It is interesting to point back to Hussein as the enemy even though he is (purportedly) in custody, and the Ba'athists have been removed from control. Now we have the ghost hand of Hussein opearating through M-14 though one might wonder to what end.

It is also important that the Administration and its lackeys continue to refer to the people involved in attacks on the coalition forces as insurgents. It is as sneaky a term as enemy combatant. If you note in the definition below, insurgents are not subject to the "laws of war." Therefore the US can operate without consideration for the laws of war, and those injured, killed, or captured are also not protected by the Geneva Convention. Now that has already proven to be a nifty slight of hand by the US - both for US citizens, and for those detained at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Note also that an insurgent is in revolt against civil authority or an established government. Interestingly, the use of insurgent falls apart at this point as there is neither in Iraq ... unless the US IS the "established government.

from Merriam-Webster Online insurgent 1 : a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent

belligerent 1 : waging war; specifically : belonging to or recognized as a state at war and protected by and subject to the laws of war

So the US is attacking "insurgents" in Falluja and Najaf and elsewhere. Gun ships have dropped 500 and 1000 pound "smart bombs" (laser guided bombs or LGB). Just what are these things and how much damage are they supposed to cause?

According to a February 18,2004 report at Iraq Occupation Watch - Pentagon distorted Iraqi casualty issue, says new report (Part 3) - the explosive element in the LGB's is tritonal - asouped up TNT that is 20% more powerful per pond than regular TNT. That means that a 500 pound bomb has the explosive capacity of 600 pounds of TNT and the 1000 pounder that of 1200 pounds of TNT. Most everything within 20 meters of a 500 pound LGB will be destroyed or significantly damaged. This bomb will leave a crater about 25 feet across and 8.5 feet deep. The "safe distance" (per military spec) is approximately 500 meters and even "protected" troops are in danger at 220 meters from a 500 pound LGB. The precision of these munitions is questionable as they have a 95% accuracy rate in optimal conditions. That means they hit within about 18 feet of their target 95% of the time.

However, battle conditions are not optimal conditions. In a technical report at GlobalSecurity.org (Laser Guided Bombs, GlobalSecurity.org), they note:

The effects of smoke, dust, and debris can impair the use of laser-guided munitions. The reflective scattering of laser light by smoke particles may present false targets. Rain, snow, fog, and low clouds can prevent effective use of laser-guided munitions. Heavy precipitation can limit the use of laser designators by affecting line-of-sight. Snow on the ground can produce a negative effect on laser-guided munition accuracy. Fog and low clouds will block the laser-guided munition seeker's field of view which reduces the guidance time. This reduction may affect the probability of hit.

So when there is a bombing run such as was shown on TV last night and the night before, it seems likely that the accuracy level will drop far below 95%.

The ongoing battle in Falluja has turned the soccer field into a makeshift cemetary. In a chilling sign of how the deaths from the conflict are perceived, the Falluja Sports Stadium is now called the Falluja Martyr's Cemetary (Siege Defined on Stones Set in Haste in the Dirt, Hauser, NYT, 4/29/04). Many women and children lie buried there and the people have dug trenches to receive more of the dead. They have not been able to recover all of the dead for burial because of the ongoing fighting.

The Iraqi police in Falluja have taken on the role of trying to keep the people of Falluja away from the American troops. The police (unlike many in Falluja and the US military) are unarmed.

It is interesting that the press statements out of Iraq rarely mention "collateral damage" anymore. The reports are of dead insurgents and not of children and bystanders. I suspect that every male from 12 to 90 who is killed is reported as an insurgent. The impression management team continues to project the image of "precision" and control. My guess that is far from the case. As conflict spreads and the US desires quick resolution, the bombing missions will likely escalate and the size of the bombs used will escalate, and the number of dead and permanently damaged will escalate, and for sure the hatred of the US both inside and outside Iraq will also escalate.

The US troops are frayed, to say the least. Rotations have been extended and extended again. There are troops being placed on their second tour in Iraq at this point and many of them were in Afghanistan before that. This leads to erratic behavior at best. As was presented on 60 Minutes II 4/29/04 report Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed, 17 soldiers and a brigadere general who were responsible for guarding POWS are up for court martial after pictures of the torture of those prisoners was verfied by the photos the offenders took. The abuse occured at Abu Ghraib prison - the same prison that Hussein used and with the same results - indefinite detentions, and massive abuse. It is no wonder that an apparently growing number of Iraqi's are beginning to wonder if trading the evil Hussein for the "Great Satan" was such a good bargain.

This is the reality of the war in Iraq. Dead on all sides. Destruction everywhere. Abuse apparently widespread, and no civil authority to protect citizens from "common criminals."

How about the Occupation leaders in Iraq, constantly saying that their "patience" won't last forever? Hello? It certainly should. Patience is not supposed to have anything to do with military action. Does Bremmer or Kimmitt or somebody get up one morning and say, "I;m tired of waiting for a peaceful resolution in Najaf or Falluja (or some place else) so let's blow them off the face of the earth."? I may have misunderstood, but I thought armies were to do what they are told to do when they are told to do it. It doesn't make any difference how patient or impatient they are. Well, "patience" is apparently wearing thin as intensive missle and bombing have started in the two cites. In stark contrast, I heard a report last night on ITV that as the attack was occuring, the reporter stated that he could hear chants coming from the mosques. We bomb and the citizenry gathers in the mosques praying to be spared. Now that is truly winning hearts and minds.

How about the new Iraqi flag that is apparently being poorly received? Designed in London and being compared to the flag of Israel by Iraqis. It was noted by one that the colors were wrong for an Arab nation. Who gets to vote on national flag designs (I don't know). However, it seems that if one wanted to unify a nation and symboilize that with a flag, some input might have been a good idea. Burning With Anger: Iraqis Infuriated by New Flag That Was Designed in London, Independent/UK, 4/28/04.

And how about Israel? The IAEA is planning a visit to inspect Israel's nuclear facilities. Of course the word is already out that they won't let ElBaradei into the Dimona nuclear reactor site (they have top secret operations there I assume). Of course, that approach has not been well received in the cases of Iran, North Korea, or Lybia. Will it raise any stink if Israel bars inspectors? Somehow I doubt it. UN nuclear watchdog chief ElBaradei due in Israel in July, Ha'aretz, 4/28/04.

The Supremes are busy this week. They are to decide whether the Administration has the right to appeal a lower court ruling on Cheney and Bush refusing to release the papers on the writing of the "energy" plan (Justices Hear Challenges to Post-9/11 Presidential Powers, NYT 4/28/04). The lower court ruled they didn't have that power. Bush Co. is in court seeking the right to appeal that ruling. I think the real issue is to drag the release out until after the elections.

NOTE all these summations are from the April Supreme Court Docket from FindLaw. The FindLaw docket includes links to the substantive information and arguments to be argued.

Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, et al. v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia
No. 03-475

Subject: Federal Advisory Committee Act, Separation of Powers, Judicial Review, Executive Privilege

Questions:

1. Whether the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5 U.S.C. App. 1, §§ 1 et seq., can be construed, consistent with the Constitution, principles of separation of powers, and this Court's decisions governing judicial review of Executive Branch actions, to authorize broad discovery of the process by which the Vice President and other senior advisors gathered information to advise the President on important national policy matters, based solely on an unsupported allegation in a complaint that the advisory group was not constituted as the President expressly directed and the advisory group itself reported.

2. Whether the court of appeals had mandamus or appellate jurisdiction to review the district court's unprecedented discovery orders in this litigation.

They are also hearing two cases on designation of someone as an enemy combatant and on indefinite detention without due process or constituionly guaranteed rights. The first case involves Esam Hamdi and the second Jose Padilla.

Yaser Esam Hamdi and Esam Fouad Hamdi, as Next Friend of Yaser Esam Hamdi v. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al. No. 03-6696

Subject: Indefinite Detention of Enemy Combatants, Habeas Corpus, Fifth Amendment, Right to Court Access, Due Process

Questions:

1. Does the Constitution permit Executive officials to detain an American citizen indefinitely in military custody in the United States, hold him essentially incommunicado and deny him access to counsel, with no opportunity to question the factual basis for his detention before any impartial tribunal, on the sole ground that he was seized abroad in a theater of the War on Terrorism and declared by the Executive to be an "enemy combatant"?

2. Is the indefinite detention of an American citizen seized abroad but held in the United States solely on the assertion of Executive officials that he is an "enemy combatant" permissible under applicable congressional statutes and treaty provisions?

3. In a habeas corpus proceeding challenging the indefinite detention of an American citizen seized abroad, detained in the United States, and declared by Executive officials to be an "enemy combatant," does the separation of powers doctrine preclude a federal court from following ordinary statutory procedures and conducting an inquiry into the factual basis for the Executive branch's asserted justification of the detention?

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense v. Jose Padilla and Donna R. Newman, as Next Friend of Jose Padilla No. 03-1027

Subject: Enemy Combatants, Presidential Authority, Commander in Chief, Article II, Authorization for Use of Military Force, Detention of Citizens, Fifth Amendment, Due Process, Jurisdiction

Questions:

1. Whether the President has authority as Commander in Chief and in light of Congress's Authorization for Use of Military Force, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224, to seize and detain a United States citizen in the United States based on a determination by the President that he is an enemy combatant who is closely associated with al Qaeda and has engaged in hostile and warlike acts, or whether 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) precludes that exercise of Presidential authority.

2. Whether the district court has jurisdiction over the proper respondent to the amended habeas petition.

Bush is also trying to get a new Archivist of the United Staes. In his ongoing effort to make everything that happens in his administration secret, he has tapped historian Allen Weinstein, who also has a reputation for maintaining secrecy to the post. The National Archivist position requires confirmation, so protest is possible and nine professional organization that deal with government records have protested - A Controversial Choice for the Position of Archivist of the United States: Part of the Bush Administration's Secrecy Strategy?, John Dean, FindLaw, 4/23/04)

So all of the above, plus some others not mentioned, has put me at a high boil. What sent me right over the top this morning? Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won't Be Formally Recorded (Bumiller & Shenon, NYT, 4/28/04). Yes comrades, after refusing to testify at all, then agreeing to do so, then arranging for Bush and his Brain to testify together, the damn thing is now going to be off the record. Bush will allow only the 10 commissioners and two note takers (one from the Whitehouse) into the "meeting." Yeah - it is now a "meeting" and not testimony so it is also not under oath (not like that would make a difference with inveterate liars).

An early time constraint of 1 hour each for testimony has not been mentioned since it is now a "meeting." The Commission has been asked to remember that they are meeting with the President (a very busy man). Of course Bush devoted three hours to meeting with Woodward for his book, and he does spend a lot of time out of the "office," so maybe it will be until the Pres or Vp decide they don't want to meet anymore. Any bets on how long that might be?

The dancing around talking with the commission has been an affront to the people of the United States. To now turn that testimony into a meeting, and only allowing limited note-taking at that, is a totally disrespectuful and beyond insult.

I can just see them patting down the commissioners as they enter the room. Issuing them one golf pencil and 2 pieces of 3x5 paper each. At the conclusion of the meeting, all materials are collected. I am sure that the Whitehouse requires that the commission's note taker's notes be approved by the Whitehouse. Too bad that Bush doesn't seem to share Nixon's penchant for taping everything (tho maybe Cheney does). We won't have those tapes to look forward to 20 years from now (if we are still around).

So there you go. Thanks for listening.

There is little doubt that the nature of a person's religious universe shapes and orders his or her understanding of the physical one. We know the Catholic church for centuries fought scientific discovery, certain that questioning ancient preconceptions about nature also questioned aspects of the supernatural. This way of looking at things continues into the twenty-first century, especially in the gulag of creepy places that is George Bush's America, places where they discuss topics like the Mark of the Beast in hushed tones.

It was that sly, clever Voltaire who declared, "If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him." A slight altering of his words tailors them to the American experience. Simply remove the word God and put Devil in its place, for, although America is sometimes called a God-fearing nation, Devil-fearing is nearer the truth.

For many years, America enjoyed the blessing of having Communism against which to rage and threaten. It made for a balanced, harmonious universe: America as God's Kingdom, ready with sword and buckler to defeat the Evil One, and all those other nations out there providing an unsaved mob to fill America's tent and contribute to the mighty battle.

Communism as Evil One played to rave reviews for decades, but all good things do come to an end, including the planet itself if you embrace the tortured, perhaps psychotic, visions of the Book of Revelation.

America's new Official Evil One is a little difficult to define, but some ambiguity likely serves the cause well. After all, those Americans who believe in speaking in tongues, as does the current Attorney General of the United States, don't specify the languages. Any babble will do. It is clear, however, that America's new Great Awakening has to do with Islam and people wearing strange headgear. In the humble, but direct, language of places like the Midwest and Texas, it's about turban-heads. Unlike godless Communists, this newly discovered slithering mass of evil believes in God, but it might just as well not since it calls him by the wrong name and reads the wrong holy book.

Well, burning people alive was a specialty of the competing churches in Europe after the Reformation, a charming custom that Puritans brought to the land that would become America. The practice has gone through many changes and refinements, and it is jealously retained by America's Hi-tech Army of Roundheads. As I write this, they are using helicopter gunships to burn and blow up women and children in Fallujah.

I came across a fascinating passage in Richard Rhodes' excellent history, The Making of the Atomic Bomb:

"One of Roosevelt's first acts was to appeal to the belligerents to refrain from bombing civilian populations. Revulsion against the bombing of cities had grown in the United States since at least the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1937. When Spanish Fascists bombed Barcelona in March, 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had condemned the atrocity publicly…As war approached, revulsion began to give way to impulses of revenge…"

America, as we know, went, in a short time, from revulsion at someone else's bombing to fire-bombing a number of cities and atomic-bombing two others. Before the ashes had cooled on a million or so innocent victims of air raids, that nest of vipers, the Communists, was released on the world. A long series of bloody, largely pointless, conflicts culminated in the holocaust-bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia. Hell, what's a few million peasants when they might be demon minions of the Evil One?

Nature’s role in our philosophical evolution is sacrosanct. Our environments intuitively guided human enterprise from the antediluvian days. The melodies of the flora and fauna inspired auditory distinctions, onomatopoeias, rudimentary tunes and gradually, the great classics and electronically wrought melanges that pump up our adrenalin today. Spoken words imitated from nature would one day become Shakespeare. Nature’s beauty transmuted the inchoate creativity of Early Mankind into cave paintings, the crudely etched motifs of animals and plants that formed the earliest script. These ubiquitous symbols, both static and mobile, kept reminding man that he was not alone, that he was perhaps guided by beings even loftier. The animistic instinct cannot be denied but neither can the existence of a truly supreme being. As with dialogue, belief is inherently human; it distinguishes Homo sapiens from the rest of our ecology. This eidetic instinct in Man is still extant; we still see our anthropomorphic representations in clouds and animals, though the underlying superstitions are waning. Yet, such symbols induce us to dream. Almost every ideation, innovation and adaptation was aided along by nature’s representations. It has hurtled mankind towards modernity, even post modernity, ever since we tried to regulate its elemental fury. We began channelling waterways, irrigated our fields, and harnessed wind for our distant conquests on sailboats. Would fuel be possible without a primal fire? Meat probably tasted better after that and wintry nights became more bearable. In fact, the harshness of winter can signal new beginnings, not just the relief of spring but also the flutters of storks who work overtime to deliver tiny bundles of joys, nine months later.

Progress was enabled by nature. Our silken haute couture needed ever-larger textile mills. Our envy of birds made us want to fly, many tried -fatally - until the Wright brothers finally got the technique right. Nature still throws a challenge in myriad ways, and we responded by sublimating its rage into a higher contrivance. Floods not only gave birth to canals and dams - with its indispensable hydroelectric power - but also immortalised the timeless, apocryphal story of the heroic young Hans Brinker, who, saved Haarlem by staunching a dyke with his chubby finger.

Despite what the doomsayers say, mankind still appreciates nature more than the artificial kitsch that attempts to emulate it. Teak furniture is infinitely more desirable than plastic sofas; psychiatrists may recommend the symphonies of forests and lakes (now a niche music industry by itself) to Xanax for sleep. We can read books made from pulp in every conceivable ergonomic position, according to personal peculiarities, but hardly so with computers. The latter itself is the culmination of our ancestors grasping (or re-grasping) of the concepts of zeroes and ones. Zero could have primordially meant an empty stomach when sticks and stones were used to hunt ungulates. One, on the other hand, may have signified the glut of a feast, a hearty meal, or a prize catch. Nature sustains and nurtures; that is why it has life’s ultimate maternal honorific.

But is man now suffused with arrogance, knowing he has the power to alter any natural course, of being the creator himself? A famished world needs its sustenance and our microscopic peering into nature’s secrets have given rise to congeries of developments, from penicillin to the microbes from Hades. As nature bares its unseen building blocks, we discover its Manichean possibilities - the nuclear bomb or atomic power. The answer lies all around us. We form the ecology, participating in a dance of symbioses. Just as Man came forth from dust, we return to it. Extrapolate this over countless aeons, and the subterranean layers start bursting to disgorge fossil fuels. When that runs out, our surroundings provide another fuel source for our inexorable march towards social evolution. The planet’s inexhaustible supply of hydrogen might rev our engines in the future. A Tupolev-154 has already flown on hydrogen (1988), balloons even before that, but now feasibility is proven in the Honda and Mercedes fuel tanks of Californian streets. Is anything impossible? Perhaps, but we universally worshipped the moon until we finally got there. What we need now is balancing acts. How do we progress and not pollute? How do we expand, consume and not precipitate extinction? It starts with the realisation that nature germinates our most profound imaginations. For every species doomed, a chance for a cure or a fashion design will be irretrievably lost. A yet to be discovered butterfly may inspire an artistic novelty or reveal a new flight technique, one day. The more we kill, chop down or develop the pyrotechnics of murder, the more we tear ourselves asunder. Mushroom clouds can’t substitute for the real thing.

Technology is value neutral. Foetuses with congenital defects can be genetically treated before they are born, relieving parents of the agony of abortion, which, in essence, is intrinsically no different from the pernicious female infanticides - something still practised among the consummately benighted today. No one would want his or her child to die horribly from a disease like Tay Sachs, and here is where our unravelling genetic secrets can be unlocked to repair a simple code gone awry. There is a thick red line between being creators and being intelligent beings. Or even executioners of mercy? How perverse would it be for a parent to abort an unborn child, pre-diagnosed as carrying the genetic flaws of Motor Neuron Disease? Is this mercy, humanity, or the killing of a Stephen Hawking, whose paralysed body is arguably the only one capable of holding Einstein’s mantle today?

Our tomatoes are getting better, our food chain more secure as we have adapted to milieu’s caprices. In the process, our hormone-treated cows are making us obese, food-related health problems persist while leaders haggle over trade barriers. Profit is overriding holistic options, which, can be ironically achieved in the cauldrons of distress. The women of France, it seems, never looked better than during the Nazi occupation, simply because gorging was beyond their means while cycling was the transport of (no) choice.[i]

As we procreate in larger numbers, how do we cope with the food chain, maintain our virgin forests and not destroy? The solutions are multifarious, from hydroponics to multi-decked greenhouses. We need to produce cattle that don’t bloat our girth, or potatoes that are bigger, more nutritious and capable of feeding extra mouths. No sane person would like to see the Great Irish Famine (1845 -1850) repeated. Biotechnology is not a philosophical break from the past. We have been breeding studs for centuries and the quest for a Black Tulip was sowed with plots of Dumas’ intrigues. Better-fed people are more productive. In a war, a fool mulls over strategies while an astute general frets over logistics. Those canned corned beef does more to an enervated army than a limp battle cry.

We can adapt, but can we create? Or do we have the right to? When we clone our idols, what do we do about our broken brethren who can’t be compared in looks or genius? The answer lies not in nature but probably in scriptures. Nature teaches you the “Survival of the Fittest”, the predatory law where the weak, the diseased and the “obtuse” get weeded out. Watch how lions hunt. Countless tribes have been lost forever and we are left with remnants of Amerindians and Aborigines, to name just two. Eugenics are subconsciously practiced in certain societies where women marry up the ladder, while less privileged men are left with no lower rungs to perpetuate posterity. Economics and a perverse financial system will only exacerbate a criminal, attritional murder of the living when money can buy health, and along the way, an ersatz form of happiness. Our best may not have died in the battlefield, but in our dark, impoverished waysides.

Scriptures, on the other hand, speak of hope. Van Gogh was cruelly treated due to his (putative) Meniere's syndrome but would such like him be tolerated in the future to produce masterpieces in paint like the The Starry Night (1889) and, inspire a later one in decibels from Don MacLean? We can still see people painting well with their toes, blind men like Stevie Wonder winning Grammys, and a deranged mathematician named John Nash winning the Nobel prize for economics, immortalised in that movie A Beautiful Mind. Would Mankind’s trajectory have been a different, pathetic one if there were no divine warnings of Providence being the defender of “orphans and widows” (Exodus 22:22-24)? There were more murders in Stalin's USSR then Hitler's Germany! Whatever our belief system, the archetypal memories of such retribution held us in check, and the genius of our crippled enriched the world prodigiously.

Now do we cross the Rubicon to create copycat Elvis Presleys, Stephen Hawkings and Peles? They are the products of challenges, where they could look at distant stars and fight those odds to become ones themselves. Superstars are stubborn. They can’t be engineered but inspired. Someone needs to teach them laborious tenacity, something quick fix genes of IQs or sinews can’t do.

What if we do cross that red line? When a master race emerges and demands a pecking order for humanity? Will history repeat itself with classes of the ubermensch and untermensch, something that failed artist from Vienna tried about half a century back? Is this quantum leap possible in the first place?

Societies obsessed with material progress are not our most innovative ones, despite their wealth.2 Unless, they resort to imports.

And, remember, Hitler failed! The Tasmanian tiger may yet prowl again, as its genes are still preserved in laboratory jars. Question is, do you want it back?

We have to be born ourselves, not contrived. We must endure life’s pangs until all those frustrating, incandescent limitations spark off genius and wisdom. Would dulcet lyrics have flowed from Stevie Wonder’s throat if his eyes got distracted? Would the immobilized Stephen Hawking have unlocked cosmic secrets if he were partying away like in his good old days? Would Pele have dribbled those balls, and our minds, if he were white?

Would mankind have flung the gauntlet if not for nature’s importunate challenges?

An Answer? As environmental degradation, the Greenhouse Effect and the scourge of synthetics threaten our planet, what can we do without compromising progress? The answer lies in biodiversity, in the Golden Rule of symbiosis. It is attested by both nature and our sacred verses. Just as man complements the woman and vice versa, mankind cannot exists apart from Mother Nature. We have been accused of causing extinctions but our interventions may have saved countless species. Our giant whales now stand a chance of survival because nature has provided alternatives to blubber. It is more difficult now for a natural blight to exterminate one of our lifelines. The Mad Cow disease didn’t kill anyone of hunger. Neither did the Chicken Flu virus of Hong Kong, even after millions of animals were culled. We can speedily intervene, for own sakes. Besides, what would life be like without our feral behemoths of majesty – the tigers, lions, rhinoceros and elephants, all emblazoned in our tribal escutcheons? They gave us our myths, laid the foundations of our discourse, arts and science. They enabled us to build, from stilted houses to safe redoubts, and we are still building. We can miniaturise trees for bonsai art and subliminally extend the idea to Intel chips. We can also observe otters to lay the cornerstones of gigantic dams, millennia later. Our venerable breed of stud horses may have inspired our quest for gene therapy, to save a yet to be born life of impending misery. This is the heart of nature, may its beat continue to pulsate our most ingenious labours. In the process, we don’t need another Josef Mengele, even a successful one, but more Alexander Flemings who can discover a mould associated with decay to restore wilting bodies.

References:

1) Is Paris Burning? – Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, 1965

2) Singapore has a wealthy, highly educated populace that is disproportionately short on creativity, resulting in an ongoing national debate over the matter. The eugenic theme kept appearing in former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s statements throughout his long tenure. Expatriates, from the Third World to the First, still fill a large number of coveted scientific and executive positions in the City-State. A good chunk of US hi-tech professionals, and ironically even doctors, come from nations with public healthcare.

Originally written in late 2003. Published on April 27, 2004

@Mathew Maavak, 2004

Mathew Maavak publishes an eclectic publication called the Panoptic World. It can be accessed at http://www.maavak.net

So scared of what she might say is the Bush administration that the Department of Justice has moved to impose the rarely used “State Secrets” privilege to prevent Edmonds from giving a deposition in a 9/11-related lawsuit. The case is the $100 trillion action filed in 2002 by 600 9/11 victim families against officials of the Saudi government and prominent Saudi citizens. FTW believes that the greatest crimes of 9/11, the ones that deserve the fullest attention of the American people, were committed by persons inside the US government, not in Saudi Arabia. I leave aside any opinions of the nature of the Saudi regime, about which FTW has written extensively. That is not the point.

While FTW has reservations about the possible motives for the suit as setting the stage for a destabilization of Saudi Arabia as a pretext for seizing Saudi oilfields, those reservations have nothing to do with the fact that a law is being invoked to conceal a crime. That is exactly what John Ashcroft's DoJ is attempting to do. Whatever Sibel Edmonds has to say, whatever she knows, is something the American people have a right and a need to hear. That right should transcend any law.

Edmonds has stated that she did not believe that the Bush administration had specific knowledge relating to the dates of the attacks or their specific targets. From her compartmentalized position in the FBI, that opinion may reflect what she knew but it does not correspond to other facts that are known and which FTW was the first to document and publish.

Unfortunately the law itself is fairly clear and it is likely that the motion to quash the subpoena will be granted and subsequently affirmed by the Court of Appeals. That brings up a greater challenge as Americans must now question the legitimacy of the law itself.

Our Declaration of Independence says that whenever the government becomes an obstacle to the pursuit of liberty and democracy that it is the right and the duty of the people to change that government. The heavier issues behind 9/11, the ones that people have not wanted to face, are now appearing on the table.

Supporting Sibel Edmonds right now means supporting the principle of protection for whistle-blowers, and for government transparency. We need to stop the DOJ's efforts to terrorize the people who could bring out the truth, whether it is Edmonds or anyone who promotes transparency inside the machinery.

And it won't take much to turn the tide. The DOJ and the Courts desperately rely upon the appearance of the rule of law. They might back down if we confront them within the very court system they use to maintain the appearance of legitimacy. Don't underestimate your own power.

Here's what you can do to help. (Please do as many of these as you can.)

#1. COME TO COURT ON MONDAY!

If you live in the DC area, please come to support Ms. Edmonds and to make sure the Judge and the DOJ know that the public insists on 9-11 transparency. The hearing will be held in the US District Court (3rd and Constitution Avenue), in Judge Reggie Walton's courtroom, on Monday, April 26, at 11:30 AM. Ms. Edmonds will be in front of the Constitution entrance at 11:00.

DC Court with map:
http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/location.html

#2. EMAIL AND CALL THE INDIVIDUALS WHO MATTER

The Department of Justice budget is funded by the White House and the Congress. Please email John Ashcroft and cc Bush, Cheney, Rice, Frank Wolf (Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), Roscoe C. Howard, Jr. (DC US Attorney), Peter D. Keisler (Assistant Attorney General), and Judd Greg (Chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary).

Simply copy and paste the following sample text in your email, or use your own words.

I first got involved in the women's choice issue in 1971 at the age of 17. At that point abortion was illegal in the US, and women were dying on a daily basis from lack of access to reproductive options and to safe abortions. In 1973 Roe v Wade made abortion one of the options that women. It also dramatically improved women's access to reproductive counseling, care, and safe choices. For me the issue was about women's right to control our own bodies, and that remains true for me today as well. THis was a political issue before Roe v Wade and it has remained so since.

Some would argue that the issue is about abortion. That is simplistic in my opinion. Women have the least choice about sexuality and the most responsibility for both contraception and the consequences of the children that may result. Until relatively recently, women in the US were not even protected from marital rape (and in most countries still are not protected). Performing sexually within marriage is seen as a duty for women. Husbands are seen as within their rights to force that duty. Outside of marriage, women (in the US) are in many ways pressured to be sexually acquiescent. The rates of rape, sexual abuse, and sexual attack are incredibly high. Yet the agenda of the "pro-lifers" has been to remove choice. Recently they have been successful in that attempt by removing abortion even to save a mother's life.

The US "pro-life" (anti-woman) agenda has directly impacted US international policy. In the 1970s and 80s as massive (and successful) campaign to address overpopulation was underway when President Reagan (a "pro-lifer" with a book on his views against abortion) withheld funds to international family planning and population control efforts. President Bush has done much the same by withdrawing $34 million from the UN Population Fund. (34 Million Friends of UNFPA has a campaign of private $1 donations to make up this lack of funding)

It may seem to some to be an idyllic situation to have mothers at home with their children and fathers off working as providers. However, this forms yet another link in the chain of the oppression of women by enforcing an economic dependence on women. This is further strengthend by a perception that there is little point in going to the expense of educating women if they are just going to be home responsible for childbearing and childrearing.

Access to reproductive services is the only access to health care and information that many women in the world have. Safe abortion is one small part of this access. The focus is on family planning, contraception, and education. This place some of control in the hands of women. The ability to plan and control their own fertility has been proven to lower the number of children per woman and to increase the quality of life for families because resources do not have to stretch as far. Having fewer children, and having them later in life, also increases the possibility of women's participation in education, and that increases economic and political participation, as well as reducing the number of children per family. These gains also pass to the next generation of daughters.

Improving the power and voice of women is critical to changing global inequality. Family plannning and access to health care are important to that struggle as well. What is good for women is good for people and critical for the earth. Without access to fertility control the global population could exand to over 12 billion by the end of the century. With that access (and not just to abortion) it may top out at around 9 billion. Still too high, but higher because of the ongoing US withholding of funds for reproductive health access. All in an effort to enforce an ideology to "keep women in their place."

WOmen around the world know this. They know the connections and impacts from their daily lives. They know the personal, human, and global costs of not having a woman's right to choose. That is why almost a million women were in Washington, DC. That is why women traveled from all over the world to have their voices heard here. Hopefully some did hear, though it is like that George did not. He was on retreat in Camp David and doesn't read the news.

Resources
March For Women's Lives: Up to a Million Descend on DC in One of the Largest Protests in U.S. History

Bush Withdraws US Support for UN Population Fund

Rich World, Poor Women

Roe v Wade Organization

34 Million Friends of UNFPA

Global Fund for Women

As Duin notes, "And the cops are still insisting, to the bitter end, that they "reasonably believed" this blind ol' bat was a threat to their safety and macho culture."

It seems that it doesn't take much to be perceived as a dangerous threat to the Portland police. A woman trying to commit suicide with a knife is shot down and killed. A woman at a traffic stop is shot and killed (Kendra James). A man at a traffic stop is shot and killed (James Perez). A 71 year old woman pulling a red wagon is violently "controlled" (Eunice Crowder).

Over and over again, the police respond with the "perceived threat" response to justify their actions. Why are they so afraid? Why are they so likely to perceive a dangerous threat to themselves? And why the hell do they continue to get away with it?

I believe that the culture has changed - for police and for the public. With the advent of the "war on drugs" and the increasing militarization of the police, police forces now have a "soldier" mentality. Soldiers are trained to stop "the enemy" dead. They are not trained to serve and protect or to deescalate situations. This was one of the major problems early on with US soldiers in Iraq. Even the Pentagon and Bush acknowledge that they needed police and not soldiers. (Of course you hear none of that now.) What they had was soldiers and that is a major part of the escalation that has created an occupation force in Iraq that is being violently attacked by the Iraqis.

In the US, the police are becoming less and less police and more and more soldiers. The public, constantly bombarded by fear propoganda, accept the increased violence and changed mission. First it was the fear of criminals, and now it is the fear of "terrorists." The police get exaggerated versions of these messages. The public perception is largely accepting of the rhetoric that the police are under constant threat, and therefore this legitimates over reaction.

We expect a lot from our "men" in "blue," or olive-drab. The Multnomah County's new sheriffs uniforms are essentially military fatigues.

Turning the police into an occupation force in our cities does not make us safer. The only way to address this is to keep challenging local governments, and keep pushing for public oversight of the police. This struggle also needs to be addressed at the national level. Somehow both police attitudes and public attitudes have to change.

In an interesting twisting of meaning, the US, (oh yeah) and the "coalition of the willing," have "liberated" Iraq. At a loose level, since the US supported Hussein in power (loosely, our man in Baghdad), then removing him was kind of removing a "foreign" power, though the US did appoint the new power (The Coalition Provisional Authority) to (temporarily) take his place. On the other hand, the US has also liberated (stolen) Iraq and its resources for multiple purposes.

It is very clear that we have not "freed" Iraq, nor the people there off. Nor are we really planning to give them sovreignty - White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could Be Limited (NYT, 4/23/04). The US constitution has the separation of church and state (though that seems to be eroding rapidly). The US model for Iraq seems to involve the separation of military and state. In other words, there will be political sovereignty, but the US will maintain military (and economic) control. It would seem that this would indeed limit the sovereignty of Iraq. Of course, the US still hasn't decided who to turn sovreignty over to.

In what could be an indicative of a resolution to that dilemma, Iraq Baathists are getting their jobs back (BBC, 4/23/04). Yes, the party of Hussein. It is true that under Hussein party membership was required to work in most positions; however, the upper echelons (ministers, generals, officers, etc) were appointments and promotions. One did not move to positions of authority without proven loyalty to Hussein. And this policy is an extension of the existing plan - not a new one - Secret police force to be set up in Iraq (The Age, 1/05/04). That "police" force is comprised of "Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shiite forces - and former agents who are now working for the Americans." As John Pike from GlobalSecurity.org notes:

"The presence of a powerful secret police ... will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set," ... "To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule."

Those "former agents" are former members of Husseins, secret police.

In a bizarre way, it makes sense to return higher ranking Baathists to position of power. They are the ones who (supposedly) know "how things work" and how to utilize the mechanisms of control. It also helps that the US already knows how to work with the Baathists as they did so for almost 30 years. The problem with Saddam (from a US policy perspective) is that he got "uppity." Perhaps it is a sign of just how much things have deteriorated in Iraq, that the US is moving to put high level Baathists back in positions of authority.

The Bush administration, and the military brass in Iraq, and Bremer, have all expressed their disappointment in the Iraqi soldiers and police they recruited and trained. While last fall they were a "disappointment" because many of the soldiers went AWOL because they weren't being paid. More recently, the "disappointment" has been that neither soldiers or police would participate in the conflicts in Falluja and elsewhere. There is an interesting analysis of this by Nancy Montgomery in the 4/23/04 issue of Stars & Stripes - A lack of security from security forces, and my analysis Abizaid disappointed Iraqi troops won't attack Iraqis, 4/13/04.

The US has apparently been trying to coax the UN into coming into Iraq, but that has been largely a failure. According to a DemocracyNow! report on 4/23/04, the US is trying to turn the oil-forf-food scandal into a justification to NOT allow the UN back in. Meanwhile, the coalition of the willing is evaporating, and most of those "staying the course" are thinking about leaving as their governments' one year committments end.

Meanwhile, it is clear that there is no peacekeeping in Iraq, but that the US is back at "war" with missles, bombs, air strikes, and use of cluster bombs in Falluja (Electronic Iraq, 4/19/04). It would seem that Falluja hardly needs a blunt warning (NYT, 4/24/04) that the US is planning for a major attack on Falluja. Troops have stopped refugges from returning, and males are essentially seen as all being rebels.

In light of this, what exactly does one call the people resisting (increasingly violently) the occupation of Iraq by (primarily) US forces? Are they civilians resisting foreign occupation? Are they insurgents? Are they rebels? Are they "terrorists"? According to the US, they are one of the last three, because the Bush administration has declared itself the rightful ruler of Iraq, having "liberated" them from one appointee and placing them under Viceroy Bremer. On June 30th, they will apparently go under Ambassador Negroponte who is well versed in controlling insurgent populations, and has no qualms about issues of human rights.

Update
I am not the only one raising questions about the return of the Ba'athists. Patrick Cokburn has this interesting article - Ba'athists Ride Again - The Return of Saddam's Generals (CounterPunch, 4/25/04). As Cockburn notes:

Iraqi generals who fought for Saddam Hussein are being reinstated to strengthen the new US-trained Iraqi army half of whose soldiers mutinied or went home during fighting earlier this month.

More than half a dozen generals from the old Iraqi army, dissolved by the US-led Coalition last May, have already been given jobs say American officials according to the US press.

...

Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, is reversing the policy under which the 350,000-strong Iraqi army was dissolved and 750,000 members of the Baath party were either sacked from their jobs or found it difficult to gain employment. It is widely admitted among US officials that the disbandment of the army and de-Baathification were disastrous decisions helping to fuel the insurgency among Sunni Arabs, only a fifth of all Iraqis but the foundation of Saddam Hussein's regime.

...

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and Washington were clearly alarmed at the degree of alienation of Sunni and Shia Arabs, 80 per cent of the population, earlier this month. Allowing the Baath party members to get top jobs is aimed at conciliating the Sunni Arab community.

It should be kept in mind that these troops entered the "coalition" as peacekeeping forces - not combat forces. Further, the Dominicans have largely been playing a US troop support role. Even Paul Wolfowitz admits this is combat not peacekeeping:

The fact is this is not peacekeeping, it's still combat," Wolfowitz said. "And until it becomes peacekeeping, a lot of countries are probably going to stay on the sidelines," he told a congressional hearing in Washington

There is a rumor (I can't confirm so if anyone comes across a reliable source please pass it on) that the Dominican troops have not been paid in several months. If so, it would be because the US has not paid them - U.S. Enlists More Countries in Iraq, at Taxpayers' Expense (LA Times, 6/23/03). According to the LA Times article, "troops" (mostly doctors) from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic are being paid by the US. The Poles are also paid by the US though the richer Europena nations are footing their own bill. The estimated cost as of the LA Times article was $250 million for one year of service; however, an IPS 7/30/03 report says that Poland alone was to be paid $240 million for their troops.

Most of the multinational coalition were in Iraq under conditions of peace and reconstruction, that situation no longer pertains. This is particularly true for the Spanish speaking troops that were under Spain and appear to be primarily medical troops. So as snide remarks about these forces star flying, it is important to know the truth.

Interracial rapes are, moreover, uncommon. Rapes of white women by black men, for instance, represent less than 10 percent of all rapes, according to the Justice Department. But in half of the rape exonerations where racial data was available, black men were falsely convicted of raping white women.

While active racism seems likely from these findings, the the report argued that "White Americans are much more likely to mistake one black person for another than to do the same for members of their own race." While this too reflects racism, it seems to me that the racism is beyond "they all look alike."

"On the other hand, the study found that the leading causes of wrongful convictions for murder were false confessions and perjury by co- defendants, informants, police officers or forensic scientists."

Murder cases, particularly capital cases, are high profile with a lot of pressure to find the perpetrator and close the case. Apparently, the fact that convicting the wrong person does absolutely nothing to make the community any safer runs far behind the pressure to "succeed" (or appear to).

The study argued that if they had looked at a representative sampling of cases rather than focusing on murder and rape, they likely would have found 28,500 "non-death row" cases of erroneous convictions.

A critic of the study stated:

We all agree that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted," Mr. Marquis said. "Is it better for 100,000 guilty men to walk free rather than have one innocent man convicted? The cost-benefit policy answer is no."

In essence he is arguing that it is less costly to lock up and even kill innocent people. He is arguing that there are really very few false imprisonments, and this doesn't seem to be the case - particularly in the most egregious cases. Is it really more "cost effective? It seems to me that when an innocent person is convicted, imprisoned, and even given the death sentence that the society pays multiple costs. One is the cost we can count - how much does it cost to convict, imprison, and sometimes kill, an innocent person? Second, harder to calculate, is the cost of having the actual perpetrator is still on the street - possibly committing additional crimes. Third is the cost to the family and community of losing a productive member. Fourth is the cost of the individual trapped in this situation and his/her children if they have any. Last, but not least is the cost (ethereal as it may seem) to our society and democracy, to our ideals and our trust in the fairness of the system.

So how much (minimum) did it cost to hold the 328 exonerated individuals (more than half of them who had been imprison for more than 10 years? Well if you take 328 people at a minimum cost of $30,000 a year for 10 years, it cost society $9.84 Million dollars. If you take the estimated 28,500 "run-of-the-mill" innocents, that cost could be $1.71 Million (assuming an average 2 year sentence). So much for cost effectiveness.

There is a pervasive belief that if one is imprisoned then they are guilty. There is a pervasive belief that removing "criminals" from free society makes for a safer society. The first belief is wrong and the second one gives a false sense of security. Both of them contribute to supporting a system that is blatantly biased and all too frequently wrong. The report did not state whether social class was also examined. It is unquestioned that racism is a problem in the "justice" system, but lack of economic resources is the cross-racial component that is most prevalent. The less money one has the deeper one penetrates into the system and the longer one's sentence is likely to be.

Are these costs that we can continue to bear? On all levels, I think not.

Permanent link at Uncommon Thought for the referenced article

The Memory Hole got pictures from Dover Air Force Base from the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act. Here is a sampling of those pictures:

If we hide reality then the truth is lost.

Not only that they also provide the The Deleted Text.

I, personally, have been driven nuts by the continuous re-writing of history that has gone on under George's watch. Many in the alternative press, and on sites like Uncommon Thought, have tried to bring these things to light. One site that has done a consistently tremendous job of saving history before it is re-written is The Memory Hole.

The Post article is the first time since 9-11-01 that I remember seeing the corporate press even throw a flag. I am hoping that this marks the beginning of a sea change. For sure, the corporate press is going to be raising eyebrows as it becomes unmistakable how they have colluded in the deception of the public. But for now .... kudos to the Post for waking up.

[Permanent Link to the Wa. Post article on Uncommon Thought

Articles of Interest

Taliban Militants Step Up Attacks in Afghanistan, 4/14/04

Pakistan declares ceasefire with al-Qa'ida fighters as criticism of offensive mounts, Independent/UK 3/22/04

U.S. launches new Afghan push against bin Laden, India News, 3/13/04

US launches "Mountain Storm" for Osama, Daily Times/PK, 3/14/04

Time Needed for Post-9/11 Changes, AP, 4/14/04

Musharraf says Iraq war undermining battle against Al-Qaeda, AFP, 4/07/04

Bush may not be very smart, but many of the people in his administration, and his closest advisors are smart. They are also single-minded and largely reflect a neo-conservative strategy. These advisors have sometimes been referred to as the "neo-conservative cabal." I hear folks decrying the stupidity of Bush's plans and actions. The US has a history of repeating the same stupid strategies over and over (overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting dictators, inserting provocateurs, funding "rebel" forces) that both fly in the face of what the general public thinks the US is about, and "blowback" to become the heart of even larger conflicts later. There has to be a "gain" in this somewhere, and so it is with the Bush actions throughout his rule thus far.

The most recent conflagration in Iraq which is rapidly uniting Iraqi's in opposition to US occupation is an excellent example of "wmd" all over again. Purportedly, the recent fighting was sparked by the closing of Sadr's newspaper because it was "printing lies and calling for violence against US forces." This is not the case. While the US occupation leadership, the Bush administration, and the US media have promulgated this (arguably legitimate) reason for shutting down the paper, it is a lie. As Norman Solomon discusses in How the "NewsHour" Changed History (4/18/04 CounterPunch) emphases mine:

At a March 30 press conference, Dan Senor of the CPA charged that Al Hawza had tried to "incite violence." That was very much in keeping with what the April 5 New York Times reported -- that while "the American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence," nevertheless "the paper did not print any calls for attacks."

So why was the paper shut down? Was it hoped that it would be the final straw that escalated an increasingly tense situation into outright violent action? If so, it has been wildly successful.

Of course, the attack on the "contractors" and the widely covered mutilation of their remains, also called for "revenge" on the part of the US. But there was obviously more going on here than meets the eye. Obviously the anger preceded its expression in that horrendous act. Why were those folks off course and into an ambush. My understanding was that the supply run they were on was standard and scheduled. Surely at least some had made this trip numerous times before. Surely they were familiar with the route and the city. Why did they go off course and directly into an ambush? There was clear and dramatic video coverage of the event. Are there camera crews stationed all over the place and they just "happened" to capture the atrocity on tape? If so, why do these ever ready camera crews not capture other equally important events?

So US forces are out for blood while Iraqi's are (deliberately?) inflamed to unify across tribal and religious factions to engage in armed resistance to the US. A "truce" is called while fighting continues. Non-combatants, including children, end up wounded and dead, while Kimmitt talks of the "precision" of the US military response. Interestingly, the term "collateral damage" has dropped from the official lexicon, which leaves the suspicion that the reports of non-combatant losses are an exaggeration or an outright lie.

In the midst of "truce" the US issues a "wanted dead or alive" notice on Sadr. Certainly this is a move that inspires trust and de-escalates the situation. Given that the cease fire was declared and then the broad announcement about targeting Sadr, the credibility and dedication to finding a solution is called dramatically into question. Another "whoops?" I don't think so.

So things are exploding (literally) in Iraq, but what about the broader policy? The Bush Middle East Policy? The Bush Israel-Palestine "road map?" Well that went gloriously out the window as well. In a move that could do nothing but inflame the situation, Bush decides to back Sharon's "plan" to the hilt. That plan involves, removing some Israeli settlements from Gaza, while expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It involves, denying the right of return to refugee Palestinians. It involves an ongoing policy of assassinating Palestinian leadership. Bush's support of the new plan removes the US from any suggestion of being an mediator in the conflict, and that conflict (and the US role in it) is critical in the Middle East and the so-called "Muslim World" in general.

I am not alone in this perception of Bush's new approach:

From DEBKAfiles - an Israeli intelligence company - Bush's 2004 Middle East Vision Could Be Israel's Nightmare (4/14/04) and Sharon's Plan Presages "Little Iraq" in Gaza Strip and West Bank, 4/17/04;

From the LA Times - Bold Risks Mark Bush's Policy on Middle East, 4/18/04;

From Zunes for CommonDreams - Bush Endorsement of Sharon Proposal Undermines Peace and International Law, 4/15/04;

From Slavin at USA Today - Bush's tone may hinder Mideast plan, 4/15/04;

From Greenberg at the Chicago Tribune - Palestinians upset with Bush, 4/15/04;

From Reuters - Saudi Arabia Criticizes U.S. Mideast Policy Shift, 4/16/04;

And then what? Israel kills the new Hamas leader by a missel (that kills and injures others, and Bush comes out in support of the action (Hamas leader assassinated in Gaza by Israeli missile strike, Macintyre, Independent/UK, 4/16/04). Bush is widely seen as giving Sharon a "green light" and the threats against the US escalate in response (Bush Sealed Hamas Leader's Fate - Palestinians, al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 4/16/04; Rantissi assassination defended by US, slammed by Europe, Middle East, AFP, 4/18/04). And this morning from the Associated Press Hamas Appoints New Leader After Killing:

Hundreds of thousands of mourners thronged the streets of Gaza City, chanting ``revenge, revenge'' and throwing flowers at the men's bodies as they were carried through the streets in a funeral procession.

A broader strategy indeed is involved, but it is clearly not aimed at creating peace and security. It seems a strategy aimed at creating war and (perhaps hopefully) direct strikes against the US and those seen as allied to it. It seems meant to stimulate a broader war to legitimate a policy of US imperialism. It seems timed to embroil the US in high risk in the run up to the election, and if they can act fast enough, to take the 9-11 Commission and the rising questioning of policy, out of the public eye.

Recommendations
There are some excellent recent analyses out on the intent and impact of US policy.

Jim Lobe, FPIF, 4/09/04, From Iraqi Occupation to Islamic Reformation: Neocons Aim Beyond Baghdad

David Ross, ZNet, 4/17/04, Plan War and the Hubbert Oil Curve

Edward Herman, CRG, 4/13/04, We Had To Destroy [Fill in Country Name] In Order To Save It

Meanwhile, the US appealed to Iran to aid in negotiations with insurgents, the insurgents kill and Iranian representative, and then Iranian infiltrators target 11 Iraqi cities;
Israelis call campaign 'massive' (Geostrategy Direct, 4/16/04)

Some 2,000 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Islamic shock troops have entered Iraq and are seeking to control 11 Iraqi cities, according to London's Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq al-Awsat.

The newspaper, quoting informed Iranian sources, reported last week that the infiltrators included fighters, clerics and students from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI] and Al-Da'wah Party. Also sent were several hundred elements from the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Corps. Their members come from families deported from Iraq and speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent.

The IRGC intelligence service was able to deploy the forces from unguarded areas of the Iran-Iraq border near Al-Kut and Al-Amarah.

The infiltrators were equipped with radios, posters, pamphlets printed in Qom and large sums of money. The cash was intended for weapons for the Badr Corps and Quds Corps fighters from Iraqis, especially former Iraqi officers.

The Iranian plan calls for imposing pro-Iranian rulers in 11 cities and town with Shiite majorities. They include Karbala, Al-Najaf, Al-Hillah, Al-Kufah, Al-Diwaniyah, Al-Kut, Al-Nasiriyah and Al-Amarah. The Iranians want to set up revolutionary committees similar to those established after the 1979 revolution in Iran.

A senior Israeli intelligence officer in Israel termed the Iranian involvement in Iraq as "massive." The officer said the Iranians are attempting to identify mayors and district governors to undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.

The Iranians are attempting to "Vietnamize" the country through the targeting, the official told Israel's Knesset committee on foreign and defense affairs."

So now are you confused? Yeah me too, but we are not alone. Safa Heiri from the Asia Times (4/17/04 Iran gets its hands dirty) senses the abiguity and attempts to explain it this way:

"There have always been two strains to US policy. Just as Iran often seems to follow policies where the one part of the government seems to differ from what the other part of the government is doing, we see the same thing in the United States very much. We have, from the beginning, in fact, relied on Iran and its assistance, especially in the south and its relations with the Shi'ite, to maintain peace and order and to lend support to a more moderate perspective in Iraqi politics. At the same time, almost without stop, we have been criticizing Iran's activities in Iraq," Sick (professor of Middle East politics at New York's Columbia University) said.

In more ways than one, one part of government doesn't know what the other part is doing. That is painfully obvious in the recent testimony before the 9-11 Commission. It is perhaps easiest to write it all off to the bureaucratic "inefficiencies" of government - perhaps all governments. However, it is equally likely that it is a deliberate strategy of CYA. This way, no matter which fickle way the tides turn governments can point to direct actions supporting any position. Or maybe I am just getting cynical.

Of course, what Sharon truly is leaving is an impossible situation. Gaza is a small, fenced-in enclave of nearly a million Palestinians where only the most mentally unbalanced Israeli settlers insist on living a life of guard towers, razor wire, patrols, and spies. Sharon's army is tired of protecting a few machinegun-toting fanatics, not to mention the small fortune it can save by ending the protection.

The army will be able to do a more efficient job by policing only the perimeter of the world's largest open-air detention center. Access by land, air, and sea are tightly controlled, although inmates are permitted on selected days to pass through fences and checkpoints for jobs in Israel that Israelis will not take.

America's court-appointed President, the remarkable man who spent a hundred billion dollars to set Iraq in flames, characterized Sharon's initiative as "historic" and "courageous," two words whose meanings there is no objective evidence he even understands.

During the carefully-staged ceremony in Washington, Bush suggested the U.S. will support Israel's annexation of parts of the West Bank. How is Bush entitled to grant land he neither owns nor occupies to a third party without so much as consulting those who lived there for centuries and still often hold deeds? Apparently, through no principle more dignified than might makes right.

The de facto border of Israel keeps shifting eastward as new settlements sprawl out like Florida land developments. The Palestinians are not to be permitted even their miserable 22% of what once was called Palestine. Sharon's gang has always wanted the West Bank, minus its inhabitants, carefully dressing up its language in biblical terms that strike a special chord in the backwaters of America. Of course, one just as reasonably could make a case for Greece claiming parts of Turkey on the authority of the Iliad. The biblical claim really is just that silly, but it carries weight in parts where children's books are scrutinized for dire signs of witchcraft.

Sharon's government has been a disaster both for the Palestinians and Israel. The world's reaction to his behavior has been waves of severe criticism, but there also has been ugly new expressions of anti-Semitism. A number of Israel's defenders work to blur the distinction between these two things, hoping to silence criticism. Reasonable people are driven to despair at being treated so mindlessly.

I believe the extreme sensitivity of many Jews to criticism of Israel's behavior actually reflects the fact that it disturbs them too, although public expressions of their distress are rare. Fierce pressure is felt by Jews who join criticism of Israel, perhaps the most notable case being the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom who not long ago spoke out quite forcefully on the subject and has not been heard from since.

"It's easy to see which side you support," was one of the more temperate negative responses I received once to a piece about Israel and the Palestinians. Why must Israel's critics be put in the position of supporting them or us? This kind of stuff - them or us - is the wisdom proffered by the most pathetic President in American history.

Critics emphasize grievances against Israel because those grievances never receive the same airing as those against the Palestinians. Indeed, there are many prominent columnists, apologists for Israel's excesses, who frequently suggest Palestinians are irrational, Thomas Friedman being only the most well-known of them. Apart from the imbalance of voices in the press, there is simply a great moral and ethical disproportion between the acts of desperate people opposing occupation and organized suppression by a heavily-armed state. Israel holds almost all the cards, so when nothing in the situation changes, indeed when it grows far worse, how is Israel not responsible?

My original intention was to write a piece about the departure of Sharon offering a fresh opportunity for peace. Why not a peace initiative as inspired as the late President Sadat's trip to Israel? But such things never do come from Israel, and what we have now is almost its polar opposite.

It is difficult to understand how Jews, consistently leaders in many struggles for human rights and progress, continue to accept the circumstances of the West Bank and Gaza. Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, figures of unquestionable moral authority and heroic resistance to tyranny, have both said that what they see there is what they knew in apartheid South Africa. Only Sharon's admirers, Bush's war-loving loonies, and Jerry Falwell's strange flock awaiting the end of time are blind to this truth.

The suicide bombings that have terrified Israelis come from utter despair. First came Barak's contemptuous offer to Palestinians of a perpetual Bantustan at Camp David after years of work over the Oslo Accords. This was followed by Sharon's ugly behavior, including his provocative trip to the Temple Mount, seeking to exploit fear. Sharon, a man directly responsible for war-time atrocities, a man who always held the Oslo Accords in contempt, was elected Prime Minister. Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been virtually imprisoned, denied a voice in Washington, and threatened several times publicly with murder. Now we have Bush hugging Sharon as though he had found a long-sought father substitute. From the Palestinian perspective, it must appear an Iron Curtain has descended.

Millions of people throughout the world understand the necessary elements of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. The proposals of Israel's Gush Shalom - a group dedicated to genuine peace, a group so often treated by Sharon's thugs as a criminal or subversive organization - contains the key elements. A return to the Green Line as Israel's border and Jerusalem's becoming capital for both states are rational conditions for a stable peace. What is so difficult about accepting them?

Instead, we have Sharon, a man who has killed thousands of people, almost all civilians, hailed as courageous. And he is hailed by a President fresh from killing women and children in Fallujah.

Apparently the "intelligence community" is not the only one with "systemic problems." The US "food safety" community seems to have similar problems. On reading the article I was immediately reminded of the recent 9-11 Commission hearings with all the claims of the "system" being to blame. I was particularly reminded of Condoleeza Rice's testimony where she claimed that terrorism was a "priority" of the administration; that the problems with in the intelligence departments were structural and systemic and 233 days were too short a time to make the necessary changes (but they were made immediately after September 11, 2001.

I believe that most of us thought that the official discovery of mad cow disease in the US would have been a similar "wake up" call. I guess not. Perhaps similar structural and systemic problems exist at the FDA and DoA. According to FDA spokesperson Brad Stone:

"the purpose of our announcement was to give a strong indication of the fact that this is a practice on its way out. We anticipate that that's a message that was received by the industry."

Well, apparently that is not the message being received by the "industry":

Not so, says Rex Runyan of the American Feed Industry Association. "It's business as usual until they publish those rules. I don't know of any companies that have made any major changes based on rumors or speculation."

Perhaps the message wasn't for the "industry" at all, but for the public. It said "we know your concerns and are responding immediately and approrpriately." The "industry" apparently knows that tactic and figured that any changes were well down the road - if they were there at all.

The article does contain a hint of where the strucutral issues might lie. Not so surprisingly, they seem to reside at the same address as the intelligence community's structural problems - 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.:

"There's significant work being done on these FDA regulations ... at the White House level," says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The Bush administration is catering to industry concerns."

Read em and weep.

The Reuters report claims that Sadr heeded the advice of other clerics and dropped his preconditions for talks with the US. This is an interesting opening which has probably disappeared in the smoke of heavy fire and missle hits in Falluja. Sadr had three conditions that were dropped: US withdrawl from residential areas, freeing detainees, and later lifting the seige of Falluja (Reuters).

Supposedly, there has been a "truce" in Falluja since last Friday. The ongoing fighting, particularly today's firestorm, hardly qualifies as a truce in my opinion. THe AP article states:

U.S. warplanes and helicopters firing heavy machine guns, rockets and cannons hammered insurgents Wednesday in the besieged city of Fallujah, and the commander of U.S. Marines here warned that a fragile truce was near collapse.

....

The truce in Fallujah was severely shaken by fighting Tuesday and Wednesday morning -- although Marines underlined their halt to offensive operations, called Friday, was still in effect.

I have to wonder what "truce" means. I thought it meant a temporary cessation of hostilites. I guess that is not the military definition.

To add further questions to US intentions in Iraq, the AP reported on 4/13/04 that Negroponte May Become Baghdad Ambassador (Schweid, AP). Negroponte is currently the US representative to the UN. Prior to being tapped for that post by GW Bush, Negroponte had been the US Ambassador to Honduras when the death squads were active there. Many were surprised when he was tapped for the UN post because of his more than questionable involvement in covert activities and support of human rights abuses (see below).

The consideration of Negroponte with his confirmed loyalty to US interests at any cost is, at best, in bad taste. Here we have a people who have lived under a despotic and violent rule for thirty years, now face what seems to be an equally despotic US occupation, and running up on turning "Iraq over to the Iraqi's" we look to Negroponte as the chief US representative. Yep, things are definitely taking a "positive" spin.

Then it what seems a bizarre twist to me, the US asks Iran for help in Iraq (Mail&Guardian, 4/14/04). Tehran received a formal request to help mediate between the US and the Iraqi opposition ["Tehran's director for Gulf affairs, Hossein Sadeghi, has gone to Iraq for talks with US-led coalition officials, Iraqi politicians and religious figures, the Irna news agency reported."] SO does this give Iraq "credit" in the dispute over their nuclear program? Does it mean that the alliance between the US and groups wishing to undermine the government of Iran is shifting? It is hard to read these things as it all seems a bit convoluted.

John Negroponte

Human Rights
John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center, in August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at this base.

During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress.

I also recommend the report from Foreign Policy in Focus Republican Rule - other Official's Profiles. It gives a much more detailed discussion of Negroponte's "service" to the US.

So the Iraqi forces, who largely joined up because there was no other employment opportunities in Iraq, would not fire on Iraqi cities and civilians. Apparently, it was expected that they would fire on friends, families, and other Muslims simply because they were ordered to do so.

That expectation makes my blood run cold. It means that if U.S. forces were deployed in the U.S. (a possibility less remote than we might think) that there is a belief that those forces would fire without qualm on citizens of their own nation, and perhaps their own town.

Regardless of who is right ot wrong in Iraq, the expectation that troops would fire on their own countrypeople is insane. The training to be a "soldier" is one of depersonalization and objectification of an "enemy." What would be reaped by the ability to do that to your own? What would be your place in your society after such activities?

To my understanding, three types of forces have been recruited and trained in Iraq - police forces, an army for national protection, and an elite secret attack unit of former Republican Guards and their commanders. All of these might be labled "security forces," but their jobs and focus are very different which may be why the US is having difficulty in Iraq.

Police forces ensure local stability and control. The aim is not to attack and kill, but to come to bloodless resolutions under the rule of law (if at all possible). Police are to "serve and protect" as the old saying goes. Of course there is some question about US police forces with the militarization of police through "special forces" teams such as SWAT teams.

Military forces are geared to fight external "enemies," repel invaders, etc. a very different focus than police. The rule is combat with the attempt to kill the enemy. The focus is the deadly use of force.

The Republican Guard special forces in use in Iraq, are in place purportedly to seek out terrorists and terrorist groups. The former Guard is being used in this case because of their familiarity with Iraq, their information networks, and their ability to blend with the local populations. Those in these special units are drawn from the elite portions of Hussein's former forces - not the average soldier.

To expect any of these groups to openly fire on their own citizens without compunction is beyond inappropriate. It sets a frightening precedent. Actually, it reinforces the rules under which Saddam Hussein maintained an iron grip of control for so many years. The fact that the US would willing use the same tactics does not speak well of the positive influence supposedly being injected into Iraq. It does reinforce the perception of a conquering and occupying force that has replaced one dictator with another.

Exactly what message is the US trying to send in Iraq? Freedom? Speech is curtailed. Those media not putting out a positive US message are shut down, harassed, or killed. Those who protest are met with guns and deadly fire. Rights under law? Over 10,000 Iraqis are being held under indefinite detention without access to legal advice, or contact with their families. Bremmer is referred to as "Ambassador," but his actual title is "Viceroy." (See How Far will They Dare?, Uncommon Thought Journal 4/13/2003).

Certainly this "great disappointment" speaks volumes about US intent in Iraq, but also about a basic philosophy that is beyond troubling. It is even beyond the idea of empire in the traditional sense. The mirror of US domestic policy is displayed in Iraq. The erosion of the line between military and police; the implementation of practices that erode personal privacy; the removal of constitutional protections to due process and freedom of speech; all happening in the United States, all being carried out within Iraq. One has to wonder how the Bush administration defines "freedom" and "democracy."

This is also a man who knows the importance of a good night's sleep and pacing his day:

Regardless of what is going on in the world Mr Bush is usually in bed by 10pm and wakes at 6am. As governor of Texas he would be in work by 8.30am and out by 5.30pm. In between was a 90-minute to two-hour break for exercise or a nap.

By my calculation, that means that he works roughly a six hour day. Now that takes true discipline in my experience. I have yet to have a full time job where I was able to limit my schedule in that way.

Now I have no problem with naps. I think we should all get a nap time. It would slow the pace of life significantly if the US structured a daily nap into our society.

But this picture of the 6.5 hour day, and 40% paid time off, is not the picture that pops into one's head with a President of a nation that is constantly under an Orange Alert, and has two major war offensives going on (Afghanistan and Iraq). One might wonder what would shake Mr. Bush from is personal schedule. When does he have time to do his job? We know he doesn't read the papers and depends on his trusted advisors to tell him what's going on. He probably also doesn't like to read pesky complicated reports. For sure, he doesn't like dry little numbers like the budget (to paraphrase, it looks like a budget, it's full of numbers).

I wonder about the rest of the Administration. What is their work schedule? Cheney has to be one of the most invisble VPs of all time. Even Dan Quayle was more visible and they were actively trying to keep him out of the spotlight. For those who don't remember, Qualye was Bush Sr.'s VP. He was almost as verbally maladroit as the current President Bush (perhaps they spent to much time together). He would pop off with embarassing remarks like

Quayle Quotations Page A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

I am almost postive that Bush Jr. used that one about "good judgements" in the past and future.

Anyway, I have digressed. Who IS working at the White House? I sure don't know, given that it seems that industry writes policy and neo-conservative think tanks write the strategies. There has GOT to be a bunch of lawyers in there somewhere who are working their tails off to keep too may egregious admissions from popping out.

On the other hand, given the damage that Bush has been able to inflict only being present 60% of the time, maybe it is a blessing he isn't in Washington more.

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It seems that Creekstone Farms Premium Beef from Kansas, wants to test all of the beef coming through their facility for Mad Cow disease. Their primary market is Japan, and Japan tests all of the beef processed in Japan. Given the Mad Cow situation in the US, Creekstone figured it was worth the extra cost and effort. Unfortunately, the Dept. of Agriculture decided that "implied a consumer safety aspect that is not scientifically warranted."

Well now, that might be a valid issue, but I have no idea what the false positive (or negative) rating of this particular test is. Of course, there may be a political issue at stake. Namely, that if Creekstone goes to full testing, it might raise questions of why less than 1% of the beef in the US are being tested. Who knows what the fallout might be? This possibility is reinforced in the article with: "Lobbying groups for cattle ranchers and slaughterhouses applauded the decision."

The article does have a surprising bit of information: "Under the Virus Serum Toxin Act of 1913, the department decides where cattle can be tested and for what."

So only the Department of Agriculture can decide on cattle testing - all testing? If a cattle farmer has a suspected case of hoof and mouth disease, does he or she need to contact the Department of Agriculture to get permnission to test, and where to go for the test? My guess is that is not the case. My guess is that the 1913 Act is enforced sporadically if at all.

So Creekstone is going back to court to try and get legal permission to test their own cattle for a deadly contagious disease which is also communicable (and deadly) to humans. I am so glad that our government is standing firm on protecting us. The may get to earn their name DoA (for Department of Agriculture).

Second is a CBS report from 7/26/01 questioning why Ashcroft was not flying commercial: (Ashcroft Flying High or the CBS original at Ashcroft Flying High)

"In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines,"

The 8/06/01 PDB was framed by repeated warnings. Another example is from the transcripts of the 9/11 Congressional Report located at the The Memory Hole linked from the 9/11 page.

2. Finding: During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community experienced a significant increase in information indicating that Bin Ladin and al-Qaida intended to strike against U.S. interests in the very near future.

Discussion: The National Security Agency (NSA), for example, reported at least 33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack in 2001. Senior U.S. Government officials were advised by the Intelligence Community on June 28 and July 10, 2001, that the attacks were expected, among other things, to "have dramatic consequences on governments or cause major casualties" and that "[a]ttack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

Then there is a quote on page 8 of the report from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's testimony:

"We issued between January and September nine warnings, five of them global, because of the threat information we were receiving from the intelligence agencies in the summer, when [DCI] George Tenet was around town literally pounding on desks saying, something is happening, this is an unprecedented level of threat information. He didn't know where it was going to happen, but he knew that it was coming."

So Tenet was "pounding desks" as well as Richard Clarke. Further if "five of the nine warnings" issued by the State Department were "global," then four of them were specific to the United States. Of course the US is also included as part of global warnings so the State Department issued nine warnings which included imminent threat of terrorist attacks, four of which were specific solely to the US between January and September of 2001.

Then from the Congressional report we learn (emphases mine):

This stream of reporting began as early as 1998 and continued during the time of heightened threat levels in 2001. For example, the Community received reporting in May 2001 that Bin Ladin supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States to conduct terrorist operations and, in late summer 2001, that an al-Qaida associate was considering mounting terrorist attacks within the United States.

The report also alludes to what we now know as the August 6, 2001 PDB on page nine (emphases mine):

Discussion: [While the credibility of the sources was sometimes questionable and the information often sketchy, the Inquiry confirmed that the Intelligence Community did receive intelligence reporting concerning the potential use of aircraft as weapons. For example, the Community received information in 1998 about a Bin Ladin operation that would involve flying an explosive- laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and, in summer 2001, about a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy from an airplane or crash an airplane into it. The FBI and CIA were also aware that convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and several others had discussed the possibility of crashing an airplane into CIA Headquarters as part of "the Bojinka Plot" in the Philippines, discussed later in this report. Some, but apparently not all, of these reports were disseminated within the Intelligence Community and to other agencies].

This is the tenor of information in which the 8/26/01 PDB occurred. This is why a PDB entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. should have raised alarms REGARDLESS of whether it had "specific" information or not. What I hear from the disavowal of the importance of the 8/06/01 PDB is that the White House had received continuous warnings from various components of the Intelligence Community, and this was just one more. If Tenet was "pounding desks," we can be sure that he was also shouting this message in "principal's meetings" - particularly during the summer of 2001. Obviously, the warnings were considered significant by the Department of Justice, as Ashcroft steered clear of commercial airlines.

In the face of all of these threats, which were passed to Bush both from the Clinton administration, and then in increasing intensity from January 2001 forward, the decision was to piddle along thinking about a "strategy" until September 4, 2001. It is interesting in hearing and looking over Rice's Testimony before the 9/11, that she repeatedly stressed that terrorism was an important concern of the President, but that there were structural problems in the intelligence community (particularly between CIA and FBI) that were very hard to change. However, they were (apparently) able to overcome these issues (that take a long time to make) immediately in the wake 0f 9/11/01. I have highlight the stresses in the following block of testimony:

RICE: Well, thank you. We did have a structural problem, and structural problems take some time to address. We did have a national security policy directive asking the CIA, through the foreign intelligence board, headed by Brent Scowcroft, to review its intelligence activities, the way that it gathered intelligence. And that was a study that was to be completed. The vice president was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the president to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that; to take the Gilmore report and the Hart-Rudman report and so forth and to try to make recommendations about what might have been done. We were in office 233 days. And the kinds of structural changes that have been needed by this country for some time did not get made in that period of time. I'm told that after the millennium plot was discovered, that there was an after-action report done and that some steps were taken. To my recollection, that was not briefed to us during the transition period or during the threat spike. But clearly, what needed to be done was that we needed systems in place that would bring all of this together. It is not enough to leave this to chance. If you look at this period, I think you see that everybody -- the director of the CIA -- Louis Freeh had left, but the key counterterrorism person was a part of Dick Clarke's group. And with meeting with him and, I'm sure, shaking the trees and doing all of the things that you would want people to do, we were being given reports all the time that they were doing everything they could. But there was a systemic problem in getting that kind of shared intelligence.

RICE: The way that we went about this was to have individual cases where you were trying to build a criminal case, individual offices with responsibility for those cases. Much was not coming to the FBI in a way that it could then engage the policymakers. So these were big structural reforms. We did some things to try and get the CIA reforming. We did some things to try and get a better sense of how to put all of this together. But structural reform is hard, and in seven months we didn't have time to make the changes that were necessary. We made them almost immediately after September 11th.

If you look through the testimony an see how many times Rice reiterated the difficulties, not having enough time, etc, one gets the sense that change was impossible even though the President was aware and concerned. So why could these "difficult" structural changes occur "immediately"? Well, the reality is that they haven't, but the Administration certainly wants us to think that they have.

If Rice writes off the 8/06/01 PDB as "historical" and nothing to raise immediate alarm, then it is certainly appropriate to look at her interpretation in the light of the context in which it occurred. It is clear to me, that even if they didn't have specific information that four planes were going to be hijacked on the East coast of the United States on the morning of September 11th, and that two of those planes were to be used as missiles to attack the WTC, another for the Pentagon, and another for the White House, that they damn well knew that it was possible. They had the warnings of highjackings and explosives. They even had knowledge that planes might be used as bombs themselves. They knew the array of targets (including the WTC and the Pentagon). They knew that "something big" was imminent. They knew enough for some Administration officials to swear off commercial flights. They knew that al-Qaeda cells were present in the US. They knew and their purported "action" was to engage in planning (at leisure) and organizational restructuring.

They also knew when those planes were highjacked. They knew the trajectories of the planes. They had to suspect with a high degree of certainty, that this was the "something big" they had been warned about for the previous seven months. And they did ... nothing. Scrambled intercept fighter jets were called back to base. They watched it happen. They sat there and watched their little screens. Yep, plane one hit the WTC. Yep, there's another one into the WTC. Whoops, that one went down somewhere. Yep, that one hit the Pentagon.

Heck, much of the nation watched the whole thing unfold in real time in front of our very eyes. The people didn't have the tools or ability to react. The Administration clearly did. Instead, Bush decided to follow through on a photo opportunity at a Florida grade school after the first plane had hit the WTC and it was known that other planes had broken off communications and were off course (5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11 - with text introduction by the Memory Hole). While sitting there listening to the children in the classroom a Emma T. Booker Elementary School, he already knew that one plane had hit the World Trade Center. We know he knew because Andrew Card told him during the reading "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."

So not only did the Administration not act to attempt to prevent the events of September 11, 2001, they did not act once they knew that the attacks were in process. Could they have prevented the events of September 11th entirely? We'll never know. Could they have lessened the impact of those events? In my opinion that is almost certain. The various commissions (Congressional and Bipartisan) have focused their attention on what the Administration knew and could have responded to prior to September 11th. Why is no one asking why they didn't respond ON September 11th. That is more inexplicable to me than what they might have figured out before hand. When I look at the total lack of response both to the threats, and to the actual attack, the picture I see is damning.

So one little PDB taken out of the context of the information that was available is pointless, and it I would agree with Michael Ruppert that it is being spun as a distraction. The argument rages of whether that particular document was the necessary warning. In looking at the PDB, I can't say that as a stand-alone document that it is. However, looked within the context of everything else (including Tenet and Clarke yelling themselves blue in the face trying to get a response), it certainly is a clear and imminent warning. The fact that no document has turned up about the specific plan is unimportant. My guess is that such information hardly ever is that specific. To claim that such specificity was the prerequisite for averting the disaster of September 11th is an insult to us all. If that is what they needed, then they don't deserve to be in power.

I have heard no evidence that the bombed mosque met either of the conditions of fire base or weapons depot. The mosque was suspected of "housing insurgents" though that also has not been confirmed. Unless the "insurgets" were firing at US troops from the mosque, then it should have remained sacred ground. The whole point of seeking refuge in a place of worship is because of the sanctity of sanctuary or refuge.

The US deciding to target mosques because they are "suspected" of housing insurgents is not a good idea. Families have been reported throughout these conflicts to be seeking refuge in the mosques - specifically because they are NOT supposed to be targets of attack. In attacking mosques in Falluja and elsewhere it is highly likely that non-combatants are likely to die.

I would imagine that firing on, or bombing, mosques is likely to enrage people rather than to shift their sympathies away from those fighting the US occupation forces (and their "contracted security"). At the present time, the US has placed Falluja under seige and over 280 Fallujans have been killed and over 400 wounded. Vehicles trying to take the wounded to hospitals have been fired on by US troops - even when they were traveling under a white flag (Al Jazeera report).

This seems a strategy to inflame - not only Iraq, but Muslims worldwide. It should anger all who hold any such place sacred (which should include the "born again" Bush) It also stinks of retaliation for the killing of the four "contract security" people killed earlier this weak. This doesn't seem an appropriate response from a supposedly controlled and disciplined military presence.

The GAO report - DEFENSE ACQUISITIONS: The Army's Future Combat Systems' Features, Risks, and Alternatives is pretty damning.

FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources. Three-fourths of FCS' needed technologies were still immature when the program started. The first prototypes of FCS will not be delivered until just before the production decision. Full demonstration of FCS' ability to work as an overarching system will not occur until after production has begun. This demonstration assumes complete success-- including delivery and integration of numerous complementary systems that are not inherently a part of FCS but are essential for FCS to work as a whole. When taking into account the lessons learned from commercial best practices and the experiences of past programs, the FCS strategy is likely to result in cost and schedule consequences if problems are discovered late in development.

In other words, the FCS (Future Combat Systems) process is funding in full a line of technology that has yet to be developed or tested. They are already behind schedule and over budget, and there is nothing to keep it from going deeper in the hole. Do we hear the familar sucking sound?

According to the GAO report, the intial projected budget is $92 Billion (pg1/3 of pdf count), and the GAO thinks that FCS is ridiculous (though they phrase it more politiely (emphases mine):

FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources. At conflict are the program's unprecedented technical challenges and time. At a top level, the technical challenges are: development of a first-of-a-kind network, 18 advanced systems, 53 critical technologies, 157 complementary systems, and 34 million lines of software code. From a time standpoint, the Army allows only 5 ½ years between program start and the production decision. This is faster than it has taken to develop a single major system, and FCS has several systems including the network, an Abrams replacement, a Bradley replacement, and a Crusader replacement. To meet this timetable, FCS is proceeding on a highly concurrent strategy that started with over 75 percent of critical technologies immature. Assuming everything goes as planned, the FCS program will begin production before all of its systems have been demonstrated. (pg2/pdf 4)

In other words, they are going to start production before they ever test any of these systems.

What this means is that this is yet another military contractor bonanza and another tax payer boondoggle. It also puts troops who will be required to use these untested systems and equipment at tremendous risk. The purported goal is Rumsfeld's own little wet dream of small groups of high tech specialists taking on the "forces of evil." One small problem is that these small, high tech units are also tremendously vulnerable. We saw this with the military Hummers in Iraq. Sure they were within the specified weight range, but they had no protection from even modest arms. Therefore you had units ordering, and paying for, their own armor for the Hummers shipped to Iraq (while the Pentagon couldn't make a decision). This obviously significantly increases the weight and decreases both maveuverablility and gas mileage. Fast, light, high tech ... prone to failure in my opinion.

The FCS plan "unrealistic" to say the least. As noted in the GAO report, over 75% of the technology is "immature." I think that is a polite way of saying that "its on the drawing boards," or maybe it is just on the "wish list." But who cares, the Pentagon apparently has a limitless budget to play with. It's only money (someone else's money) after all.

Kudos to Wired News for an excellent report.

According to PFAW's analysis:

The proposed rules would transform overnight many nonprofit groups (including charities, civic organizations, religious groups, labor unions, and fraternal organizations) into federally regulated political committees - faced with draconian restrictions on how they raise and spend money - for merely expressing an opinion about a federal officeholder's policies or views. The potential chilling effect on free speech cannot be overstated. Many nonprofits would be forced to choose between ceasing normal operations or facing crippling restrictions on fund raising.

The rule changes would essentially prohib all political speech, or what might be interpretted as political speech, by a wide range of organizations - "Another proposed rule would expand the definition of a federally regulated "expenditure" to include communications that "promote, support, attack, or oppose" a federal candidate or policy position of a candidate."

We do have a brief opportunity to give input to the FEC on this issue. Bush GreenWatch gives the following information for providing input - NOTE that the comment period ends APRIL 9:

TAKE ACTION! Send a comment opposing the rule change to the FEC. Comments should be addressed to Ms. Mai T. Dinh, Acting Assistant General Counsel, and must include the full name, electronic mail address, and postal service address of the commenter. The comments period ends on April 9: [email protected].

While voicing that the US is there to give "democracy" to the people of Iraq, and place power within a "sovereign" Iraqi government, every move seems a deliberate attempt to undermine both. Looking at the situation in Iraq, one can't help but wonder if the Iraqi's might feel that they have exchanged one tyrant for another. Look at what's been going on: secret and indefinite detention of over 10,000 Iraqi's; censorship everywhere you look; sealed areas and towns requiring papers to move around; the only employment to speak of with the new regime and requiring a vetting process not dissimilar from the one Hussein had; death the consequence of dissent. So what has changed here?

We are hearing less and less about "foreign" fighters, and more and more about internal rebellion. It sounds like whatever "window of opportunity" to have peace in Iraq and the de-escalation of US presence and force is slammed shut.

The current outbreak of violence seems to be a response to the US shutting down Shi-ite cleric Al-Sadr's news paper because it was "telling lies" (US faces Iraqi revolt, Guardian, 4/05/04). The US has also launched an offensive against "radicals."

U.S. Forces Take on Shi'ite, Sunni Rebels in Iraq, Reuters, 4/05/04)

U.S. helicopters blasted targets in Baghdad Monday in an intensifying showdown with Shi'ite Muslim radicals resisting America's postwar plans for Iraq.

U.S. forces also tackled Sunni insurgents in Falluja, where four American security men were killed last week. Residents reported heavy firing overnight and a hospital doctor said five people had been killed and three wounded.

Troops used loudspeakers to announce a night-time curfew and sealed roads around the troubled town west of Baghdad. Schools closed and the streets were empty. The U.S. military said it had also shut the nearby Baghdad-Amman highway indefinitely.

In Baghdad, Reuters journalists said they saw two Apache helicopters attacking targets in the mainly Shi'ite Shuala district, where a U.S. tank transporter was in flames.

To complicate issues even more, the US troops are well beyond the euphamism "spread thin." Troops are working extended periods without break (7 days on 6 hours off); rotations have been extended and extended again, troops are being sent back to active duty when they are unfit to be on duty (Army sent mentally ill troops to Iraq, UPI, 3/12/04). In short, the soldiers who are there are most likely not functioning at heir best in terms of decision-making either. It is little surprise then that Naomi Klein would write The U.S. is Sabotaging Stability in Iraq (Globe & Mail, 4/05/04).

On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers, trained and controlled by coalition forces, opened fire on demonstrators here, forcing the emergency evacuation of the nearby Sheraton and Palestine hotels. As demonstrators returned to their homes in the poor neighborhood of Sadr City, the U.S. army followed with tanks and helicopters. As night fell, there were unconfirmed reports of dozens of casualties. In Najaf, the day was equally bloody: 19 demonstrators dead, more than 150 injured.

But make no mistake: This is not the "civil war" that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the U.S. occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shiites who support Muqtada al-Sadr.

We are all watching the same failure to reweave a stable society in Iraq, and watching the unweaving of whatever good will had been built. As the violence escalates into an Iraqi war of liberation - Iraq vs US - it becomes less likely that an international aid and support presence will appear.

The only hope I see for Iraq at this time is a regime change in the US. Not necessarily because a different President would de facto do any better, but because Bush has painted himself into a corner. Any attempt by Bush to significantly change course would not be trusted. A new leadership could disavow the Bush policies and start relatively cleanly. This could be important not only in Iraq, but with our allies as well. Bush is trapped by both lies and rhetoric into getting tougher and tougher in Iraq (and elsewhere). To do otherwise would mean coming clean on the decptions and opening government to the light of day. I doubt that either of those things are likely to happen.

I did a presentation on the FTAA and Prison Privatization in 2001 (see presentation notes at Prison Privatization and Sovereignty) which came at the issue from a globalization impact approach. Examples of contracting prison labor include (both from Bloomer and from my presentation):

- Inmates in Vermont, make snowshoes for Stowe Canoe and Snowshoe Co.

- Prisoners in California raise pigs for D.R. Ranch of Avenal.

- Oregon Prison Industries, which goes by the name of UniGroup, markets a line of convict-made blue jeans called "Prison Blues.

- TWA has used inmate labor to break strikes. During a flight-attendant strike in 1986, TWA turned its reservation clerks into flight attendants and put inmates to work on the phone. The airline company still pays $5 an hour to inmate reservation clerks at a juvenile facility in Ventura, Calif. That same work, when unionized pays $18 an hour.

- San Francisco-based Data Processing Accounting Services moved U.S. assembly jobs to a maquiladora in Tecate, Mexico. But increased competition sent the company back to the United States in 1992--to San Quentin State Prison."Some of the work went to China and some of the work we sent to San Quentin," DPAS owner Bob Tessler says. "Our objective is to find low-cost labor." The company left San Quentin in 1996 because of high prisoner turnover, but it's looking for an alternative site, ideally at another prison.

The ultimate function of both off-shoring and contracting prison labor are the same - reduce labor costs to increase corporate profits. Both cost-saving strategies also remove public and private sector jobs from the US open labor pool.

However, there is a pernicious side to the use of prison labor that plays into a complex web of dynamics. First, the wars on crime and drugs in the US have dramatically increased the prison population (and those under corrections control). Second, the implementation of madatory sentencing and "three strikes you're out rules" have increased both the duration of incarceration, and dramatically expanded the prison population.

Keeping people in jails and prisons is a very expensive proposition which is paid for at tax payer expense. Increasing prison populations also requires the building of new prison facilities - also at tax payer expense. The solutions posed to this manufactured prison population explosion is two-fold. First, requiring prisoners to work and opening up internal prison industries that compete with the private sector; second, privatizing prisons to corporations. These two strategies work hand in hand and both are promoted to reduce the costs to tax payers of maintaining an extensive (and filled to capacity) incaraceration system. There is no study that I have seen that shows that private facilites are less expensive than public , and actually they usually cost tax payers more. Since many private facilites are also contracting their prisoners, they are getting paid by the tax payers for incarceration costs, and earning big buck from contracting companies through the use of the prisoners under their control.

This makes the private corrections industry very profitable, but it also creates a truly "captive" labor force - a labor force that can (and does) compete with some of the cheapest and most exploited labor on the planet.

There is another major concern that folks should consider - in any corporation the growth imperative prevails. In other words, corporations are based upon the foundation that lack of growth equals death. Therefore, private corrections industries have every incentive to try and extend their market reach which requires additional laborers under their control. This creates an environment where there is no incentive to reduce the number of prisoners held, nor to "turn over" their workforce. In other words, the pressure is to increase the prison population and to increase how long that workforce is "captive" to their "employer."

I am glad that Fox took notice of the situation though they hardly offered a detailed analysis. They do point to the cheapness of this labor force:

Businesses say the inmates make good, hard-working employees in an industry plagued by high turnover. The prisoners are never late, absent or on vacation -- and do the job for only about $130 a month, or less than $1 an hour. Companies also don't have to offer them benefits.

Ah yes, the profit motive. But where does the "extra" money go - straight to the corrections agencies coffers is where. Businesses are certainly not contracting to prisons for $130/mo.

So there you have it - the solution to "expensive" US labor in an exploited global labor market - lock folks up. One might wonder when someone will suggest just locking up the poor and the unemployed (for safety's sake of course). It will make them "productive" citizens and teach them important job skills.

I personally feel that it has to do with the pace of life required in the US in combination with unrealistically high performance expectations. It is no surprise then if I see depression as (at least in part) a social environment issue, and that I have had long term concerns about taking antidepressants to "cure" the problem. Well, that concern was validated by two recent reports: Nearly one-fifth drop out of Lilly antidepressant drug trial after participant's suicide (AP, 2/12/04), and U.S. expands antidepressant warning (CBC, 3/23/04)

The CBC reports that the FDA has sent warnings out to doctors that they should monitor patients on 10 different antidepressants for suicidal tendencies.

Drug regulators in Canada, the U.S. and Britain have warned that children and teens taking antidepressants may be at greater risk of committing suicide. Monday's advisory expands the warning to include adults, and asks drug makers to add warnings about the possible risks to their labels.

Most of the antidepressants in the warning are selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors or SSRIs , which work to raise serotonin levels in the brain. It's thought that reduced transmission of serotonin plays a role in depression.

The drugs included are the SSRIs (selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors). Specifically: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, Remeron, Lexapro, Luvox, Serzone, and Wellbutrin.

Now one thing, in my lay opinion, that might be causing an increase in depression is sleep deprivation. I see a lot of this in my students, (and experience a fair amount of it myself). In that vein, a recent study found that Even Babies Don't Get Enough Rest (NYT, 3/30/04). In fact, the study states that infants are averaging an hour and a half less sleep than the 14 hour minimum that doctors recommend. In support of my suspicion about life style issues, the article states (emphases mine):

Dr. Mindell and other sleep experts say that young children who do not sleep enough do not function as well as their better-rested classmates at school and that their relationships with family and friends suffer. Infants and toddlers also need enough sleep to remain alert and open to the world around them, the experts say.

Dr. Lewis Kass, a pediatrician and the director of the sleep disorders center at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, said the findings were significant because they provided firm data for a phenomenon familiar to pediatricians.

In many families today, he said, even small children take part in so many activities that sleep patterns are inevitably disrupted. "This puts in terms that people can grasp how big a problem this is," said Dr. Kass, who was not involved in the survey.

Pediatricians do not pay enough attention to the issue, according to the poll, with 52 percent of parents reporting that their children's doctors do not ask about sleep habits. Some parents also lose as many as 200 hours of sleep a year because of their children's poor sleeping patterns, the survey found.

...

Experts say they sense that small children get less sleep and have more sleeping problems than they did in the past, though they acknowledge they have little evidence. Still, most attribute the problem to the current patterns of daily life.

"All of the pressures of today's 24-7 society are not just affecting adults but are filtering down to our children," Dr. Mindell said. "This is a warning that we need to pay as much attention to the sleeping half of children's lives as the waking half."

Therefore, it should come as no big surprise that it is no only adults who are taking more antidpressants - Antidepressant Use Way Up in U.S. Kids, Report Says (Reuters, 4/02/04). According to the article, the fastest growing antidepressant use group is ... preschoolers ... their use rate doubled between 1998 and 2002. Doubled in four years!

Express Scripts, which keeps statistics on drug use, said the number of prescriptions written for antidepressants is growing by about 10 percent a year in children and adolescents.

The study looked at a random sample of 2 million children covered by commercial insurance between 1998 and 2002. Among children under age 5, the number of girls being prescribed an antidepressant doubled and the number of boys went up by 64 percent, the group reported.

It doesn't then seem too surprising that youth suicides are also jumping rapidly. According to the Child Trends Databank, "The teen suicide rate increased from 5.9 to 11.1 per 100,000 between 1970 and 1994. " And then we have this from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control:

Suicide Among the Young

* Persons under age 25 accounted for 15% of all suicides in 2000.1 From 1952-1995, the incidence of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled. From 1980-1997, the rate of suicide among persons aged 15-19 years increased by 11% and among persons aged 10-14 years by 109%. From 1980-1996, the rate increased 105% for African-American males aged 15-19.1,8

* For young people 15-24 years old, suicide is the third leading cause of death, behind unintentional injury and homicide. In 1999, more teenagers and young adults died from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, and chronic lung disease combined.1

* Among persons aged 15-19 years, firearm-related suicides accounted for more than 60% of the increase in the overall rate of suicide from 1980-1997.1

The risk for suicide among young people is greatest among young white males; however, from 1980 through 1995, suicide rates increased most rapidly among young black males.9 Although suicide among young children is a rare event, the dramatic increase in the rate among persons aged 10-14 years underscores the urgent need for intensifying efforts to prevent suicide among persons in this age group.

There may be yet another contributing factor in both depression and suicide. As is widely noted, those in the US have lousy dietary habits which apparently result in a fair amount of gasto-intestinal disorders. Ads for treating these conditions are all over the television. Side effects from these medications (now sold over-the-counter in an unregulated way) have their own side effects. Axid, Tagamet, and Pepcid all have depression as a side effect. Tagamet additionally has psychoses/hallucination, confusion/delerium, dementia, and sexual dysfunction as possible side effects. The last three side effects are shared by another common drug - Zantac.

The need for these gastro-intestinal drugs is being driven by life style structure in the US, as is sleep disorders, as is anxiety and depression. We are utilizing a wide array of drugs to keep people functioning in the dysfunctional social environment we have created. Each drug entered into the mix has its own side effects. The more widely used a drug is, the more prevalent those problems are within the society (more people experiencing side effects). Of course, no one seems to be looking at the effects of drug combinations in the general population - folks taking multiple over-the-counter and prescription drugs.

While I don't want to extend this article into yet another topic, these drugs have a larger effect than in the human population. They are having a dramatic environmental effect as they enter our water ways as they are excreted from the humans taking them. If you are interested in this part of the problem, I recommend the following articles: New study says pharmaceutical wastes taint US waters, Drug Flush - Lake Mead, and More waters test positive for drugs.

Isn't "modern life" complicated?

Update - related article: 4/04/04 Cockburn, CounterPunch, Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked!

If the events that occured in Falluja are any indication, then the anger at the US occupation (and actions during that occupation) are very high indeed. The events that took place after the bombing of the vehicles was extreme by any standard. It is difficult to tell from the pictures just how many people were actually involved in the events following the bombing. The US news would lead us to believe that it was a large mob. However, from the pictures here, few were directly participating or celebrating. It is clear though that some of those involved were children. (I would suggest some caution on how this story is spun.)

Regardless of how many people were involved, the level of anger and hatred is clear. Unless the Blackwater personnel were expected on that route (which could be), then this was a spontaneous attack. One has to wonder what would trigger such actions. Was it the actions of the Blackwater personnel in particular, the private security forces in general, or just that they looked "American?" Even Al Jazeera is silent on what triggered this particular event. Perhaps we will never know.

4/02/04 Update According to an interview with Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar by Democracy Now! (Hotbed of Resistance: An Iraqi Discusses Fallujah Violence), two days before the attack there had been a "the American army shot many many people, women and children, on the streets, and --- in a bizarre shooting incident that was unjustified, killing many people. Fallujah has been a place where the US Army has actually used brutal force to suppress the people there, including using the F-15s, and F-16s to attack villages and place where they think the resistances are, which is unjustified to use high explosives against individuals." Also, he reports that for approximately the last month and a half hundreds of people have been detained by US forces or by these private security forces.

The individuals killed in the attack were employees of Blackwater - a US-based private security contractor. Increasingly the US Department of Defense is hiring these types of independent contractors. As James Dao notes, the US military is increasingly using corporate military services (Private U.S. Guards Take Big Risks for Right Price, NYT, 4/02/04). These employees are frequently retired Special Forces personnel. As Dao states in the article:

Though there have been private militaries since the dawn of war, the modern corporate version got its start in the 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At that time, many nations were sharply reducing their military forces, leaving millions of soldiers without employment. Many of them went into business doing what they knew best: providing security or training others to do the same.

The proliferation of ethnic conflicts and civil wars in places like the Balkans, Haiti and Liberia provided employment for the personnel of many new companies. Business grew rapidly after the Sept. 11 attacks prompted corporate executives and government officials to bolster their security overseas.

But it was the occupation of Iraq that brought explosive growth to the young industry, security experts said. There are now dozens, perhaps hundreds of private military concerns around the world. As many as two dozen companies, employing as many as 15,000 people, are working in Iraq.

Visiting the Blackwater Home Page is interesting. Their self description states:

"Blackwater USA is comprised of five companies; Blackwater Training Center, Blackwater Target Systems, Blackwater Security Consulting, Blackwater Canine, and Blackwater Air (AWS). We have established a global presence and provide training and tactical solutions for the 21st century."

Our clients include federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Transportation, local and state entities from around the country, multi-national corporations, and friendly nations from all over the globe.

We customize and execute solutions for our clients to help keep them at the level of readiness required to meet today's law enforcement, homeland security, and defense challenges.

Any and all defense services supplied to foreign nationals will only be pursuant to proper authorization by the Department of State.

Come to Blackwater, where the professionals train."

Gary Jackson
President

Blackwater has a 6000 acre training facility in Moyock, North Carolina which it bills as "The most comprehensive private tactical training facility in the United States." They created the new "interactive target system" for the FBI. They design, build and sell, a number of products related to "security" and training. They boast that they even have their own city on site for a variety of training needs. In other words, Blackwater is very comprehensive and self-contained. This is interesting in a world of spin-offs and mergers ... at least it is to me.

This use of what amounts to mercenaries by the US military is troubling to me. It is somewhat coincidental that the day before the Falluja attack the article Big Pay Luring Military's Elite to Private Jobs was in the NY Times. Senior Special Forces personnel (Seals, Green Berets) are leaving their military posts (where they earn about $50,000 a year) to take positions with companies like Blackwater for $100,000 to $200,000 a year. At this price one would think that the cost to the US tax payer is much higher if the military is contracting out to "security services." Apparently the CIA is recruiting Special Forces folks as well.

These "private security forces," which in this case are essentially private armies, are not under the control of the US military. It is intimated in the DemocracyNow! interview that there may be a special resentment against such contractors. The US military is not keeping track of the number of "contractors" killed or wounded in Iraq, nor may they be paying too much attention to how they fullfill their responsibilities. In my opinion, the use of such private forces raises the possibility that the uncontrolled actions of such a private/corporate army may increase the negative perception and reaction of the population. Whether they are official military or not, their actions reflect directly on the US.

Related Articles
Fallujah Horror Points to Rising Anti-American Rage, AFP, 4/01/04.

Outsourcing the war, Arun, BBC, 4/02/04

Just in case the link to the photo essay disappears, I have recreated it with full attribution at Falluja Pictures be forewarned that some of these pictures are extremely graphic.