Maine Owl

Has anyone counted the times Cheney, Bush, Rice, McClellan, Fleisher, et. al. deceived the American people and its press sheep in the Iraq war run-up? Sure. The Center for Public Integrity came up with 935. Harry Shearer explains:

Shiite Ayatollahs do not care for occupation security agreement

Juan Cole has this covered thoroughly. It's hardly big news in America, where our sporting events (like the Indy 500 today) feature reverent celebrations of troops and endless war for freedom, complete with awesome jet flyovers. But the Shiite clerics are balking at the U.S. conception of "freedom" in the the long-term "military cooperation agreement within a framework of strategic friendship and cooperation" set to be signed between the U.S. and the Iraqi government in about two months.

If you do not read Juan Cole, it is hard to find the news. According to Cole, a report concerning a Thursday meeting of Sistani and Iraqi P.M. Nouri al-Maliki had Sistani reiterating that the agreement with "the U.S. occupiers" would happen over his dead body. Time magazine does have something substantive today about a

not-so-subtle warning by Sistani to Maliki and American leaders as they negotiate a long-term bilateral agreement that will spell out conditions for a U.S. presence in Iraq beyond next year, when the current U.N. mandate ends. A number of contentious issues, such as the presence of permanent U.S. military bases and the ability of U.S. forces to arrest and detain Iraqis, remain unresolved.

With all the solemn talk this Memorial Day weekend about the sacrifices made by U.S. troops for our "freedom," no one seems to be asking when this war is going to end and how the people of Iraq are ever going to be free of us.

Morality of the United States



My God, look at those little figures running...

I've posted before about the diabolical methods being used to incinerate whole blocks out of an area the size of south Chicago. Here you see the action, as the Apache helicopter pilot celebrates. I can't even begin to know what to say, except the U.S. must get out of Iraq.

Juan Cole thinks that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may be forced to issue a fatwa blessing Iraqi Shiite militias to respond to the American attacks. Obviously it's complicated and some of these militias are bad actors. But come on, this kind of overwhelming force in their country against them? What should we expect in return?

Practically everybody in the world understands American taste for blood. They don't see the young men pulling these triggers the same heroic way we do. Personally, I don't blame the helicopter pilot. But I see how someone who is under these guns could. It's bad for them and bad for us. Everybody loses.

Off-budget Iraq/Afghan occupation funding sweetened with vet benefits

Little-noticed provision supplies billions for military bases worldwide

This all just has me screaming inside. After that bizarre rejection last week by the U.S. House of Representatives of occupation funding with Republicans staging a childish yet effective protest, the U.S. Senate has replied by passing a Christmas tree absolutely loaded with lavish financing of imperial operations, said to be good for six months into the next administration.

The sad thing is that it's actually slightly difficult even to find the news. Stories on this senate passage do not come up on the front page of Google news. The San Francisco Chronicle story I linked above ran on page A6. Coverage in the Bangor Daily News also ran on page A6, topped by a head shot of General Petraeus and a lead AP story about his suggestions in Congressional testimony that it "may" be "likely" he could recommend "further troop reductions in Iraq," but he "won't promise more details until fall." At least that article correctly suggests this timing is aimed at the "heart of this year's presidential elections," as Bush hollered "victory" in a speech in North Carolina at the same time.

Below that in the BDN is another AP story about the war funding with this curious headline: "Senate deals Bush a defeat on Iraq war spending." Defeat? Well, that's because the Senate added GI Bill and Democratic domestic spending priorities to the bill that Bush didn't want. A bunch of Republicans peeled off from Bush, making the vote "stunning" and a demonstration of Bush's "diminished standing." Democrats for their part seem to think they are too clever: pass through the massive war budget without restrictions that few of them really oppose anyway (34 Democratic & Republican senators, including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins half-heartedly voted yea on a failed amendment requiring a "timetable", though both from Maine switched on final passage) and include benefits for vets in order to show how much they care about the human costs of the war, while also getting hundreds of millions of dollars for roads, food safety, police, and the space shuttle. Certainly any defeat of Bush here had nothing to do with genuine anti-war sentiment.

Even over in liberal/progressive blog circles, there was great cheering over this supposed Bush rebuke. For example, a fill-in writer over at Eschaton called "Bush dealt defeat on Iraq bill" a "gratifying headline." Fine, nobody likes Bush, but I think he's willing to take the daggers as long as they come with all the war dollars he could ever desire for his last eight months.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the third and most gut-wrenchingly remarkable story on BDN page A6 today is this:

US strike on al-Qaida kills children
By KIM GAMEL - Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) - A U.S. helicopter strike north of Baghdad killed eight people in a vehicle, including at least two children, Iraqi officials said Thursday, insisting all the dead were civilians. The U.S. military said six were al-Qaida militants but acknowledged children were killed.

Adding to the confusion, Associated Press Television News footage showed the bodies of three children in blood-drenched clothes - the eldest appearing to be in his early teens - along with the bodies of five men, at the hospital in Beiji, where the dead were taken after Wednesday evening's strike.

Iraqi and U.S. officials each put the number of slain children at two. The reason for the discrepancies between the two accounts and the TV footage was not known.

It was the latest incident threatening to alienate Sunni Arabs, who have played a key role in the steep decline in violence over the past year by joining forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq. Beiji, an oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad, lies in a largely Sunni Arab area.

The strike came as the U.S. was trying to ease Iraqi anger over the shooting of a copy of the Quran by an American sniper, who used Islam's holy book for target practice.

The war is going swimmingly. Just lovely. Especially lovely since an Iraqi police colonel says the strike was on a fleeing vehicle, shot in the back. I guess I give the BDN credit for running this at all because the Google search suggested not that many papers actually picked it up.

All this American disinterest in the devastating price the Iraqis are paying for U.S. imperial occupation will come to haunt us. The rest of the world detects our dismissal of self-determination along with our distinct taste for blood. There will be a point where wrapping all the consequences into a mythic pursuit of "al-Qaida" no longer works. We'll have a lot more enemies than just al-Qaida.

Let's take a look at what is actually in this bill.

The president's ludicrous war narrative

Drone aircraft used in Sadr City

The NPR Check item I just posted about reminded me of an NPR story that ran a bit over a year ago. It involved the "Predator" and the newer "Reaper" drone aircraft the Pentagon likes to use for "precision" bombing in densely populated areas it wishes to pacify. I wrote about this here: Where is Sidney Freedman when you need him?

Over about the last month, these diabolical remote-controlled aircraft have been used to deadly effect in the area of Baghdad called Sadr City:

Heavy civilian casualties after drone attacks
Posted: 2008/05/09 - From: Mathaba
by Diana Lee

Time and time again, news stories of heavy civilian casualties have surfaced ? largely innocent women and children slaughtered or injured - after reports of attacks by armed UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that roamed the skies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Gaza.

Most recently, UNICEF expressed serious concern about the systematic air and missile attacks wreaking havoc in Sadr City by the U.S. military in its relentless pursuit of insurgents. The Iraqi government declares almost 1,000 people have died so far ? 60% of them are women and children. Prior to the UNICEF report, USA Today gave an account that the U.S. military record showed ?an unprecedented number of air strikes by unmanned airplanes in April to kill insurgents?. The Pentagon has increased use of armed drones to deal with the escalation in fighting in Baghdad's district of Sadr City as well as in Basra.

The story goes on to describe how these killing machines are used in Afghanistan as well.

The way NPR reported the wonders of these devices, it was all about family. "Pilots" could go home to their wives & children after a day in the lab sending missiles into other people's homes. I am just so anguished that in America this story of sickening death and destruction can be given a veneer such as that presented by NPR.

The news today is perhaps a hopeful Mother's Day message: a ceasefire in Sadr City. But a thousand civilians killed under the weight of U.S. remote-control bombs has been the cost.

Sections of densely populated area being sacked

Curiously, I am finding that the BBC and the radio program it cosponsors, The World, are the only mainstream outlets reporting this:

Wednesday, 7 May 2008 13:42 UK
Iraq prepares for Baghdad exodus
By Clive Myrie - BBC News, Baghdad

The authorities in Baghdad say they are preparing for an exodus of thousands of people from eastern parts of the city... Two football stadiums are on stand-by to receive residents from two neighbourhoods in the Sadr City area. The government has warned of an imminent push to clear the areas of members of the Mehdi Army, loyal to the anti-American cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians....

The story also says that leaflets warning residents to leave have been distributed. It says that the Iraqi operations are "backed by US ground and air support."

I just listened to the report on this on The World, but the audio is not up on the website yet. It's rather nonchalant about the football stadiums where the refugees are supposed to be housed while their neighborhoods and homes are sacked under the gun of U.S. air power.

The militia fighters who keep firing on the Green Zone supposedly have to be rooted out because they are "hiding" among the civilians. This is swill to hide the killing of civilians the U.S. perpetrating. I suspect that the Sadrist militia has very deep support in these neighborhoods. The attack is really an attack on the population as a whole.

The result of U.S.-backed bombardment causing thousands of deaths among a population of millions who had been caged behind barriers and starved, now finally being removed, will be an even wider war. They are daring Iran to get more involved to help this mainly Shiite population.

Of course, fuller reporting on the situation can be found at Raed in the Middle and Al-Ghad. The latter speaks of a recent U.S. bombing of a Sadr City hospital, a war crime under the Geneva Convention. But not surprising following U.S. practices in Fallujah four years ago.

Iraqi official livid over proposal supported by Senator Susan Collins to force attachment of oil revenue for American purposes

"America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq."
--Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit

With another massive Iraq war funding bill now before Congress, it has become popular among Republicans and Democrats alike to take Iraq to task for not using enough of its burgeoning oil revenue for reconstruction projects. Senator Collins joined that fray in front-page stories last month, insisting that the "free ride" for Iraq should be over.

Good thing I listen to the podcast of Harry Shearer's Le Show. Otherwise, I would not have caught this significant story, which last week evidently made it no further than the Chicago Tribune:

Iraq: U.S. has no claim to oil boom
By Liz Sly - Tribune correspondent - May 1, 2008

BAGHDAD ? As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military.

"America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

The issue of Baghdad's contribution to the costs of the war jumped to the forefront early in April during testimony to Congress of the Iraq war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Noting that the soaring price of oil is likely to give Iraq a revenue bonanza this year of up to $70 billion, senators quizzed the two on why Iraq isn't using its rising oil income to pay more of the costs of reconstruction.

Iraqi and U.S. officials say they are. Iraqis acknowledge the need for Iraq to take on a greater share of its reconstruction costs and say it is doing so. In fact, according to the latest report released Wednesday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the body established by Congress to monitor reconstruction spending, Iraq is now responsible for the majority of the money spent on reconstruction and the Iraqi security forces.

Iraqis say the criticisms in Washington grossly simplify the complexities of Iraq's situation and fail to take into account the vastness of Iraq's needs....

The Tribune article goes on to review the staggering history of corruption under American auspices, "Behind the controversy lies a giant muddle of misspending, waste, corruption and poor accounting on the part of both Iraq and the U.S. surrounding about $100 billion worth of spending on reconstruction and the Iraqi security forces that has barely dented Iraq's needs over the past five years."

U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has some quibbles with Congresspeople like Collins and Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who have made hay with the "Iraqis are not pulling their weight" line--"a bit overplayed," according to Bowen. Figures are presented that suggest Iraqi piking on their own reconstruction just is not the case.

The bottom line here is that people in Iraq have noticed America's arrogance. To them, people like Collins and Levin are heard to be manipulating American politics for American interests while using Iraq and it's oil as a pawn. But to me the truth is clear. America has destroyed Iraq. It's guts have been cut out to the point that, as Patrick Cockburn has described, the lakes of sewage are visible from outer space. The reconstruction projects our Congress bothers to discuss after its done funding the military operation (which works to further destroy the country) barely scratch the surface of what America owes the Iraqi people.

Poor contractor oversight to blame

Perhaps Senator Susan Collins will be interested in this:

Despite Alert, Flawed Wiring Still Kills G.I.'s
By JAMES RISEN - New York Times - Published: May 4, 2008

WASHINGTON ? In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

The bulletin, with the headline "The Unexpected Killer," was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water ? one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool ? that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

"We?ve had several shocks in showers and near misses here in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country," Frank Trent, an expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, wrote in the bulletin. "As we install temporary and permanent power on our projects, we must ensure that we require contractors to properly ground electrical systems."

Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar circumstances. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

While several deaths have been attributed to inadvertent contact with power lines under battlefield conditions, the Army bulletin said that five deaths over the preceding year had apparently been caused by faulty grounding, and the circumstances of others have not been fully explained by the Army. Many more soldiers have been injured by shocks, Pentagon officials and soldiers say.

The accidental deaths and close calls, which are being investigated by Congress and the Defense Department?s inspector general, raise new questions about the oversight of contractors in the war zone, where unjustified killings by security guards, shoddy reconstruction projects and fraud involving military supplies have spurred previous inquiries.

American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which was often performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.

This betrayal is really sickening. Some of these people could still be alive if Senator Collins had not been asleep when the warnings came in and action by her oversight committee could have really counted.

Digby has the photo, with which I will not torture readers here. She takes on the vacuous White House Press Muffin, Dana Perino, who accused "the media" of playing "this up again...as they do every single year."

DIGBY: She forgets that the jackass unnecessarily "flew" onto the ship for the photo op and pranced across the deck like a Chippendale's dancer before announcing "in the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Far be it for anyone to "play it up." After all only hundreds of thousands of people are dead.

Indeed.

Beyond the oft-repeated line delivered by President Bush that day, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," and all the Hullabaloo about "Mission Accomplished," the speech of May 1, 2003 is a deep and vexing study in official propaganda and smoothing for public consumption what were by that time very harsh intentions for Iraq.

For example, the very next line after "prevailed" states that, "Our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."

Well, how has that turned out for the "celebrating Iraqis" whom the president said that day had "seen the ageless appeal of human freedom"? Let's not bother to discuss the details of how the "Coalition" allowed looting and looted the country itself mercilessly, the U.S. policy of disciplining the population of Iraq by invading homes, sweeping up citizens to be tortured in dungeons, encouraging ethnic divide and death squads, conducting aggressive and currently increasing aerial bombardment of civilian areas, sacking whole cities (e.g. Fallujah), and generally ensuring the destruction of the modern state of Iraq.

Let's just look at one especially devastating consequence, studied and reported this week by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees:

Survey shows most Iraqis in Syria still unwilling to return home

GENEVA, April 29 (UNHCR) ? A survey of nearly 1,000 Iraqis currently staying in Syria has shown that 95 percent fled their homeland because of direct threats or general insecurity and that only 4 percent currently had plans to return to Iraq.

The latest Assessment on Returns to Iraq was carried out for the UN refugee agency by the IPSOS market research agency in Syria from March 2-18. A total of 994 interviews were undertaken in Damascus at UNHCR's registration and food distribution sites, in community centres or during home visits.

Some 86 percent of the respondents were registered with UNHCR, while 14 percent had not yet been registered. A total of 95 percent stated that they had fled Iraq in recent years, either due to direct threats (65 percent) or general insecurity (30 percent). About 2 percent of the interviewed Iraqis had left Iraq before 2003; 44 percent between 2003 and 2006; and 54 percent since 2006. A total of 94 percent had a valid residency permit in Syria.

...

A total of 4.7 million Iraqis have been uprooted as a result of the crisis in Iraq. Of these, more than 2 million are living as refugees in neighbouring countries ? mostly Syria and Jordan ? while 2.7 million are displaced inside Iraq.

"UNHCR remains committed to identifying obstacles to a safe and dignified return to Iraq and to working with the Iraqi government on measures aimed at addressing these obstacles to ensure that a voluntary return will someday be possible," agency spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said in Geneva on Tuesday.

She noted that UNHCR had appealed in January for US$261 million for its work on behalf of Iraqi refugees outside their country as well as for the internally displaced. "So far, we have received just under half of that amount, which is not enough to keep our programmes going during the second half of 2008," she stressed.

For now at least, it's just wishful thinking that anytime soon there will be "a safe and dignified return to Iraq" for most of these people. This is really all you need to know to see that practically everything President Bush says about Iraq is bullshit.

Amazing statement by Penobscot County District Attorney

Jury acquits six in protest
By Judy Harrison - Thursday, May 01, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

Brendan Trainer, assistant district attorney for Penobscot County, prosecuted the case. He referred questions to District Attorney R. Christopher Almy.

"I think that the public in Maine is so disgusted with the war in Iraq that they demonstrated their disgust with this verdict," said Almy, a Democrat. "And, that they are upset with [Sen. Olympia] Snowe and Collins for getting us involved in this debacle."

Susan Collins, are you listening??