It's always been about the OIL to them

 

An Iraqi boy mourns over the body of his father at a morgue in Baquba. Nine Iraqi Shiites were gunned down on their way to work in renewed violence after US President George W. Bush said an immediate pullout of US troops would be a 'huge mistake'.(AFP/Ali Yussef)

Click here: Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)    

Iraq set to lose billions of dollars in oil rip-off
Saturday 26 November 2005

Washington D.C, Asharq Al-Awsat - Iraq is currently losing millions of dollars in rip-off deals between the US-backed government in Baghdad and international oil companies, a report published in London on Tuesday said.
Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraqs Oil Wealth revealed Iraqis were in danger of losing up to $194 billion in lost revenues, and risk handing more than 64% of the control of Iraqs oil reserves to foreign companies. Iraq has the worlds third largest oil reserves.
Steve Kretzman, from Oil Change International who contributed to the report, said, The Bush administration has gone to great lengths to hide the truth, but this report confirms what many had long suspected. In short, the winners for control of Iraqs oil are the US, the UK and their oil companies. The losers are the Iraqi people.
Published by a coalition of environmental organizations, the report indicated that long-term contracts would guarantee massive profits with rates of return between 42% and 162%, compared to an average profit of 12% in the oil industry.
Gregg Muttitt of PLATFORM, a center of expertise on oil and gas corporations in London, who researched and wrote the report said, "This form of contract being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available. Iraqs oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people, not foreign oil companies.
He was referring to a type of contract known as production sharing agreements (PSAs) which he claimed have been heavily promoted by the US government and oil companies and have the backing of senior figures in the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Britain had also encouraged Iraq to open its oilfields for foreign investment. The report demonstrated that PSAs that last for 25 to 40 years, are usually secret and prevent governments from later altering the terms of the contract.
Iraqi officials have defended these contracts and said they would contribute to the development of oil-producing regions across the country. In a recent statement, Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi deputy prime said, In order to increase our oil production we need to enter into PSAs.
First developed in the 1960s, these contracts technically keep the legal ownership of oil reserves in state hands and therefore sidestep the accusation of transferring oil wealth into foreign hands, while practically, they deliver oil companies the same results as the concession agreements they replaced.
PSAs generally exempt foreign oil companies from any new laws that might affect their profits. The contracts often stipulate that disputes are heard not in the countrys own courts but in international investment tribunals.
The report warned that these contracts may be signed while the government is new and weak and the security situation dire. They are likely to be highly unfavorable but could last for up to 40 years. As such, the report called for a full and open debate in Iraq about the way oil resources are to be developed, not 30-year deals negotiated behind closed doors.
Not only are these deals being negotiated without public discussion, but ongoing violence in Iraq has been putting the country at a considerable disadvantage. Muttitt explained, “Iraqis institutions are new and weak. Experience in other countries shows that oil companies generally get the upper hand in PSA negotiations with governments. The companies will inevitably use Iraqs current instability to push for highly advantageous terms and lock Iraq into those terms for decades.
The Iraqi constitution adopted last October opened the way for greater foreign involvement in Iraqs oilfields. Negotiations with oil companies are already underway, ahead of the parliamentary elections in December and prior to the passing of a new Petroleum Law.
Several influential Iraqi politicians and technocrats were responsible for pressing the government to sign long-term deals with foreign oil companies, the reportfound.
According to Louise Richards, Chief Executive of War on Want, a co-publisher of the report, the study demonstrates that Iraqs oil profits, far from being used to alleviate the suffering that the Iraqi people now face, are well within the sights of the multi-nationals.
As an alternative, the report calls on Iraq to self finance oil production by inviting foreign oil companies to sign short term agreements with fewer constraints or by using oil profits as a guarantee to borrow the necessary funds.
In a start warning to the Iraqi people, the report claimed the country was in danger of surrendering its democracy before it even begins.

Up in the Air by Semour Hursh

 

UP IN THE AIR

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Where is the Iraq war headed next?

Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28

In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year. The Administrations best-case scenario is that the parliamentary election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be capable of handling the insurgency. In a speech on November 19th, Bush repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. He added, When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned. One sign of the political pressure on the Administration to prepare for a withdrawal came last week, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained for very much longer, because the Iraqis were getting better at fighting the insurgency. A high-level Pentagon war planner told me, however, that he has seen scant indication that the President would authorize a significant pullout of American troops if he believed that it would impede the war against the insurgency. There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated combat to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. In terms of implementation, the planner said, the drawdown plans that Im familiar with are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame that is, they depend on the ability of a new Iraqi government to defeat the insurgency. (A Pentagon spokesman said that the Administrationhad not made any decisions and had no plan to leave, only a plan to complete the mission.) A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the Presidents public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what. Were not planning to diminish the war, Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawsons views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield. He continued, We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004. The war against the insurgency may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win, he said. As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, were set to go. Theres no sense that the world is caving in. Were in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message. One Pentagon adviser told me, There are always contingency plans, but why withdraw and take a chance? I dont think the President will go for it until the insurgency is broken. Hes not going to back off. This is bigger than domestic politics.

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding. Bushs closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bushs first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the Presidents religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that God put me here to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that hes the man, the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose. The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: I said to the President, Were not winning the war. And he asked, Are we losing? I said, Not yet.  The President, he said, appeared displeased with that answer. I tried to tell him, the former senior official said. And he couldnt hear it. There are grave concerns within the military about the capability of the U.S. Army to sustain two or three more years of combat in Iraq. Michael OHanlon, a specialist on military issues at the Brookings Institution, told me, The people in the institutional Army feel they dont have the luxury of deciding troop levels, or even participating in the debate. Theyre planning on staying the course until 2009. I cant believe the Army thinks that it will happen, because theres no sustained drive to increase the size of the regular Army. OHanlon noted that if the President decides to stay the present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious consequences for morale and competency levels.

 Many of the militarys most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they dont want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has so terrified the generals that they know they wont go public, a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that things were fucked up. But in a subsequent teleconference with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves. One person with whom the Pentagons top commanders have shared their private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months. The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer from what I call battle fatigue in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as the common enemy in Iraq. He also took issue with one of the White Houses claimsthat foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency. Murtha said that American soldiers havent captured any in this latest activity the continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border with Syria. So this idea that theyre coming in from outside, we still think theres only seven per cent. Murthas call for a speedy American pullout only seemed to strengthen the White Houses resolve. Administration officials are beyond angry at him, because he is a serious threat to their policyboth on substance and politically, the former defense official said. Speaking at the Osan Air Force base, in South Korea, two days after Murthas speech, Bush said, The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. . . . If theyre not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. Im going to make you this commitment: this is not going to happen on my watch. The President is more determined than ever to stay the course, the former defense official said. He doesnt feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.

  He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway, the former defense official said. Bushs public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House, the former official said, but Bush has no idea.
Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else? another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?

Its a serious business, retired Air Force General Charles Horner, who was in charge of allied bombing during the 1991 Gulf War, said. The Air Force has always had concerns about people ordering air strikes who are not Air Force forward air controllers. We need people on active duty to think it out, and they will. There has to be training to be sure that somebody is not trying to get even with somebody else. (Asked for a comment, the Pentagon spokesman said there were plans in place for such training. He also noted that Iraq had no offensive airpower of its own, and thus would have to rely on the United States for some time.) The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significantand underreportedaspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way a Marine press release said, Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line. Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations, Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments. In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war. The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be painted, or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. The pilot doesnt identify the target as seen in the pre-brief the instructions provided before takeoff a former high-level intelligence official told me. The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a hot-read from a military unit on the ground and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You dont want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots cant verify. He added, And were going to turn this process over to the Iraqis? The second senior military planner told me that there are essentially two types of targeting now being used in Iraq: a deliberate site-selection process that works out of air-operations centers in the region, and adaptive targeting supportive bombing by prepositioned or loitering warplanes that are suddenly alerted to firefights or targets of opportunity by military units on the ground. The bulk of what we do today is adaptive, the officer said, and is divorced from any operational air planning. Airpower can be used as a tool of internal political coercion, and my attitude is that I cant imagine that we will give that power to the Iraqis. This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, there is no sense of an air campaign, or astrategic vision. We are just whacking targets its a reversion to the Stone Age. Theres no operational art. Thats what happens when you give targeting to the Army they hit what the local commander wants to hit. One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better. But he acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. “We have the most expensive eyes in the sky right now, the consultant said. But a lot of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call in air strikes? Theres got to be a behavior-based rule. General John Jumper, who retired last month after serving four years as the Air Force chief of staff, was in favor of certification of those Iraqis who will be allowed to call in strikes, the Pentagon consultant told me. I dont know if it will be approved. The regular Army generals were resisting it to the last breath, despite the fact that they would benefit the most from it. A Pentagon consultant with close ties to the officials in the Vice-Presidents office and the Pentagon who advocated the war said that the Iraqi penchant for targeting tribal and personal enemies with artillery and mortar fire had created impatience and resentment inside the military. He believed that the Air Forces problems with Iraqi targeting might be addressed by the formation of U.S.-Iraqi transition teams, whose American members would be drawn largely from Special Forces troops. This consultant said that there were plans to integrate between two hundred and three hundred Special Forces members into Iraqi units, which was seen as a compromise aimed at meeting the Air Forces demand to vet Iraqis who were involved in targeting. But in practice, the consultant added, it meant that the Special Ops people will soon allow Iraqis to begin calling in the targets. Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, who has written widely on American airpower, and who taught for three years at the Air Forces School of Advanced Airpower Studies, in Alabama, predicted that the air war will get very ugly if targeting is turned over to the Iraqis. This would be especially true, he said, if the Iraqis continued to operate as the U.S. Army and Marines have done plowing through Sunni strongholds on search-and-destroy missions. If we encourage the Iraqis to clear and hold their own areas, and use airpower to stop the insurgents from penetrating the cleared areas, it could be useful, Pape said. The risk is that we will encourage the Iraqis to do search-and-destroy, and they would be less judicious about using airpower and the violence would go up. More civilians will be killed, which means more insurgents will be created. Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. Its not going to work, said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower studies at the Royal Air Forces advanced staff college, who is now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing? Brookes said. No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town. The inevitable reliance on Iraqi ground troops targeting would also create conflicts. I dont see your guys dancing to the tune of someone else, Brookes said. He added that he and many other experts dont believe that airpower is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with airpower didnt work in Vietnam, did it?

The Air Forces worries have been subordinated, so far, to the political needs of the White House. The Administrations immediate political goal after the December elections is to show that the day-to-day conduct of the war can be turned over to the newly trained and equipped Iraqi military. It has already planned heavily scripted change-of-command ceremonies, complete with the lowering of American flags at bases and the raising of Iraqi ones. Some officials in the State Department, the C.I.A., and British Prime Minister Tony Blairs government have settled on their candidate of choice for the December electionsIyad Allawi, the secular Shiite who served until this spring as Iraqs interim Prime Minister. They believe that Allawi can gather enough votes in the election to emerge, after a round of political bargaining, as Prime Minister. A former senior British adviser told me that Blair was convinced that Allawi is the best hope. The fear is that a government dominated by religious Shiites, many of whom are close to Iran, would give Iran greater political and military influence inside Iraq. Allawi could counter Irans influence; also, he would be far more supportive and coÃperative if the Bush Administration began a drawdown of American combat forces in the coming year. Blair has assigned a smallteam of operatives to provide political help to Allawi, the former adviser told me. He also said that there was talk late this fall, with American concurrence, of urging Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, to join forces in a coalition with Allawi during the post-election negotiations to form a government. Chalabi, who is notorious for his role in promoting flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction before the war, is now a deputy Prime Minister. He and Allawi were bitter rivals while in exile. A senior United Nations diplomat told me that he was puzzled by the high American and British hopes for Allawi. I know a lot of people want Allawi, but I think hes been a terrific disappointment, the diplomat said. He doesnt seem to be building a strong alliance, and at the moment it doesnt look like he will do very well in the election. The second Pentagon consultant told me, If Allawi becomes Prime Minister, we can say,Theres a moderate, urban, educated leader now in power who does not want to deprive women of their rights. He would ask us to leave, but he would allow us to keep Special Forces operations inside Iraq—to keep an American presence the right way. Mission accomplished. A coup for Bush. A former high-level intelligence official cautioned that it was probably too late for any American withdrawal plan to work without further bloodshed. The constitution approved by Iraqi voters in October will be interpreted by the Kurds and the Shiites to proceed with their plans for autonomy, he said. The Sunnis will continue to believe that if they can get rid of the Americans they can still win. And there still is no credible way to establish security for American troops. The fear is that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would inevitably trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war. In many areas, that war has, in a sense, already begun, and the United States military is being drawn into the sectarian violence. An American Army officer who took part in the assault on Tal Afar, in the north of Iraq, earlier this fall, said that an American infantry brigade was placed in the position of providing a cordon of security around the besieged city for Iraqi forces, most of them Shiites, who were rounding up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shiite said to them. The officer went on, They were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites, with the active participation of a militia unit led by a retired American Special Forces soldier. People like me have gotten so downhearted, the officer added. Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for special-mission unit, has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) Its a powder keg, the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When youre fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere and at once.

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/051205fa_fact

Support our Troops - Demand the Truth!

Swift Boating Cindy and her book

My Book is Being Freeped by Cindy Sheehan  Tue Nov 29, 2005

It's not bad enough that people who have obviously not read my book are being hateful about it on Amazon, now the right-wing hate sites are spreading a false story that nobody bought my book at Camp Casey on Saturday.

That is not true, I sold all 100 copies and got writer's cramp signing them. Photos were taken of me before the people got in line to have me sign the book. We made 2000.00 for the peace house.

This is a letter from my publisher:

Dear Friends,

As publisher of Cindy Sheehan's new book, Not One More Mother's Child, I need to set the record straight about a lie circulating right-wing websites that has even made it onto amazon.com.

I donated 100 copies of Not One More Mother's Child to Crawford Peace House, encouraging them to sell these copies to benefit their work. During her Thanksgiving Vigil near President Bush's ranch, Cindy agreed to sign copies for those who bought them, as a benefit for Crawford Peace House. AP and Reuters posted photos - I can't imagine why - of Cindy sitting at the book table between signings, rather than while someone was at the table. And now the smear websites are circulating an article, with these photos, that Cindy gave a signing and nobody came. It's simply not true! She not only signed all 100 copies and raised $2,000 for Crawford Peace House, she got writer's cramp!

These kinds of lies helped defeat Senator McCain in 2000 and Senator Kerry in 2004. The right has been trying to humiliate and "Swift-Boat" Cindy since she helped galvanize the peace movement in August. It is important to set the record straight. Cindy's book, Not One More Mother's Child, is being very well received nationwide, and the benefit booksigning in Crawford Texas on November 26, 2005 was well attended and a huge success.

Thank you.

Arnie Kotler

Koa Books

Kihei, Hawai'i

 

I knew when I saw these pictures they were going to try and twist things around like they ALWAYS do.  AND THEY DID!  

 

Cindy Sheehan Claims Photos Falsely Implied Her Book Signing was a Flop AP The widely-used book signing picture.

By E&P Staff

Published: November 29, 2005 12:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and her book publisher are upset about Associated Press and Reuters photos that allegedly presented a misleading impression of her book signing last weekend in Texas.

Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, gained wide fame last summer in an antiwar protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and then in a march in Washington, D.C. She returned to Crawford last week for a Thanskgiving protest. Her new book, “Not One More Mother's Child,” had just been published, and her publisher organized a book signing in a large tent in Crawford on Saturday.

Photos of the event, carried widely on the Web, and then picked up by conservative blogs, seemed to imply that the book signing was a bust. The photos showed Sheehan looking dejected, sitting at a table, with no one in the tent except for a couple of photographers. The AP caption simply read: “Anti-war activist CindySheehan waits for people to show up at her book signing near President Bush's ranch on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005 in Crawford, Texas.”

The Washington Post, which carried Evan Vucci's AP photo, noted that at a protest the same day Sheehan had addressed a crowd of only about 100. “In the morning,” the Post observed, “Sheehan signed copies of her new book, being published this week,for an even smaller crowd,” although it cited bad weather as a possible factor.

But in a statement today, Sheehan accused “right-wing” sites of “spreading a false story that nobody bought my book at Camp Casey on Saturday. That is not true, I sold all 100 copies and got writer's cramp signing them. Photos were taken of me before the people got in line to have me sign the book. We made $2000 for the peace house.”

Her publisher, Arnie Kotler at Koa Books, meanwhile released a letter to her supporters, charging that “AP and Reuters posted photos - I can't imagine why - of Cindy sitting at the book table between signings, rather than while someone was at the table. And now the smear websites are circulating an article, with these photos, that Cindy gave a signing and nobody came. It's simply not true…. the benefit books igning in Crawford, Texas on November 26, 2005 was well attended and a huge success.”

AP has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Camp Casey 5 by Cindy SHeehan

 

Camp Casey 5 by Cindy Sheehan Mon Nov 28, 2005 The spin on the news about our weekend in Crawford is wrong and very incomplete.

I was just watching a local news show that said our rally was "poorly" attended on Saturday. There were over 500 people that came in and out on Saturday. I don't call that poorly attended, especially for a holiday weekend. We feel so happy that we got that many people. People also came to Camp Casey instead of beating each other up at Wal-Mart. No word in the media about the 12 people who came out to Crawford that day to support the killers and the killing.

Not only did we have a good turnout, but we had a great time. Many old friends returned and we made a ton of new friends. It was a great weekend and I am not going to let the media ruin it for us. For a fundraiser for the Crawford Peace House, we sold over 100 of my new books and made the Peace House over $2000.00.

We had an interesting experience Saturday night. We walked down to the Prairie Chapel cemetery which is very close to Camp Casey. Fred Mattlage's father who just died in June is buried there and we were reading the old grave markers. Crawford was founded by German settlers and the cemetery was filled with their names. It must have been a cruel existence, because there were so many babies buried there. Anyway, a Secret Service agent came to see what we were doing! We are miles away from the Bush Green Zone! Then after we left, our people saw a couple of cars go back to the cemetery and check the place out with flashlights! How did they think we were going to harm George there? Interesting.

Yesterday morning a mighty wind blew up and our big tent started to come undone, so we had to scramble around to get everything secure before we got impaled by tentpoles. After everything was put away we went down to the Peace House for our interfaith prayer service which started 3 hours late and most of our group was gone by then. People needed to get home to be at work on Monday.

Before we left Camp Casey 5, we let some mylar balloons go. We put a soldiers' name on each one and a little sticker that said to call the Crawford Peace House if the balloon was found. We got a call from Tennessee!! I told you the wind was blowing hard. I hope that Casey's balloon ended up on George Bush's porch.

Again, on Saturday, George said that the 2107 of our troops that have been killed by his murderous policies died for a "noble mission." Again, he didn't elaborate on the mission, just that it is "noble." Even if the reasons for going to war were the truth and noble (which we all know they weren't), the fact that this government condones torture and the use of chemical weapons is immoral and criminal. These people need to be stopped, and we in the Camp Casey Peace movement are doing everything in our power to do so. And we won't stop until they are.

We are so grateful that we have so many good friends and supporters from around the nation and the world and our support is only growing. People are setting up Camp Casey's every Friday in front of their Senator's offices around the country. I think there should be a Camp Casey, or a Camp Mike, or a Camp Lori, or a Camp David, or a Camp Eric in front of every Senator or Congressperson's office (Democrat or Republican) who supports this war. People at the Camp Casey in front of Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office have even been arrested for exercising their first amendment rights.

People all around our country are starting to vote with their "whole ticket." We don't need to have a Camp Casey in Crawford to work for peace. Do something close to you. If there is not a peace activity in your community: start one!

Make plans now to be at Camp Casey 6 at Easter Time. However, let's hope and pray that we will be getting together to celebrate this time. That will be a miracle.

 

Dead soldiers' mothers feel betrayed

By Robert Fisk / Seattle Post-Intelligencer

NEW YORK -- I sit in one of the dives on 44th Street, uncertain how to approach Sue Niederer and Celeste Zappala, afraid that their stories can be too easily turned into tears, their message lost after the Veterans Day march. They were put at the back of the New York parade, humiliated, with their little crowd of anti-war veterans and their memories of boys who left young wives for Iraq and came back in coffins.

Later, I sit between the two women and remember the blood splashed across the road at Khan Dari and the 82nd Airborne washing away the brains from the highway in central Fallujah and the body lying beneath a tarp in north Baghdad. I've seen the American corpses. Now here are the American mothers.

Sue lost her son Seth on Feb. 3 last year. He was looking for "improvised explosive devices" near Iskanderiya, south of Baghdad -- the infamous IEDs, roadside bombs that have taken hundreds of American lives -- when a booby trap blew up next to him.

Dates are important to Sue. She goes back over them repeatedly, as if this will somehow straighten things out, make sense of the immorality of her son's death, perhaps -- I sense this powerfully, though I am not certain -- bring him, however briefly, back to life. Seth married on Aug. 26, 2003, just five days before he was first deployed to Iraq; his young wife, Kelly, scarcely had time to know her husband. He came home on leave on Jan. 1, 2004, left on Jan. 17 and was killed just three weeks later.

Sue's voice rises in indignation above the noise of the New York diner, angry and brave and drowning out the joshing of two vets at the other end of the table. "I remember very clearly my son's last words before he went back after his two weeks' vacation. 'I don't know who my enemy is,' he said. 'It's a worthless, senseless war, a war of religion. We'll never win it.' He wasn't killed. He was murdered. He was murdered by the U.S. administration. He was out looking for IEDs. He found one, stopped his convoy and was blown up. I regard it as a suicide mission."

I know Iskandariya, the place where Seth died. It's a Sunni Muslim town south of Baghdad, throat-cutting country where insurgents man their own checkpoints beside the palm groves and canals. Vietnam comes to mind. The other voices round the table are lowered now. The waiter turns up with pizzas and Pepsis and red wine. There's an American flag in the center of the table. These mothers and ex-soldiers all talk of their patriotism, although these days they might agree with Nurse Edith Cavell: that patriotism is not enough.

Celeste's son Sherwood was killed on April 26 last year, his end as tragic as it was unnecessary. He was protecting a group of military inspectors hunting for President Bush's mythical weapons of mass destruction when a perfume factory they were searching in Baghdad suddenly exploded.

"He was getting out of the cab of his truck to help the wounded when some debris came crashing out of the sky and hit him," Celeste says. "When they left on their mission, they were supposed to have a lorry with them with equipment that would explode bombs by radio before they reached the scene. But that day, the lorry broke down and a British officer told them to set off on the mission without it. I will always remember that my son died just a month after George W. Bush made that videotape in front of the press -- the one where he made a joke about looking for weapons of mass destruction and pretended to search under his desk for the weapons. He was making fun of the fact he hadn't found them but my son died looking for them and they didn't exist."

Sherwood and his 28-year-old wife, Deborah, had a young son. "We always tell him that his father was a hero," Celeste says. "We think of him that way. He was a noble man." Sherwood had joined the National Guard in 1997, believing, like thousands of other American servicemen in Iraq, that he could use the money to pay off his college loans. "He'd told us he would go and do the job and that he would bring all his men home safely. There were 15 of them, all from Pennsylvania, and he kept his word. They all came home safely -- except for Sherwood."

At the other end of our table, Alex Ryabov, who served in R Battery, 5th Battalion, 10th Marines, in the original 2003 invasion force, says he was against the war from the start, refusing to believe there were any WMD.

"When I got into Iraq, I saw what our artillery rounds did to people. I had to go up front to see where the rounds were falling and I saw whole Iraqi cities engulfed in flames. There were Iraqi dead on the sides of the roads -- I couldn't tell if they were men or women."

Is it so surprising that this little group of mothers and ex-soldiers should have trailed along behind the Veterans' Parade in New York or that they should now represent Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and should have joined older men who belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War? These are not the men and women whom Bush wants to have at hand when he denounces members of Congress for claiming he fiddled the intelligence files before the war, when he tells yet more enthusiastic young soldiers that the United States will "prevail" in its "war on terror" and I can see why.

"My husband, Greg, was an absolute Republican, even after my son was killed," Sue says. "But then we went to see Michael Moore's film, 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' And as we walked out, my husband apologized to me. And he said: "I'm sorry -- everything you've said about the war is correct. I'll back you 100 percent in everything you say and everything you do."

I say goodbye to this little group of brave American men and women -- the ex-soldiers have no jobs, no future save their enthusiasm for their own campaign against the Iraq war -- and leave their table with its sad, gold-fringed U.S. flag and head off into the fumes and noise of Times Square. Up on a giant television screen, Vice-President Dick Cheney -- he who went on lying about the non-existent links between Saddam and 9/11 long after the invasion -- is solemnly bowing his head in the Arlington cemetery.

Ah yes, he is honoring the fallen. And I wonder if he will ever understand his betrayal of the men and women back on 44th Street.

A Journey That Ended in Anguish

 

A Journey That Ended in Anguish - Los Angeles Times

 

 Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.

By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

"War is the hardest place to make moral judgments."

Col. Ted Westhusing, Journal of Military Ethics

WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

His friends and family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.

On the Internet and in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have questioned the military investigation.

A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

Even at Jenks High School in suburban Tulsa, one of the biggest in Oklahoma, Westhusing stood out. He was starting point guard for the Trojans, a team that made a strong run for the state basketball championship his senior year. He was a National Merit Scholarship finalist. He was an officer in a fellowship of Christian athletes.

Joe Holladay, who coached Westhusing before going on to become assistant coach of the University of North Carolina Tarheels, recalled Westhusing showing up at the gym at 7 a.m. to get in 100 extra practice shots.

"There was never a question of how hard he played or how much effort he put into something," Holladay said. "Whatever he did, he did well. He was the cream of the crop."

When Westhusing entered West Point in 1979, the tradition-bound institution was just emerging from a cheating scandal that had shamed the Army. Restoring honor to the nation's preeminent incubator for Army leadership was the focus of the day.

Cadets are taught to value duty, honor and country, and are drilled in West Point's strict moral code: A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal — or tolerate those who do.

Westhusing embraced it. He was selected as honor captain for the entire academy his senior year. Col. Tim Trainor, a classmate and currently a West Point professor, said Westhusing was strict but sympathetic to cadets' problems. He remembered him as "introspective."

Westhusing graduated third in his class in 1983 and became an infantry platoon leader. He received special forces training, served in Italy, South Korea and Honduras, and eventually became division operations officer for the 82nd Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

He loved commanding soldiers. But he remained drawn to intellectual pursuits.

In 2000, Westhusing enrolled in Emory University's doctoral philosophy program. The idea was to return to West Point to teach future leaders.

He immediately stood out on the leafy Atlanta campus. Married with children, he was surrounded by young, single students. He was a deeply faithful Christian in a graduate program of professional skeptics.

Plunged into academia, Westhusing held fast to his military ties. Students and professors recalled him jogging up steep hills in combat boots and camouflage, his rucksack full, to stay in shape. He wrote a paper challenging an essay that questioned the morality of patriotism.

"He was as straight an arrow as you would possibly find," said Aaron Fichtelberg, a fellow student and now a professor at the University of Delaware. "He seemed unshakable."

In his 352-page dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army. It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what, exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S. military.

"Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge," he wrote in the opening pages.

As planned, Westhusing returned to teach philosophy and English at West Point as a full professor with a guaranteed lifetime assignment. He settled into life on campus with his wife, Michelle, and their three young children.

But amid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he told friends that he felt experience in Iraq would help him in teaching cadets. In the fall of 2004, he volunteered for duty.

"He wanted to serve, he wanted to use his skills, maybe he wanted some glory," recalled Nick Fotion, his advisor at Emory. "He wanted to go."

In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.

Westhusing's task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

In March, Gen. David Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations."

"Thanks much, sir, but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The Times.

In April, his mood seemed to have darkened. He worried over delays in training one of the police battalions.

Then, in May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.

A USIS contractor accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed, the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.

In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."

Westhusing reported the allegations to his superiors but told one of them, Gen. Joseph Fil, that he believed USIS was complying with the terms of its contract.

U.S. officials investigated and found "no contractual violations," an Army spokesman said. Bill Winter, a USIS spokesman, said the investigation "found these allegations to be unfounded."

However, several U.S. officials said inquiries on USIS were ongoing. One U.S. military official, who, like others, requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the inquiries had turned up problems, but nothing to support the more serious charges of human rights violations.

"As is typical, there may be a wisp of truth in each of the allegations," the official said.

The letter shook Westhusing, who felt personally implicated by accusations that he was too friendly with USIS management, according to an e-mail in the report.

"This is a mess … dunno what I will do with this," he wrote home to his family May 18.

The colonel began to complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one captain.

"The meetings[with contractors] were never easy and always contentious. The contracts were in dispute and always under discussion," an Army Corps of Engineers official told investigators.

By June, some of Westhusing's colleagues had begun to worry about his health. They later told investigators that he had lost weight and begun fidgeting, sometimes staring off into space. He seemed withdrawn, they said.

His family was also becoming worried. He described feeling alone and abandoned. He sent home brief, cryptic e-mails, including one that said, "[I] didn't think I'd make it last night." He talked of resigning his command.

Westhusing brushed aside entreaties for details, writing that he would say more when he returned home. The family responded with an outpouring of e-mails expressing love and support.

His wife recalled a phone conversation that chilled her two weeks before his death.

"I heard something in his voice," she told investigators, according to a transcript of the interview. "In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and being alone."

Westhusing's father, Keith, said the family did not want to comment for this article.

On June 4, Westhusing left his office in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone of Baghdad to view a demonstration of Iraqi police preparedness at Camp Dublin, the USIS headquarters at the airport. He gave a briefing that impressed Petraeus and a visiting scholar. He stayed overnight at the USIS camp.

That night in his office, a USIS secretary would later tell investigators, she watched Westhusing take out his 9-millimeter pistol and "play" with it, repeatedly unholstering the weapon.

At a meeting the next morning to discuss construction delays, he seemed agitated. He stewed over demands for tighter vetting of police candidates, worried that it would slow the mission. He seemed upset over funding shortfalls.

Uncharacteristically, he lashed out at the contractors in attendance, according to the Army Corps official. In three months, the official had never seen Westhusing upset.

"He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

The meeting broke up shortly before lunch. About 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone. After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later. Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

The manager rushed into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing's feet and tossed it onto the bed.

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off."

After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide. A test showed gunpowder residue on his hands. A shell casing in the room bore markings indicating it had been fired from his service revolver.

Then there was the note.

Investigators found it lying on Westhusing's bed. The handwriting matched his.

The first part of the four-page letter lashes out at Petraeus and Fil. Both men later told investigators that they had not criticized Westhusing or heard negative comments from him. An Army review undertaken after Westhusing's death was complimentary of the command climate under the two men, a U.S. military official said.

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most painful stressor."

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

One military officer said he felt Westhusing had trouble reconciling his ideals with Iraq's reality. Iraq "isn't a black-and-white place," the officer said. "There's alot of gray."

Fil and Petraeus, Westhusing's commanding officers, declined to comment on the investigation, but they praised him. He was "an extremely bright, highly competent, completely professional and exceedingly hard-working officer. His death was truly tragic and was a tremendous blow," Petraeus said.

Westhusing's family and friends are troubled that he died at Camp Dublin, where he was without a bodyguard, surrounded by the same contractors he suspected of wrongdoing. They wonder why the manager who discovered Westhusing's body and picked up his weapon was not tested for gunpowder residue.

Mostly, they wonder how Col. Ted Westhusing — father, husband, son and expert on doing right — could have found himself in a place so dark that he saw no light.

"He's the last person who would commit suicide," said Fichtelberg, his graduate school colleague. "He couldn't have done it. He's just too damn stubborn."

Westhusing's body was flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Waiting to receive it were his family and a close friend from West Point, a lieutenant colonel.

In the military report, the unidentified colonel told investigators that he had turned to Michelle, Westhusing's wife, and asked what happened.

She answered:

"Iraq."

Having a Great Time, Wish You Were all Here or Throw the Bitch in the Ditch

 

Having a Great Time, Wish You Were all Here or Throw the Bitch in the Ditch

...a message from Cindy Sheehan

Camp Casey Thanksgiving, Crawford, Texas

I was feeling very down when I was flying to Waco yesterday. I did a lot of crying and missing Casey on the way out from Sacramento. I am not at the place in my grieving yet where I can look at all of our good times and feel grateful for them. Remembering many, many happy Thanksgivings past only made me feel worse, not better.

So, I called my sister (one of the Crawford 12 jailbirds) when I was on a short layover in Dallas to ask her who was picking me up. She wouldn't give me a straight answer saying that "don't worry, someone will be there." So I told her not to worry about it, I would take a taxi to the Peace House or rent a car. I was DEFINITELY feeling sorry for my poor little self.

Well, after the very short flight from Dallas to Waco, and after a luggage misunderstanding on the tarmac, I walked into the terminal in Waco. Lo and behold, there were dozens of people there to welcome me and lots of press. Most of the people (including the press) were old Camp Casey friends and my spirits lifted and I felt strangely at home.

After a stop at the Peace House we headed back out to Camp Casey on the Camp Casey II location. Now I did feel at home. We stayed up for hours talking about politics, the war, old times, and the future. We laughed and cried and I thought: "I am so lucky to have two families. My children and mi familia de Corazon: (my family of the heart).

Both of my families are very close and loving and we laugh and have good times, but our good times are hampered by the fact that we are here for dead serious reasons: we want to hold a President and his lying administration accountable for leading us to disaster in Iraq and we want to stop an immoral occupation. Some of us are also there because we have been so intimately and tragically affected by the disaster and immorality. We periodically stop to reflect on these things.

When I am here in Crawford at Camp Casey, I almost feel sorry for George up there a couple of miles away from us in his protected Green Zone. He is protected from physical harm (which he need not fear from us) and he is protected from political harm. He doesn't have to face people who disagree vehemently with his policies and who oppose his continued killing with every fiber of our beings. He is protected from the real world of pain and need. He has never had to face his failures or own up to anything. Really, are any of us surprised that he has been such a miserable failure in every way?

The reason I feel sorry for him though, is that he is also sitting in his political Green Zone with apparently not many friends or confidants. Reports show that he only has four people who he can talk to. He is not even on friendly terms with his father, Karl or Dick. We at Camp Casey, on the other hand, are surrounded by laughter, love, hope and acceptance. One can't help smiling just being here.

I received an email today that had this subject line: "Throw the Bitch in the Ditch." The writer accused me of "throwing dirt" on Casey, himself and his son who all have served the country. I have NEVER said anything to disparage the honorable service of Casey or the others who have signed up to be in the military, only to be abused by the leadership of this country. This writer didn't even blink an eye at calling the mother of a war hero "bitch." I wonder how the email writer feels about his own leadership "throwing dirt" on the service of actual military men like: John Kerry; Jack Murtha; Max Cleland, and yes, even John McCain? I have never questioned people who try to stay alive fighting in the dishonorable wars of the old men. Who I appreciate even more, though, are the people of courage who resist killing innocent people and become conscientious objectors. I wish Casey had. I am hoping that would have happened. He told everyone before he left for Iraq that he didn't think he could "kill anyone."

Today we dedicated the Casey Sheehan Memorial Peace Gardens at the Crawford Peace house and we unveiled the memorial stone. It was a very poignant and moving event. Tomorrow we are having a rally here at Camp Casey, everyone is invited. There is great info at the Crawford Peace House website or www.MichaelMoore.com.

We are again going to be sad to leave on Sunday, but if George is still defiling the White House and if the war is still raging, we will be back for Easter.

Someone has to make George face his failures and change his ways. We in the Camp Casey Peace movement are dedicated to that mission. But more importantly we are dedicated to the mission of honoring our fallen heroes by bringing their buddies home alive.

We will keep pressing; we will not give up; we will stay the course; we will prevail.

   

War protester Bob Oehmen plays a Native American flute by a makeshift memorial for the American troops that have died in Iraq after a war protest near President Bush's ranch, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)  

   

 Travis Jay Grigg's father, Barney Grigg, center, touches the American flag that had just draped his son's casket Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005, at the Highland Cemetery outside Inola, Okla. Army Pfc. Grigg, 24, was killed Nov. 15 by a roadside bomb in Taji, Iraq. (AP Photo/Tulsa World, Robert S. Cross)  

   

Anti-war activist Melissa Garner strings the names of soldiers who died in Iraq written on small tags during a gathering near U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, November 26, 2005. A group of activists have set up near the ranch to call on Bush to pull the troops out of Iraq immediately. REUTERS/Jim Young  

 

 U.S. Marine humvees travel down the highway toward the Syrian border in Qaim, 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

**********************************************************

Report: 9/11-Iraq link refuted days after attack

Magazine says administration refused to give key docs to Senate committee

MSNBC

Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published report.

The report, published Tuesday in The National Journal, cites government records, as well as present and former officials with knowledge of the issue. The information in the story, written by National Journal contributor Murray Waas, points to an abiding administration concern for secrecy that extended to keeping information from the Senate committee charged with investigating the matter.

In one of the Journal report's more compelling disclosures, Saddam is said to have viewed al-Qaida as a threat, rather than a potential ally.

Presidential brief
The president's daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime existed.

And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer, more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.

The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the Bush administration.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other PDBs, as part of the committee's continuing inquiry into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003.

The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.

“Indeed,” the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, “the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004.”

Long-alleged connection
After Sept. 11, the administration insisted that a connection existed between Iraq and al-Qaida. President Bush, in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, said the United States had “learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gas.”

And Vice President Cheney, in a September 2003 appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” alleged there was “a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s.”

But the National Journal report said that the few believable reports of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida “involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group.”

Saddam considered al-Qaida “as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime,” the Journal reported. “At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks” of al-Qaida with Iraqi intelligence operatives as a way to get more information about how the organization worked, the Journal said.

Journal: Little has changed
The Journal story asserts that little has changed to refute the initial absence of information linking Saddam and the al-Qaida network.

“In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed” between Iraq and al-Qaida, the Journal reported.

Reporter Waas quotes one former administration official, whose assessment is a problematic contradiction of the administration’s longstanding assertions:

“What the President was told on September 21 was consistent with everything he has been told since — that the evidence was just not there.”

How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?

 

How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?
    By Paul Rockwell
    t r u t h o u t | Book Review

    Friday 25 November 2005

A review of Cindy Sheehan's uplifting and soulful book.

    The agony of war can transform any human being.

    In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Rudyard Kipling, the bellicose poet of the British empire who coined the infamous phrase "white man's burden," urged his own son to join the British military. One week after his son enlisted, he was dead. Overwhelmed with grief, Kipling wrote two "Epitaphs for War." In the first, dead soldiers speak:

If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.

    In the second, "The Dead Statesman," a statesman speaks:

And now all my lies are proved untrue.
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young.

    There are many kinds of betrayal in human affairs - forgery, embezzlement, adultery, murder. But in the affairs of state, there is no greater disloyalty, no greater act of betrayal, than to send young men and women to their deaths on the basis of fraud.

    To lie is to murder.

    That is the theme of Cindy Sheehan's defiant, witty, compassionate, and deeply patriotic first book, Not One More Mother's Son. What begins in grief over the loss of her son Casey on April 4, 2004, ends in hope at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in August 2005. Action overcomes grief. Direct action empowers.

    While she confronts the enormity of suffering caused by lies of state, she does not devote a lot of space to proving that Bush manufactured the case for war. She relies on the long trail of evidence - the early vows of Bush to "take down Saddam;" the revelations of Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clark and other whistle blowers; the report of Representative Henry Waxmen on administration statements known to be false at the time they were made; andof course, the Downing Street memo. All evidence that is already available.

    Who Murdered Casey?

    Not One More Mother's Child is primarily about a mother's love of her child and the enormity of the lies that strangled his life.

    American readers know very little about Casey Sheehan from the news. Cindy's book gives us an opportunity to meet her son as she knew him. Not a day passes when she does not remember Casey's idiosyncrasies, those special "little things," like the toddler's remark: "I wuv you, Mom."

    "Casey was a gentle, kind, loving person. He never even got into a fist fight his whole life." He was an Eagle Scout, an altar boy, and he joined the army in the hope of becoming a Chaplain's assistant. When he got to Iraq, the definition of the "enemy" kept expanding. He was confused by the changing mission and was never quite sure why he was ordered to fight.

    Army Specialist Casey Sheehan died in an ambush in Sadyr City, April 4, 2004. Bill Mitchell, Cindy's comrade in grief, also lost his son Michael in the same calamity. The Iraqi people are patriotic and proud. It was a huge blunder when US commanders closed down the Shiite newspaper. Rebellions erupted throughout the city. Shiite youth, many no older than Michael and Casey, set up roadblocks. They placed washing machines, refrigerators and burning tires in the streets. American soldiers were trapped by an ill-trained militia, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

    Who, then, killed Casey? His mother's answer is unflinching. Casey was murdered by President Bush. American soldiers are victims of their own government. "Bush," she explains, "put our kids in another person's country, and Casey was killed by insurgents. He wasn't killed by terrorists. He was killed by Shiite militia who wanted him out of the country, after Casey had been told he would be welcomed with chocolate and flowers as a liberator. The Iraqi people saw it differently. They saw him as an occupier."

    Bill Mitchell agrees with Cindy. "My son was killed by Saddam's enemies. We have created enemies because of our actions. Iraqis are responding to what the US has done, and we just continue to fight anyone who gets in the way."

    What makes Cindy's book so refreshing is her ability to learnfrom pain, to rise above her own personal tragedy. She does not express any animosity toward the Iraqis. Her restraint is no small achievement in a wealthy country consumed by nationalism, where it is easier to hate than to understand.

    A set of democratic precepts - that we are all God's children; that the insurgents are defending their own homes, streets, and mosques from outside invaders; that Iraqis have as much right to self-determination, the right to be left alone by outside powers, as the American people - and basic common sense underlie her speeches, letters, and her appeals to the conscience of America.

    Her book advances the gutsy argument that first appeared in a pamphlet by the US Army veteran Sam Goff: "To preserve your own humanity, you must recognize the humanity of the people whose nation you now occupy, and know that both you and they are victims of the filthy rich bastards who are calling the shots."

    How to Honor the Fallen

    More than any other contemporary writer and activist, Cindy Sheehan has found a way to honor American troops while repudiating the war in which they are trapped.

    She exposes one of the most overlooked and ugly features of wartime propaganda: the political exploitation of human grief, the perverted use of the dead to make war on the living.

    In the early phase of the occupation, Bush hardly acknowledged the death toll in Iraq (and he never mentions the magnitude of Iraqi suffering). Now Bush is becoming desperate to find new excuses to prolong the war. He transforms memorials into platforms for the occupation, and his condolences are laced with political aims of empire and war.

    In a series of speeches, Bush stated: "We owe the troops something. We will finish the task for which they gave their lives. We have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen by completing the mission." For Cindy, this attempt to link the honor of Casey to the leveling of cities, the use of cluster bombs that maim Iraqi children, the raiding of Iraq homes, the infamy of Abu Ghraib, the senseless deaths of more American youth, is outrageous.

    "How does Bush honor soldiers by killing more of their buddies?" Cindy asks. "I know my son better than anyone on earth, and I know he is appalled by the continued carnage in his name. As amother, why would I want any other mother - American or Iraqi - to go through the same pain that I am suffering?"

    With a directness characteristic of all her writing, she says: "I demand that you, Mr. Bush, stop using my son's name and my family's sacrifices to continue your illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq."

    Nor is Cindy alone in addressing what Chris Hedges calls military "necrophilia." "All wars feed on martyrs," writes Hedges. "The mention of the dead instantly shuts down all arguments for compromise or tolerance. It is the dead who rule. They speak from beyond the grave urging the nation onward to revenge. The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave their lives."

    Military invocations of death often resemble those ancient rituals in which tribal leaders required human sacrifice to appease the gods of war. Bush, however, is a sophisticated barbarian. He knows that, without identification with our troops, his morally indefensible war would be repudiated by the American people. It is America's emotional attachment to their troops, who are prepared to risk their lives when their country is under a real attack, that has - so far - saved Bush from self-destruction. And that is why, of course, he delivers so many speeches against the backdrop of the troops.

    Would our fallen troops want their own comrades to meet untimely deaths? Would they invite us to take more revenge on Iraqis who possess no weapons of mass destruction? If they could speak to us from beyond, would they not cry out, as did the dead soldiers in Kipling's epitaph: "If any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied"?

    Such questions answer themselves. But Cindy addresses another kind of question, a spiritual enigma that is not easy to solve. Did our soldiers die in vain? Was it all for nothing? How do grieving families find peace if they face the truth about war?

    It is the message of Cindy's book, I believe, so simple and so profound, that only the truth can heal. Only the truth can liberate the memory of the fallen. Our soldiers deserve a reckoning. And we must honor them in a way that affirms the sacredness of life.

    We cannot bring back the dead. But we can end the war and hold our leaders accountable for their crimes. We can turn Casey's sacrifice into a message for peace. Then even the dead, through Cindy's inspiration, can save future generations from the scourge of war. Then - perhaps only then - our fallen comrades can rest in peace.

    Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine.

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    Go to Original

    "Sheehan's Stand" Monument Unveiled in Crawford
    The Associated Press

    Friday 25 November 2005

 
Bill Mitchell, Cindy Sheehan, Dee Dee Miller, and Juan Torres take part in a commemoration of a monument bearing the words "Sheehan's Stand." The names of two dozen soldiers whose families were part of the vigil are engraved on the back. All four lost love ones in Iraq.
(Photo: Rebecca MacNeice)     Crawford, Texas - Anti-war demonstrators, back in Crawford to protest during President Bush's holiday vacation, unveiled a stone monument Friday with the words "Sheehan's Stand" in honor of the woman who inspired their efforts.

    Cindy Sheehan, who staged a 26-day protest outside Bush's ranch in August, cried when she saw the 2-foot-high sandstone marker.

    On the other side of the rectangular slab is the word "Why!" and names of more than two dozen soldiers whose families were part of the vigil. The name of Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, is among them.

    "Nobody knew what was going to happen, and we made up Camp Casey as we went along, and it grew and grew and grew," said Sheehan, of Berkeley, Calif. "We're here to say that the killing has to stop, that we're not going to justify any more killing on our losses."

    The artist who carved the 1,200-pound monument, Ron Teska of Wind Ridge, Pa., drove to Crawford the last week of the protest with the stone slab in the back of his pickup. He spent about 45 hours carving it.

    The marker was placed at the Crawford Peace House, which opened downtown a month after the war began in March 2003. An anti-war rally was planned for Saturday and an interfaith service Sunday.

    Several Bush supporters also gathered in Crawford on Friday with a sign reading: "The price of freedom is not free." Hundreds were expected to attend a pro-Bush rally Saturday.

    "I disagree with her claims that the president is a murderer and a liar," said James Vergauwen of Windthorst. "When you're at war, you need to be at war as a whole country and not as a divided country."

    Go to Original

    Bush Supporters, Opponents Gather in Texas
    By Angela K. Brown
    The Associated Press

    Saturday 26 November 2005

    Crawford, Texas - Three months after the mother of a fallen soldier led a 26-day anti-war vigil near President Bush's ranch, peace activists and Bush supporters converged again Saturday for dueling rallies.

    Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old Casey died in Iraq, called for anti-war activists to return to Crawford this week as Bush celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday. The war opponents' camp is at the same 1-acre private lot that a landowner let them use in August when Sheehan's original campsite became too crowded.

    The first demonstration attracted thousands from around the country and made the woman from Berkeley, Calif., a national figure.

    "Nobody knew what was going to happen, and we made up Camp Casey as we went along, and it grew and grew and grew," said Sheehan. "But we're here to say that the killing has to stop, that we're not going to justify any more killing on our losses. And we're not going away."

    Meanwhile, father Gary Qualls, who lost his Marine son Louis in Iraq last year, was among hundreds of Bush supporters who wanted to counter anti-war demonstrators with their own demonstration. Qualls, who also led a pro-Bush rally in August, said the anti-war demonstration is disrespectful to soldiers and hurtful to troop morale.

    "Our sons and daughters have given the ultimate sacrifice, and they deserve nothing less than pure honor and pure respect," Qualls said.

    On Friday, activists unveiled a stone monument bearing the words "Sheehan's Stand." The names of two dozen soldiers whose families were part of the vigil are engraved on the back. The monument stands at the Crawford Peace House, which opened downtown a month after the war began in March 2003.

 

Peace activists Cindy Sheehan, from left, her sister Dede Miller and Juan Torres comfort each other during the dedication ceremony for the Camp Casey Memorial Garden at the Crawford Peace House, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. Sheehan and her supporter have resumed their war protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Peace activists Bill Mitchell, from left, Dede Miller, Juan Torres and Cindy Sheehan look a carved stone at the newly dedicated Camp Casey Memorial Garden at the Crawford Peace House, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. Sheehan and her supporter have resumed their war protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan walks out of the Crawford Peace House before an event near President Bush's ranch on Friday, Nov. 25, 2005 in Crawford, Texas. A stone was dedicated to fallen soldiers at the Crawford Peace House. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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TVNL Editor's Comments: Look around you right now. Count the people in your home; your children, siblings, parents, pets, whom ever happen to be at your home at any given time. Add your neighbors on either side of where you are. Now imagine that you come home to find them all dead because a car bomb exploded in front of your home. How would you feel?

Now imagine that the only reason that someone was able to drive that car bomb up to your home and obliterate your family in the blink of an eye, is because some Governor from another state thought your mayor was a bastard, so they sent their National Guard in to depose your mayor. In the process they also fired all the police and let everyone out of jail. How would you feel?

How would you feel towards the Governor who unleashed this horror unto your family? How would you feel towards the people who supported the actions that led to the obliteration of your family? How would you feel after you lose everyone and everything that is dear to you because people in a state on the other side of the nation poked their nose into your citys business? How would you respond? How would you feel?

I'll tell you how you would feel, you would feel like an Iraqi. Now perhaps you will better understand how & why they respond to thePNAC invasion of their nation, no matter what that response may be. Think about it!  Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org

Cindy's back in Crawford

 Sheehan Back in Texas for War Protest

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press WriterFri Nov 25,11:08 AM ET

The mother of a fallen soldier who led a vigil against the war in Iraq outside President Bush's ranch returned to Texas, saying she is "heartbroken" that the troops are not home.

When Cindy Sheehan arrived at the Waco airport Thursday, three dozen supporters erupted into cheers and tears and grabbed her for lengthy embraces. Before they whisked her back to Crawford, the group chanted, "Stop the war! Bring them home now!"

"I feel happy to be back here with all my friends ... but I'm heartbroken that we have to be here again," said Sheehan, who hoped to arrive earlier in the week, but was delayed by a family emergency. "We will keep pressing and we won't give up until our troops are brought home."

Sheehan asked protesters to return to Crawford this week during Bush's family Thanksgiving gathering. She was unknown when she set up camp outside Bush's ranch during his August vacation, but as the vigil drew thousands, she attracted national attention.

Friday, Sheehan's itinerary included attending a dedication of a garden at the Crawford Peace House in honor of her 24-year-old son, Casey, who died in Iraq last year. An anti-war rally was scheduled at a downtown park Saturday.

A few miles away in a field beside the main road leading to Bush's ranch, a Bush supporter set up camp Thursday with a tent and signs saying "A Noble Cause" showing pictures of smiling Iraqi children.

The war protesters' camp this week is at the same 1-acre private lot that a landowner let them use in August when Sheehan's original campsite became too crowded. The grassy lot is about a mile from Bush's ranch.

Before Sheehan's arrival, more than 100 protesters at the camp ate a traditional Iraqi meal for Thanksgiving — salmon, lentils, rice with almonds and a salad of parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers and bulgur wheat. They said they wanted to call attention to the innocent Iraqi victims in addition to the more than 2,100 U.S. soldiers killed since the war began in March 2003.

"It's significant because the people of Iraq are suffering under our occupation, and for people in America it's business as usual stuffing themselves on fat turkeys," said Tammara Rosenleaf, whose husband is an Army soldier to be deployed in a few weeks.

   

 Supporters cheer as peace activist Cindy Sheehan arrives at the Waco Regional Airport after flying in from California, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, in Waco, Texas. Sheehan plans to resume her war protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)  

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan talks to the media after arriving at the Waco Regional Airport after flying in from California, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, in Waco, Texas. Sheehan plans to resume her war protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)  

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, right, is greeted by supporter Kathleen Hernandez at the Waco Regional Airport after flying in from California, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, in Waco, Texas. Sheehan plans to resume her war protest near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)  

 

 War protester Dede Miller, sister of Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan, dishes up a Thanksgiving meal of traditional Iraqi food at their camp near President Bush's ranch, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, in Crawford, Texas. About 100 war protesters gathered for the Thanksgiving meal. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)