General Discussion

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE
NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

By Philip Martin

12/08/06 "Lew Rockwell" --- I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.

The following e-mail message was received by Impeach for Peace. Impeach for Peace developed the DIY Impeachment. Evidently, that's come to someone's attention.

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In the not too distant future, America will once again be visited with the love and sincerity of the Islam-O-fascist, then the fun can begin.

We have a nation of narcissistic, hedonistic, comfort punks who have taken up the mantra of peace at any cost, for now.

Once this cabal of the self centered is faced with some reality, reality will once again rear its fun little head.

In the not too distant future, America hating cowards and peace punks may find themselves looking at a gallows for treason. What fun, just imagine what you would do, when your day arrives, they lead you to the place of execution and you stand there in all your peace glory, shaking like a leaf in the breeze, the noose is placed over your hippie head and you wait for the drop. I can't wait, the pissing of the pants and cries for Jesus, who you rejected when you embraced atheism, sodomy and the dumbocrap way.......That'll be a great day!

By Greg Mitchell
Editor and Publisher
Monday 13 November 2006

New York - Her name doesn't show on any official list of American military deaths in the Iraq war, by hostile or non-hostile fire, who died in that country or in hospitals in Europe or back home in the USA. But Iraq killed her just as certainly.

She is Jeanne "Linda" Michel, a Navy medic. She came home last month to her husband and three kids (ages 11, 5, and 4), delighted to be back in her suburban home of Clifton Park in upstate New York. Michel, 33, would be discharged from the Navy in a few weeks, finishing her five years of duty.

Two weeks after she got home, she shot and killed herself.

Published on Friday, November 10, 2006 by the Independent / UK

One by one, they are falling victim to conflict they engineered. Bush and Blair remain - for now

Richard Armitage

Colin Powell's number two quit at the same time as his boss after the 2004 election.

Jose Maria Aznar

Spanish PM. Victim of Islamic extremism caused by war. Ousted after Madrid bombs.

Published on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 by the Independent / UK
by Colin Brown

Injured soldiers returning from Iraq have brought back a superbug that has been linked with outbreaks in NHS hospitals where they have been treated, a health minister has confirmed. The links between casualties brought back from Iraq and outbreaks in the NHS have caused alarm within the health service and led to renewed demands for more dedicated wards for Britain's armed forces to enable wounded soldiers to be isolated more effectively.

By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher
Wednesday 01 November 2006

One of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh "interrogation techniques."

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

Published on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 by CommonDreams.org Bush
by Bob Burnett

One of the most memorable Iraq war images was President Bush's May 1, 2003, speech from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. As Bush announced, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," framed by the banner, "Mission Accomplished," he was surrounded by hundreds of cheering troops. At the time, it would have been hard to predict that three years later major combat operations would not have ended, the mission would not be accomplished, and Bush would be losing the support of the military.

By James Glanz
The New York Times
Monday 30 October 2006

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration's on the situation in Iraq.

By Donna St. George
The Washington Post
Tuesday 19 September 2006

Harassment allegations have galvanized activists.

Eugene, Ore. - Suzanne Swift remembers standing in her mother's living room, hours away from her second deployment to Iraq. Her military gear had already been shipped - along with her Game Boy, her DVDs and books, her favorite pink pillow, her stash of sunflower seeds. She had the car keys in her hand, ready to drive to the base. Suddenly, she turned to her mother.

"I can't do this," she remembers saying. "I can't go."

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Monday 18 September 2006

Watch it or Read it:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091906Z.shtml

Published on Sunday, September 17, 2006 by the Associated Press
by Patrick Quinn

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Monday 18 September 2006

George W. Bush's Sept. 15 outburst - threatening to stop interrogating terror suspects if Congress doesn't let him revise the Geneva Conventions to permit coercive techniques - is part of a pattern of petulance that dates back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new challenges to his authority.

By Robert Dreyfuss
TomPaine.com
Wednesday 13 September 2006

President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and the entire Republican election team are scrambling to make their socalled war on terror the focus of the next seven weeks. As in 2002 and 2004, they're counting on their ability to scare Americans with the al-Qaida bogeyman. And while the trauma of 9/11 has begun to dissipate and American voters seem less susceptible than ever to the scare tactics used by the White House, for the past five years the Democrats have been singularly unable to develop an effective counter to the Bush administration on terrorism. So, for that reason, here are 10 important facts about terrorism that opponents of President Bush should understand.

By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 18 September 2006

President Bush's speechwriters have just about worn out their lexicon of scary words and phrases to regale us with tales of all the terrorist plots he has disrupted since 9/11. But one word has apparently been expunged from the White House dictionary: Anthrax.

The Onion
September 13, 2006 | Issue 42•37

The White House recently released an updated version of its anti-terrorism strategy, "National Strategy For Combating Terrorism." Here are its main new components:

Published on Sunday, September 17, 2006 by the Toronto Sun (Canada)
by Eric Margolis

As Canadian, American and British soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, it is time the truth be told about this ugly little war.

Much of what we’ve so far been told by our governments and media has been untrue, wishful thinking, or crass jingoism.

The respected European think tank, Senlis Council, which focuses on Afghanistan, just reported the Taliban is “taking back Afghanistan” and now controls that nation’s southern half. According to Senlis, southern Afghanistan is suffering “a humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty.

By Abu Bakker Qassim
The New York Times
Sunday 17 September 2006

Tirana, Albania -- I have been greatly saddened to hear that the Congress of the United States, a country I deeply admire, is considering new laws that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detentions in federal court.

I learned my respect for American institutions the hard way. When I was growing up as a Uighur in China, there were no independent courts to review the imprisonment and oppression of people who, like me, peacefully opposed the Communists. But I learned my hardest lesson from the United States: I spent four long years behind the razor wire of its prison in Cuba.

Published on Saturday, September 16, 2006 by The Spectrum (Utah)
by Ed Kociela

The bomb test looking for a home may have found one in White Sands, N.M.

A spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said recently that the Divine Strake test - an explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil over a series of tunnels to see how deep it will go, how much damage it will create - has not been scrubbed.

Published on Saturday, September 16, 2006 by the Boston Globe
by Robert Kuttner

My father was a machine gunner with the Army's 28th Infantry Division, which was among the first units to march down the Champs-Elysées after the Allied liberation of Paris . In December 1944, having landed at Normandy and fought across France and Belgium, he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, and sent hundreds of miles through northern Germany in an unheated boxcar in the dead of winter to a prison camp at Muhlberg in the east.

My father survived the war not because of the generosity of the Nazis to Jewish soldiers. The Germans must have been tempted to send captured Jewish American soldiers to Auschwitz along with Polish, German, and Dutch Jews and kindred human garbage. But they did not. My father survived because, amazingly, even the Nazis respected the reciprocal agreements on humane treatment of prisoners.

The doctrine was simple: You don't abuse my soldiers when you take them prisoner, and I won't abuse yours. Mostly, despite the multiple atrocities of World War II, the doctrine held.

By Constant Brand
The Associated Press
Friday 15 September 2006

Brussels, Belgium - The European Union on Friday called on the United States to respect international law in its handling of terror suspects after President Bush acknowledged his country had operated secret prisons abroad.

"We reiterate that in combating terrorism, human rights and human standards have to be maintained," said Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, speaking on behalf of the 25 EU foreign ministers. "We acknowledge the intention of the US administration to treat all detainees in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention."

Tuomioja's statement was the first formal joint reaction by the 25-nation bloc to Bush's disclosure last week that the CIA had operated controversial detention centers, some of which were believed by human rights groups to have been located in eastern Europe.

The EU appeal for Washington not to ignore international treaties on prisoners of war came as Bush is pushing Congress to back new rules for interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects.

By Missy Comley Beattie
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 15 September 2006

Lately, I've watched very little television and none at all on 9/11/06. My husband likes to watch the news when he comes home in the evening and, if I'm sitting in front of my computer in another room of our small apartment, I can hear the palaver. The other night, a couple of blather heads were pontificating on the November elections. I heard one say that if people vote on the issues of security and morals, the Republicans will be victorious.

Editor's Note: "The number of weak and poorly governed nations that can provide a breeding ground for global terrorism has grown sharply over the past three years," reads the first sentence of the article below. It is in this report that we find both the root cause, and the ultimate solution, to the phenomenon of global terrorism.

Despite all Bush administration hyperbole to the contrary, the root causes of terrorism have little to do with "enemies who hate freedom," or "enemies of democracy," or even extremist fanatics pledged to a 7thcentury interpretation of Islam. These are symptoms, but not the disease.

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 15 September 2006

Democratic congressman John Murtha released a 12-page report outlining severe shortfalls plaguing the US Army as thousands of troops prepare to be deployed to Iraq.

Murtha, a 37-year Marine Corps veteran who entered the political arena in 1990, said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears full responsibility for the military's consistent readiness failures and demanded that the Defense Secretary resign.

By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
Friday 15 September 2006

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Although President Bush and other senior administration officials were at that time regularly linking Hussein to al-Qaeda, the CIA's highly sensitive intelligence supporting the contrary view was apparently not passed on to the White House or senior Bush policymakers.

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the Guardian/UK
by Bianca Jagger

Those Who Oppose the Proposed UN Arms Treaty Could Derail a Chance to Save Millions of Lives

As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world. An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would place tough controls on sales.

The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of control - $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
by Jerald Albrecht and Coleen Rowley

The administration put service members in harm's way despite a puny threat, then cut and run from its responsibilities to them.

Duty. Honor. Country. For some, the West Point creed has become a cliché. But for 130,000-plus American soldiers in Iraq, these words mean a great deal.

By Nick Turse
TomDispatch.com
Thursday 14 September 2006

Military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, propaganda releases by the Pentagon, and a spate of recent press reports touting the way the military has made its wo/manpower goals.

But the armed forces have only met with success through a fundamental "transformation," and not the transformation of the military - that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" - Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

By Chris Floyd,
TO UK Correspondent
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 14 September 2006

1. Staggering to the Exit

It may look and feel like a farce right now, but one day some future Shakespeare might write it as a tragedy: the fall of a powerful, popular leader broken on the wheel of war.

For make no mistake: if not for the criminal folly of the Iraq invasion, British Prime Minister Tony Blair would not have been unceremoniously shoved toward the exit last week by his own party, including some of his fiercest loyalists. The man who once commanded one of the largest majorities in the history of the ancient British Parliament, who won three successive national elections and appeared to have sealed his party's hold on power for decades to come, has seen his stature and authority eaten away by the hubris that led him to join George W. Bush's duplicitous, disastrous Babylonian Conquest.

By Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer
The Washington Post
Thursday 14 September 2006

President Bush's nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations appears increasingly endangered in the Senate, prompting the administration to explore other ways to keep him in the job after his temporary appointment expires in January, officials said yesterday.

The situation represents a sharp turnaround from two weeks ago, when the White House was confident it could finally push through Bolton's long-stalled nomination. But last week's surprise move by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) to delay a vote convinced Republicans on Capitol Hill that the nomination may be doomed, prompting a search for alternatives.

By Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Wednesday 13 September 2006

San Francisco - The Bush Administration is objecting to a groundbreaking treaty that set up a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia.

Under the treaty signed Friday, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan committed themselves not to produce, buy, or allow the deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil.