The Rag Blog

A judge Wednesday ordered a U.S. soldier to stand trial in absentia for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the prosecutor said.

Spc. Mario Lozano is indicted for murder and attempted murder in the death of Nicola Calipari, who was shot on March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital, prosecutor Pietro Saviotti said.

Another agent, who was driving the car, and the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, were wounded.

“This looks to me like the first step on a long road toward truth and justice, and I hope justice will come in the end,” said a visibly emotional Rosa Calipari, the agent’s widow.

Lozano was not at the hearing and his whereabouts are not known, but defendants can be tried in absentia in Italy. Judge Sante Spinaci set his trial date for April 17.

Prosecutors so far have not sought the soldier’s arrest. Lozano, a member of the New York-based 69th Infantry Regiment, has said through friends in the military that he had no idea the car was carrying the Italians.

The case has strained U.S.-Italian relations. The United States and Italy drew different conclusions in reports on the incident. U.S. authorities have said the vehicle was traveling fast, alarming soldiers, who feared an insurgent attack. Italian officials claimed the car was traveling at normal speed and accused the U.S. military of failing to signal there was a checkpoint.

Thomas Gray’s maxim stating that “ignorance is bliss” has been both, widely accepted and widely refuted. Proponents and opponents to what that gentleman said, or meant to say, back in 1742 seem to gather with equally opposing strength as centuries pass. Of late, however, the people of Latin America may have given us a replacement to that axiom, coining with their actions a true gem: “Bliss is being ignored – by the US!”

And you know what? They may have come up with an irrefutable truism when we try to make sense of what they mean by that. However, what they are saying south of the border and what we get from America’s corporate press confound us as if originating in Babel. Commentary by so-called experts on Latin America, usually from think-tanks of convenience – those from where most propaganda germinates which serves the needs of both the White House and the State Department – seem to always give us a minority or dissenting view… something which would be acceptable were it not presented as the majority or prevailing view. And that’s basically what we get, minority-imposed views.

Recently I came across an article-commentary typical of what’s being written these days; it was penned by Alejandro Chafuen from Atlas Economic Research Foundation, under a catchy headline, “Latin America won’t just sit still and be ignored – Our southern neighbors grow politically restive with U.S. inaction to their legitimate economic worries”. What, you say!? Is this individual for real or is he just a PR man for the Latin elite?

The fact that George W. Bush has ignored the breaking of political piñatas south of the border – way, way south of the Rio Grand – might have made the powerful local elite, and their squire-class of enablers, politically restive in Central and South America; but as far as most of the people who live there, those best described as without a pied à terre in Miami or elsewhere in the States or Europe, these past six years have proven to be a true blessing, bringing a ray of hope for a true beginning of social and economic reform. It’s not an anti-democratic or anti-American trend that is taking place, as we are being led to believe by a shamelessly lying government and a conformational press. What’s happening in the Latin Down Under is not really about us, it’s about them; about people freeing themselves from us, the “corporate America” that has kept the powerless in those nations as permanent beggars, at times mistakenly looking northward for alms.

At this point, all we have seen is nothing more than the unlocking of the gates to allow passage of both political reform and economic equity for hundreds of millions of Latin Americans. Whether or not these peaceful socio-economic revolutions succeed, and to what degree, remains an experimental unknown for now.

“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.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter

No one has done more to expand Iran’s power in the region than George Bush. He routed the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and then toppled Saddam and the Ba’athist Party in 2003. Both of these were the traditional enemies of the Islamic Republic. Now Bush has installed Iranian-backed warlords in the Green Zone and delivered the country to the Shiites.

Was that what Bush had intended; to expand Iranian power and influence throughout the Middle East? Or is it merely the unintended consequence of a deeply flawed policy that is destabilizing the region and irreparably damaging American interests?

Iraq is not Vietnam. America cannot simply pick up and leave Iraq. By 2020 60% of the world’s remaining oil will come from the Middle East. The world’s 4 largest oil fields (including the massive Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia) are in a permanent state of decline. Unless the American people are prepared to abandon their SUVs on the side of the freeway and pedal to work on their bicycles, some accommodation must be reached in Iraq.

The war was unnecessary. Saddam was always willing to sell his oil on the open market and he even offered to make oil-leasing concessions to the American oil giants just before the war broke out. But there were other factors involved as well, including Israel’s aspirations for regional hegemony and the confused, revolutionary ideology of the neocons (“preemption”, “creative destruction”) which drove the country to war.

President George Bush is proposing to slash medical care for the poor and elderly to meet the soaring cost of the Iraq war.

Mr Bush’s $2.9 trillion (£1.5 trillion) budget, sent to Congress yesterday, includes $100bn extra for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for this year, on top of $70bn already allocated by Congress and $141.7bn next year. He is planning an 11.3% increase for the Pentagon. Spending on the Iraq war is destined to top the total cost of the 13-year war in Vietnam.

The huge rise in military spending is paid for by a squeeze on domestic programmes, including $66bn in cuts over five years to Medicare, the healthcare scheme for the elderly, and $12bn from the Medicaid healthcare scheme for the poor.

Mr Bush said: “Today we submit a budget to the United States Congress that shows we can balance the budget in five years without raising taxes … Our priority is to protect the American people. And our priority is to make sure our troops have what it takes to do their jobs.”

WASHINGTON: More U.S. troops were killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months — at least 334 through Jan. 31 — than in any comparable stretch since the war began, according to an Associated Press analysis of casualty records.

Not since the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004 has the death toll spiked so high.

The reason is that U.S. soldiers and Marines are fighting more battles in the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and other cities. And while hostile forces are using a variety of weapons, the top killer is the roadside bomb.

In some respects it is the urban warfare that U.S. commanders thought they had managed largely to avoid after U.S. troops entered Baghdad in early April 2003 and quickly brought down President Saddam Hussein’s government.

And with President George W. Bush now sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad and western Anbar province, despite opposition in the U.S. Congress and the American public’s increasing war weariness, the prospect looms of even higher casualties.

With Brent Wilkes speeding towards indictment, the AP churns up more details about his close friend Dusty Foggo, the former Executive Director of the CIA, helped him land a multimillion deal in Iraq.

The contract, previously reported to be worth between $2 million and $3 million, was a no-bid, unneeded deal to distribute water in Iraq. In other words, it was right up Wilkes’ alley, since he specialized in selling unneeded and drastically overpriced equipment and services to the government via acquaintances like the now-incarcerated Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).

The problem for Dusty Foggo, who left his senior post at the CIA shortly before federal agents raided his house, is that CIA officials, according to the AP, are saying that the recommendation to hire Wilkes’ company — which was headed by his young nephew and had existed for only a few months — came from Foggo. The AP reported last week that prosecutors are planning to file honest services fraud and conspiracy charges against Foggo and Wilkes.

Just last week, in a typical air strike of the Iraq War, two missiles were fired at targets somewhere in the city of Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar province in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, in the course of a battle with American forces stationed there. According to newspaper accounts, “18 insurgents” were killed.

Air power has, since World War II, been the American way of war. The invasion of Iraq began, after all, with a dominating show of air power that was meant to “shock and awe” -– that is, cow — not just Saddam Hussein’s regime, but the whole “axis of evil” and other countries the Bush administration had in its mental gun sights. Among the largest of America’s “permanent” megabases in Iraq is Balad Air Base with the sorts of daily air-traffic pile-ups that you would normally see over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. And yet, as Tomdispatch.com has written numerous times over these last years, reporters in Iraq almost determinedly refuse to look up or report on the regular, if intermittent, application of American air power especially to heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq’s cities.

Now, the Bush “surge” is officially beginning. Little about it is strikingly new or untried — except possibly the unspoken urge to ratchet up the use of air power in Iraq, the only thing a Pentagon with desperately overstretched ground forces really has to throw into the escalation breach (as in recent months it has drastically escalated the use of air power in Afghanistan). Pepe Escobar, the superb globe-trotting correspondent for Asia Times, has recently warned that the new Bush administration “plan” signals “the dire prospect… of a devastating air war over Baghdad” in which “Iraqification-cum-surge” will prove “a disaster mostly for every Baghdadi caught in the crossfire.”

Just last week, Julian E. Barnes of the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Air Force has the Iraqi itch and is getting ready to scratch it. Air Force commanders are preparing for a “heightened role in the volatile region.” They are, he reported, already “gearing up for just such a role in Iraq as part of Bush’s planned troop increase” — an expansion of air power that “could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants… [and] more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran.”

Until now, U.S. air power in Iraq has been a non-story — if you weren’t an Iraqi. In the coming months, however, it may force its way onto the front pages of our papers and onto the nightly TV news — but not if the Pentagon has anything to say about it. Doing some journalistic sleuthing, Nick Turse has discovered just how secretive the Pentagon has been about offering any significant information on the size, scope, and damage involved in its air operations over Iraq. The story of this secret American air war is now told for the first time — and at this website. Tom

Bombs over Baghdad: The Pentagon’s Secret Air War in Iraq
By Nick Turse

A secret air war is being waged in Iraq — often in and around that country’s population centers — about which we can find out little. The U.S. military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in our media, may account for most of the U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths there since the 2003 invasion.

We are going to witness within the few coming days and weeks the unfolding of a play authored by President Bush’s Administration about the immediate future of the Middle-East.

02/06/07 “ICHBlog” — — Is President Bush a nice man who wants to protect USA and to introduce democracy to Iraq or has he got Grand Plans for you?

President Bush was born in an upper-class military family. He was raised. therefore, within a culture that favors military solutions in problems solving. It appears that he is enjoying his role as a commander in chief and itching for a chance to exercise the powers of this authority. He often proclaims that, a commander in chief does not waver, a characteristic that might explain his insistence to “Stay the Course”. He doesn’t accept failure and talks mostly about victory, ignoring the catastrophic calamities inflicted upon the Iraqi people and the demise of more than 3000 US soldiers. He is still quite adamant that the military solution in Iraq is the only one to treat the myriad of deep rooted racial and religious problems that his military assault has brought to the surface in the first place.

It is clear that President Bush, irrespective of the daily carnages, does not want to admit failure in Iraq. As a Commander in Chief who does not waver, he affirmed his intention to “Stay the Course” by appointing a team of theoreticians and executives, who would support him in applying a militaristic approach to the problems of the Middle-East. As expected and instead of de-escalation, the new hawkish team came out with a new surge plan, as the last chance, to achieve the elusive victory that all the other plans have failed to achieve.

The surge plan has introduced a new strategy that consists of three steps.

1 – To Clear. Troops to clear suburbs off militarists. Militarists who stand in the way of reconciliation and the unity of Iraq, Sunni Insurgency or Shia Militia/Death Squads. However, this Clearing is exclusively used against the Sunni Insurgency and within Sunni suburbs.

2 – To Hold. Troops to stay after clearing to deny militarists the chance of coming back. A surge of 21,500 soldiers would not be enough to clear and hold all the hot spots in all of Iraq.