The Rag Blog

THE UNITED STATES upset the regional balance in the Middle East when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but “cutting and running” must precede them all. Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president’s conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter’s FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh “interrogation techniques” used on prisoners.

AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) — Will Rogers said, “You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.”

However, the horses are counting on the people more than ever now. Nearly 100,000 horses are killed annually in foreign-owned slaughterhouses in America for human consumption in other countries.

With the upcoming Senate vote on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, Americans have a small window of opportunity to save a living legend.

Horses are all the things a truly evolved human should be. There are countless examples of their innate ability and desire to heal people.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.

Introduction

Numerous writers, journalists, public officials and academics on the Right and Left have noted changes in relations between the US and Latin America. Those on the Right bemoan the ‘end of US hegemony’, the growth of a ‘New Left’, the ‘revival of populism’ and the ‘loss of US influence’. Those on the Left herald the purported changes as a moment of progressive regional realignment. The Right speaks pessimistically of the threats to ‘national security and democracy’, and access to energy and other resources. One sector on the Left claims to perceive a new regional ‘axis of counter hegemony’ led by Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia sweeping the continent. While other prudent conservative observers argue that a broad ‘center-left’ alternative headed by ‘social democratic’ regimes like Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay are replacing traditional US allies and challenging both the Leftist regimes and past US policies.

Inside the US Government, policymakers focus on isolating and destabilizing the Left, downplaying the challenges from the center-left and emphasizing political continuities and economic opportunities with neo-liberal regimes.

Faced with radically different assessments of the strength and weakness of US influence in Latin America, an independent analysis of the historic context for measuring the rise or fall of US power is required. This requires a serious assessment, which avoids overblown generalizations, and examines specific issues, areas and particular conjunctures in which agreements or disagreements between the US and Latin America occur. This includes looking at how differences are resolved as well as the structural convergences and divergences.

Crisis and Collapse of US-Backed Clients: The End of the Golden Era

Embedded in the ‘good times’ and the rhetoric of ‘free elections and free markets’, neither the World Bank nor the IMF, Washington and the EU anticipated the massive popular uprisings and electoral revolts of the late nineties through to the first half of the following decade (1999-2006), which overthrew or repudiated each and every US client.

In Ecuador, three popular uprisings replaced neo-liberal presidents, blocking the privatization of gas, oil and petroleum, as well as the signing of the Latin American Free Trade Agreement. In Argentina, in December 2001, in the face of a financial collapse, the freezing of accounts of millions of bank depositors and a deep economic recession, a mass popular rebellion ousted the incumbent President De la Rua and three of his would-be ‘successors’. In Bolivia, 3 bloody mass insurrections in January 2000, October 2003 and June 2005 led to the overthrow of two of Washington’s most obedient and servile clients – Sanchez de Losado and his Vice President Carlos Mesa, both notorious privatizers and lax regulators of tax, fiscal and contraband activities by foreign MNCs. In Brazil, mass pressure led by the rural workers movement (MST) and urban discontent led to the defeat of incumbent President Cardoso’s party and the election of the apparently social democratic Lula Da Silva.

Most important of all Washington’s efforts to destabilize Venezuela’s President Chavez for objecting to the Bush Administration Middle East war policy, and its subsequent backing of a failed coup, radicalized Chavez and his supporters.

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Ali Abbas decided that his upper right thigh was the best place for a tattoo because no one gets tortured there.

He’d seen hundred of bodies in the city morgue and dozens of hospitals during his 18-day search for his missing uncle. He’d seen drill marks in swollen, often unrecognizable heads, slash marks across necks, bullet holes in backs, abdomens and swollen hands. He’d seen bodies that had been thrown into the river, so swollen they’d barely looked human. But by and large, the thighs had been intact.