As I discussed in a post from July 2010, this is one of those successes of the US invasion and occupation that you don't hear publicized here very much. A doctor in Fallujah believes that a proliferation of children born with shocking birth defects is related to the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium weapons in Fallujah in 2004:

Dr Samira Alani, a paediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, has taken a personal interest in investigating an explosion of congenital abnormalities that have mushroomed in the wake of the US sieges since 2005.

We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine, Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.

As of December 21, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we've never seen them until now, she said. So when I describe it all I can do is describe the physical defects, but I'm unable to provide a medical term.

Most of these babies in Fallujah die within 20 to 30 minutes after being born, but not all.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed was born in October 2007. His clinical diagnosis includes dilation of two heart ventricles, and a growth on his lower back that doctors have not been able to remove.

Abdul has trouble controlling his muscles, struggles to walk, cannot control his bladder, and weakens easily. Doctors told his father, Mohamed Jaleel Abdul Rahim, that his son has severe nervous system problems, and could develop fluid build-up in his brain as he ages, which could prove fatal.

This is the first instance of something like this in all our family? Rahim told Al Jazeera. We lived in an area that was heavily bombed by the Americans in 2004, and a missile landed right in front of our home. What else could cause these health problems besides this?

Dr Alani told Al Jazeera that in the vast majority of cases she has documented, the family had no prior history of ongenital abnormalities.

Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft palates, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.

Of course, as noted in the Al Jazeera article, there may be such clusters of birth defects to varying degrees elsewhere in Iraq as well, because the US did not limit the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium weapons to Fallujah. Furthermore, according to Dr. Sharif al-Alwachi, cancer rates have escalated substantially in Babil Province in southern Iraq. Another doctor measured radiation rates in Basra and Kerbala, and the indicator on the Geiger counter went beyond the range. It is impossible to know the severity of the problem because of a lack of doctors and researchers available to conduct a comprehensive investigation, but 42 sites with high levels of nuclear radiation and dioxin contamination have been identified by the Iraqi government:

Southern Iraq, especially Basra, have been adversely affected by such contamination:

The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.

If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it, ­she told the Guardian. First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.

The soil has ended up in people's lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health.

Unfortunately, the Guardian article does not explain the potential sources for the dioxin contamination, but, in regard to radiation, one one can reasonbly conclude that it probable that many parts of Iraq have experienced levels of radiation exposure and contamination substantially in excess what is known about Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns. And, it is important to recognize that the US did not first commence to subject Iraq to radiation contamination in 2003 as explained in this 2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

On the Highway of Death, 11 miles north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert.

They also are radiating nuclear energy.

In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. The devastating results gave the highway its name.

Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery.

Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.

While the US military denies it, retired Major Doug Rokke believes that the use of depleted uranium during the 1991 Gulf War was responsible for subsequent cancer clusters in the Basra area:

Major Doug Rokke, now retired, was in charge of cleaning up American tanks hit by DU during the Gulf War—casualties of friendly fire. He said the DU dust got blown far away by the wind and entered the soil and water supply. Dr. Rokke, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, said many of the men in his cleanup crew developed the same kinds of cancers seen among Iraqi children.

The first member of our staff to develop cancer was sleeping downwind from where we collected the contaminated equipment, he said. This was in Saudi Arabia. He developed cancer of the larynx and throat within nine months. He was breathing in the dust, which we know goes tremendous distances. The first lung cancers were within two years and the first deaths were fairly rapid.

When DU hits a hard target, it creates a small, radioactive fireball.

Dr. Rokke believes depleted uranium poses a particular danger for children because their young bodies are more vulnerable. DU is both radioactive and a toxic, heavy metal. Children who breathe or eat even a small amount can be affected. He said using depleted uranium in Iraq may well cause serious health problems in years to come.

Andrew Kershaw of The Independent graphically described the horrific birth defects of the children in Basra in 2001:

I thought I had a strong stomach - toughened by the minefields and foul frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq.

Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called congenital anomalies, but what you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque and thank God they didn't bring out the real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs.

I won't spare you the details. You should know because - according to the Iraqis and in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish its findings on the spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq - we are responsible for these obscenities.

During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs for they were scarcely human are the result, Dr Amer said.

He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.

Then the chair-grabbing moment - a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

For those born without such defects, Kershaw discovered that there was a dramatic increase in leukemia, and a lack of medication to treat them. If they did not die for lack of the medication, they subsequent died when they ran out of it.

Labels: American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, US Military

From a US diplomatic cable released by wikileaks, describing communications between the public affairs office of the US embassy in Doha and then Al Jazeera Managing Editor Wadah Khanifar on October 18, 2005:

¶7. (C) PAO raised the question of an Al Jazeera website piece published in the last week, listed under the heading Special Coverage, and containing Live Testimony Concerning Tal Afar. The site opens to an image of bloody sheets of paper riddled with bullet holes. Viewers click on the bullet holes to access testimony from ten alleged eye witnesses who described recent military operations in Tal Afar.

¶8. (C) Khanfar said that, in accordance with an earlier promise to PAO (Ref B), he had taken a look at the piece and had two images removed (two injured children in hospital beds, and a woman with serious facial injury). PAO pointed out that the testimony of a doctor in the piece also implied that poison gas had been used on residents of Tal Afar and that the appearance of the piece, in particular the bloody bullet hole icons, came across as inflammatory and journalistically questionable. Khanfar appeared to repress a sigh but said he would have the piece removed. Not immediately, because that would be talked about, but over two or three days, he said.

¶9. (C) He said he had told the website staff that in future, when they want to add an item to the Special Coverage section of the website, they should send a draft of the idea over to his office. (Note: The AJ website is located in a separate building across town. End note.) He noted that until two or three months ago, the website staff had enjoyed much more autonomy. Now, however, website director Abdel Aziz Al Mahmoud attends the weekly editorial meetings at the TV channel offices, and the website staff is being pulled under the umbrella of the same editorial standards as the TV channel. I don't say that such things are not going to be repeated on the website, but it is a learning process, said Khanfar.

Khanifar resigned from Al Jazeera earlier this week upon the release of this cable, as well as some other ones, by Al-Akhbar in Lebanon.

Labels: American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Mainstream Media

UPDATE: For those completists among you who want a comprehensive deconstruction of the dishonesty of Bill Keller when it comes to his support for the invasion of Iraq, and his subsequent complicity in the support of the New York Times for it and war on terror more generally, consider this excellent article by Greg Mitchell. Not surprisingly, he thinks much more highly of Paul Wolfowitz than he does Julian Assange:

Keller mentions Paul Wolfowitz in passing but fails to note his lengthy profile of the war architect in the Times magazine from Sept. 22, 2002. Sample quote: Paul Wolfowitz, who is interesting and complicated, has been cast since Sept. 11 in the role of zealot... . The shorthand version of Paul Wolfowitz, however, is inadequate in important ways. It completely misses his style, which relies on patient logic and respectful, soft-spoken engagement rather than on fire-breathing conviction. Keller described three important things Wolfowitz brings to the table, including something of a reputation as a man who sees trouble coming before others do, his long anxiety about Iraq being one example. Another striking thing about Wolfowitz: an optimism about America's ability to build a better world.

There's an old adjective that applies to Keller here, bootlicker. Kiss ass is a contemporary synonym.

INITIAL POST: The self-absorbed mendacity of the people at the New York Times who supported the invasion of Iraq after 9/11 is almost beyond belief, or, at least, it would have been beyond belief pre-9/11. Turn out that Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the Times from July 2003 until June 2011, was partially persuaded to advocate for the invasion of Iraq because of the birth of his second daughter:

But my prudent punditry soon felt inadequate. I remember a mounting protective instinct, heightened by the birth of my second daughter almost exactly nine months after the attacks. Something dreadful was loose in the world, and the urge to stop it, to do something — to prove something — was overriding a career-long schooling in the virtues of caution and skepticism. By the time of Alice’s birth I had already turned my attention to Iraq, a place that had, in the literal sense, almost nothing to do with 9/11, but which would be its most contentious consequence. And I was no longer preaching the real-world vigilance of intelligence and law enforcement.

So, let's get this straight, Keller decided to take a public advocacy role for the invasion of a country that presented no threat to the US so that he could feel more secure about the safety of his daughters. The US just had to go and kill a bunch of Arabs in Iraq, and destabilize the society, so that he could sleep less fitfully. Of course, the fact that many of the children of Iraq, 28% according to one medical estimate, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of the invasion and subsequent violence goes unmentioned in his rambling, evasive mea culpa.

For Keller, the lives of his daughters, and those of the children of other people like him, are personal, intimate and justify the embrace of irrational violence, while those of the people of Iraq are merely faceless numbers. In the end, Keller can only bring himself to characterize the invasion as a monumental blunder, while seeking mitigation for his role in of promoting it, because, after all . . Whether it was wrong to support the invasion at the time is a harder call . . as he begrudgingly admits his error.

Needless to say, I am angered when I read such self-serving, expedient rationalizations for the embrace of violence in the service of the US empire. I have a four and a half year old son, and, unlike Keller, I have never emotionally responded to global violence, even when experienced within the US, with the urge to advocate for the indiscriminately killing of others. But then, unlike Keller, I don't perceive the people of Iraq, or the rest of the Middle East and Central Asia, for that matter, as quite so otherly as he does. He is, in effect, using his children as rhetorical human shields to defend his depraved response to 9/11. He is so desperate to defend himself that he has put this in print where it will haunt his two daughters, Alice and Molly, for the rest of their lives.

Shockingly, one cannot even describe Keller's response as a desire for retribution, because the people of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. This is a bloodlust beyond vigilantism, a perverse moral failure beyond that examined in a famous film on the subject, The Ox Bow Incident. Here again, Keller exposes his particularly manipulative form of dishonesty when he describes Iraq as a place that had, in the literal sense, almost nothing to do with 9/11. Having placed himself under the bright klieg lights of his own personal interrogation, he, like many garden variety fraud artists, can't fully admit their culpability. Like, yeah man, I might have co-signed that check when confronted with irrefutable proof of their signature. If Keller was subjected to a real interrogation by the police, the detectives would conclude that there was something hinky about him. Keller just can't come clean.

As you might expect, Keller attempts to recover the sympathy of his audience by complaining about how people frequently confront Times' reporters and condemn them as propagandists for the war on terror. Again, we are subjected to another one of those evasive, hinky mea culpas ineptly crafted to reestablish credibility while ensuring that no one is responsible:

For years, our early stories hyping Iraq’s menace (and to a lesser extent what people like me wrote on the opinion pages) fed a suspicion, especially on the left, that we were not to be trusted.

John F. Burns, a correspondent who chronicled the tyranny of Hussein while the man was still in power and stayed on to cover the invasion and aftermath, recalls the reflexive hostility he encountered as a Times reporter on trips home. We were all liars, warmongers, lapdogs of Bush and Cheney and so forth, he told me.

Whatever we wrote — no matter what it was, and no matter how well documented — was dismissed as Bush propaganda, added Dexter Filkins, who covered the battlefields and politics of Afghanistan and Iraq for The Times before moving last January to The New Yorker. That was probably going to happen anyway, but the paper’s real failings gave those criticisms more credibility — and longer legs — than they deserved. Remember that the right-wingers (and a lot of the military) hated us at the time, too, since the war had started to go badly from the get-go, and we were reporting that.

Poor Bill, John and Dexter, so maligned from all sides while trying to file honest reports and opinions. Predictably, one searches Keller's article in vain for any reference to Judith Miller and Michael Gordon. Nor does he mention that he held up the publication of an article revealing the scope of warrantless domestic wiretapping by the Bush administration for over a year after the 2004 election, and subsequently refused to respond to inquiries initiated by the Times' Public Editor at the time, Byron Calame, relying upon, as here, the issuance of a written public statement. Calame concluded that the explanation of the delay by those involved was woefully inadequate. All in all, Keller comes across as a careerist with little concern for the consequences of his actions with an exaggerated confidence in his ability to talk himself out of trouble when he can insulate himself from public accountability.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Mainstream Media, New York Times, Occupation of Iraq

Yesterday, President Obama made the connection between 9/11 and perpetual war explicit:

US President Barack Obama today hailed the 9/11 generation of US veterans and 6200 service members who perished in the hard decade of war spawned by the September 11 attacks.

Mr Obama, speaking to the 93rd annual convention of the American Legion, paid tribute to millions of servicemen and women who had signed up after the world's deadliest terror strike 10 years ago killed nearly 3000 people.

Today, as we near this solemn anniversary, it's fitting that we salute the extraordinary decade of service rendered by the 9/11 generation, the more than five million Americans who have worn the uniform over the past 10 years, he said.

Today we pay humble tribute to the more than 6,200 Americans in uniform who have given their lives in this hard decade of war. We honour them all.

Mr Obama said the 9/11 veterans had become a one America team that changed the way their country fights and wins its wars and had learned the cultures of the lands in which they had served.

We see the scope of their sacrifice in the tens of thousands who now carry the scars of war, both seen and unseen, our remarkable wounded warriors.

Most profoundly, we see the wages of war in those patriots who never came home. They gave their all, their last full measure of devotion, in Kandahar and the Korengal and Helmand, in the battles for Baghdad and Fallujah and Ramadi.

It is a most remarkable statement of imperialist intent and purpose, all the way down to the condescending remarks about how the troops learned the cultures of the lands in which they had served. It is an imperialism that the US intends to pursue indefinitely.

Meanwhile, wikileaks has provided us with an example of what US troops have been doing in Iraq during the period referenced by Obama, courtesy of a diplomatic e-mail written by a US diplomat in Geneva, Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Execution:

I would like to draw the attention of your Government to information I have received regarding a raid conducted by the Multinational Forces (MNF) on 15 March 2006 in the house of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee, a farmer living in the outskirts of Al-Iss Haqi District in Balad (Salah-El-Din Governorate).

I have received various reports indicating that at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay'ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra'a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz's mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz's sister (name unknown), Faiz's nieces Asma'a Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma'arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.

According to the information received, American troops approached Mr. Faiz's home in the early hours of 15 March 2006. It would appear that when the MNF approached the house, shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued for some 25 minutes. The MNF troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them. After the initial MNF intervention, a US air raid ensued that destroyed the house.

Iraqi TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims (i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies carries out at the Tikrit Hospital's morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.

I am aware that the MNF confirmed that an air raid took place that day in Balad and that it caused an unconfirmed number of casualties. The US military attacked the house to capture members of Mr. Faiz Harrat Al-Majma'ee's family on the basis that they were allegedly involved in the killing of two MNF soldiers who were killed between 6 to 11 March 2006 in the Al Haweeja area. The US military was further reported in the media as stating that MNF troops attacked the house in question to capture a foreign fighter facilitator for the Al Qaeda in Iraq network. Other reports indicate that over the past five months, there have been a significant number of lethal incidents in which the MNF is alleged to have used excessive force to respond to perceived threats either at checkpoints or by using air bombing in civilian areas.

Perhaps, you wonder, why is it so important to deconstruct such obvious propaganda? Well, first of all, it isn't that obvious for a lot of people, and second, it is the means by which US politicians preserve public support for US military operations around the world. As Donald Rumsfeld did on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, US politicians, like the President, persist in associating the deaths of those who died on 9/11 with US invasions and occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and, to much lesser extent, Pakistan. Sweep it all up. Things related and not remains the governing principle of US foreign policy.

Exploitation of the people who died on 9/11 and, conversely, the suppression of any acknowledgement of the people who have subsequently died in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia as a consequence of US military operations is culturally central to perpetuating this imperialist policy. In other words, a mythology of victimization, a mythology whereby those who died on 9/11 are connected to conflicts unrelated to the attacks themselves, is necessary to provide a comprehensible ideological narrative for actions that would otherwise be recognized as violently expansionist. Needless to say, recourse to racist and sectarian stereotypes about Arabs, commonly described as Islamophobia, is also an essential feature of it, financed by influential corporate interests.

Accordingly, we should speak clearly about the tenth anniversary events associated with 9/11. They are offensive, because they exploit death to justify death on a permanent, exponentially greater scale. They constitute part of a sinister foundation myth for the so-called war on terror, a euphemism for the expansion of the American Empire, and its neoliberal, capitalist values, by means of military force. To participate in them is to participate in the embrace of the war on terror and all of the sadomasochistic brutality associated with it. On September 11, 2001, a covert clash of fundamentalisms erupted in full public view in the most spectacular fashion, a clash between the violence of radical Islamic fundamentalism and the violence of American exceptionalism, and we should instead recognize that these deaths are the tragic result of this conflict.

Shortly after the attacks, Tariq Ali asked an immigrant Central American cab driver in New York City about them, and he responded:

You know how many people they've killed in Central America? You know?... I feel sorry for the ones who died. That's more than they feel for us.

Indeed. But it's actually worse than that. Turns out that people like Rumsfeld and Obama, representative of the the political elites that govern the US, don't feel much for the people who died in the Twin Towers, either, because, if they did, they wouldn't have stripped the victims of their humanity and reduced them to US propaganda symbols. We can most sincerely respect their deaths by ascribing a tragic dimension to them equal to the deaths of anyone else.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Barack Obama, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Pakistan, Rumsfeld, Sadomasochism

UPDATE: In case you've forgotten, the post-9/11 reaction:

At a community meeting Saturday in Mountain View, civil rights leaders and local residents who described being targeted expressed fear that upcoming events could trigger another flare-up of backlash attacks.

They spoke from experience -- schoolchildren taunted for wearing religious head scarves, workers discriminated against because of beards and turbans. And rights advocates warned that more incidents could soon be added to the growing tallies of post 9/11 hate crimes.

Sarah O'Neal, a Muslim who attends Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, told the packed audience in a senior center auditorium that she'd been called towel head. Fellow students often asked if she had relatives in al-Qaida. And once she was lured by a schoolmate into the bathroom, where Sarah O'Neal is a terrorist was written in graffiti on the wall.

INITIAL POST: By the end of the day on September 11, 2011, there will be little doubt that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will have served the purpose of celebrating perpetual war in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Consider, for example, this event in Sacramento:

This year marks the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Come and join us in remembering not only the nearly 3000 Americans who did not return home to their families after the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, but also those members of our Armed Forces who have given their lives defending our country. In doing so, you will be honoring those who were lost while helping to establish a support system for the families of local public servants, should they make the ultimate sacrifice.

In Downtown Sacramento, the 9/11 Memorial 5K Run/Walk will take place to give those who vowed to Never Forget the opportunity to exercise that vow. The 5K will start at 9:11 on 9/11, and wind through Downtown Sacramento. At the finish of the 5K, American flags will be handed to runners as they cross the line. Each flag will represent an American who lost their life on 9/11/2001. Runners will carry the flag they are given and will place it in the grass in the Tribute in the Park. Each American Flag will be placed next to a name plate engraved with the name of an American who did not return home. When the 9/11 5K Memorial Run/Walk is complete, nearly 3000 flags will stand united in the grass as a tribute to those that were lost.

Needless to say, there is something really offensive about this. To presume that the victims of 9/11 would have wanted to be remembered by reference to US militarism is, at best, presumptuous, especially when you realize that over 500 of the estimated 2700 victims were born outside the US.

Furthermore, as explained in a 2006 La Oferta article, an unknown number of undocumented people died in the attacks, and, naturally, they go unacknowledged during the Sacramento event:

Like Nora Elsa Molinar, scores of Hispanic families mourn family members thought to have died in the World Trade Center attacks five years ago Monday, but of whom no record remains because they were undocumented

Although Molinar lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has never been in New York, the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 changed her life forever, as happened to thousands who suffered the same kind of loss.

Every Friday for six years Nora would receive a call from her son Fernando, but for the last five years she has heard nothing of him.

Fernando, who emigrated to New York when he was 15, worked as a delivery boy for a pizzeria near the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks that cost the lives of 2,749 people.

Nonetheless, he is not on any list of victims or missing persons, EFE was told by Joel Magallan, director of the Tepeyac organization that serves New York’s Mexican community.

Beyond this, there is also something offensive about the sanctification of the victims of 9/11, a sanctification that elevates them above the ongoing victims of US military attacks post-9/11. While the enormous numbers of deaths associated with the Iraqi conflict cannot be definitely calculated, even though we know that the number is exponentially greater than the number who died on 9/11, attacks that Iraqis had nothing to do with, of course, the US military continues to kill people on a nearly daily basis in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. A sincerely motivated 9/11 event would acknowledge all of these deaths, as well as those killed in the past through American covert operations, such as Operation Condor, among others. A sincerely motivated 9/11 rememberance would emphasize all the victims of political violence, instead of transforming it into yet another rationalization of the military expansion of the American Empire.

And, finally, a historically honest 9/11 event would condemn the leadership of the US for its coldhearted exploitation of those who died, as CBS News reported a year after the attacks:

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. – meaning Saddam Hussein – at same time. Not only UBL – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

Go massive, the notes quote him as saying. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.

By the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had already turned his attention away from the victims, and focused upon how he could exploit the tragedy to kill even more people. Not surprisingly, he'll be one of the attendees at the 9/11 anniversary in New York City.

Labels: 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Libya, Pakistan, Rumsfeld, Sacramento, US Military

Labels: Alternative Media, American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, YouTube

From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

A judge sentenced ex-BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle to the minimum term of two years in prison Friday for fatally shooting unarmed train rider Oscar Grant, saying he believed the former officer's testimony that he had confused his pistol for a Taser.

Mehserle, 28, faced as many as 14 years in prison after he was convicted in July of involuntary manslaughter and a separate charge of intentionally firing a gun at Grant at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland early Jan. 1, 2009. But Judge Robert Perry threw out the firearm conviction before sentencing Mehserle in Los Angeles County Superior Court, saying there was no evidence to support it.

Reminiscent of the absurdity of a San Francisco jury finding Dan White guilty of manslaughter for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk because he ate too many twinkies, Judge Perry ruled that Mehserle was involuntary acting upon muscle memory when he killed Grant:

Perry's remarks suggested that, had the prosecution won the murder conviction it sought, he would have overturned it because he found no intent to kill.

Mehserle's muscle memory took over in this moment of great danger and stress, the judge said. No reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that Mehserle intentionally fired his gun."

Meanwhile, in regard to killings by the US miltary on the other side of the world:

In another top case, eight Marines were initially charged with murder or failure to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis that occurred after a roadside bombing that killed a Marine. Six have had charges dropped or dismissed, and one was acquitted.

Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the squad leader, is scheduled to go to trial Sept. 13 on reduced charges of voluntary manslaughter in nine of the 24 deaths and other crimes in the November 2005 shootings in the town of Haditha.

Last year, a Marine accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi detainee during a 2004 battle to recapture the city of Fallujah pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty after the government dropped a murder charge as part of a plea agreement.

The other two defendants were acquitted, one by a military jury and the other by a civilian court after he completed his military obligations and was beyond the reach of a court-martial.

Any explanation by police officers or US troops is apparently sufficient.

Labels: "Support the Troops", BART Killing, California, Iraqi Deaths, Police, Racism, US Military

Through the Wolf Brigade, the US carried out its policy of intensifying sectarian violence in Iraq in 2005 and 2006:

A visit from the unit to any neighbourhood was sure to bring trouble – as it it did for Omar Salem Shehab on 25 June that year.

We were at home that night, Shehab recalled this week. We were three brothers sleeping above my ice-cream shop. We were woken by soldiers entering our house by force. They came with Americans. They said we were wanted and produced a document. The Americans took our pictures, then the soldiers we now knew were the Wolf Brigade took us to the Seventh Division camp [of the Iraqi army].

Shehab and his brothers lived in Dora, in Baghdad's south, a lethal enclave of the city that was rapidly deteriorating into chaos. Like most of Dora's residents, they are Sunni Muslims.

The trio were at the army camp for a day, then transferred to Baghdad's main prison, known as Tsferrat.

We were tortured all the time, he said. We were never investigated, just tortured. The commander of the Wolf Brigade, Abu al-Walid was one of the torturers. My brother had a kidney problem and they continued to torture him without giving him medicine.

He died after a month and the doctor wrote 'kidney failure' as a cause of death, despite his body being covered with torture marks. When he died, they let me and my other brother out. I later learned that another man we had met in prison, Khalid Hussein, had also died.

Torture and death seemed synonymous with the almost exclusively Shia unit, which was tasked with rooting out Sunni insurgents from post-Saddam Iraq. As security unravelled across the country, they were often seen alongside US forces, particularly in Baghdad and Mosul.

As a consequence of the WikiLeaks document release, US support for Iraqi death squads is finally being exposed to the light of day.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Neoliberalism, Occupation of Iraq, US Military

Perhaps, you've already read about this subject in relation to the WikiLeaks release of material associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even if you have, please bear with me, starting with the following from The Guardian:

A frago is a fragmentary order which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ.

Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.

The systematic viciousness of the old dictatorship when Saddam Hussein's security agencies enforced order without any regard for law continues, reinforced by the chaotic savagery of the new criminal, political and sectarian groups which have emerged since the invasion in 2003 and which have infiltrated some police and army units, using Iraq's detention cells for their private vendettas.

Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer's whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.

Beyond allowing the US and the other participants in the coalition to outsource the brutalization of detainees, Frago 242 created opportunities for a perverse voyeurism, whereby US troops were permitted to watch the most gruesome abuse of people without any obligation to do anything about it.

If there was any question that the US was complicit in much of this abuse, Justin Raimondo helpfully directs our attention to another article in the The Guardian that eliminates any remaining doubt:

Within the huge leaked archive is contained a batch of secret field reports from the town of Samarra. They corroborate previous allegations that the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry's special commandos.

In Samarra, the series of log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US infantry, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for further questioning. Typical entries read: All 5 detainees were turned over to Ministry of Interior for further questioning (from 29 November 2004) and The detainee was then turned over to the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion for further questioning (30 November 2004).

The field reports chime with allegations made by New York Times writer Peter Maass, who was in Samarra at the time. He told Guardian Films: US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing, while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a detention centre, he said.

An interview conducted by Maass in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade's US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.

The Wolf Brigade was created and supported by the US in an attempt to re-employ elements of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, this time to terrorise insurgents. Members typically wore red berets, sunglasses and balaclavas, and drove out on raids in convoys of Toyota Landcruisers. They were accused by Iraqis of beating prisoners, torturing them with electric drills and sometimes executing suspects. The then interior minister in charge of them was alleged to have been a former member of the Shia Badr militia.

According to this post by lenin in 2006, the situation in Samarra was not unique:

6,000 bodies in Baghdad's mortuaries since the start of the year, and what's more, no-one believes these are the true figures from the violence in and around Baghdad as many bodies are not taken to the morgue, or are never found.

Here's the thing: the US government can openly announce its intentions. It can even be reported once in a while (albeit with a rather crude apologia bracketing the facts). Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee can die while uncovering the truth behind it. Yet somehow, invariably, it's simply taboo to mention what is richly evident. The BBC did not mention any of this either on television or on the internet. No one mentions that the bulk of these deaths are attributed to the Special Police Commandos, who were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units.

Yasser Salihee found that many of the dead were apprehended by large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios. He died shortly after reporting this at a US checkpoint, with a bullet in the head.

As Patrick Cockburn drily observed: Of particular interest to Iraqis, when WikiLeaks releases the rest of its hoard of documents, will be to see if there is any sign of how far US forces were involved in death squad activities from 2004.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Death Squads, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism, US Military

More from Chris Brooke (again, best read from the bottom up):

Blair, p. 653: I met a very bouncy Sarkozy at the start of his Presidential campaign and told him that he sounded like Napoleon.

Blair, p. 645: And on social exclusion, you shd concentrate on dysfunctional families, not on poor people or young people in general.

Blair, p.644: in these speeches I gave lessons to my successors, eg that to deal with the criminal underclass you need draconian powers.

Blair, p. 634: Twice I thanked God for the independence of the British judiciary, over cash for honours and the Hutton inquiry.

Blair, p. 607: Putting campaign donors in the Lords is a murky business, but it is the system as it has operated for a long, long time.

Blair, p. 602: But it wasn't that I didn't get public opinion on Lebanon, nor that I cdn't have articulated it... I didn't agree with it.

Blair, p.600: If I condemned Israel, it wd be more than dishonest; it wd have undermined the worldview I had come to hold passionately.

Blair, p. 598: In Sept 2006 I visited Beirut... Unsurprisingly, I was not popular with many Lebanese people.

Blair, p.597: The occupation of Palestinian land may be an injustice, depending on yr viewpt, but this is a region w plenty of injustices.

Blair, p. 596: Israel is a government with a well-armed & well-trained army & air force. They do not target civilians.

Blair, p. 594, on the Israel / Lebanon war in 2006: That event, & my reaction to it, prob. did me more damage than anything since Iraq.

Blair throws around stupid metaphors, p. 592: the bazooka of outrage, the blowpipe of ridicule.

Blair, p. 591: Politicians shag around bc of the supreme self-control you have to exercise to be at the top.

Blair, p.585, thinks abt pensions, wanting a framework that over time wd...tilt the responsibility for provision from state to individual.

Blair, p. 577: Academies were great, because they were freed from extraordinarily debilitating & often politically correct interference.

After wading through these tweets, I have a number of observations. First, Blair's reflexive support for Israel, and, by extension, state violence generally, as expressed in similar remarks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is remarkable. One gets the sense that there is no act of state violence that he would condemn, including the use of nuclear weapons. Although he apparently does not address it, Blair's perspective on the wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan suggest he believes that the US use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was appropriate, and would probably support their use again, such as, for example, in an attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear research and power program.

Second, Blair reveals himself to be an autocratic figure in the tradition of late 19th Century and early 20th Century progressives as it relates to the working class and lower income people. He believes that workers should pay their own pensions with no state assistance, placing him squarely among those in the US who want to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits, and consistently describes the lives of many low income people in pathological terms. Recall his comment, posted here yesterday: The right-wing phrase, underclass, was ugly, but it was accurate. People at the bottom had dysfunctional lives, full stop. Today, we get more elaboration: to deal with the criminal underclass you need draconian powers.

In this, Blair brings to mind the perpetual urban renewal efforts of the last century, most prominent in the 1930s and 1960s. Such efforts were usually justified by reference to the purported urgency of eliminating blight, an antiseptic term that identified lower middle income and low income communities as disease infested, crime ridden areas that must be destroyed so that they could be replaced by modern middle class neighborhoods. As a result, many vibrant lower middle income and lower income communities were forever lost, with their residents cast to the winds. Most recently, as noted by Yusef, the same sad transformation has taken place in post-Katrina New Orleans.

But Blair is more aggressive in his approach as he approved the installation of public surveillance equipment, greater police power and increased criminal penalties. In this, he again acted upon his adoration of the US, which has pioneered such measures as a solution to social disorder. Hence, he perceives the state as beset by threats from within and without, an international Islamic insurgency that will take decades to overcome, and an internal class of lumpenproletarians that invariably threaten to disrupt the lives of its citizens if not strictly controlled. While not explicit, he seems to perceive immigration as something that intensifies both threats, as he elsewhere states that the post-Holocaust asylum policy was no longer tenable. In effect, Blair possesses an extreme vision of a utopian, middle class consumer society, perhaps even more extreme than the one promoted by Thatcher and Reagan, as Blair lacks the residue of libertarian values, however slight, that motivated them. Of course, it can only be implemented by recourse to coercion and violence, which he readily embraces.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Islam, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Police, Postmodernism, Racism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

An amazing accomplishment by Chris Brooke, a page by page Twitter summarization of Blair's memoirs. The banality of Blair would be truly hysterical, if it hadn't contributed to the deaths of so many people.

Some excerpts (please note that they are best read from the bottom up):

Blair, p. 516: If Condi Rice has a fault, it is that she is probably too decent for the world of politics.

Yes, Blair really does call Ariel Sharon, p. 515, a big man in every sense.

Blair, p.513: Even Gitmo, a policy that was both understandable &, done in a different way, justifiable was seen as anti- the rule of law.

Blair, p, 501: Gerhard Schroeder was a really tough cookie.

Blair, p, 482: Top US universities were the best in the world plainly & inescapably due to their system of fees.

Blair, p. 467: on the pics from Abu Ghraib, no doubt they were exceptional incidents, and the offenders were prosecuted.

Blair, p. 458: The reception was ecstatic. They got up and applauded throughout, a total of thirty-five times.

Blair, pp.457-8, quotes at length from his speech to the US Congress, one of the most important and, in my judgement, best speeches I made"

Blair, p. 410: Even people who didn't like me or agree with me still admired the fact I counted, was a big player, was a world... leader.

Blair, p. 409: But Cheney's manner of doing it was incomplete. We needed to win the war at the level of ideas, by engaging Muslims.

Blair, p. 408: Cheney is the object of so much conspiracy theory that it's virtually impossible to have a rational discussion about him.

Blair visits Crawford, TX, April 2002, p. 399. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Blair, p. 394: George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world.

Blair, p. 387: the Middle East was urgently in need of modernisation.

Pre-9/11 terrorism, Blair calls, p. 343, the price that America paid for being America.

Blair, p.204: The right-wing phrase, underclass, was ugly, but it was accurate. People at the bottom had dysfunctional lives, full stop.

Blair, p. 116: I wanted to preserve, in terms of competitive tax rates, the essential Thatcher/Howe/Lawson legacy.

Blair says, p. 88, that it wd have been wickedly irresponsible to send his kids to an average state school.

For the full, rich experience, you have to read Brooke's dissection in its entirety. It has the riveting quality of a compelling work of experimental fiction. He has about 170 pages to go before completing the task that he has set for himself.

Labels: American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

UPDATE: lenin reminds us of everything that was horrible about Blair, but who knew that one of his role models was . . . Princess Diana? Rarely has someone so openly exposed the vacuity of their thought and their relationships with others:

Blair's fat little compendium of pseudo-revelations, attacks on personal acquaintances and colleagues, self-justifying circumlocutions, political polemic, and narcissistic reflections, comes with its own self-destruct button. Comparing himself to the people's princess, he says: We were both in our ways manipulative people, perceiving quickly the emotions of others and able instinctively to play with them. Elsewhere, he informs astonished readers that sometimes politicians must conceal the full truth ... bend it and even distort it. This being the case, you might suspect that he is not always being honest with his readers, and that the impression he tries to give of opening up and being fully frank is as counterfeit as his intelligence on Iraq. You might wonder what is the point of your parting with a portion of your spending power even for one of the thousands of half price copies that your local WH Smith will be shoving in your direction, if all that's going to happen is that Tony Blair lies to you. Again. When all he's ever done is lie to you, at taxpayers' expense. Will there come a time, you might wonder, when we will stop paying Tony Blair to lie to us?

INITIAL POST: Today, the memoirs of Tony Blair went on sale in the United Kingdom. Needless to say, there has been a media frenzy. Given Blair's return to the spotlight, if only for a few days, I thought it appropriate to repost my film review of the 2007 movie, The Queen, in so far as it addresses Blair.

Please note that the reference to Frears is shorthand for the director, Stephen Frears, while the reference to Morgan alludes to the scriptwriter, Peter Morgan. Both of them fulfilled their responsibilities in stellar fashion in regard to the film generally and most particularly in their characterization of Blair, along with the actor who played the role, Michael Sheen:

. . . Another pleasant suprise was Michael Sheen's performance as Tony Blair. Indeed, the film is actually as much about Blair and his abandonment of his Labour idealism as it is about the crisis within the royal family after Diana's death. Blair had just been installed as Prime Minister when Diana died, and his closest advisors are startled by his increasing identification with the conservative royals as the media circus intensifies. Sheen, again assisted by Morgan's top drawer script, portrays Blair sympathetically, but accurately, as a middle class man who aspires to political power so that he can attain social acceptance by the elite. Through such a well rounded, empathetic presentation, Sheen (and Morgan) indict Blair as a cogenial little man who would cheerfully sell out anyone or anything for his self-aggrandizement, and it is an indictment far more compelling than any issued by the left.

In a telling scene near the end, a scene that highlights the allegorical aspect of this part of the story, the Queen, after having been subjected to the most brutal personal insults by her subjects, finds herself, to her dismay, being consoled by Blair. Never mind, he says, the bond between you and your subjects is now stronger than ever. The Queen, not so sure, demurs, and warns, someday, Mr. Blair, you may also find yourself equally reviled by the public. Blair, of course, ever supremely confident of his hold over the populace (and, at times, even the royals), expresses his disagreement through his body language. Frears and Morgan, with benefit of hindsight, recognized that such arrogance lead inevitably to the catastrophe in Iraq.

Not surprisingly, consistent with his attainment of his petty aspirations, he supports the ruthless budget cutting of the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition, and urges an attack upon Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons.

For someone born and raised in the United Kingdom, it is rather odd to realize that Blair most closely resembles a small town social climber out of a Sinclair Lewis novel, like Babbitt or Elmer Gantry, with the absence of any capacity for self-reflection. Accordingly, he is more akin to the self-serving evangelist Gantry than the emotionally adrift real estate agent George Babbitt. Like Gantry, Blair exploited religion, but in the related field of politics, where there is also a demand for messiahs:

The strongest support for Bush's war came from Tony Blair, Britain's most religious leader since Gladstone. Like Bush, Blair prays. He keeps a Bible by his bed and says he will only answer to my maker for British deaths in Iraq. When David Frost asked if he and Bush prayed together on Iraq, Blair declined to answer.

Blair has been notoriously described by many as Bush's poodle, but, in fact, the relationship was the other way round, as recognized years ago by Richard Gott. Just as Joseph Lieberman can be accurately described as the person most responsible for the current orientation of the Democratic Party, Blair is the person who most effectively proselytized the neoconservative values of the war on terror, introducing them into the mainstream discourse, as it were, commencing his effort, as did the participants of the Project for a New American Century, before 9/11.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Neoconservatives, Neoliberalism, Religion, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

An update on the possible consequences of the use of depleted uranium munitions in Fallujah in 2004:

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened.

Tom Eley of the World Socialist Website provides more background:

According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby nations.

The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to increase their effectiveness.

In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.

In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every 1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of 1945.

One suspects that similar, if not more destructive, radiation weapons would be used in an attack upon Iran, with potentially even more severe consequences.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, War with Iran

Dahr Jamail has published a harrowing article about the indiscriminate violence that has marked the occupation of Iraq:

Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation forces.

"I remember one woman walking by, said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.

The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media in the US.

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.

During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot, Washburn's testimony continued, The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond. Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent.

Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.

One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation.... One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.

Vincent Emanuele, a Marine rifleman who spent a year in the al-Qaim area of Iraq near the Syrian border, told of emptying magazines of bullets into the city without identifying targets, running over corpses with Humvees and stopping to take "trophy" photos of bodies.

An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by, he said, This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment.

Of course, if you haven't figured it out already, you should read the article in its entirety.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

Given that the organization that has released this 2007 video, wikileaks, is being described as a threat to national security by the Pentagon, I believe that it is important to disseminate it as broadly as possible.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

Like the officials of the Bush admininstration, Tony Blair and his New Labour acolytes sought to make their own reality as well:

Government uncertainty about how to reply to a medical journal's article on the numbers killed in Iraq has been revealed in official documents.

In October 2004 the Lancet published estimates that 98,000 people died in the conflict's first 18 months.

Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the figure, but one official warned the government would be "ripped apart" if it questioned the Lancet's methodology.

The government tried to stop publication, but was over-ruled.

A subsequent Lancet article claimed that the number of deaths caused by the conflict up to 2006 was more than 650,000.

Of course, Blair was far too concerned about the situation. A complaisant media ignored the findings of the Lancet while relying upon the much lower, less credible figures developed by Iraq Body Count. And, even more, the people behind Iraq Body Count, the same people who estimated the number of dead Iraqis by primarily reading the foreign language media, enthusiastically stepped forward to malign the statistical methodology of the Lancet, even as Blair's science advisor found it all too credible. If you can't prevent the evidence from being released to the public, sound the alarm for assistance from your allies in the NGO world. Or, maybe, they come to the rescue without being asked.

Labels: Iraq Body Count, Iraq War, Iraqi Deaths, Tony Blair

Three years in prison for the man who threw his shoes at President Bush. Sometimes, the simplest things tell you more about the nature of American imperialism than the most thorough and sophisticated analysis.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Bush, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq

According to the New York Times:

President Bush flew to Iraq on Sunday, his fourth and final trip to highlight the recently completed security agreement between the United States and the country that has occupied the bulk of his presidency and will to a large extent define his legacy.

But his appearance at a news conference here was interrupted by an Iraqi journalist who shouted in Arabic — “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog” — and threw one of his shoes at the president, who ducked and narrowly avoided being struck.

As chaos ensued, he threw his other shoe, shouting, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” The second shoe also narrowly missed Mr. Bush as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki stuck out a hand in front of the president’s face to help shield him.

Labels: Bush, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Republicans, YouTube

Jurors wept and embraced former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr. after acquitting him of voluntary manslaughter in the killings of unarmed Iraqi detainees during a fierce 2004 battle.

Tears rolled down Nazario's cheeks and courtroom spectators openly sobbed and cheered Thursday. He is the first U.S. veteran tried by a civilian court for alleged actions in combat.

It's been a long, hard year for my family," Nazario said outside the courtroom. "I need a moment to catch my breath and try to get my life back together."

Jurors took less than six hours over two days to find the former sergeant not guilty of charges that he killed or caused others to kill four detainees in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 9, 2004. The detainees were shot during a battle — marked by house-to-house fighting — that was considered one of the fiercest of the Iraq war.

NOTE: The two Marines that allegedly saw Nazario kill the detainees refused to testify.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism

A FORMER US Marine was acquitted of manslaughter here today in the shooting deaths of unarmed Iraqi prisoners during 2004 fighting in Fallujah.

Jose Luis Nazario, 28, was found not guilty of all charges after a landmark trial at the US District Court at Riverside in California, southeast of Los Angeles.

It was the first time a former serviceman had been tried in a civilian court for actions taken during combat.

Prosecutors told the jury that Mr Nazario had ignored clear rules about how to treat prisoners and ordered the execution-style killing of four "unarmed, submissive, docile" detainees during a house search.

Mr Nazario is alleged to have shot dead two of the captives himself before ordering two subordinates to kill the others.

However the prosecution's case was weakened after the two subordinates - Marines Jermaine Nelson and Ryan Weemer - refused to testify against Mr Nazario last week and were declared in contempt of court.

Labels: "Support the Troops", American Empire, Iraqi Deaths, Occupation of Iraq, Sadomasochism