forces of private “security” companies like Blackwater USA, now fighting a shadow war alongside U.S. troops in Iraq, would be untouched. On this striking point Jeremy Scahill has much to say — and he should know. He’s the author of the surprise national bestseller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which will shake you to your combat boots when it comes to the nature of the mercenary age — sorry, the age of “private security contractors” — that we’ve now entered. No personal library that claims to make sense of our messy, bloody planet should be without his book. Tom

We know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an economy but is now the only possible way to organize an economy. We know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be ignored. There’s no longer even any need to persecute such heretics; they are obviously irrelevant.

How do we know all this? Because we are told so, relentlessly — typically by those who have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities, mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism, we’re told, is simply crazy.

We are told, over and over, that capitalism is not just the system we have, but the only system we can ever have. Yet for many, something nags at us about such a claim. Could this really be the only option? We’re told we shouldn’t even think about such things. But we can’t help thinking — is this really the “end of history,” in the sense that big thinkers have used that phrase to signal the final victory of global capitalism? If this is the end of history in that sense, we wonder, can the actual end of the planet far behind?

We wonder, we fret, and these thoughts nag at us — for good reason. Capitalism — or, more accurately, the predatory corporate capitalism that defines and dominates our lives — will be our death if we don’t escape it. Crucial to progressive politics is finding the language to articulate that reality, not in outdated dogma that alienates but in plain language that resonates with people. We should be searching for ways to explain to co-workers in water-cooler conversations — radical politics in five minutes or less — why we must abandon predatory corporate capitalism. If we don’t, we may well be facing the end times, and such an end will bring rupture not rapture.

Here’s my shot at the language for this argument.

Capitalism is admittedly an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally (1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for children.

In short, either we change or we die — spiritually, politically, literally.

1. Capitalism is inhuman

There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We’re told that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to thrive economically.

04/28/07 “ICH” — — The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:

“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.

“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.

“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.

“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.

“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.

“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.

“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

“A wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.

“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia.

“It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq’s borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.

“The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not some impossible outcome.

“I hope the President seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill the Congress has sent him. I will respect him greatly for such a rare act of courage, and so too, I suspect, will most Americans.

“This is retired General Odom. Thank you for listening.”