The Rag Blog

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Five and a half years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre Walter Reed Army Medical Center into a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely — a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them — the majority soldiers, with some Marines — have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

BAGHDAD, 18 February (IRIN) – Umm Muhammad Jalal, 39, starts every day walking to a river 7km away from her temporary home in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Fallujah, 70km west of the capital, Baghdad. Because of severe water shortages, she and many others make the daily trip to the river to collect water for all their needs.

“For the past four months we have been forced to drink, wash and clean with the river water. There is a dire shortage of potable water in Fallujah and nearby cities,” Umm Muhammad said.

“My children are sick with diarrhoea but I have no option. They cannot live without water,” she added. “Aid agencies that were helping us with their trucks of potable water are less and less frequent these days for security reasons. For the same reason, the military doesn’t want the [aid] convoys to get too close to some areas.”

Umm Muhammad knows how dangerous drinking water from the river can be with associated waterborne diseases. But she is desperate and needs water to survive.

“Each day we receive less in assistance. The government is not helping us and we have to find our own ways of surviving. I never imagined that one day I would have to drink water from a dirty river,” she said.

Millions of Iraqis lack potable water and live with bad sewage systems, which have increased the incidence of waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea.

“The water shortage is a real problem in some parts of Iraq as a large part of the country is desert. But the existing networks have also suffered from lack of maintenance or by being destroyed during the war,” said Cedric Turlan, information officer for the NGOs Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI).

According to the Ministry of Water Resources, only 32 percent of the Iraqi population has access to clean drinking water, and only 19 percent has access to a good sewage system.

Vulnerable groups, such as internally displaced people (IDPs), have had no choice but to drink from rivers.

The United States has 140,000 troops occupying Iraq, a country thousands of miles from its borders. Iran borders Iraq. Which nation has the greater interest in Iraq’s future?

According to the U.S. media, the Bush Administration, and many Democrats, the answer is the country whose borders are thousands of miles away. And while America is free to invade, bomb, and kill thousands of Iraqis, many believe that Iran’s “meddling” in the affairs of its neighbor justifies the United States bombing Iran as well. International law does not grant America the unilateral right to intervene everywhere, but it does give other nations the right to protect their borders. The fact that so many Americans believe otherwise explains why we are now mired in Iraq, and why Iran is a potential target.

The American media’s focus on whether there is evidence of Iran “meddling” in Iraq—while describing America’s 140,000 troops there as necessary to prevent violence—is a tribute to the idea that America has the God-given right to operate by its own set of international rules. The notion that Iran, which shares a border and common religion with Iraq, has less of a right to be involved in that nation’s affairs than the United States could only be accepted by those steeped in “America is always right” propaganda from an early age.

Recall the controversial presidential election in Mexico in 2006. Let’s assume that Iran decided that the PAN Party’s admitted violation of Mexican election laws, and the resulting subversion of democracy, required military intervention to install Lopez-Obrador as President in place of the official winner, Felipe Calderon.

After bombing and invading Mexico, assume Iran used its military might to not only install Lopez-Obrador as President, but to maintain an occupying force to protect the democratic process from insurgents.

And assume that Iran not only kept this force in Mexico for nearly four years, but was now increasing its presence as part of its “surge” strategy to reduce violence.

Can anyone imagine America not “meddling” in Mexico in order to prevent Iran’s action?

And if we “meddled” in our neighbor Mexico’s affairs, would Americans’ think that gave Iran the right to bomb us?

America’s “Monroe Doctrine” unilaterally declared in 1823 that European nations should stay out of the affairs of the American continents. The Doctrine applied not just to North America, but to South America as well.

But while America opposes interventions in our hemisphere, U.S. troops have traveled the world invading other countries and overthrowing their governments. Our CIA even helped overthrow the democratically elected Iranian government in 1954—think that might explain why America is not real popular in Iran?

The rest of the world already thinks that America poses the greatest threat to world peace. Our election of George W. Bush in 2004—knowing full well that he lied about WMD’s in Iraq and that he was a dangerous psychopath—is viewed throughout the world as a harsh indictment of the American character.

Now the world looks on as the American media debates whether Iran is “meddling” in Iraq, and whether such meddling warrants U.S. military intervention. The fundamental question of why America has a greater legal or moral right than Iran to “meddle” in Iraq is virtually never addressed.

Nor has the media reminded Americans that the U.S. installed regime in Iraq is aligned with Iran, as this would destroy the narrative that has Iran undermining American efforts to bring regional stability. I know Americans are an ahistorical people, but have millions already forgotten that Sadaam Hussein was Iran’s chief enemy, and that Iran was thrilled when he was toppled from power?

As much as a US bombing of Iran seems insane, Dick Cheney has already proved himself delusional. Since he recently stated that we are making great progress in Iraq, he could also believe that bombing Iran would shift attention from the Iraq debacle, and be the only way to save the Bush Presidency.

One thing we know for sure. If Bush ordered the bombing of Iran, all Republicans, some Democrats, and nearly all DC pundits would be warning that Congress cannot cut off funding for the Iran war out of loyalty to our troops.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Kiki Munshi was showcased by the media in September as a seasoned U.S. diplomat who came out of retirement to lead a rebuilding group in Iraq.

Now she is back home, angry, and convinced that President George W. Bush’s new strategy of doubling the number of such groups to 20 along with a troop surge of 21,500 will not help stabilize Iraq.

A diplomat for 22 years, she quit her job last month as leader of a Provincial Reconstruction Team — groups made up of about 50 civilian and military experts that try to help Iraqi communities build their own government while strengthening moderates.

“In spite of the magnificent and often heroic work being done out there by a lot of truly wonderful people, the PRTs themselves aren’t succeeding. The obstacles are too great,” Munshi said this week in Washington, where she was pressing her view at the State Department and to Congress.

“Once again we are proceeding to lay people’s lives on a line drawn with faulty information. Once again the fantasies of the ‘policy-makers’ drive decisions without much link to the realities on the ground,” said Munshi, who retired from the foreign service in 2002 .

Her postings included Romania, India and Sierra Leone before Iraq, where Munshi said he had felt a “moral obligation to sort out the mess we have made there.”

An audit by the special inspector general for Iraq last October found similar problems with the PRTs to those listed by Munshi, including an “ever-changing security situation, the difficulty of integrating civilian and military personnel, the lack of a finalized agreement on PRT operational requirements and responsibilities.”

REJECTION

Members of Congress have also been critical of the program, which suffered early on from not being able to attract enough civilian staff and a dispute between the State and Defense departments over who would provide security for the teams.

The Bush administration rejects Munshi’s views and the State Department said the expanded PRT plan was more focused, requiring team members to do pre-deployment training and with a clear goal of bolstering moderates and sidelining militants.

“We have been very mindful of the problems our PRT leaders have reported to us. We have worked very hard to streamline it,” said Barbara Stephenson, the deputy coordinator for Iraq at the State Department, which oversees the PRT plan.

Munshi said the PRT plan was ill-conceived, under-funded and poorly staffed.

She said security was so bad that the council in the town in Diyala province where she was based had not had a quorum since last October and that death squads were rife.

PRT members found it hard to meet with Iraqis because of intimidation, she said, giving the example of training sessions that had been canceled because of poor security.

The PRTs are embedded with the military, a tactic Munshi says has varying results depending on the ability of the unit.

“All the PRTs embedded with the military are subject to the vicissitudes of military fortune, for good or ill,” she said.

But the State Department countered that Munshi’s experiences were not repeated in all the provinces and set up interviews with two PRT leaders who said while there were difficulties, they believed their work was making an impact.

Stephanie Miley, a PRT leader in the Iraqi town of Tikrit, said her teams managed to get out to see Iraqi officials five or six times a week but security issues meant they could not stay for long.

(Ynet News): A delegation of American senators is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The senators are members of a joint Senate-Knesset committee headed by Senator Jon Kyl, who is close to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Member of Knesset Yuval Steinitz (Likud) is hosting the delegation. Together with Senator Kyl, he established the committee four years ago to strengthen defense cooperation between the two countries.

‘We formed the committee four years ago, when I was Chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. It is the only joint committee between the American Congress and another country,’ said Steinitz.

‘We think that it is important that the members of the delegation feel the connection and understand Israel better. They are mostly non-Jewish and we want them to feel some obligation to the country,’ he added.

‘The ability of the Senate and the Congress to promote issues is just as important as that of the American administration. They will be briefed by Mossad Officials about Iran, Hezbollah and global Jihad,’ he said.

‘The committee has had major achievements and we hope that this visit will lead to additional feats,’ he concluded. One of the committee’s successes to date is receiving funding for a project to develop a rocket-interception system.

The two-day visit includes meetings with Opposition Chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Chief of the Mossad. Later on they will also meet Deputy President and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

WASHINGTON — The head of the Army hospital responsible for most of the seriously injured war veterans has acknowledged that the staff responsible for tracking patients after they receive treatment was overwhelmed by the number of wounded when violence spiked in Iraq two years ago.

The undermanned staff may have led to wounded veterans falling through the bureaucratic and medical cracks, he said.

Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander of the prestigious Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said the number of outpatient soldiers reached a high of 872 in summer 2005, up from about 100 before the war, leaving the military and medical staff responsible for monitoring their well-being unable to keep on top of critical cases.

“We found that the platoon sergeants that we had for accountability and the case managers that we had, they were literally managing 125 patients each,” Weightman said. “That’s too many to do [oversight] effectively.”

Walter Reed, located in northwest Washington, D.C., is renowned for its inpatient medical care, which has helped keep alive hundreds of soldiers who probably would have died during previous conflicts.

Less well-known is the care soldiers receive as outpatients, which has stretched to an average of 10 months — two months longer than Army guidelines call for — a period Weightman said can be even more frustrating for wounded soldiers and their families.

“When you’re an inpatient, you’re literally a captive in our organization,” Weightman said. “When you’re an outpatient, there’s a lot more options that you have as a patient as far as where you can go and who accounts for you. That was, in some cases, a problem.”

Food Distribution and Marketing in Cuba

When I worked in agriculture in the early 1990s, one of the greatest problems was the distribution system. The December 1993 national assembly sessions included an alimentary report by Candido Palmero, former head of agricultural contingents. He said that the contingents and the new cooperative UBPCs could guarantee their production goals but he couldn’t guarantee that “you will eat all harvested crops, because we don’t have our own trucks to distribute goods.” Candido considered the state centralized food distribution centers, Acopio, a disaster!

Although Fidel and other state leaders expressed interest in changing the system and distributing directly to local markets, there remains much to be done. In contrast to then, however, other forms of distribution are allowed. For example, most ANAP cooperatives have converted to the Credit and Service Cooperative (CCS), which own and share farm equipment, and many CCSs own their own distribution trucks, a significant advantage over most state cooperatives.

Most private producers distribute directly to designated farmers markets, but they must buy gasoline and parts in the convertible currency (cucs). If they distribute their own crops, they also lose precious time from the fields or they must employ drivers and (illegally) vendors. Nevertheless, direct distribution to market places is common fare for 25,000 individual farmers, for nearly 2000 CCSs and the remaining 750 Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CPAs), and the farmer-soldier EJT. Even a few profitable UBPCs and granjas have sufficient funds to buy vehicles and distribute directly to markets, or they set up stands where people can buy those products remaining after sales to the state.

Distribution and Investigative Journalism

A couple carrying their groceries home from market in Havana

Matías Cabrera did not see any problem with the traditional Acopio system.

“Improvements have occurred since your time. Both producers and distributors are better in advising one another concerning times of harvest, how much shall be collected and what days the trucks will arrive,” the UBPC farm director told me.

“We get three different prices for our products—one for the libreta rations, another for the state controlled farm markets, and a third from the tourist hotels. The Acopio collects and distributes more exactly.

“Thievery of our products is prevented because a farmer rides in the trucks. He observes what is delivered where and sees that the correct payment is noted. Control is better.”

In February 2006, the Communist party newspaper, “Granma”, conducted an unusually critical investigative series about problems in agriculture, farm markets and distribution. “Granma” confronted distribution problems, which Matías apparently oversaw, when it interviewed the Acopios national leader, Frank Castaneda Santalla.

02/17/07 “ICH’ – — The more things change, the more they stay the same. What seemed an earthquake on November 7, 2006, has turned into a mere ripple in a volatile pond. Despite proclamations to the contrary, Democratic control of Congress cannot be termed a reversal of the ill advised, disastrous, policies of the Bush administration in Iraq.

Will the Democrats perpetuate the Iraq war? Or will they seek a viable solution that incorporates a full and immediate withdrawal from the escalating conflict? The mere presence of foreigners – namely, American combatants – irritates the social fabric of Iraq. Muslim memories are long. The Crusades are a still fresh source of inspired struggle. Muslim traditions, accomplishments and history are distinguished and extraordinary. The Western perception, based on colonial self-indulgence and ignorance, rests upon an assumption of cultural inferiority. George W. Bush always has a “raison de jour” for invading Iraq: first, to ostensibly to avoid the “mushroom cloud”, then the war against terror, then to liberate the Iraq people and bring democracy to the benighted. It is now some nebulous “success”. As we watch the situation deteriorate, and fatalities mount in almost incomprehensible numbers on all sides, a genuine turn of policy is vital. We wonder where it all went so terribly wrong. Are we the first to make such errors, or can history teach us about the madness of making war? Most important, are we willing to learn?

Governments, states, empires, kingdoms, from ancient times to modern, frequently embrace policies at odds with international stability and focus instead on short-term economic gains. From ancient Rome to Egypt, to the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Victorian colonialism, and the Soviet Union, political and religious institutions have sought to absorb autonomous neighbours. Empire building, the consequence of self-delusion, arrogance, and xenophobia, is actually economic exploitation. The spoils of war are paramount: not democracy, not enlightenment, nor freedom, liberty, and certainly not self-determination. To assert such lofty motives is disingenuous dissembling. Why is the United States only interested in “liberating” countries swimming in natural resources such as oil? Why did the United States not champion former Soviet Republics in 1989? What of Chechnya’s struggles? Why has the United States ignored human catastrophes such as Darfur, Rwanda, or ethnic cleansing in Palestine? Aids in Africa? And what of medicare, social security, education in the United States? How far would the almost four hundred billion spent on the invasion of Iraq go towards bettering American society?

02/17/06 “New York Times” — — DAMASCUS, Syria — In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.

He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.

But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.

Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”

Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,” he said. “You can’t believe how I cried.”

His mother, Intisar al-Ani, raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. “It was like my soul going out, from my happiness,” she recalled. “I hugged him hard, afraid the Americans would take him away again.”

Just three weeks earlier, his last letter home — with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink heart — appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq’s troubled detention and justice system.

After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.

Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.

American detention officials acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated.

Officials declined to give specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed him.