The Rag Blog

According to a report in the Washington Times yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld has a new job. Yep, he has been given the job of a “non-paid consultant” – with clearance to “review” secret and top secret documents inside the Department of War. It looks like he and his 7 paid staffers have a lot of reading to do. But given Rumsfeld’s famed integrity and ethical record, the thought of destroying any of this material would not occur to him, right? I mean after all, he only has that law suit in Italy to think about and his popularity around the world – and any talk about war crimes are ridiculous – nothing more than “political attacks”, right? Doesn’t this bitter old killer know that he’s invincible? So why worry.

Well, Rummy and his loyal staff better do a good job of finding every “shred” of incriminating war-crimes evidence in those seas of paper, recordings and hard drive data. On the other hand, if they begin to feel overwhelmed, maybe they could call Oliver North in for a few months to help them out. Ollie has some history in the shred-and-purge disorder. You know? … sometimes I think that perhaps we wouldn’t mind so much and it wouldn’t be so goddamned insulting if they just used a little more finesse in lying to us.

But we have to remember that that old boy arrogance has always been co-joined with his brother, ignorance. And the twins have a nasty habit of overstepping themselves. It’s because they are not satisfied with just “winning”. One of the perks of the business is to also derive pleasure from rubbing the faces of the masses in their pile of dung. After all “the masses” have never posed a real threat to these honorable men. They can trust their corporate media to keep the mob divided and stupid. After all, didn’t the RDR (Republican-Democrat Regime) just stiff-arm 70% of the U.S. population who voted against the war in Iraq by escalating the war with 21,500 new troops? Really! Seriously, what are the masses going to do – rebel?

Join us this weekend in Washington as we take our first stand of 2007 to confront them with their war crimes and demand that they end their blood-letting and bring the troops home now. Even better, plan to join us as we Stay in Washington – with the mobilization now underway for March 17 to force the RDR to defund the slaughter. Did I hear someone say they are afraid of going to jail? What lies in store for us and our children and grandchildren in the future in this country will be far worse than jail if we don’t stop our country’s crimes against humanity – and if we don’t stop them – they won’t stop.

KXAN’s Shannon Wolfson has been investigating a new report that says the federal government is monitoring anti-war groups in Austin.

According to the ACLU report released this week, the Department of Defense has been monitoring peace groups around the country. At least two of them hit the government’s radar after a protest inside the doors of Dobie Mall.

Some would say protests are part of the spirit of Austin. But an unclassified document released by the ACLU shows that a 2005 protest at Dobie Mall was reported by the defense department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, database.

About one protest in Austin, it reads: “The protesters blocked the entrance to the recruitment office with two coffins, one draped with an American flag and the other covered with an Iraqi flag.”

Tomas Heikkala with Veterans for Peace said, “A certain part of my activist spirit is angry for sure, and it fuels me.”
Wolfson said, “Why?”
Heikkala said, “Why? Because it’s saying, ‘Do something about this.'”

Heikkala was just 21 when he was drafted in 1967. He spent nine-and-a-half-months in Vietnam.

“When I came home from the Vietnam War, I knew I had participated in something I shouldn’t have done, and it plagued me,” said Heikkala.

So he joined Veterans For Peace, and as the chair of the Austin chapter, he talks to young people about non-violence.

Wolfson said, “Is Veterans For Peace a threat to the United States?”
Heikkala says, laughing, “No, no. It’s an asset.”

The local ACLU chapter echoes the national group’s call for further investigation.

“It’s a misuse of taxpayer dollars and resources when there are actually real threats out there that the government should be targeting,” said Marti Garza with Austin’s ACLU.

The ACLU report also acknowledges the Pentagon has admitted that much of the information gathered on anti-war activities should not have been in the TALON database classified as a threat to the United States. But the ACLU argues that far too little is known about how the information was gathered in the first place.

Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann asked Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe about an interview Senator Chuck Hagel gave to a magazine in which Hagel said that when the Senate first received the Iraq war resolution from the Bush administration back in 2002, the resolution gave the Bush administration the right to use force against any country in the Mideast region. Hagel said that he, Richard Lugar and Joe Biden rewrote the resolution to give the administration the right to use force only in Iraq.

Wolffe replied that he knew from interviews he had done at the time that members of the administration wanted the right to use force anywhere in the Mideast region because they thought Iraq was only going to be the first country they invaded and transformed into a democratic state. They believed that Iraq would be a “cakewalk,” and once other countries in the region saw the transformative process in Iraq, they thought other strongmen and authoritarian governments in the region would just “topple” and flower into democracies. Or they would invade, as they had done in Iraq, and make them into democracies.

It was like one big, fantastic game of Risk to these stupid idiots. Can you imagine the amount of ignorance, naivete, stupidity and arrogance a preznut and his merry men and women would have to have to think they could transform the Middle East into a cradle of democracy with a few simple invasions with about 140,000 troops?

Channel 4 News has exclusive access to the brutality meted out by the largely Shi’a Iraqi army in Baghdad.

It is a shocking insight into the sectarian violence that is tearing Baghdad apart.

As tens of thousands of American troops prepare to “surge” into the iraqi capital – Channel 4 News has obtained exclusive evidence of the brutality being meted out by the largely Shi’a Iraqi army – as US troops stand idly by.

Two journalists – embedded with the First Cavalry division – witnessed suspected insurgents being viciously beaten and abused.

The journalists were then threatened and held under armed guard by the Americans – as troops attempted to seize their footage.

US Army commander Lieutenant Colonel Dale C Kuehl told Channel 4 News he had taken administrative action to include suspending the platoon sergeant.

He said: “The US Army does not condone detainee abuse within our formation not within ISF formations.

Lina Massufi is fed up because her house in Baghdad has been raided by US and Iraqi soldiers more than 12 times in the past three months.

BAGHDAD, 22 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – “My name is Lina Massufi. I’m a 32-year-old laboratory assistant who works 10 hours a day just to make enough money to raise my children.

“My life has been like hell over the past three months. US and Iraqi soldiers have raided my house more than 12 times.

“My husband, Khalil, was killed during the US invasion in 2003 when he drove through a closed road and soldiers shot him dead.

“I live in Haifa Street, one of the most dangerous places to live in Baghdad today. The area is infamous for its huge number of insurgents. This is why Iraqi and US soldiers have increased their activity in the area, constantly raiding homes and arresting men for interrogation.

“Last month, they arrested my 23-year-old brother Fae’ek, who lives with me. He is a pharmacy student but nonetheless they took him and kept him in prison for more than a week – even after knowing he was innocent. He returned with signs of torture on his body and was crying like a baby because of the pain.

“I cannot stand the constant military raids in my home. Every time they [the soldiers] raid my house, they break the door. They don’t know how to knock at a door. One day, when I asked them why they were entering like that instead of ringing the bell, they laughed at me and called me an idiot.

“My furniture is all broken into pieces because of the way they conduct their searches. I no longer have dishes or glasses to speak of because they destroyed most of them during the raids.

“I have two children and for most of the time, they are scared. Muhammad, a four-year-old, cannot sleep well at night. He has nightmares every day and when he wakes up he cries, asking me not to let the soldiers take him as they took his uncle.

“Fadia, my daughter, who is only eight years old, doesn’t want to go to school because she says that if they raid our home and I’m not around, they would do something bad to her brother. But with her at home, she can help him not be afraid.

“Our neighbourhood is in the middle of a constant war. It is not safe for us to leave or enter our houses. Most of the shops around here are closed. We have to walk about 5km to buy food like vegetables and rice.

“Sometimes, when I return by taxi from my job, which is about 45 minutes from my home, I find the street closed and bullets flying around everywhere.

“I start to cry as I become afraid that something might have happened to my children even though I know that my brother is there. I know that when I get home, I will find Muhammad crying and Fadia scared but I cannot stay all day at home because if I leave my job, there will be no one to feed them.

“It is common to see at least three corpses on Haifa Street each day and sometimes up to eight, as happened last week. They are fighters, innocent civilians or soldiers. No one takes care of them [the bodies] because if you tried to get closer, you could become the next victim.

Peace activists from around the United States will converge on Washington Saturday for what organisers hope will be the largest demonstration to date against the Iraq war.

“We expect a turnout in the six figures,” said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman who now runs the group Win Without War, which is organising the march along with True Majority, Working Assets, the RainbowPUSH Coalition, the National Organization for Women and the national umbrella group United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

UFPJ’s Leslie Cagan told IPS that the level of energy in the antiwar movement has spiked since the November election, when voters ended Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

“The voters of this country figured out that they could use the November elections as a vehicle to voice their opposition to the war,” Cagan said. “What happened there was that the voters gave Congress a mandate to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home.”

That success at the polls gave antiwar citizens more optimism that a large demonstration might make an impact, she said.

In mid-November, United for Peace and Justice called a demonstration for the nation’s capital for Jan. 27, with other large mobilisations planned for Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.

In addition, smaller actions are planned for more than 50 cities. In Bismark, North Dakota, the group Surge for Peace will be delivering petitions to members of the local congressional delegation. In Austin, Texas, the Stop the War coalition is hosting a march and rally featuring student activists, Green Party activists, and members of the group Veterans for Peace.

A full listing of all marches nationwide is on the group’s website unitedforpeace.org.

“People started saying to us right after the election ‘well, what is Congress going to do?'” Cagan said. “And we quickly realised the real question is ‘what are we going to do to push this Congress to do what they said they were going to do to get elected’. So we figured we got to get people into Washington as soon as possible after the new session of Congress began.”

Organisers said five or six Democratic lawmakers are expected to speak at the rally in Washington, and that Representative Barbara Lee will speak at the Los Angeles gathering.

“By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? … While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.” -Dick Cheney, who was CEO of oil services company Halliburton, in a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London- 1999

It hadn’t even been seen by Iraqi legislators yet, but details of a new “Iraqi” hydrocarbons law, drafted in reality by U.S. contractors, were revealed Jan. 7 in the Independent, a major London newspaper that has been critical of the Iraq war.

Once information about the leaked document got out, it was condemned around the world as an unprecedented giveaway to the multinational oil companies—in particular, those based in the U.S. and Britain.

“Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries,” wrote the Independent. “[U]nder a system known as ‘production-sharing agreements,’ or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the U.S., would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq’s oil.

“PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but give a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.”

Iraq has the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world

The article quoted Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. “He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the U.S. government, which had a representative working in the American Embassy in Baghdad for several months.”

Muttitt added: “Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinize this legislation than most Iraqis. The draft went to the U.S. government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had.”

Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.

While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 — The shouting in his Baghdad apartment building woke Luay Mohammed seconds before intruders broke down his door.

The men, some wearing police uniforms, entered before dawn demanding identification cards, Mohammed recalled. They tore the doors off the closet, threw the television on the floor and hauled Mohammed and his two barefoot brothers outside to be blindfolded. They and 14 other men were taken to what they thought was a government office, where a man others kept calling “sir” spoke to their huddled group.

“You are Palestinians. Why are you still living in Iraq?” Mohammed recalled the man saying. “You have 48 hours to leave.”

Within 24 hours, Mohammed was gone. The 36-year-old was among dozens of people who loaded their meager belongings onto buses at dawn Wednesday inside Baghdad’s main Palestinian enclave in the Baladiyat neighborhood. They drove north toward the Syrian border, joining a growing exodus of Palestinians now following their familiar story line: an unwelcome people searching for a home.

Baghdad is a dangerous place for anyone to live, and the fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims has displaced hundreds of thousands. Largely forgotten amid this violence is the plight of thousands of Palestinians in Iraq, who face an increasingly hostile environment because they are predominantly Sunni and perceived as having been favored during the rule of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad is paralysed by fear. Iraqi drivers are terrified of running into impromptu checkpoints where heavily armed men in civilian clothes may drag them out of their cars and kill them for being the wrong religion. Some districts exchange mortar fire every night. This is mayhem beyond the comprehension of George Bush and Tony Blair.

Black smoke was rising over the city centre yesterday as American and Iraqi army troops tried to fight their way into the insurgent district of Haifa Street only a mile north of the Green Zone, home to the government and the US and British embassies. Helicopters flew fast and low past tower blocks, hunting snipers, and armoured vehicles manoeuvred in the streets below.

Many Iraqis who watched the State of the Union address shrugged it off as an irrelevance. “An extra 16,000 US soldiers are not going to be enough to restore order to Baghdad,” said Ismail, a Sunni who fled his house in the west of the city, fearing he would be arrested and tortured by the much-feared Shia police commandos.

It is extraordinary that, almost four years after US forces captured Baghdad, they control so little of it. The outlook for Mr Bush’s strategy of driving out insurgents from strongholds and preventing them coming back does not look good.

On Monday, a helicopter belonging to the US security company Blackwater was shot down as it flew over the Sunni neighbourhood of al-Fadhil, close to the central markets of Baghdad. Several of the five American crew members may have survived the crash but they were later found with gunshot wounds to their heads, as if they had been executed on the ground.

Baghdad has broken up into hostile townships, Sunni and Shia, where strangers are treated with suspicion and shot if they cannot explain what they are doing. In the militant Sunni district of al-Amariyah in west Baghdad the Shia have been driven out and a resurgent Baath party has taken over. One slogan in red paint on a wall reads: “Saddam Hussein will live for ever, the symbol of the Arab nation.” Another says: “Death to Muqtada [Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist Shia cleric] and his army of fools.”