The Rag Blog

Let me make an argument about Bush administration Iran policy — about the possibility that a regime-change-style, shock-and-awe air assault might someday be launched on Iranian nuclear facilities and associated targets — based on no insider knowledge, just the logic of George-and-Dick’s Thelma-and-Louise-style imperialism.

Of course, we all know at least half the story by now. Is there anybody in official Washington — other than our President, Vice President, the Vice President’s secretive imperial staff, assorted backs-against-the-wall neocon supporters lodged in the federal bureaucracy, and associated right-wing think tanks — who isn’t sweating blood, popping pills, and wondering what in the world to do about our delusional leaders?

You only have to pick up the morning paper to find the most mainstream of official types in an over-the-top mode that, bare months ago, would have been confined to the distant peripheries of political argument. There’s Senator Joe Biden, the very definition of a mainstream man, grilling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about whether she believes the administration already has the authority to attack Iran and swearing, if she does, that it “will generate a constitutional confrontation in the Senate, I predict to you.” (You can add the exclamation point to that comment or to similar ones from the likes of Senators James Webb and Chuck Hagel among others.) Or how about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on presidential pronouncements in January?

“Much has been made about President Bush’s recent saber rattling toward Iran. This morning, I’d like to be clear: The President does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking Congressional authorization — the current use of force resolution for Iraq does not give him such authorization.”

Former officials are now crawling out of the Washington woodwork to denounce Bush/Cheney policy in Iraq and Iran with the fervor (however masked by official Washington language) of an exorcism. There, for instance, is former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in front of Congress, more or less predicting the end of the Roman… sorry, the American empire:

“The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability… If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large… A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated…”

Imagine the police are called in to investigate an alleged beating, but interview only the suspects and don’t speak to the alleged victim. Then imagine detectives close the investigation after all the suspects have made statements insisting they are innocent. This is not an imagined scenario: this is how justice is administered at Guantanamo Bay.

Last October, Sgt. Heather Cerveny, a Pentagon paralegal assisting in the case US v Omar Khadr, had a few drinks at the Windjammers Club at Guantanamo. Cerveny spent about an hour chatting with guards– what she heard was shocking. According to a sworn statement made by Cerveny:

“[A guard named] Bo told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees held being held in the prison. One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said his actions were known by others. … [Another guard named Steven] stated that he used to work in Camp 5 but now works in Camp 6. He works on one of the ‘blocks’ as a guard. He told me that even when a detainee is being good, they will take their personal items away. He said they do this to anger the detainees so that they can punish them when they object or complain. I asked Steven why he treats the detainees this way. He said it is because he hates the detainees and that they are bad people. … In addition to the above incidents, about 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees, to including ‘punching in the face.’ From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice.”

The US Southern Command deemed the statement “credible” and tasked Army Col. Richard Basset to investigate. The result, according the AP, was that “Basset told Cerveny the guards denied her account of their conversation in a Guantanamo bar — and the investigator accused her of having made a false statement.”

As Washington steps up its campaign of propaganda and aggression against Iran, some leading European politicians and sections of the media have expressed their concern during the past week over the increasing danger of a US military provocation plunging the entire Middle East into chaos.

Parallel to preparations for a US military strike—or an Israeli provocation with US support—Washington is also increasing pressure on European companies and governments to break commercial and financial relations with Iran.

Under strong pressure from the US, European governments supported a United Nations Security Council resolution in December 2006 giving Iran 60 days to halt its uranium-enrichment program or face economic sanctions. Now, the US is stepping up the ante and demanding firm and rapid measures by European companies, banks and governments to cut their ties with Teheran.

According to a report in the New York Times, one senior US administration official declared, “We are telling the Europeans that they need to go way beyond what they’ve done to maximize pressure on Iran.” The official went on, however, to complain about the European reaction: “The European response on the economic side has been pretty weak.”

The US administration is particularly targeting loans made by European governments to Iran. According to the International Union of Credit and Investment Insurers, European loans to the Iranian government in 2005 amounted to US$18 billion. The biggest donors were Italy (US$6.2 billion/4.7 billion euros), Germany (US$5.4 billion/4.17 billion euros), France (US$1.4 billion/1.08 billion euros) and Spain and Austria, each with US$1 billion dollars (772 million euros).

Editor’s Note: This is an important article published in the private Council of Foreign Relations journal, an academic-business mainstay of imperialism since 1921. The author presents a realistic insider’s view of the United States’ main adversary in Latin America, if not the world. This description and analysis of Cuba today (“post-Fidel”) with recommendations for Washington policy change represents the position of part of big capital. Their view is to end the boycott, in order to flood their socialist adversary with consumer goods and investments, hoping to transform the egalitarian nation into a capitalist economy once again in their patio. – Ron Ridenour, Columnist
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Foreign Affairs’ Summary: The smooth transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his successors is exposing the willful ignorance and wishful thinking of U.S. policy toward Cuba. The post-Fidel transition is already well under way, and change in Cuba will come only gradually from here on out. With or without Fidel, renewed U.S. efforts to topple the revolutionary regime in Havana can do no good — and have the potential to do considerable harm.

Julia E. Sweig is Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and Director of Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground and Friendly fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century.

Cuba after Castro?

Ever since Fidel Castro gained power in 1959, Washington and the Cuban exile community have been eagerly awaiting the moment when he would lose it — at which point, the thinking went, they would have carte blanche to remake Cuba in their own image. Without Fidel’s iron fist to keep Cubans in their place, the island would erupt into a collective demand for rapid change. The long-oppressed population would overthrow Fidel’s revolutionary cronies and clamor for capital, expertise, and leadership from the north to transform Cuba into a market democracy with strong ties to the United States.

But that moment has come and gone — and none of what Washington and the exiles anticipated has come to pass. Even as Cuba-watchers speculate about how much longer the ailing Fidel will survive, the post-Fidel transition is already well under way. Power has been successfully transferred to a new set of leaders, whose priority is to preserve the system while permitting only very gradual reform. Cubans have not revolted, and their national identity remains tied to the defense of the homeland against U.S. attacks on its sovereignty. As the post-Fidel regime responds to pent-up demands for more democratic participation and economic opportunity, Cuba will undoubtedly change — but the pace and nature of that change will be mostly imperceptible to the naked American eye.

Fidel’s almost five decades in power came to a close last summer not with the expected bang, or even really a whimper, but in slow motion, with Fidel himself orchestrating the transition. The transfer of authority from Fidel to his younger brother, Raúl, and half a dozen loyalists — who have been running the country under Fidel’s watch for decades — has been notably smooth and stable. Not one violent episode in Cuban streets. No massive exodus of refugees. And despite an initial wave of euphoria in Miami, not one boat leaving a Florida port for the 90-mile trip. Within Cuba, whether Fidel himself survives for weeks, months, or years is now in many ways beside the point.

In Washington, however, Cuba policy — aimed essentially at regime change — has long been dominated by wishful thinking ever more disconnected from the reality on the island. Thanks to the votes and campaign contributions of the 1.5 million Cuban Americans who live in Florida and New Jersey, domestic politics has driven policymaking. That tendency has been indulged by a U.S. intelligence community hamstrung by a breathtaking and largely self-imposed isolation from Cuba and reinforced by a political environment that rewards feeding the White House whatever it wants to hear. Why alter the status quo when it is so familiar, so well funded, and so rhetorically pleasing to politicians in both parties?

But if consigning Cuba to domestic politics has been the path of least resistance so far, it will begin to have real costs as the post-Fidel transition continues — for Cuba and the United States alike. Fidel’s death, especially if it comes in the run-up to a presidential election, could bring instability precisely because of the perception in the United States that Cuba will be vulnerable to meddling from abroad. Some exiles may try to draw the United States into direct conflict with Havana, whether by egging on potential Cuban refugees to take to the Florida Straits or by appealing to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to attempt to strangle the post-Fidel government.

It’s like asking the Mafia to investigate its own drug-running and prostitution operations.

“A long awaited Pentagon Inspector General’s report into the Office of Special Plans and its activities surrounding pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war has been completed,” writes Larisa Alexandrovna for Raw Story. “According to sources close to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the classified version of the Pentagon IG’s report will be released to committee members Friday…. it remains unclear how objective the Inspector General’s report will be, given that the Pentagon was tasked with investigating itself.”

Since the Pentagon is neocon occupied territory with an Iran-Contra criminal overseeing daily operations, we can assume objectivity will be tossed out the window. “It’s also uncertain just how much light two to three declassified pages will shed on questions surrounding what many consider a rogue Pentagon intelligence unit created to feed the White House information favoring a case for war.”

The ‘surge’ is going well. With streets blocked by check points and American troops ‘advising’ Iraqi forces, on consequtive days, the Bab Sharqi market was attacked, body parts strewn amongst stalls, goods – and bodies and injured hauled away on the wooden carts used to bring goods to sell. Shorja market was next in firing line, with its covered and outdoor stalls, alleys, serving all from traders who used to come from Kurdistan for the cheaper Baghdad price (road now too dangerous) locals, the Catholic priest, workers and refugees housed in the church moments walk away.

Next was the Friday Ghazil animal market, believed the oldest in the Middle East, a weekly amble through the exotic, the heartbreaking, the songbirds, snakes and the illicit. An exceptional act of bravery was the attack on the bird market. It takes a particularly fearless mindset to declare a war on birds. The mortars which landed in the Kholoud secondary school, in west Baghdad’s Adil district, killing five students and injuring twenty, shredding young bodies with flying glass, were reportedly fired just thirty metres from a ‘surge’ crackdown checkpoint.

In 2003 Baghdad’s ancient Muntanabi book market, a place to wander in wonder at its offerings, was blown up. It had stood on the site for inumerable generations, books laid out on the street, on tressles, on laps – and in the ancient alleyways and covered nooks and crannies, near dark, where the dust was blown off seventeenth century gems and first editions of the wonders of french philosphers, poets. Goethe, Shakespeare, Dickens, hid on piled shelves, no country’s greats seemingly not to be found. The booksellers, professional or amateur, handled their volumes as if fragile, utterly precious. A purchase meant a parting.

‘Bring ’em on’ : the books, the birds, the kids, in this ‘last ditch crackdown’, part of a plan devised by George W. Bush, according to Al Jazeera. Perhaps when the last remnant of Mesapotamia’s ancient heart and soul has been finally ripped out and the last Iraqi has left or been slaughtered, the new pioneers will arrive and build Walmarts, Starbucks, Kentucky Frieds, Mesapotamia Mackburgers, from northern Nineveh’s wonders to Basra, from Babylon to Eden (Qurna.) The myriad marvels of this extraordinary land are truly pearls cast amongst swine – the occupying, brute forces.

The duty of care these illegal occupiers have is total, thus they are responsible for ever tragedy. But so depraved are these new Mongols, they have moved on from sending pictures of burned and slaughtered Iraqis to porn sites in exchange for their revolting images and reportedly now collect Iraqis’ brain matter for ‘trophies’ to put in the fridge back at base. Heaven help the communities to which they return and the children they raise. And again, from where are these deviants recruited? Such psychotic sicknesses could surely only have come from a recruiting drive in secure psychiatric institutions, or maximum security penal institutions.

Our occupation of Iraq has been a losing game for a lot of reasons. Consider one Army unit’s effort to hand out hundreds of soccer balls to Iraqi kids.

Feb. 7, 2007 | On a hot summer morning in 2004, Garett Reppenhagen dragged himself out of his cot at a rudimentary Army base, 40 miles north of Baghdad, for a briefing on the day’s combat mission. His battalion of the 1st Infantry Division was holed up in an abandoned warehouse and sleeping in steel trailers with sandbags stacked in the windows. They were stationed on the outskirts of Baquba, a city rife with insurgents in the violent Sunni Triangle. As the soldiers gathered around their Humvees, Reppenhagen, a scout and sniper, figured he knew what his lieutenant was going to say.

There had probably been another roadside bomb nearby. That meant Reppenhagen and his platoon, acting on intelligence that might be good or bad, would drive their Humvees into a nearby neighborhood, seal off entire town blocks, search houses and round up a bunch of men who might or might not have some tie to the insurgency.

What the lieutenant told them, however, had nothing to do with the enemy. They were going to hand out soccer balls to Iraqi kids in the surrounding villages. Reppenhagen was surprised. “You do so much crappy shit over there that when you get a mission to actually help people, it’s encouraging,” he said.

It wasn’t clear who came up with the idea to win over Iraqis with soccer balls. A March 2004 press report from the Pentagon describes a unit of the 1st Armored Division handing out soccer balls in the Karadah district of Baghdad. “The children were thrilled to receive new soccer balls as soldiers tossed the balls to the boys and girls,” the report said. In a December 2004 release, Kiowa helicopter pilots with the 1st Cavalry Division are described tossing soccer balls to grateful kids in an operation aptly dubbed “Operation Soccer Ball.” Spc. Thom Cassidy, who worked in the logistics shop in Reppenhagen’s battalion, recalled that giving out soccer balls to the kids around Baquba was passed down from higher command to a battalion colonel at the base. In any event, Cassidy said, “this was a very, very Army idea. This was the prototypical Army idea.”

At Forward Operating Base Warhorse, Reppenhagen and his fellow soldiers encountered a five-ton truck stacked with large cardboard boxes. They began to unload the truck and open the boxes. There were maybe 50 soccer balls in each box. But the balls had not been inflated. They were all flat. Reppenhagen scoured the boxes. No pumps. What was worse, nobody had bothered to pack the needles to inflate the balls.

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 7 (Bernama) — The killing of hundreds of people in Fallujah was sparked off when children below the age of 16 demonstrated in the streets of the city protesting against the American occupation of their school and the invasion of Iraq, a war crime victim told a war conference, here Wednesday.

Abbas Abid, 43, said when the demonstrators reached the school, the American troops shot at these children and killed 16 of them, one of whom was his nephew.

“After the shooting, some relatives of the murdered children, decided to fight the American troops for killing their children. This occurred at a time when resistance fighters throughout Iraq began their fight against the US occupation,” he said.

Presenting his statutory declaration at the three-day War Crimes International Conference organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation at the Putra World Trade Centre, which ends today, Abas said after the invasion by the US army in Iraq, Fallujah city was not occupied immediately by any US troop.

He said it was only about four months later that American troops entered Fallujah city and divided themselves into different groups, and they used the government buildings and schools as their military bases and/or locations. These buildings were surrounded by tall barbed wire fences.

He said the American troops allowed the Iraqi army camps and bases to be unguarded, and this lack of security enabled the people to take weapons and ammunition from these camps to protect themselves.

“This was planned by the American troops as they wanted a civil war to erupt between the Iraqi people.

“At the time, the US troops did not think that the Iraqi people would oppose the occupation and fight them and that we would welcome them as liberators. They did not understand that the Iraqi people opposed occupation and did not want foreign troops in their country,” he said in a session chaired by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Abas, who is an electrical engineer, said the military operation continued for about two months and the majority of the citizens left Fallujah waiting for the end of the military operation.

When the military operation ended, the American troops could not enter the city following a deal made between the defenders and the attackers. The situation in Fallujah became a lot better and things were calmer with the people who had fled the city earlier returning to their homes.

About six months later, the American troops again attacked the city as they could not accept their earlier defeat at Fallujah, Abbas said.

“This time, the American troops used all sorts of weapons and equipment like planes, heavy tanks, heavy canons, missiles and weapons with traces of uranium. They killed a lot of people using this method.

“The football field became a cemetery to bury the Fallujah people who died. Injured Fallujah people were not allowed to be admitted into the hospital. They were left in the open to die.”

CAMP PENDLETON, United States (AFP) – A US Marine squad leader congratulated soldiers “for getting away with murder” after an Iraqi civilian was bound and shot dead at point-blank range, a military court has heard.

Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins, who will stand trial for murder next month, made the comments after the abduction and killing of 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Award in Hamdania outside Baghdad last April, a witness testified.

Navy medic Melson Bacos, who was jailed for one year last September for his role in Awad’s killing, recounted Hutchins’ comments while giving evidence at a sentencing hearing for another Marine, Trent Thomas.

Bacos said that after Awad had been shot in a roadside hole, squad members had to work quickly to remove “zip ties” used to bind his hands and feet.

The squad wanted to make it look like they had just come upon the victim, when in fact they had dragged him from his home, Bacos said.

Baghdad – At least 33 Iraqis were killed and 58 wounded in a series of blasts across Iraq over a 24-hour period, sources said Thursday.

Meanwhile, joint Iraqi and US forces stormed Thursday the Iraqi Health Ministry building, detaining Deputy Health Minister Hakem al-Zamli, ministry spokesman Kasem Allawi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Joint Iraqi and US forces stormed the ministry premises, firing several gunshots in the air as they forced reception employees to remain still.

The forces broke into al-Zamli’s office and took him to some unknown place, Allawi added. It was reported that some ministry employees were also detained.