The Rag Blog

Virginia could become one of the first states to require parents to either get their middle-school daughters vaccinated against viruses that can cause cervical cancer or apply for an exemption.

Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, has introduced a bill that would add the human papillomavirus vaccine to the list of immunizations needed for school attendance.

Hamilton said pharmaceutical company representatives approached him about submitting the bill, probably because he chairs the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions. Drug companies have been among the largest contributors to Hamilton’s election campaigns.

The House panel is scheduled to review HB1914 on Tuesday.

Under Hamilton’s bill, the first of the three-dose vaccine series – which protects against a sexually transmitted disease – would need to be taken before girls’ entry into middle school.

Although health providers have hailed the vaccine as a major breakthrough in the prevention of cervical cancer, there has been an undercurrent of concern about young girls being vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease.

Hamilton said parents who objected to their daughters having the vaccine would be exempted from the requirement if they reviewed material about the vaccine and filled out a form. Children also could be exempted by parents and guardians for religious or medical reasons. The requirement would take effect in September 2008.

Traditional conservative, William F. Buckley was once asked how he would describe a “liberal.” He thought for moment, his snake-like tongue darting about just behind open lips, then spoke.

“A liberal is someone who over-waters their house plants.”

Ouch! That hurt. Because he was right. I knew exactly what he meant. Why would a liberal over-water a house plant? Because they were mean? No. Quite the opposite. They were just trying to help. Because liberals are nice people – sometimes too nice. Liberals have over-developed empathy glands. When a liberal tells you he or she “feels your pain,” they mean it — even if at that particular moment you’re not feeling it.

Now, before you jump all over me, I’m a liberal. (Well, a social liberal anyway, though I tend to be more conservative when it comes to things like balancing the federal checkbook.) But on social issues I’m right there – choice for women, equality for everyone and more than a little suspicious about what the domestic Axis of Evil — corporate/political/media nexus – are up to.

But, just as conservatives always go too far with their proclivities, so too do liberals. And for both, that is always their downfall. We are coming to the end – whew! — of a conservative cycle and just beginning the next liberal cycle. Be assured, it too will inevitably end in excess. But maybe we can avoid some obvious mistakes early on.

Which is why I am risking the ire of the liberal/progressive community to speak frankly about immigration reform. I know the war in Iraq is currently consuming almost all the available attention – and rightfully so. But there are other festering wounds on America’s body-politic that require immediate attention, and one of the biggest is immigration.

But before I put the war aside for a moment, we should all remind ourselves that it took the Democrats were also on the wrong side of that issue – and for way too long. And, though they seem to have now gotten it right, it’s too late. The damage is done, and it’s irreversible. Simply put, Democrats were snookered, bamboozled and herded like sheep to the slaughter by conservatives on the war.

And now they are now being led to the slaughter again, by the same bunch, on immigration reform.

Yes the Neocons are at it again. On the war they played on Democrat’s fear of being seen as sissies. This time Neocons are playing on liberal empathy for the very real plight of illegal immigrants from Mexico. But as laudable as that empathy is, it’s a trap and Democrats have taken the bait – again.

By falling in step with the Bush administration’s so-called “comprehensive immigration reform,” Democrats are driving a dagger into the hearts of working class Americans, particularly those struggling to survive at the bottom of the income scale. In other words, they are about to screw the very people they claim should vote Democrat because only Democrats will help them.

(01-18) 04:00 PST Baghdad — Even before bombings at a university killed at least 65 students this week, officials said Iraq’s higher education system was on the verge of collapse.

Faced with the lingering war and unrelenting sectarian violence, students by the thousands have been leaving campuses to return home or enroll at universities in other countries. Enrollment fell by more than half at some colleges in the past year alone, education officials said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi professors continue to be targeted for assassination and intimidation. According to Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry, insurgent and militia groups have killed at least 280 academics since 2003, and 3,250 others have fled the country. The violence also has caused as many as 40 percent of Iraq’s professionals to flee the country since the U.S.-led invasion nearly four years ago, according to the Brookings Institution, an independent research group in Washington.

But education officials say they are determined to carry on.

“It would be a big blow against all Iraq if universities closed down now,” Basil Al-Khaleeb, 55, spokesman for the Higher Education Ministry, said before Tuesday’s bombings at the largely Shiite Al-Mustansirya University. “We didn’t stop during the past two wars, and we’re working to continue during this war.”

Iraq’s higher education system was once considered the most advanced in the Middle East. Tuition is free at 20 government-run public universities, such as Baghdad University, and 47 technical institutes. Private colleges charge between $114 and $305 annually. But the system has declined dramatically in the past 20 years.

Twin car bombs near the gates of Al-Mustansirya University on Tuesday killed at least 65 students, mostly women, a university official said. Images of bloodstained notebooks and a burned-out minivan that students had been getting into were shown on satellite TV news stations.

Sais Hussein, 21, a junior majoring in geography at Baghdad University’s School of Arts, said now he is unlikely to finish the school year.

“My mother was crying today because she saw the dead students and imagined I could be one of them,” Hussein said in a telephone interview. “I would like to continue my classes, but my parents decided it’s too dangerous for me to return to school. I don’t know what to do.”

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.

For instance, the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

You can read all about the nasty business of washing war crimes at the Washington Post. They start with fixing the headline. “Death in Haditha” – not ‘mass murder in Haditha’ or ‘Another American Atrocity in Iraq.’ Next, forget the damning details, screw the truth and give the perpetrators all the room in the world to blame their conduct on ‘mistakes’ made in the heat of battle amidst the fog of war.

There never was any mystery about what happened in Haditha. Four of the victims were students and the fifth was a taxi driver giving them a lift back from school. One of the Marines involved in the executions later urinated on the bodies. The same company of marines continued their killing spree by butchering twenty other civilians, including women and children. As usual, the Pentagon managed to cover up the story for a few months. Fortunately, in this instance, the survivors got to tell their story.

Remember the name of the rotten excuse of a journalist who covered the story for the Washington Post – Josh White. After giving an obligatory sanitized version of the facts, he speculates that “the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their rules of engagement.” Really! Is that it? Maybe we should throw the book at this death squad attired in Marine uniforms for the crime of “breaching the rules of engagement.” That should at least qualify as a misdemeanor of some sort.

As it turns out, the accounts provided no such ‘evidence.’ In fact, the Associated Press explicitly contradicted Josh White. It noted that “U.S. criminal investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine. Investigators determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm’s length of each other and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.”

It’s a matter of historical record that the Post was instrumental in marketing the war of choice in Mesapotamia. Its reporters and neo-con commentators were among the elite shock troops that conspired with the Office of Special Plans to perpetrate the WMD hoax against the American public. Spreading the canard that the pre-meditated murders in Haditha took place in the heat of battle – as “the Marines came under attack” – is exactly the kind of coverage one should expect from the likes of Josh White.

Haditha is a carbon copy of the slaughter at My Lai. And just like My Lai – it is but a representative sample of hundreds of war crimes that have been committed by the American occupation army against the Iraqi people. The policy of dismissing civilian casualties as ‘collateral damage’ has become nothing more than a grant of immunity to each and every ‘coalition’ combatant.

Do the rules of engagement that govern the behavior of troops in Iraq encourage this kind of atrocity? Were Rumsfeld’s rules legal? Do they comply with international law governing the conduct of an occupation army? Is Haditha really an exception? How many Haditha type incidents took place in the sieges of Fallujah, Tel Afar or Ramadi? Is the conduct of our troops part of the reason for the insurgency? The Haditha story stayed buried for two months. How high up did the cover-up go?

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report revealing that the Pentagon monitored at least 186 anti-military protests in the United States and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database.

“It cannot be an accident or coincidence that nearly 200 anti-war protests ended up in a Pentagon threat database,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. “This unchecked surveillance is part of a broad pattern of the Bush administration using ‘national security’ as an excuse to run roughshod over the privacy and free speech rights of Americans.”

The ACLU report reviews hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year. The documents revealed that the surveillance of peace groups and anti-war activists was more widespread than previously known.

It was Will Rogers who advised: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Yet the Bush administration is grabbing for every shovel it can find. Faced with his own spectacular failure in Iraq, with violence that his own CIA director termed “satanic, President Bush has chosen to escalate the very policy that catalyzed the slaughter and mayhem in the first place. The White House finds itself in a hole and, incomprehensibly, has decided to keep digging.

It’s long past time that we climb out of the hole. Today in the House of Representatives, I am introducing the Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act, a comprehensive legislative proposal to quickly end the occupation of Iraq. It is a broad measure, capturing ideas from military and diplomatic experts and including provisions offered in previous legislative proposals. Specifically, the bill would, among other things:

— Withdraw all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq within six months from the date of enactment.

— Accelerate, during the six-month transition, training of a permanent Iraqi police force.

— Prohibit the continued funding, except for the redeployment of troops currently in Iraq, of combat troops to Iraq.

— Prohibit any permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. (Despite official denials, bases are under construction, including one that includes a miniature golf course and a Pizza Hut).

— Authorize, if requested by the Iraqi government, U.S. support for an international stabilization force, which would stay no longer than two years.

— Prohibit U.S. participation in any long-term Iraqi oil production sharing agreements before the enactment by the Iraqi government of new regulations governing the industry.

— Authorize an array of non-military assistance in Iraq, including reconstruction of a public-health system; destruction of land mines, recovery of ancient relics; and distribution of compensatory damages for civilian casualties.

— Honor the sacrifice of our servicemen and women by providing full funding for every health-care treatment, and benefit that they are entitled to under current law.

To be sure, peace and freedom will not bust out spontaneously the moment the last American soldier leaves Iraqi soil. Professor William Polk, co-author with former U.S. Sen. George McGovern of “Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), notes that such an assumption would be as naïve as the neoconservative pre-war fantasy that our soldiers would be met by bouquet-tossing Iraqis weeping with gratitude. But U.S. withdrawal, in addition to removing our own soldiers from harm’s way, will remove the insurgency’s very raison d’etre and put Iraq on track toward national healing and reconciliation.

President Bush, however, has chosen escalation over withdrawal, a choice that is tragically misguided and, with virtually no political support, ultimately unsustainable. No less of a militarist than Oliver North has concluded that “sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets.”

The president ignored the advice of the Iraq Study Group, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the soon-to-be-replaced Gens. George W. Casey Jr. and John P. Abizaid (despite the president’s repeated insistence that he takes his cues from “commanders on the ground”). This staggering act of presidential arrogance flies in the face of public opinion and reveals nothing but contempt for the electoral verdict delivered by the American voters in November.

That’s why today I am proposing my own plan to bring our troops home, and restore Iraqi sovereignty.

Because of the election and its mandate, the president can no longer expect carte blanche from the House and Senate. As a co-equal branch of government with constitutional war powers, we in the Congress are within our rights to challenge and even forestall both the overall Bush policy and the new deployment of more than 21,500 troops. That the 109th Congress chose not to exercise such authority will not — and should not — restrain the 110th.

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday pushed legislation to prohibit a U.S. attack on Iran without Congress’ permission.

The effort, led by Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican who in 2005 joined calls from many Democrats for a phased U.S. withdrawal from the Iraq war, came as lawmakers voiced concerns that the Bush administration might provoke a confrontation with neighboring Iran.

“The resolution makes crystal clear that no previous resolution passed by Congress” authorizes a U.S. attack on Iran, Jones told reporters, referring to the 2002 vote by Congress authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The joint resolution, which would have the force of law if passed by the House and Senate and signed by President George W. Bush, would waive the congressional authorization only if Iran attacked the United States or its armed forces, or if such an attack was “demonstrably” imminent.

So far, Jones’ resolution has 11 co-sponsors in the 435-member House.

Rep. Martin Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he did not trust Iran or its intentions in the Middle East. But he said the resolution on Iran was needed because the Bush administration had “lied so many times” in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Backers of the legislation said they hoped Democratic leaders in the House would advance their resolution in coming months, possibly as part of Iraq war funding legislation or other Iraq-related measures.

Concerns about a U.S. attack against Iran increased after the United States moved an additional aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf region and the Bush administration told Arab allies it would do more to contain Tehran.

RAMADI, Iraq, Jan. 16 — Inside a huge shuttered factory on the gritty western fringes of this outlaw desert town, thousands of ornate porcelain sinks, toilets and other fixtures sit in row after row next to the automated ovens and assembly lines that once churned out the products but lie silent under a thin film of yellow desert dust.

However, neither the fancy ceramics nor the machines appear to be damaged, a miracle that no one can quite explain in one of the most dangerous cities of a country that looters have ravaged since 2003.

Whatever the explanation, some American and Iraqi officials believe that surviving factories like this one — once considered inefficient, government-subsidized behemoths — could present a last chance of sorts for dealing with two problems that have remained stubbornly unsolved since the invasion: Iraq’s reconstruction and its insurgency.

The factories, state-owned enterprises under Saddam Hussein’s government, would appear to be the unlikeliest of saviors — things like a bus factory in an ethnically riven area south of Baghdad, a tomato paste factory in the Kurdish north, and a second plant in Ramadi that makes floor tiles with silk-screened floral patterns. The factories went dark after the invasion for a variety of reasons, including an insistence by the initial American occupation authority that once they closed, vibrant free markets would spring into existence to fill the void.

But neither those markets nor the expected commercial and social benefits of the $30 billion American-financed reconstruction program have materialized. So a few officials and local leaders are returning to the shuttered plants in hopes of finding a cheaper way to help the economy and perhaps create jobs to attract young men who might otherwise join the insurgency.

The dusty old plants are more evocative of guys with lunch pails than the big thinkers who once believed that expensive American reconstruction projects would remake the face of Iraq. “Any opportunity to re-employ more people and give the government a chance to get income from these factories is important,” said Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an Anbar tribal leader, as he toured the porcelain and tile factories in his flowing black-and-gold robes. “Especially in this time when Anbar is experiencing terrorism.”

The sheik added, in reference to the idle Iraqis who put the unemployment rate at anywhere from an estimated 30 percent to 60 percent, “They are normal human beings — they would rather work than make violence.”

(01-16) 04:00 PST Washington — Iraq is in the throes of the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948, a mass flight out of and within the country that is ravaging basic services and commerce, swamping neighboring nations with nearly 2 million refugees and building intense pressure for emigration to Europe and the United States, according to the United Nations and refugee experts.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which appealed for $60 million in emergency aid last week, believes 1.7 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, whose prewar population was 21 million. About 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing inside Iraq each month, the United Nations said, and 500,000 have been displaced since last February’s bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. These figures are as of January 2007.

The Bush administration and the governments of Jordan and Syria, the nations that accept the bulk of the refugees, have been reluctant to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis, experts said.

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (IPS) – The convoy of flatbed trucks picked up its cargo at Baghdad International Airport last spring and sped northwest, stacked high with crates of expensive medical equipment. From bilirubin metres and hematology analysers to infant incubators and dental appliances, the equipment had been ordered to help Iraq shore up a disintegrating health care system.

But instead of being delivered to 150 brand-new Primary Health Care centres (PHCs) as originally planned, the Eagle Global Logistics vehicles were directed to drop them off at a storage warehouse in Abu Ghraib.

Not only did some of the equipment arrive damaged at the warehouse, owned by PWC of Kuwait, one in 14 crates was missing, according to the delivery documents. The shipment was fairly typical: Military auditors would later calculate that roughly 46 percent of some 70 million dollars in medical equipment deliveries made to the Abu Ghraib warehouse last spring had missing or damaged crates or contained boxes that were mislabeled or not labeled at all.

Not that it really mattered. Just over three weeks before the Apr. 27 delivery, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had canceled the construction of 130 of the 150 PHCs for which the materiel was intended. As a result, the equipment that could help diagnose and treat Iraqi illness (and escalating bomb or gun injuries) now sits idle waiting for someone to figure out what to do with it.

Even if the equipment finally makes it through the bureaucratic logjam, lack of trained personnel to operate it, especially outside major cities, will severely limit its utility. The Army Corps had written a 15-day training plan into the contract, but over time, this had been whittled down to 10 and then to just three days. Iraqi Ministry of Health officials have given up hope that any training at all will accompany the sophisticated equipment.

The desperate plight of children who are dying in Iraqi hospitals for the lack of simple equipment that in some cases can cost as little as 95p is revealed today in a letter signed by nearly 100 eminent doctors.

They are backed by a group of international lawyers, who say the conditions in hospitals revealed in their letter amount to a breach of the Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US as occupying forces to protect human life.

“We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Iraq, instead of being a country at the top of the league for medicine, as it once was, now has conditions and mortality of a Third World country.

Only in this way can the Iraqi people rebuild their country with its infrastructure, administration, and hospitals.”