The Rag Blog

The US government began hearings on Friday to determine if 14 accused terrorists currently being held at Guantanamo Bay can be deemed enemy combatants. The hearings, which have been closed to independent observers, are receiving heavy criticism for their secretive nature and what some are calling pre-determined outcomes.

“The administration has been almost pathological in trying to find ways to keep these people from ever seeing a real judge or a real lawyer,” John Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press, “and the reasons are obvious.”

Turley, among many legal analysts, believes that the likelihood that torture tactics were used on the detainees has heightened the administration’s state of secrecy for fear of public retribution. The law professor also suggested that President Bush not only knew about the torture program but may have ordered it.

“It seems pretty clear that they’ve been tortured,” Turley told the AP, “and that the president knew they were being tortured, and may have even ordered their torture through techniques like water boarding.”

Last September, CIA sources told ABC News that the harshest, technique they were authorized to use on “high-value detainees, such as the 9/11 attacks architect Khalid Sheikh Mohamed…was called ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner’s face was covered with cellophane, and water is poured over it (pictured above) — meant to trigger an unbearable gag reflex.”

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported for ABC’s The Blotter that “new rules issued by the Pentagon today prohibit water boarding, though there was no clear acknowledgement that it was permitted previously,” and that “CIA officers told ABC News that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under water boarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk.”

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran said on Sunday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to brief the U.N. Security Council about his country’s civilian nuclear plans, which the West says are a covert attempt to make atom bombs.

The five permanent members of the Council — the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia — plus Germany are considering imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear ambitions, which Tehran insists are entirely peaceful.

“The president of Iran plans to speak in a possible meeting of the Security Council on Iran’s nuclear program to defend the right of the Iranian nation to use peaceful nuclear technology,” state TV on Sunday quoted government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham as saying, without giving further details.

Iran’s IRNA news agency quoted Elham as saying Ahmadinejad planned to attend “if the Security Council has a meeting on Iran’s nuclear program.” The Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the news to reporters but gave no more details.

The military’s most senior doctor pledged to improve the standard of care for wounded service personnel after the publication of a series of complaints about their treatment by the NHS.

Lieutenant General Louis Lillywhite, the Surgeon General, defended the way casualties were looked after but said: “If we need to do things better, we shall.”

His statement came after leaked complaints from soldiers and their families graphically described the dire state they were left in after being injured while serving their country.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said their treatment represented a “betrayal” while Lord Guthrie, the former defence staff chief, told one Sunday newspaper: “The handling of the medical casualties from both Afghanistan and Iraq is a scandal.”

The complaints, leaked to the newspaper by military sources, centre on Birmingham’s Selly Oak hospital, where many injured soldiers are now treated following the closure of almost all separate military units.

One reveals how Jamie Cooper, the youngest British soldier wounded in Iraq, spent a night lying in his own faeces after staff allowed his colostomy bag to overflow.

On another occasion, according to the letter from the 18-year-old’s parents, his medical air mattress was allowed to deflate, leaving him in “considerable pain”. He also contracted the superbug MRSA.

Phillip and Caroline Cooper, from Bristol, wrote to Ministry of Defence officials and hospital managers to complain after he had spent more than two months at Selly Oak.

The letter told how their son had been wounded in a double mortar attack and it was only “by the grace of God and the work of an excellent surgeon” that his life had been saved – but there followed a “catalogue of errors”.

In separate correspondence Alex Weldon of 45 Commando Royal Marines complained of pain relief arriving hours late. The marine, who was shot in Afghanistan, described seeing a fellow casualty from Afghanistan in such agony on the ward that it “brought tears to his eyes”.

Dr Fox accused the Government of “an act of betrayal against our bravest soldiers”.

Top American generals make shock admission as Iraq leader pleads with neighbouring countries to seal off their borders

The US army is lagging behind Iraq’s insurgents tactically in a war that senior officers say is the biggest challenge since Korea 50 years ago.

The gloomy assessment at a conference in America last week came as senior US and Iraqi officials sat down yesterday with officials from Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in Baghdad to persuade Iraq’s neighbours to help seal its borders against fighters, arms and money flowing in. During the conference the US, Iranian and Syrian delegations were reported to have had a ‘lively exchange’.

In a bleak analysis, senior officers described the fighters they were facing in Iraq and Afghanistan ‘as smart, agile and cunning’.

In Vietnam, the US was eventually defeated by a well-armed, closely directed and highly militarised society that had tanks, armoured vehicles and sources of both military production and outside procurement. What is more devastating now is that the world’s only superpower is in danger of being driven back by a few tens of thousands of lightly armed irregulars, who have developed tactics capable of destroying multimillion-dollar vehicles and aircraft.

By contrast, the US military is said to have been slow to respond to the challenges of fighting an insurgency. The senior officers described the insurgents as being able to adapt rapidly to exploit American rules of engagement and turn them against US forces, and quickly disseminate ways of destroying or disabling armoured vehicles.

O God! Pardon our living and our dead, the present and the absent, the young and the old, the males and the females.

I am a Muslim I am Iraki.

What America does in Iraq

Do not come to me talking of your feelings. Do not come to me asking for forgiveness. Who do you think you are?

I will not ever forgive or forget what your country has done to us. I will not ever forget or forgive what your country has done my family, my city, my country, my people.

Never.

My grandchildren’s, grandchildren, will teach their grandchildren to hate America for what she has done to us. Never ever ever will I, or they, forget or forgive what your barbaric country has done to us.

Never.

Few laws should be more important for the health of our economy and the well-being of ordinary Americans than the 69-year-old National Labor Relations Act, which promises working people the unfettered right to unionization. The law, however, has grown so feeble and is so poorly enforced that millions are being denied that fundamental right.

Which is why organized labor and its Democratic allies are waging a major campaign for a bill – the Employee Free Choice Act – that would carry out the law’s long-neglected promise. The House approved the measure 241-185 on March 1. But though the slim Democratic majority in the Senate is also certain to support it, Republicans are threatening a filibuster that could block passage. Even if the measure should squeak through Congress, President Bush is very likely to veto it.

Nevertheless, the groundwork will have been laid for enactment in 2008 if, as labor anticipates, Democrats retain control of Congress and Bush is succeeded by a Democrat.

The great need to reform the Labor Relations Act should be obvious – except to those on the Bush side of the labor-management divide who don’t relish sharing more of their profits and control of the workplace with those who do the actual work.

As both sides are well aware, the lack of firm legal rights is the main reason only about 12 percent of U.S. workers belong to unions. They know, too, that union members do much better than non-members. They’re paid an average of 30 percent more and have health insurance, pensions, paid holidays and vacations and other fringe benefits that most non-members lack, have an effective voice in determining their working conditions and play a greater role in political affairs and community activities.

It’s no wonder that thousands of employers routinely intimidate those who support or attempt to organize unions. They commonly use such tactics as ordering supervisors to spy on organizers and to threaten pro-union workers with firing, demotion or other penalties, despite the law. They order workers to attend meetings at which employers rail against unions and falsely claim that unionization will force workers to pay exorbitant dues and lead to pay cuts and layoffs or even force the employers out of business. They hire high-priced “union avoidance” consultants to help them with their dirty work.

Employers have little reason to fear government action. The penalties for the employer violations are slight, at most small fines or small back-pay settlements for workers who are wrongly fired. Workers, at any rate, fear complaining about violations because it usually takes months — if not years – for the government to act, and they meanwhile risk being fired or otherwise disciplined.

Washington’s escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region’s energy resources

03/09/07 “The Guardian” — In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq – a country otherwise free from any foreign interference – on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

In the cold war-like mentality in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the “surge” in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq.

Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington’s heightened aggressiveness. These concerns are given new substance in a detailed study of “the Iraq effect” by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, revealing that the Iraq war “has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide”. An “Iran effect” could be even more severe.

For the US, the primary issue in the Middle East has been, and remains, effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance. Iranian influence in the “crescent” challenges US control. By an accident of geography, the world’s major oil resources are in largely Shia areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington’s worst nightmare would be a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world’s oil and independent of the US.

Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid based in China. Iran could be a lynchpin. If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the US position of power in the world.

To Washington, Tehran’s principal offence has been its defiance, going back to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the hostage crisis at the US embassy. In retribution, Washington turned to support Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Iran, which left hundreds of thousands dead. Then came murderous sanctions and, under Bush, rejection of Iranian diplomatic efforts.

Last July, Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, US support was a critical factor, the pretexts quickly collapse on inspection, and the consequences for the people of Lebanon are severe. Among the reasons for the US-Israel invasion is that Hizbullah’s rockets could be a deterrent to a US-Israeli attack on Iran. Despite the sabre-rattling it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. Public opinion in the US and around the world is overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the US military and intelligence community is also opposed. Iran cannot defend itself against US attack, but it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting even more havoc in Iraq. Some issue warnings that are far more grave, among them the British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that “an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three”.

Then again, a predator becomes even more dangerous, and less predictable, when wounded. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East’s energy resources.

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up – in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran’s oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., March 8 — In an interview this week in his windowless West Wing office, Karl Rove said that there is “very little” discussion about President Bush’s legacy at the White House these days, only a focus on developing good policy that might have a long-term impact. “The president’s attitude is, ‘History is going to write the legacy long after we are all dead or in no position to affect it — so why worry about it?’ ” Rove said.

Yet history is never far from Rove’s mind. While he has kept a low profile in Washington since the midterm election losses took some of the edge off his reputation as a political genius, Rove, a Bush senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, has begun trying to put his own distinctive spin on current events and the longer historical view.

He spoke last month to GOP partisans gathered for a Lincoln Day dinner in Springfield, Ill., where he argued that the midterm losses, while painful, were in keeping with historical patterns for the second term of a two-term president. Later, he gave an overview of the historical development of presidential communications before a group of students at Texas State University.

On Thursday, he came to an unlikely venue, a forum sponsored by the public service school started by former president Bill Clinton at the University of Arkansas. His topic was again historical: an appraisal of the debts that presidents owe their predecessors. He waxed at length about Harry S. Truman’s creation of the National Security Council and Clinton’s National Economic Council, and how both institutions have made the modern president stronger and more effective.

His point was that presidents often come to adopt institutions and policies created by their predecessors, and Rove clearly suggests that this will one day happen as well to the institutions and policies shaped by Bush. “Presidents set in motion certain things that their successors evaluate and decide by and large, particularly the structural ones, to adopt,” Rove said in the West Wing interview.

He said that the biggest Bush legacy will be what he terms the “Bush doctrine.” It “says if you train a terrorist, harbor a terrorist, feed a terrorist, you will be treated like a terrorist yourself. And then the corollary of that, which is that we will not wait until dangers fully materialize before taking action.”

Bush has spoken in similar terms. In public and private settings, he has discussed his desire to leave his successors stronger tools for dealing with the “war on terrorism,” the enterprise he sees as the central mission of his presidency. The inference is that while would-be presidents may criticize tactics such as his military tribunals and warrantless electronic surveillance, they will come to recognize the necessity of such policies in a protracted struggle against Islamic radicalism.

I am told by the Manchester Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that you have impeccable academic and battlefield credentials. Bush has appointed you “Commander of the Multinational Forces in Iraq”, and so you have the power to implement your highly publicized counter-insurgency theories. You are nearly my namesake – having a Romanized version of my Hellenized name (Petraeus/Petras). You are dubbed a ‘warrior’ or ‘counter-insurgency intellectual’. I hold credentials as an ‘insurgency intellectual’ or as Alex Cockburn calls it ‘a fifty-year membership in the class struggle’. You publicists have billed you as ‘America’s last best hope for salvation (of the empire) in Iraq.’ Predictably the Democrats in Congress led by Senator Clinton went down to their knees in praise and support of your professionalism and war record in Northern Iraq. So let it be recognized that you enjoy an advantage: the support of both parties, the White House, Congress and the mass media, but still being an insurgent intellectual, I am not convinced that you will or should succeed in saving Iraq for the empire. Better still; I think you undoubtedly will fail, because your military assumptions and strategies are based on fundamentally flawed political analyses, which have profound military consequences.

Let us start with your much-vaunted military successes in North Iraq – especially in Nineveh province. North Iraq, particularly, Nineveh, is dominated by the Kurdish military and tribal leaders and party bosses. The relative stability of the region has little or nothing to do with your counter-insurgency prowess and more to do with the high degree of Kurdish ‘independence’ or ‘separatism’ in the region. Put bluntly, the US and Israeli military and financial backing of Kurdish separatism has created a de facto independent Kurdish state, one based on the brutal ethnic purging of large concentrations of Turkmen and Arab citizens. General Petraeus, by giving license to Kurdish irredentist aspirations for an ethnically purified ‘Greater Kurdistan’, encroaching on Turkey, Iran and Syria, you secured the loyalty of the Kurdish militias and especially the deadly Peshmerga ‘special forces’ in eliminating resistance to the US occupation in Nineveh. Moreover, the Peshmerga has provided the US with special units to infiltrate the Iraqi resistance groups, to provoke intra-communal strife through incidents of terrorism against the civilian population. In other words, General Petreaus’ ‘success’ in Northern Iraq is not replicable in the rest of Iraq. In fact your very success in carving off Kurd-dominated Iraq has heightened hostilities in the rest of the country.

Your theory of ‘securing and holding’ territory presumes a highly motivated and reliable military force capable of withstanding hostility from at least eighty percent of the colonized population. The fact of the matter is that the morale of US soldiers in Iraq and those scheduled to be sent to Iraq is very low. The ranks of those who are seeking a quick exit from military service now include career soldiers and non-commissioned officers – the backbone of the military (Financial Times, March 3-4, 2007 p.2) Unauthorized absences (AWOLs) have shot up – 14,000 between 2000-2005 (FT ibid). In March over a thousand active duty and reserve soldiers and marines petitioned Congress for a US withdrawal from Iraq. The opposition of retired and active Generals to Bush’s escalation of troops percolates down the ranks to the ‘grunts’ on the ground, especially among reservists on active duty whose tours of duty in Iraq have been repeatedly extended (the ‘backdoor draft’). Demoralizing prolonged stays or rapid rotation undermines any effort of ‘consolidating ties’ between US and Iraqi officers and certainly undermines most efforts to win the confidence of the local population. If the US troops are deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and increasingly subject to desertion and demoralization, how less reliable is the Iraqi mercenary army. Iraqis recruited on the basis of hunger and unemployment (caused by the US war), with kinship, ethnic and national ties to a free and independent Iraq do not make reliable soldiers. Every serious expert has concluded that the divisions in Iraqi society are reflected in the loyalties of the soldiers.

General Petraeus, count your troops everyday, because a few more will stray and perhaps in the future you will face an empty drill field or worse a barrack revolt. The continued high casualty rates among US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, during your first month as Commander suggests that ‘holding and securing’ Baghdad failed to alter the overall situation.

Petraeus, your ‘rule book’ prioritizes “security and task sharing as a means of empowering civilians and prompting national reconciliation.” ‘Security’ is elusive because what the US Commander considers ‘security’ is the free movement of US troops and collaborators based on the insecurity of the colonized Iraqi majority. They are subject to arbitrary house-to-house searches, break-ins and humiliating searches and arrests. ‘Task Sharing’ under a US General and his military forces is a euphemism for Iraqi collaboration in ‘administrating’ your orders. ‘Sharing’ involves a highly asymmetrical relation of power: the US orders and the Iraqis comply. The US defines the ‘task’ as informing on insurgents and the population is supposed to provide ‘information’ on their families, friends and compatriots, in other words betraying their own people. It reads more feasible in your manual than on the ground.