The Rag Blog

OAKLAND (Commentary) In May of this year, I conducted an interview with Ehren Watada while working as a freelance journalist. Watada is a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq.

In the interview, Lieutenant Watada asserted that he had a duty as an officer to evaluate the legality of his orders and conduct himself accordingly. He said that he could not participate in the Iraq War because it was “manifestly illegal” and that his participation would make him a party to war crimes.

In June, Lieutenant Watada made national headlines when he refused to deploy to Iraq.

Lieutenant Watada continues to report for duty at Fort Lewis in the state of Washington while awaiting a February 2007 court-martial on one charge of “missing movement” and four charges of “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” Each of the latter four charges is based entirely on political speech. If convicted on all charges, Lieutenant Watada could spend up to six years in prison.

The U.S. Army has cobbled together portions of my interview with Lieutenant Watada and these statements comprise the foundation of one charge of conduct unbecoming an officer. To substantiate this alleged crime, the Army has subpoenaed me to testify on behalf of their prosecution.

The dynamics of the situation are clear. When the military chooses to prosecute a soldier for expressing dissenting political positions to a member of the press, that journalist is unwittingly and inevitably forced into the middle of the conflict.

Among multiple issues this raises, it begs one central question: Doesn’t it fly in the face of the First Amendment to compel a journalist to participate in a government prosecution against a source, particularly in matters related to personal political speech?

It is my job as a professional journalist to report the news, not to act as the eyes and ears of the government. I am repelled by this approach that jeopardizes my credibility and seeks to compel my participation in muting public speech and dissenting personal opinion.

Further, it is stunningly ironic that the Army seeks my testimony – the testimony of a journalist – in a case against free speech itself. What could be more hostile to the idea of a free press than a journalist participating in the suppression of newsworthy speech?

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — At one end of a converted trailer in the American military detention center here, a graying Pakistani businessman sat shackled before a review board of uniformed officers, pleading for his freedom.

The prisoner had seen just a brief summary of what officials said was a thick dossier of intelligence linking him to Al Qaeda. He had not seen his own legal papers since they were taken away in an unrelated investigation. He has lawyers working on his behalf in Washington, London and Pakistan, but here his only assistance came from an Army lieutenant colonel, who stumbled as he read the prisoner’s handwritten statement.

As the hearing concluded, the detainee, who cannot be identified publicly under military rules, had a question. He is a citizen of Pakistan, he noted. He was arrested on a business trip to Thailand. On what authority or charges was he even being held?

“That question,” a Marine colonel presiding over the panel answered, “is outside the limits of what this board is permitted to consider.”

Under a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in October, this double-wide trailer may be as close to a courtroom as most Guantánamo prisoners ever get. The law prohibits them from challenging their detention or treatment by writs of habeas corpus in the federal courts. Instead, they may only petition a single federal appeals court to examine whether the review boards followed the military’s own procedures in reviewing their status as “enemy combatants.”

But an examination of the Guantánamo review boards by The New York Times suggests that they have often fallen short, not only as a source of due process for the hundreds of men held here, but also as a forum to resolve questions about what the detainees have done and the threats they may pose.

Some limitations have long been evident. The prisoners have no right to a lawyer, or to see classified evidence, or even to know the identity of their accusers. What has been less visible, however, is what many officials describe as a continuing shortage of information about many detainees, including some who have been held on sketchy or disputed intelligence.

Behind the hearings that journalists are allowed to observe is a system that has at times been as long on government infighting and diplomatic maneuvering as it has been short on hard evidence. The result, current and former officials acknowledged, is that some detainees have been held for years on less compelling information, while a growing number of others for whom there was thought to be stronger evidence of militant activities have been released under secret arrangements between Washington and their home governments.

Military officials emphasize that the boards are an administrative forum and were never intended to replicate judicial standards of fairness. But they say the hearings offer prisoners a viable opportunity to rebut the government’s evidence.

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ‘secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.

The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren’t grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it — for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’

Almost every day, Sgt. First Class Joel Jacobs comes to the Third Infantry Division’s “Warriors’ Walk” at Fort Stewart, Ga. Among the eastern redbud trees – each commemorating one of the more than 300 division soldiers killed in Iraq – it’s a chance for him to honor his fallen comrades.

Like many, Sergeant Jacobs greets the news of American casualties with sorrow and resolve. He retired from the Army a few months ago, and you might think the prosthetic leg would slow him down. But asked how he’s doing, this 21-year veteran who faced danger in Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq says , “I’m absolutely fine, sir.”

“When you come home, you remember the ultimate sacrifices some of your fellow soldiers have made,” he says of his regular walk.

Of the 3,000 American GIs lost in Iraq as of midday Sunday, more have been killed by roadside bombs – improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – than any other cause. More than by rifle fire, mortar attack, or car bomb.

It’s a danger that has bedeviled Pentagon war planners for months, one to which they’ve responded with a high-level task force headed by a retired four-star general, $6.7 billion in research and development, new high-tech equipment and vehicles, and – perhaps most important – intelligence efforts to get inside the decisionmaking of an insurgency that is sophisticated, if largely low-tech.

If anything, the danger is increasing despite efforts to counter it.

IEDs are “the enemy’s most effective weapon,” Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all US forces in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services committee last March. “They are the perfect asymmetric weapon – cheap, effective, and anonymous.”

It’s time to take another look at Iraq, because there’s been a big change in insurgent tactics in 2005. That’s inevitable. War makes people on both sides think faster. Peacetime armies never learn anything; wartime armies learn new tricks faster than a hungry raccoon.

The big change is that the insurgents have decided to rely on IEDs rather than ambushes with shoulder-fired weapons to kill the two or three GIs per day they figure they need to wear down the US public’s will to stay in the fight. And it’s working, way too well.

The stats are clear: IED victims make up a bigger chunk of our casualties every month. Over the last six months, IEDs have caused 63% of US combat deaths. Last month (October 2005) was typical: out of 96 US troops killed, IEDs were responsible for 57.

Compare that with April 2004, a terrible month when we lost 140 troops. Back then the insurgents relied on RPGs and small arms. Only 19 of our 140 KIA that month-barely more than a tenth-were killed by IEDs.

The insurgents have decided to do it the easy way. As long as they can use IEDs, their low-tech standoff weapon, why should they risk close combat?

The real question is why they can get away with it. And here-well, I hate to keep saying this, but somebody needs to. The reason they can do it is because we still have NO INTEL on them. It’s the biggest failure of the war, and nobody talks about it. CI warfare is about people, not hardware. We’re all hardware and no intelligence, like a Tim Allen show. Makes me sick.

That makes the decision to go with IEDs a no-brainer for the insurgents. In the standard ambush, the kind we were facing a year ago, the insurgents detonated an IED under a convoy, then opened up on the stalled survivors with RPG and small arms fire. It probably made them feel good, sort of their version of shock and awe, but the rifle fire was ineffective and by concentrating their forces, the insurgents made themselves vulnerable to our air power.

The problem in any guerrilla battle is the getaway. Anybody can pull a trigger; the trick is getting your men home safe, while enemy choppers zoom through the sky and every street is full of troops and armor looking for men of military age. That’s the tough part.

An IED ambush has none of those risks. Only one man needs to be on the spot-the triggerman. He detonates the IED from a car parked down a side street and drives away before the occupiers can even start their search. No risk. No casualties. Very demoralizing for the occupiers, especially since they know damn well that everybody in the neighborhood was in on the attack but they can’t level the locals’ shacks like they’re dying to.

What makes this wave of IEDs worse is that the devices are getting more effective. Frankly I’ve been shocked at how good the Iraqis are with these things right from the start. I mean, after that shameful performance in GW I, did you expect these bastards to be so sneaky, patient, and smart? I knew this war was a bad idea, but even I never realized what we’d be up against.

BAGHDAD, Jan 1 (Reuters) – The Iraqi government ordered the closure of a popular independent television channel on Monday for inciting sectarianism, two days after the hanging of Saddam Hussein sparked anger among his fellow Sunni Arabs.

Sharkiya is owned by a London-based Iraqi businessman and says it takes an independent editorial line, though many viewers see it as leaning toward the minority Sunni Arab viewpoint.

The channel was still showing programming on Monday, as it broadcasts from Dubai, and it was not immediately clear what impact the government’s order would have.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf said the government had ordered the channel to close indefinitely.

“We have warned them many times not to broadcast any false news that would increase tension in Iraq,” Khalaf told Reuters, declining to specify which particular reports were false.

The order comes two days after Saddam’s execution for crimes against humanity over the killing of Shi’ite Muslims.

The execution, which was rushed through by Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government at the start of a religious holiday, and video of the hanging that showed Shi’ite officials taunting Saddam before his death, have raised fears of a backlash.

Asked if the move was prompted by Sharkiya’s coverage of the execution, Khalaf said: “In the last three days if you watch their channel you can see they are leading people to violence and increasing the sectarian tension.”

“Whatever human beings have begun, other human beings can then put a stop to.”

The U.S. media might have missed the significance of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, but the public shouldn’t miss the message: It’s about hope.

While the Baker-Hamilton report from the Iraq Study Group dominates the news in recent weeks with its rebuke of the colossal mess the United States has made in Iraq, there is another report released at the end of October — even more vital in its import — that has gone virtually unnoticed. I’m referring to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released by the U.K. government, which has received far too little attention in the U.S. press. It too is about a colossal mess we’ve made, not in a single nation but in the atmosphere of the entire planet, with possible consequences for all life on earth.

If the news in the Stern Review is scary to think about, it’s ultimately a message of hope: It’s not too late to act on global warming — provided we take strong, united global action, starting now and increasing over the next 10 years. Indeed, “delay would be dangerous and much more costly,” the Review warns. What’s powerful about the report is that it positions the issue in easy-to-grasp economic terms. It estimates that acting now to stabilize climate change could cost 1 percent of global GDP each year — which is relatively manageable — but not acting could create losses that dwarf that. Likely the losses from inaction, the Review estimates, would reach 5 percent to 20 percent of global GDP year after year, “now and forever.”

For politicians who argue that taking action now to reduce global warming emissions is too costly in economic terms, the Stern Review offers a stern rebuke: The real economic damage will come not from action but inaction. And as a measure of the report’s economic credibility, it was commissioned by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was prepared by one of the world’s leading economists, Sir Nicholas Stern, and has been endorsed by four Nobel Prize-winning economists plus the president of the World Bank.

The Stern Review offers powerful economic ammunition for the global warming debates that will play out in politics in coming months and years. But as useful as it is, it takes us only part of the way. An analysis by my colleagues at the Tellus Institute shows that the report stops short on two counts.

First, it looks only at environmental damages that can be monetized and quantified, when the risk of catastrophic changes in the climate and ecological systems are far more unknowable. “The Stern Review should be considered a conservative estimate of the dangers,” says Tellus President Paul Raskin. By using only monetized values, he added, “it’s like looking at a mountain through a pinhole.”

Second — and more consequential — is the question of how we get to a world of reduced emissions. The Stern Review concludes that climate stabilization will require that annual greenhouse gas emissions be brought down more than 80 percent below current levels. And it predicts that this can be achieved without significantly compromising world economic growth — since the shift to a low-carbon economy will create huge business opportunities in developing low-carbon and high-efficiency products. As the U.K. Treasury put it in a public statement,

“Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy.”

London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat calls attention to a statement by the leader of the Islamic Army in Iraq “On the Safavid Iranian Project”, posted on the IAI website. (Text version here; voice version here). Although the statement is dated December 28, the paper says it was published on the website yesterday (Saturday December 30).

The main point appears to be that as the focus of the battle shifts from the Americans to the Iranians, the Americans in their search for an exit are making the mistake of talking to “opportunists”, including Baathists, who say they represent the Iraqi resistance but don’t.

Laila El-Haddad spent the last three weeks in a dismal apartment she was forced to rent in El Arish, Egypt, together with her son Yusuf, who is two years and nine months old. Every few days the two tried to travel to the Rafah border crossing, about 50 kilometers away, attempting to return to their home in Gaza. These were distressful efforts: Together with another 5,000 or so residents of Gaza, who have also been waiting in recent weeks to return to their homes, she was crammed with her toddler for hours in an endless line at the crossing. “Elbow to elbow, like cattle,” is how she describes this in her blog, until being pushed back in shame once again.

El-Haddad, a young journalist who splits her time between Gaza and the U.S., can afford to pay $9 per night. But most of the unfortunate people around her, including cancer patients, infants, the elderly and students, the injured and disabled, cannot allow themselves such luxuries. Some of them rent a tent for 1.5 Egyptian pounds per night. The rest simply sleep out in the open, in the chill of night, or crowd together in local mosques.

These people want to return home. Israel does not even allow them this. They are human beings with families, plans and commitments, longings and dignity, but who cares. In recent weeks, even the Palestinian Minister of the Environment, Yusuf Abu Safiya, was stuck there. El-Haddad tells of how the minister could be seen one evening collecting twigs on the beach of El Arish to light a bonfire. During the summer, at least seven people died of heat and dehydration while waiting at the border. For many of those who are ill, the wait is a nightmare that threatens their lives. For students, it means losing an academic year. There is almost no mention of this cruel abuse in the newspapers: After all, the occupation in Gaza has ended.

Without anyone paying attention, the Gaza Strip has become the most closed-off strip of land in the world – after North Korea. But while North Korea is globally known to be a closed and isolated country, how many people know that the same description applies to a place just an hour away from hedonist Tel Aviv?

The Erez border crossing is desolate – Palestinians are not allowed to cross there, foreigners are rarely allowed to cross and Israeli journalists have also been prohibited from crossing during the past two weeks. Only wheelchairs are occasionally pushed through the long “sleeves” of the security check, leading a deadly ill person or someone seriously injured by the IDF to or from treatment in Israel. The large terminal Israel built, a concrete and glass monster that looks like a splendid shopping mall, juts up like a particularly tasteless joke, a mockery. At the Karni crossing, the only supply channel for 1.5 million people, only 12 trucks per day have passed since January. According to the “crossings accord” signed a year ago, Israel committed to allowing 400 trucks a day to pass through. The excuse: security, as usual.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Somali government troops heavily backed by Ethiopian tanks and soldiers pushed Saturday toward Somalia’s port city of Kismaayo, the last stronghold of the Islamic Courts movement swept from power in recent days.

A major battle between the two sides seemed imminent, as Ethiopian jets blew over towns near Kismaayo, and leaders of the Islamic movement rallied fighters who had retreated to the area in the face of Ethiopia’s vastly superior military force.

The Islamic Courts movement is “ready to fight against the enemy of Allah,” Sharif Ahmed, a leader of the group, told residents of Kismaayo, according to the Associated Press.

Somalis are growing impatient with the presence of thousands of Ethiopian troops in their country, but Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has backed the interim Somali government now in power, has said his military will not pull out until it has captured the most “extremist” leaders and “international jihadists” within the Courts movement.

Meles has accused those leaders of supporting ethnic Somali separatist groups in Ethiopia, and both the United States and Ethiopia have accused the Islamic Courts fighters of sheltering terrorists, an allegation the movement has called propaganda.

The United States has denied giving Ethiopia the green light to invade Somalia but has steadfastly supported Ethiopia’s right to self-defense, and Meles has characterized this war as defensive, not preemptive. Just days before the Ethiopian action, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi E. Frazer, accused the Islamic group of being “controlled” by an al-Qaeda cell, an allegation that regional analysts say was exaggerated and intended to justify Ethiopia’s incursion.

The U.S. government, which has a substantial military presence up the coast in Djibouti, has said that four suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania could be among the 2,000 or so fighters who retreated in recent days to the Kismaayo area, which includes a vast forest ideal for hiding in and staging a guerrilla war.

The Islamic Courts movement came to power in June with the popular support of Somalis tired of the brutish rule of warlords who called themselves an “anti-terrorism coalition” and received financial backing from the CIA.

Somalis tend to adhere to a moderate version of Islam, and for many, supporting a movement that enforced Islamic law with varying degrees of severity was a pragmatic choice rather than a religious one.

Imperial arrogance – the road to chaos

The two mainstays of the neoconservative and neoliberal agenda can be reduced to the accumulation of more wealth for the tiny upper clique of the American population and to assuring the ever-lasting continuation of the U.S. empire. The rest of the world is simply of no consequence to the neocon way of thinking and that’s where they make the huge mistake that is one day going to be their downfall. Willful shortsightedness has always been their hallmark and every day now it is looking ever more likely that their undoing is imminent. When the base caves in, the tower will come tumbling down.

U.S. imperial arrogance has had no bounds since they began to see themselves as an invincible power already in the 19th century. That’s when they began to strike out in Latin America to consolidate their empire in the western hemisphere and the Philippines. The geopolitical situation in the world has recently led Washington to assume preposterous rights to single-handedly reshape the world to their liking and the long-term goal is clearly to become the rulers of the planet. But it now looks increasingly as if the roof is going to fall in on the whole pack of wolves and one day soon the now astronomically rich will find themselves left out in the cold with nothing but worthless paper in their portfolios.[1]

Don’t credit the neocons with any deep ideological thinking in their way of going about conquering the world. The United States must obviously be an empire, its military must be invincible and the country must continue to be by far the wealthiest country in the world. Of course we are the most powerful and the world has to see it clearly and tremble with awe and fear. We are also the moral beacon to the world; we alone know what has to be done to save our moral values, our high-minded law and order high priests read the gospel of righteousness to the world.

Certainly some neocons believe that God has given them the right or even the duty to defy anyone who threatens U.S. hegemony and that therefore they have every right to run roughshod over international law and conventions. The plenipotentiary powers of the pre-revolutionary European kings is their model. Napoleon and Hitler are their forerunners.