The Rag Blog

The president relies on thousands of private soldiers with little oversight, a disturbing example of the military-industrial complex.
JEREMY SCAHILL is a fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of the forthcoming “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”

AS PRESIDENT BUSH took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina — Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja — two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallouja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.”

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war’s privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

BAGHDAD, 24 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – The Iraq Red Crescent is steadily resuming its work in Baghdad after it suspended its activities in the capital for more than three weeks following the kidnapping by militants of its staff members and volunteers on 17 December 2006.

Of the 30 staff members kidnapped from the heavily guarded Red Crescent headquarters, 10 are yet to be released.

The aid agency has been the main conduit for the distribution of supplies, food and non-food items, countrywide, according to the Ministry of Displacement and Migration and local aid agencies. Thousands of families became desperate after the suspension of the Red Crescent’s work in Baghdad and the closure of 40 of its subsidiary offices in the capital.

BAGHDAD, 25 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – “I’m a 57-year-old former Ba’athist official [under former President Saddam Hussein’s rule] at the Ministry of Finance where I was earning a very good salary. I originally came from al-Qaim city in Anbar province. I graduated in economics.

“I had a wife and two lovely children – a son and a daughter. Our home was an extravagant villa and we used to eat the best food you could find in Baghdad.

“I used to buy new jewellery for my wife and daughter practically every month and I used to get my wife and all my children the best clothes and shoes.

“Whenever my son got good marks in college I would reward him with a holiday to neighbouring countries. And when he graduated from Medical College in 1999, I gave him plenty of money and arranged for him to tour Europe.

“That was my life before the US-led invasion, a life of luxury. But when the regime fell, I lost everything I had.

“My wife, Nawal, who was 46, my daughter Sundus, who was 24, and my mother were all killed in an air-strike on my father’s house in Mansour, one of Baghdad’s most respectable districts.

At least 73 frightened Palestinians have arrived in El Waleed, at the Iraq-Syrian border, after fleeing Baghdad earlier this week following the detention and release of 30 Palestinian men on Tuesday.

Their arrival brings to 593 the number of Palestinians stuck at the Iraq-Syria border, many of them for months. Syria has denied them access and they refuse to return to Baghdad, where Palestinians have been the target of numerous attacks.

UNHCR has not yet had a chance to talk to the newly arrived refugees, who arrived at the border on Wednesday night. Along with ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and other partners, we are ensuring that enough food, water and relief items are on site. Additional tents are also being delivered.

BAGHDAD, 25 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – There is increased international concern about the plight of Palestinians living in Baghdad following the arrest on 16 January of 30 Palestinians by Iraqi security forces in two neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad. Although they were released shortly after, the UN is concerned that Palestinians have been systematically targetted and threatened by authorities and militias.

However, despite their release, a group of up to 90 terrified Palestinian men, women and children fled Baghdad on Wednesday heading toward the Syrian border, where the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says more than 500 Palestinians have been stranded for months.

“We are in an exceptional situation as we are in the midst of a major security operation to secure Baghdad. Everyone is subjected to any interrogation from the security directorates,” said a police officer on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to disclose security information.

In one incident in Baghdad’s central district of al-Batawyen, interior ministry forces broke doors and windows of a building that is rented by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to house Palestinian refugees and arrested 17 men.

The second incident took place in al-Amin district in the eastern side of the capital. According to UNHCR, 13 Palestinian men were apprehended by men wearing Iraqi security uniforms.

“There was sniper fire against a government building from the rooftop of the al-Batawyen house in which they [the Palestinians] were staying. But police later released them when they found them innocent,” the police officer said. “And the second incident was just to check their legal documents.”

ATHENS, Greece: A far-left militant group claimed responsibility for a recent rocket attack against the U.S. Embassy in Athens, and said in a statement published Thursday the strike was in response to U.S. military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

The Revolutionary Struggle group said the Jan. 12 attack was “our own response to the criminal war on ‘terrorism’ that the U.S. has launched throughout the planet.”

The statement, published in the Pontiki weekly newspaper, also blamed Greece’s governing conservatives for backing U.S. policies, and accused Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis of “kowtowing to the U.S.”

Police forensic experts were examining the document to verify its authenticity. Militant groups in Greece often send declarations to newspapers as a way of claiming responsibility for attacks.

* Note: To hard cook the eggs, place them into a pot and cover with cold water; bring the water slowly to a simmer, and let the eggs cook for 10 to 12 minutes (slow simmer); turn off the heat, then drain the pot of hot water and immediately cover the eggs with cold water, let sit for a couple of minutes, then drain it; fill the pot with cold water again, but while doing so, crack the eggs against the side of the pot by shaking it from side to side; finally, let the eggs sit for about 5 minutes in cold water, then drain, peel the eggs, and refrigerate them in a tightly sealed container.

LONDON — Iraq is in negotiations with Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to build a new $3 billion petrochemical facility, and is in talks with several other Western companies over industrial projects.

In an interview Thursday, Iraq’s minister for industry and minerals Fowzi Hariri said the discussions with Chevron and Exxon began this week in Washington and are at an early stage.

“It will be one or the other company for this new facility, not both,” he said. “We’re hoping to have a (Memorandum of Understanding) in place by about July.”

Hariri took his first trip to Washington early this week and met with several companies about industrial projects. The other leg of his trip took him to London, where he also met with a number of firms.

The minister, who has been in his post since last June, said the issue of security was a prominent feature of the discussions, given the sectarian conflict that has come to characterize Iraq over the past year. He said he emphasized to the companies that much of the violence has been in Baghdad. “What you see on the television is real … but it’s concentrated in the capital,” said Hariri.

Caracas, January 19, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— During a briefing before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Intelligence, current CIA chief General Michael V. Hayden revealed President George W. Bush had requested his agency “pay more attention” to the activities of President Hugo Chávez and his government in Venezuela.

General Hayden’s commentaries were directed to the House Committee on Intelligence after outgoing Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte had addressed the congressional group. Negroponte, now sub-secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice, indicated to the committee that the United States was in a “good position in terms of intelligence” regarding Venezuela and Cuba, implying that the recently-created special CIA Mission Manager on Venezuela and Cuba, overseen by veteran intelligence officer Norman A. Bailey since November 2006, was active and functioning effectively.

Bailey, a Cold War operative and Reaganite, was an intelligence officer and specialist in Latin America for over two decades. The new CIA Mission in Venezuela and Cuba, officially created in August 2006 by Negroponte’s National Directorate of Intelligence, is designed to enhance U.S. intelligence operations, information gathering and analysis in the two countries. An August 16, 2006 press release by Negroponte’s office declared the new CIA mission was “critical today, as policymakers have increasingly focused on the challenges that Cuba and Venezuela pose to American foreign policy.”

“I hope that this Forum will issue proposals to stop the neo-liberal model” – Evo Morales, President of Bolivia and candidate to the Peace Nobel Prize

President Evo Morales speaks to the World Social Forum in Nairobi

First of all I want to greet the World Social Forum and all the compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters who participate here in order to continue formulating a programmatic, political and ideological line to change the world, this world of injustices and inequalities. Forums, international and world events always guide us as union leaders, and now – I must say – as presidents. I hope this Forum will issue proposals allowing to change and to assert how to stop the neo-liberal model which has been to harmful to my country, Bolivia, as well as to Latin America and, for sure, to other countries of the world. I believe that there are two [programmatic … political and ideological] lines in the world:

1. Governments and presidents betting for life and

2. Presidents and governments betting to end lives with their politics.

In less than one year after I became President I have found two kinds of peoples, governments or – to put things clear – programs: some governments send troops to save lives and others send troops to end lives. This is the deep difference, some of them are there to look for hegemony and others are there to save lives in the framework of solidarity and reciprocity. So to which of them shall we associate? I say: to the governments of presidents and comandantes who are saving lives unconditionally and with solidarity. Others, from the stand of hegemony, continue thinking of how to dominate the world at the price of lives and without any respect for human rights.

Therefore it is necessary to think of life, to think of mankind, to think of how to save mankind, that is, how to save the planet Earth; the indigenous movement shows its important contribution of how to live in harmony with the planet Earth, the Pacha Mama – Mother Earth, – as we say in Bolivia. It makes me happy to see the constant growing of environmental movements, the so-called “green movements”, as well as humanist movements, all fighting for mankind. We must all join throughout world to save mankind by saving the planet Earth, putting an end to any militarist, interventionist, and haughty politics. To think of dominating with armed forces is not the correct way. It is a form to continue attempts against life itself, that is, against human rights.

For one moment I think our union and social leaders in the region should learn English in order to share fighting experiences in Africa. It is hard to understand that some African countries are so rich [in resources] but are poorer than Bolivia, that Bolivia is so rich but has so many poor. Regrettably the natural resources are so destroyed that in order to recover them we must ready, based upon political conscience, to stand as peoples for the recovery of our natural resources to change the social situation in the countries from the South.

This South-to-South relationship has already achieved importance throught agreements and contacts among presidents and governments – if not among the peoples themselves – but it is necessary to hold these meetings because there is something that worries me: that in some African countries those excluded, marginalized and discriminated against could assume office and perhaps liberate themselves as human beings, but if they do not think of liberation of our natural resources, real change will be impossible. Perhaps some oligarchic groups think of us as pobrecitos. They say: well, now these poor little people – these Blacks, these Indians are already in government; yes, we do govern and if we do not touch their economic interests they will support us; but to truly govern is to set free, to nationalize natural resources.

I find important this meeting, South-to-South alliances, but more fundamentally [I find important] the alliances between the peoples of our countries. I feel that we have some gaps to fill: in Latin America we are champions in ousting presidents but I feel that these [African] countries lack such an experience and the task now is how to create a larger conscience so that together we can fight. I would stand for a South-to-South agreement with the Middle East, Africa, South Africa and Latin America as a basis to stem Empire’s arrogance.

Source in Spanish: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=45417