Are you following this story? About how the US shot up the car containing rescued Italian hostage Guiliana Sgrena, injuring her and killing the secret service agent who had negotiated her release? Funeral for Italian shot in Iraq is the understated headline today. (bbc.co.uk, 03/07/05), though earlier articles on Ms. Sgrena's belief that there's no way such an incident could be accidental, were more lively.

The U.S. has been killing people in cars in Iraq near its checkpoints, including entire families, for some time, but most of their victims have been Iraqis, and the press has largely excused such behavior. Now that it is Italians dying under wild U.S. fire, the practice is coming under greater scrutiny.

The U.S. responded that it's ridiculous to believe that U.S. soldiers would target her. The quote from the article is: "It's absurd to make any such suggestion, that our men and women in uniform would target individual citizens." That's one of those strange, selectively worded answers which suggests that it IS perfectly reasonable to suggest that the uniformed US personnel DO target groups of citizens.

I suppose the U.S. will try to offer a few hundred dollars to this intelligence officer's family, the way they do to the bereaved in Iraq?

US comes to grips with 1500 dead (bbc.co.uk, 03/04/05).

Pitt's blog now has audio! Check out the Truth Out Overview with Will Pitt. (truthout.org)

Committee to Protect Bloggers announces its first campaign: Free Arash and Mojtaba. This is a campaign to free dissidents in Iraq and elsewhere who have been imprisoned for blogging about their situation. While the campaign is about 'bloggers' specifically, the concerns are human rights and freedom of speech - blogging is just a tool for speech, not the focus of this campaign.

Must read item of the day: as the U.S. media maintains its sunny outlook on the future of Iraq - perhaps because, regardless of who won, the corporate tax rate is permanently capped at 15 percent? - things are going to hell for moderates, secularists, and women who live there. Go read this at Riverbend's blog: Baghdad Burning: Groceries and Election Results. (riverbendblog.blogspot.com, 02/18/05).

Having recently read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Riverbend's conversation and worries on what it's like for women in Iran, with the men saying it's not so bad, is especially creepy.

A nice, long explanation about how the Sunnis may not benefit from even the tiny consolation of a constitutional veto: Informed Comment's Guest Editorial by Andrew Arato points out that the alleged protection for Sunnis, the right to veto the constitution put forth by the people elected in the election they boycotted or couldn't get to, isn't guaranteed. This is a little long, but good, as everything on Dr. Cole's website is.

Also of interest, from his summary of Chalabi's recent interview, this quote:

“The agreement will deal with the right or how those U.S. forces detainees Iraqis. There are thousands of Iraqis now detained by U.S. forces. We don't know why. We don't know how. And we don't know under what legal structure they are being detained. I believe that this process should be an Iraqi process.”

Chalabi is a spooky guy, with a lot of ambition, and some undemocratic tendencies. (Cole accurately describes him elsewhere as a "corrupt expatriate financier and Iranian asset.") I'm surprised that even he is concerned about the U.S.' mass arrests, but it's worth noting.

Actually, there are so many informative things to read at juancole.com that you should just go, now, and read until your brain is full. He reports on the low turnout, the dubious assertions by the western press that various elected Iraqis are secular even though they espouse fundamentalist views publicly, etc.

Elections In Iraq: I like how the U.S. press, despite the fact that turnout wasn't very good, now pretend that everything is fine in Iraq because they had an election.

I mean, only 2% of Sunnis turned out in some areas, but that's FINE! (Fine for whom?) And now we can pretend that, even if the U.S. government pre-approved who could run in the election, that everyone will accept the results - even all those Sunnis who didn't vote - and all is legitimate now.

I have no idea why they think that. An optimistic guess would be that they think it will go over simply because fundamentalist-led, anti-occupation parties won seats far and away beyond the puppet government's. Yet, whenever someone is quoted about how great it is, the person quoted is never an Iraqi. So it comes across as a bit... off.

For those of you, like me, who need a short recap, the BBC FAQ about the election is here: BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Q&A: Iraqi election (bbc.co.uk, 02/13/05).

Remember Afghanistan? That other country we invaded? Want to know how they're doing? Read this: UN warns of fresh Afghan chaos (bbc.co.uk, 02/21/05). The answer: things are extremely bad, getting worse, and may pose a threat to its neighbors.

It makes you think other nations might think twice before accepting U.S. "help."

Elections in Iraq. I'm not sure I understand the glowing reports about the recent elections in Iraq.

Firstly, the initial returns I've read about demonstrate that the result will be very much anti-occupation. Which is good, but not what the U.S. had in mind.

Secondyly, I'm unclear on how this is a step forward for democracy. If we were invaded by a foreign nation, and they picked out a slate of parties we could vote for in an election, without specific people being on the ballot, we'd call it a joke. A farce. Not legit. And then, when the election is held without international observers... Well. WE would never put up with such nonsense here.

And do we need to discuss Negroponte's role in this? His history of saying, 'death squads? I don't see any death squads?'

The International Action Center (iacenter.org) folks have written some good articles on this topic. This is from The Antiwar Movement and the Iraqi Elections:

This election is being conducted at gunpoint, administered by a war criminal, and stage-managed by CIA front companies. To pretend that this has anything to do with democracy is outrageous. The Iraqi people recognize this --among expatriates, 90 percent haven't even bothered to register to vote on Sunday.


What, then is the purpose of the phony election? It is actually directed at the U.S. public, which is growing increasingly disillusioned with the war. The sole intent of the election is to provide legitimacy for the occupation, to marginalize the resistance movement, and create an illusion of progress. The election, like the phony transfer of power, will change nothing on the ground in Iraq. On January 31, the day after the election, more than 150,000 U.S. troops will still occupy Iraq, the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib will still be full of Iraqi prisoners, and CIA employee Iyad Allawi will still be the U.S.-appointed dictator.

I've been told that many Americans are feeling better about the invasion, the massive civilian casualties, and the absence of WMDs now that an election for non-specific candidates has been held.

There must be something in the water.

I also found this interesting, from the IAC's statement on the elections in Iraq (also at iacenter.org, within frames I can't link directly to):

Returning Iraq to 1955. It is telling that the Bush Administration is claiming this is the first democratic election to be held in Iraq in fifty years. The election referred to as the last democratic election was held under a U.S. & British appointed monarchy to select an advisory body that had no executive or legislative power. Its only function was to provide a façade of legitimacy to the puppet regime; the election did not change the fact that the people of Iraq were under the thumb of U.S. and British oil companies. Less than 3 years later, a massive popular revolutionary upheaval overthrew the corrupt monarchy and, since that time, the U.S. and Britain have been trying to return Iraq to the same semi-colonial status. This election is part of their plan.

I will be interested to know how our media reports the election results, especially if they are going as I've read.

The bureaucracy of torture: read t r u t h o u t - CIA Abductions of Terror Suspects Are 'Out of Control' (truthout.org). There are two articles at this link, both are worth reading.

The first is about the U.S. abducting suspects from around the world, taking them abroad to allies who torture them, and then... well, largely realizing they have been abducting and torturing people with no connection to terror. The second story is about someone who was abducted, tortured into confessing to being in an Al Queda camp and video just to make the torture stop, and then being cleared by the British government who could prove they were in England at the time of their alleged crimes.

Yes, the U.S. is abducting and torturing people who weren't even in Afghanistan during the time periods for which they are concerned!! Depriving innocents of their freedom is not the same as 'protecting freedom.' No matter what the press releases say.

I love the idea of the major news networks struggling to come up with a dramatic slogan and graphic for an ongoing campaign of admitting how wrong they in their WMD reporting. Read WMDUH! Don't expect four months of round-the-clock truth coverage, by Matt Taibbi (www.nypress.com).

Yes, I've been following all of the dismal war news, including the British scandal over their soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the slaying of parents in front of their six children by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint, the ever increasing violence in Iraq on the run up to the elections, the Iraqi women who are afraid to leave their homes and are unsure if they can vote, or if voting will even be fair.... but I haven't had anything nice to say about it, and so I've said nothing.

But I can say this short thing, on behalf of the peace movement: We Were Right. We are still right, so right it HURTS. Make the pain stop. Bring the troops home.

For the news I haven't been discussing, I recommend Mykeru.com on the checkpoint parent slaying (and a nice piece on MLK just below it), and Professor Cole's Informed Comment for everything else, plus a nice piece on the portions of the U.S. Constitution violated by the Bush Administration.

Iraqis angry with abuse sentence (english.aljazeera.net, 01/16/05). For some reason, the media here though that the sentence was very serious. They were SO EXCITED when the conviction came through, it was almost as if they'd won some prize. I still don't fully understand it, though I suspect that those reporters who think 'this proves the system works' are unclear on who the system works for. It appears Iraqis have figured that out...

If you're not already reading the blog Baghdad Burning, go read it now. Sample: "It feels like just about everyone who can is going to leave the country before the elections. " Her comments about the Bush Administration finally admitting that there are no WMDs, after all she and her countrymen have suffered... It's very painful.

From the Pitt blog at t r u t h o u t:

"I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary
Press Briefing
7/9/2003

Yes, the press really was relying on people this dumb to sum up why we should support a doomed war based on shaky evidence. Yes, it is amazing. No, he wouldn't understand the answer, even if we didn't use swear words.

Doctors aided in detainee abuse, journal says / Pentagon denies report of tailored torture (sfgate.com reprint from washingtonpost.com, 01/06/05). This comes just after two dozen FBI agents reported witnessing "interrogation excesses."

Oh, and some of the U.S. forces who are committing these abuses are now threatening other American agents who witness the abuses. New documents excerpted by the ACLU (aclu.org) included complaints from the DIA, who reported that:

TF 62-6 personnel have done the following to DIA interrogators/debriefers: threatened them, confined them to the compound, ordered them not to talk to anyone in the US and informed them that their emails are being screened.

These task force people appear to be abusing their positions as well as their other-agency colleagues and the detainees in their care. Their behavior undermines the U.S. claim to represent, respect, and want the rule of law.

This Amnesty International Report on detainees is very up to date, for those of you who have been wondering why Guantanamo Bay dropped out of the headlines despite having its four year anniversary this month. USA: Guantanamo - an icon of lawlessness (amnestyusa.org, 01/06/05).

Forever detained: This is a horrific article: Long-Term Plan Sought For Terror Suspects (washingtonpost.com, 01/02/05):

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.

Whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty?' Did that get burned along with our belief in the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution?

The Friends Committee has written a good article on why the U.S. needs to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately. Free Iraq: The Responsibility of Withdrawal - FCNL Issues (www.fcnl.org) asks whether the failed policies of the past two years will be blindly continued, or if the reality of the antagonism and violence the presence of U.S. forces fuels will be recognized. Here's a sample:

Some argue that U.S. responsibility under international law to restore security and protect civilians in Iraq demands that the U.S. military remain and help stabilize the country. In fact, the presence and offensive operations of U.S. troops have become the greatest threats to Iraq%92s future. U.S. offensives, including aerial bombings, city sieges (witness Fallujah), and neighborhood sweeps, foster resentment among Iraqis, fuel the insurgency, and threaten civilian lives. Iraqi security forces are attacked more often when U.S. troops are present, and the Green Zone--a barricaded neighborhood housing the interim Iraqi government along side the U.S. embassy--has become a prime target for suicide bombings and mortar attacks.

I still know people who argue that the U.S. cannot leave Iraq until it is peaceful, but since the U.S. has engendered so much hatred, the U.S. military presence appears to preclude peace, making the situation circular.

Read the entire Friends' article. It outlines specific steps which should be taken to end the violence in Iraq.

No WMDs

U.S. Wraps Up Search for Banned Weapons in Iraq (Reuters.com01/12/05). Gee, who aside from the entire world peace movement could possibly have foreseen this?

The U.S. makes mistakes? Of course, I'm being sarcastic: the only surprise here is that it is being reported.

U.S. troops in Iraq open fire at checkpoint, killing eight, hospital officials say; roadside bomb kills U.S. soldier (sfgate.com, 01/09/05) reports: "...at least eight people were killed in the second mistaken American attack in two days to have deadly results."

The weird part of this article is that, after admitting they bombed the wrong house, the military then claims to know how many people were in the wrong house. It's not like they have credibility on this point, but they try:

The attack came just hours after the United States acknowledged dropping a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house during a search for terror suspects outside the northern city of Mosul. The military said in a statement that five people were killed.

The owner of the house, Ali Yousef, said 14 people were killed when the bomb hit at about 2 a.m. Saturday in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said the dead included seven children and seven adults. The discrepancy between the death counts could not be reconciled.

You should go read this sfgate article to review that last sentence over and over again. Yes, actual eyewitness and verified journalist counts must be fairly compared against absentee military spokesmodel counts which may have been for the house they had intended to bomb.

Can I mention that, too? That bombing people's homes at night with their families in them is not a way to 'win hearts and minds,' it is not the way to win the moral high ground, and it is very much not the way to enforce the concept of the rule of law. As the U.S. wallows in Christian sentiment, more hands should be flying up to point out that executing entire families is completely un-Christian. There are a few hands, but surprisingly few. Is that not obvious to everyone?

*

As an aside, there is also a fascinating article at SFGate about the politics of "supporting the troops." A Bush/war supporter is reported to say that yellow ribbon car magnets, even if made abroad cheaply and sold without a non-profit beneficiary, are an apolitical way of "supporting the troops," a position which they also consider to be apolitical. It takes a while to get down to someone who is actually using the proceeds from magnet sales to ACTUALLY send something to the troops, and no one is seeing irony there.

No irony in cheap magnets made abroad.
No irony in making a profit off something allegedly done to support the troops.
No irony in putting this dislay on oil-consuming cars, a hot topic and the driving force between what had been called "Operation Iraqi Liberation" until someone looked at the acronym.

There is no actual troop support happening here.

IF any of these people cared to actually support the troops, they would have demanded that Bush restore all the veterans funding and pay cuts he's made at the troops expense. They would allow soldiers and their families to live in decent housing. They would demand that injured vets not become invisible to the public, politicians, and media upon their return. They would notice that too many of the family interviews of the soldiers' families are taking place in trailer parks within areas with no decent economic opportunities, and demand that every American who joins up had a REAL choice to join the 'volunteer' military services. They would demand that for all Americans.

But most of these people do not. Instead, they drive around with little foreign-made magnets on their cars. Which tells you about the level of their commitment.

Not a good way to differentiate the U.S. from Saddam Hussein:t r u t h o u t - Pentagon May Use Death Squads in Iraq (truthout repost from Newsweek, 01/08/05): "The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq." Yes, the Pentagon thought that the mass killing of innocents in El Salvador was a small price to pay for the strategic advantage of preventing popular governments from emerging. YIPES!! Go read this.

It still bothers me that mass graves are only of concern when a country isn't our "friend." BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Mass grave unearthed in Iraq city (news.bbc.co.uk, 12/27/05). This is only of consequence because Iraq's former leader is now our enemy. It was no big deal to the U.S. at the time.

THAT is ridiculous. It is the predictable outcome of disregarding international law until it is politically opportune, and then only using it to punish political enemies.

The BBC often invites readers to comment on world events, and it is invariably fascinating. BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Falluja offensive: Your reaction (bbc.co.uk, 11/22/04) is amazing. This was printed while I was away on vacation, along with the release of the video showing a U.S. soldier killing an injured, unarmed man laying on the ground. (I failed to post anything about that, or about the report interviewing soldiers who admitted to killing large numbers of civilians accidentally, which, if representative, indicates a wholesale slaughter of civilians by the occupation.)

There is a lot of reframing of reality going on, to measure the events in Falluja by completely different yardsticks than could ever be used at home, within one's own communities. This is a discussion between foreign people who want another country to change to their liking, and largely aren't concerned with distant consequences.

One writer remarks that, if compared to other battles in which large militaries battle militias in urban combat, this has been a great victory, because fewer soldiers died than in other situations.

Another remarks that Afghanistan is free and safe (!!!), showing that foreign invasions can be successful. (I can only assume this person is one of the free and safe Afghan warlords.)

Another says that it's okay that there are so many people dying, because that is normal for wars.

And that it's okay to level Falluja, because this is a war. And it "had to be done." Because we said so.

With the right keyword, a supposedly morality-obsessed nation can check its morals at the door.

I remember when Salam Pax wrote that "shock and awe" was a horrible concept if it was about to happen to your home town, to a city you love. Any normal, healthy person couldn't wish that upon themselves, or their loved ones, or anyone else. And yet, here are cheerleaders -- with a sprinkling of people pointing out the immorality of the situation, and praying for victims -- doing just that.

It's just amazing.

As someone living in a country that gained its independence through what would now be coined terrorism, the U.S. of A., it's amazing to see how the idea of such tactics is completely self-serving.

Iraq 2004: What went wrong (bbc.co.uk, 01/01/05): "In 2004, Iraq went badly wrong - except for supporters of the insurgency, in which case it went grimly well."

This is one of those articles which ONLY looks at 2004, and assumes that the war was going to occur regardless... It almost approaches comedy by the end, with comments about the country still being 'on track.' But on track to where?

Professor Cole (and one of his readers) have some good points to make about how the war in Iraq is hampering the U.S. response to the Tsunami crisis in Asia. Informed Comment, 12/28/04:

Bush's underlining of the $2.5 billion he says the United States gave in emergency humanitarian aid last year annoyed the hell out of me.... Bush said 'billion' as though it were an astronomical sum. But he spends a billion dollars a week in Iraq, without batting an eye. That's right. Two weeks of his post-war war in Iraq costs as much as everything the US spent on emergency humanitarian assistance in 2003 for all the countries in the world.

Ah, priorities.

Head Scarves Now a Protective Accessory in Iraq - Fearing for Their Safety, Muslim and Christian Women Alike Cover Up Before They Go Out (washingtonpost.com. 12/30/04). The complete collapse of order has allowed women of all religions in Iraq to be targeted for abuse. When a woman whose religion doesn't require a head covering is (or feels) unsafe without one, things have gone seriously downhill.

This is no surprise to anyone who has been following the situation in Iraq, with its bombings, kidnappings, and the horrific rape of young girls which has inspired "honor killings" by male relatives of victims. This is more of the same, on a more personal level. Now, half of the population may be pressured into giving up any public persona... *shudder*

POSIWID

Watching the despair of the people of Iraq, I've often wondered what Bush believed he was celebrating when he had that terrible, comic photo-opportunity aboard an aircraft carrier that bore a huge, "Mission Accomplished" banner. What mission had he believed was accomplished?

A potentially useful tool for contemplating this is a principle used in analyzing complex systems. It is called POSIWID - the purpose of a system is what it does (users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv). In examples of economic analysis, it is used to look at why things are done a certain way. If a bank set up a very complex accounting system that hides transactions from regulators while spewing unnecessary data, the purpose of the system is, in fact, to hide transactions.

This tool can easily be misapplied or misinterpreted, but I believe it can be useful for looking at a variety of systems. If a college requires exorbinant fees to consider student applications which have the effect of blocking low-income students, the purpose of the application may, in fact, be to block low-income students. If the political primary system in the U.S. is set up in a way that only millionaires can participate, the purpose of the primary system may be to limit our options to millionaires. Some of these effects may appear to be unintentional, but if there is no larger impact and no alternative achievable purpose provided, the effect I point out is the MAIN effect, and becomes a sort of default.

So if we look at the invasion of Iraq, we hear a list of stated purposes:

-protection from WMDs
-increased stability
-safer lives for Iraqis
-democracy

and then we have a list of actual effects:

-weapons spread across unlawful groups
-decreased stability
-less safe lives for Iraqis (higher death rate than under Saddam)
-anarchy (in a bad way)
-U.S. military expansionism (including military bases)
-suppression of dissent in U.S. and Iraq
-redirection of U.S. tax funds to military contractors/political donors and away from social services
-passage of undemocratic laws in U.S. consolidating government power
-persecution of peace and democracy advocates in U.S.

POSIWID can be used in this situation as a tool, but does not provide a final analysis.

The invasion of Iraq has been very lucrative and advantageous for a variety of interests. The negative consequences of the invasion have not fallen on the same people who have benefited most. This is by design. I find this approach useful for analyzing the situation we find ourselves in with this war.

Winning hearts and minds, part 43: Inside Falluja: 'Nothing to come back to' (bbc.com, 12/24/04).

A good list of election reforms urgently needed here in the U.S. Here is a good list of basic reforms needed to call what we have a democratic system: t r u t h o u t - Hill and Richie | Cries for Electoral Standards Mount (truthout.org, 12/22/04)

F.B.I. E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Torture (truthout.org, 12/20/04).

t r u t h o u t - Majority Says Iraq War a Mistake, Rumsfeld Should Go, Subtitle: "56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake". (truthout.org repost from washingtonpost.com, 12/21/04).

New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse Was Widespread (washingtonpost.com reposted at yahoo, 12/21/04) demonstrates again that actual truth doesn't aid the U.S. image abroad. Theft, long-term abuse, deadly shootings of detainees....

The most deadly attack against U.S. forces in Iraq just occurred. Yahoo! News - Rocket Hits U.S. Base in Iraq, Killing 22 (news.yahoo.com, 12/21/04) reports of an attack on a military base mess camp.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, responding to a question about how Iraqis will be able to safely get to some 9,000 polling places if U.S. troops can't secure their own bases, said there was "security and peace" in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

And we just never see those 15? Do they have NAMES? I might like to see that list.

In case you're having a hard time wrapping your mind around the death tolls in Iraq, look at this: Iraq Body Count Visual Aid (mykeru.com).

Professor Cole discusses the probable religious government outcome of a democratic vote in Iraq. (juancole.com, 12/17/04) I'm not sure why Americans think this result is preventable: religion has a huge impact on elections here, and fundamentalists always wield some influence.

*

Some of my friends have been discussing Brad Carson's piece in the New Republic called "Vote Righteously!" (tnr.org, registration required), about losing to fundamentalists here in the U.S. I've received odd comments about this, from shock that there are fundamentalists who vote for religious issues rather than what government is actually supposed to do, to comments about needing to be more 'in touch' with fundamentalists here at home.

Here's my response to part of this discussion, which included a question as to whether or not the U.S. is in an internal culture war between fundamentalists/extremists and everyone else. It may not apply to the discussion Iraqis are having internally -- I'm not sure they feel free to have a discussion about what their nation's government should look like when they're occupied by an increasingly hostile and destructive foreign force, combined with a hostile and destructive internal resistance movement. But some of the same ideas may apply, so I'm posting this here.

We live in a country where 'equal pay for equal work' is still controversial, so I would propose that we have ALWAYS been in a culture war. Heck, the former slave-holding states all dumped the Democrats over civil rights, and have been living in a bitter enmity with the "culture" of the rest of multicultural (bad word!) America ever since. (There's a map floating around the web suggesting that the [so-called] red [Bush-majority] states, with just one exception, all were states or territories permitting slavery in our nation's history. [This was prior to the resolution of 3 state outcomes.])

I don't see 51% Bush vs. 48% Kerry as a "mandate" for taking on the values of our most socially regressive citizens. Even if it meant we could "win" the 51 by announcing that minorities and women need to 'know their place' and everyone needs to [take on fundamentalist beliefs] it wouldn't really be winning. We'd lose our own 48%. And we'd be living under our own version of the Taliban.

We should note that all my pro-choice groups note that they've gained five seats in Congress, and that every single pro-choice incumbent supported by Emily's List (a group I'm in that develops and supports pro-choice Democratic women) won re-election. South Dakota elected its first female rep; Wisconsin elected its first ever African-American rep, who also happens to be female. So the "too liberal" concept doesn't apply: choice isn't "too liberal" for everyone, and people are happy to elect women and minorities to federal offices. So it's not just "liberalism."

There are other cultural factors at work. I've read that southern white men will now only vote for one of their own, preferably a governor, preferably a Baptist, which is how Carter and Clinton made it in, and therefore that's all the Democrats should put forth as Presidential nominees forever. But that seems likely to alienate the rest of us over time, so I doubt it's a good solution. Better solutions may rest in removing social issues from the federal front pages through efforts that appeal to states-rights advocates -- making marriage solely the purview of religions, for example, as an example of how government should be smaller and less intrusive.

We may have to face the fact that some Americans don't want a democracy: they want a theocracy which reflects only their own belief systems, and which forbids the belief systems of others. Things we think of as practical government functions - like paved roads, post offices, foreign policy, equal opportunity enforcement and the EPA - as irrelevant. Kicking ourselves over not appealing enough to such folks [22-27% of the Bush voters for "morality"] won't help us, so I don't think we're having the right discussion if we're including them.

I think we can only appeal to the people who DO want democracy. I haven't heard 'Bush moderates' defined in any way; many of the Dems who I've heard interviewed voted for Bush based on WMDs they think were found, or other misinformation. But I think the people to appeal to, the Clinton-Republican-types, are a limited group who can be appealed to by the 'reality based community' on issues that don't require all of us who are brown or female to become serfs.

Here in the U.S. the situation is very different from that in Iraq in myriad ways, obviously. But one of the biggest ways is the long history of secular democracy here, and the fact that religious institutions have not rivaled the government for power in a significant way since our laws were established. Many western churches have a long history of supporting whatever government is in power, and using the government's authority to reinforce its own. There are notable exceptions, but the U.S. has never known a church-state rivalry that threatened the state seriously.

In Iraq, religious leaders hold more influence than the U.S. backed regime(s), and have stepped into the apparent power vacuums to provide basic services. In that respect, they are in a very strong position which U.S. fundamentalists would envy. If a religious coalition takes a strong position against the occupation and wins big, that will be perceived as a mandate for all their purposes, including a religious state. If a squeaker victory here is a "mandate," imagine what a big victory in Iraq for religious parties would look like.

So. The issue of fundamentalism and government are not as distant as Iraq to U.S. voters.

My vacation/special assignment have ended, although later than planned. And so I belatedly worked toward catching up on the news about war and peace in the world.

It has not been a good process.

There have been some particularly appalling reports about U.S. actions abroad this month. As we celebrate Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards Men, I read about the U.S. intentionally bombing hospitals in Iraq to suppress reports of civilian casualties. The December 6th issue of the Nation included 'What Happened to Hearts?' by Jonathan Schell, which points out that without a hospital to report casualties, "there would be no international outrage, and all would be well."

Also see Controlling Information in the Attack on Fallujah by Bob Allen (laborstandard.org)

Since July when the Allawi government began ?authorizing? U.S. airstrikes against Fallujah, the hospital?s medical staff provided aid to a steady flow of casualties. Their daily accounts and accompanying photos exposed the U.S. war propagandists? claims of ?precision attacks.?

It wasn't just Falluja General that the U.S. bombed, either: US strikes raze Falluja hospital (news.bbc.co.uk, 11/06/04) describes the leveling of another hospital (Nazzal Emergency) by U.S. forces. Something called the Popular Clinic ("Fallujah residents say clinic bombed," abc.net.au, 11/09/04) was taken out by the U.S. There are also reports on other hospitals damaged by the U.S., and of U.S. forces firing on ambulances...

Things are so bad that the International Red Cross' Iraq web pages have quotes about how NO WARS ARE EXCLUDED FROM INTERNATIONAL LAW.

*

If it was the goal of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. two years ago to reduce the U.S. to a nation whose forces level civilian hospitals and don't abide by international law on the treatment of civilians, they've won.

It would almost be nice if the hijackers had SAID that was their goal: our proud military strategists might have tried to avoid the current situation just to save face.

*

The big mystery in reading the news is whether anyone actually believes a "democracy" can be brought about through war crimes and force against the voting public. I've seen no historical evidence that such an approach would work.

[I'm on a combination of vacation and 'special assignment' for the duration of November. I'll resume writing in December. Happy Thanksgiving.]

Clean elections make legitimate governments

As dismal news from Iraq reports on more of the country spiraling into chaos and violence (truthout.org, 11/13/04), the promise of January national elections seems to be at risk. Though even if elections are held, there are serious doubts in Iraq and abroad that the elections will be credible.

In her commentaryDon't Rig the Iraqi Election, by Marina Ottaway (truthout.org, repost from washingtonpost.com, 11/09/04), Ottaway points out that the U.S. would prefer:

less-risky, noncompetitive elections, in which the outcome would be predetermined. Their preference is to push for a "monster coalition" of major political parties, which would agree among themselves ahead of time how to apportion parliamentary seats and cabinet posts.

She also points out that Shiites are unlikely to accept the legitimacy of an election in which "security concerns" prevented them from voting.

Elections Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq, by Patrick Cockburn (truthout.org repost from Independent U.K., 10/05/04) points out that the proposed election system, which favors exile-run political parties which are unpopular within Iraq, is unlikely to result in a system that Iraqis will embrace.

*

It's amazing to me that the U.S. is trying to guarantee a fair election in a war-torn land, while it can't guarantee one at home. Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities by Donna Britt, (truthout.org repost from washingtonpost.com, 11/12/04), contains some comments about the disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters here in the land of the free that ring true among people I've spoken to:

Why aren't more Americans exercised about this issue? Maybe the problem is who's being disenfranchised -- usually poor and minority voters. In a recent poll of black and white adults by Harvard University professor Michael Dawson, 37 percent of white respondents said that widely publicized reports of attempts to prevent blacks from voting in the 2000 election were a Democratic 'fabrication.' More disturbingly, nearly one-quarter of whites surveyed said that if such attempts were made, they either were 'not a problem' (9 percent) or 'not so big a problem' (13 percent).

We all need to be sure our democracy really is democratic: if citizens in thee comfortable U.S. can't be guaranteed their constitutionally mandated voting rights, how can other nations moving toward democracy feel confident in democracy overall? If the U.S. government constantly holds itself out as a model to the world, it should actually be a positive model. And that's not happening right now.

Here's a message I shared with a few friends recently:

You folks are great! Several of you have forwarded fabulous clippings to me about the even uglier side of this election: organized efforts to prevent people, especially people of color in swing states, from exercising their rights to vote. By the time the Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Republican Party to stand in Ohio polling places and legally challenge any brown person of their choosing, you know our nation had sunk to a new low.

There are some great materials on attempts to block voters, and attempts to prevent votes from being counted ranging from legal spoilage to outright fraud. I've compiled some excerpts and links here.

(For a longer article from the NAACP and People for the American Way, read 'The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today.' (naacp.org. It's 27 pages long.))

[My partner] observed yesterday that many Democrats have absorbed the Republican message after the Supreme Court intervened in 2000: 'Accept your loss and close your eyes.' 'Get over it.' 'Recounts HURT us.' 'Legitimacy is less important than the stability that comes from a quick-if-inaccurate decision.' None of this supports democracy. To me, our democracy is in jeopardy if any of us are denied our fundamental rights. It's inexcusable that the problems found in 2000 weren't fixed, and that new problems have been introduced.

There are a couple of organizations attempting to act on the problems. One is blackboxvoting.org, which is attempting to raise money to audit the election results wherever paper ballots are available. They've already issued FOIA requests. Another is thepen.us, which has a campaign demanding an investigation of fraud from the Democrats, for what that is worth. [I think the best research could be performed by a press consortium like the one that investigated Florida, but whose results were suppressed after 9-11. They have the funds, credibility, and means to publicize the results that ordinary citizens lack, but I don't know if they are interested in investigating. The founder of BlackBoxVoting says her media contacts have been forbidden from reporting on irregularities, however, so it's unclear that any media company will go this route.]

I've read the arguments against examining this election from both of the corporate parties, and they are framed incorrectly. To them, the question is whether or not the Democrats won the philosophical & cultural war of "values," and the conclusion both sides have reached is no. But that is not the actual question. The question is whether or not we had a fair election in which all American citizens, regardless of their skin color or place of residence, freely exercised their rights to vote and could confidently believe their votes were counted. The answer to that question appears to be no, and it is much more important than which rich guy won.

I do sincerely believe that we can never have a fully legitimate government while people are being denied their right to vote. The attempt to deny people their voting rights through means both legal and illegal damages the very idea of legitimate government. That is why the elections in Iraq need to be fair and transparent, just as they should be here and everywhere else in the world.

The effects of the disenfranchisement here in the U.S. have already led to doubts about the accuracy of national elections. Rumors abound, but so do analyses: The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy, by Professor Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D. (truthout.org, 111404) lays out an excellent context for what exit polls are used for around the world, and raises questions about why a time-honored process used as a check against corruption around the world conflicts so dramatically with the results the U.S. is reporting. It's a good piece, and worth reading. Even if you don't like to rely on statistics, the fact that the U.S. experiences wildly different results than the rest of the world from using the same methodology raises many new questions.

A must read for the well-informed American: The Nation: November 15, 2004 issue. On domestic issues, the editorial entitled Fix the Electoral System concisely lists the steps which need to be taken to end the routine, systemic disenfranchisement of minorities and poor people. Something I didn't know: the Carter Center couldn't perform election monitoring, because our messy, states-make-up-their-own-procedures system wasn't consistent enough to observe, unlike so-called "Third World" countries which can manage to have a standard system. Oh, and the two main parties didn't agree to cooperate. That didn't help...

Jeff Morley (of the Washington Post) has an item noting that the Iraqi Health Ministry has stopped releasing civilian casualty figures to journalists on orders from the interim government. Morley also has some interesting things to say about the counting methodology of NGOs.

Jonathan Schell's Looking Tough discusses the outcome of all the detention and torture schemes the US has enacted during this period, and the fact that of the thousands of people detained, "not one has been successfully convicted of terrorism - the only conviction obtained having been thrown out by a federal judge in Detroit."

Find it and read it!

Free Press News : Iraq tells media to toe the line (freepress.net). Iraq has a media regulation agency which is supposed to be independent from both the interim government and occupation authority. But...

It said news organizations should "guide correspondents in Fallouja … not to promote unrealistic positions or project nationalist tags on terrorist gangs of criminals and killers....[to] set aside space in your news coverage to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations of most Iraqis, clear."

"We hope you comply … otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests," the statement said. It did not elaborate.

Sunni clerics call for boycott of January elections because of Fallujah attack (sfgate.com, 11/09/04).

Another source of information from within Iraq: Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches (dahrjamailiraq.com). He's a reporter who has spent 5 months in occupied Iraq, and is now functioning as a correspondent for several news outlets. Read The Fire is Spreading… as a sample of his reporting.

It's grim but educational stuff.

A multimedia web exhibit: Iraq Uncensored: "seven independent photographers and filmmakers have worked exclusively in Iraq documenting US troops and Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and child laborers, imprisoned women and incarcerated youths." It's a good exhibit, though not a happy one. But if you're reading this, you're probably not surprised by that.

Voices in the Wilderness : What We Call Peace is Little Better Than Capitulation To a Corporate Coup: excerpts from a speech by Arundhati Roy (vitw.org, 11/04/04):

It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of the process of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure on the world. Increasingly, human rights violations are being portrayed as the unfortunate, almost accidental, fallout of an otherwise acceptable political and economic system.

The link doesn't appear to provide the entire text of her speech, but it's worth reading the entire thing.

On The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart joked that the Iraqis have been observing our election, and remarked: 'You invaded us... to give us THIS?!?' :-)

Perhaps, before we force our brand of "democracy" on the Iraqi people, they should be allowed to shop around a bit. In projectcensored.org:
Democracy Fails: Corporations Win, Peter Phillips comments on the state of things here:

November 2 gave us a choice between war and more war, corporate globalization and more corporate globalization, the continuation of gifting billions of dollars to Israel, the Patriot Act and an expanded Patriot Act, a police state and an seriously growing police state, media monopoly and even bigger media monopolies, and wealth inequality or an even greater wealth divide. With the only alternative to these issues being minor candidates without a snowball's chance, for many voting seemed meaningless.

Isn't it great that WE get to be the model for other democracies? He has other points: go ahead and read 'em.

I don't know how I missed this.TheStar.com - Crude dudes by Linda McQuiag of the Toronto Star (www.thestar.com, 09/20/04). It's an article with comments from Fadel Gheit, a Wall Street oil analyst.

"Think of Iraq as virgin territory .... This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in currently .... It is the superstar of the future," says Gheit, "That's why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth."

Gheit just smiles at the notion that oil wasn't a factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He compares Iraq to Russia, which also has large undeveloped oil reserves. But Russia has nuclear weapons. "We can't just go over and ... occupy (Russian) oil fields," says Gheit. "It's a different ballgame." Iraq, however, was defenceless, utterly lacking, ironically, in weapons of mass destruction. And its location, nestled in between Saudi Arabia and Iran, made it an ideal place for an ongoing military presence, from which the U.S. would be able to control the entire Gulf region. Gheit smiles again: "Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath .... You can't ask for better than that."

There's something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn't show the kind of detail normally shown on maps ? cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq's oil.....

Follow the link and read the whole thing. It's adopted from a book, which looks like a fascinating read. (It's especially interesting when you read about how trade deals force Canada to export to the U.S. regardless of its own demand situation. How any government could have signed such an agreement is a great mystery.)

Electile Dysfunction?

Yes, Virginia, there were some odd things about the 2004 Presidential election.

I'd already written elsewhere about the very unpleasant attempts to disenfranchise new voters who were registering to vote. (Compilation in the previously cited/linked audio file special report on voter fraud at thisamericanlife.org. (Real audio file) Combined with the overt attempts of elected officials in places like Florida to de-register tens of thousands of ethnic minority voters in Democrat-heavy regions, attempts by officials in some states to refuse to accept voter registrations due to paper weight regulations, and other antics, it is cause for alarm and investigation. Word of these things occurred in advance of the election, far ahead enough for it to be announced (and in some cases, for arrests to be made), but late enough for those harmed to be unable to register.

But come election day, there was some more weirdness. For example, the exit polls. I watched them "live" on cnn.com for Ohio and a few other key states. Kerry was ahead, Kerry was ahead, Kerry was ahead... and then when everything was declared for Bush they retroactively changed the results. Which was weird, but I'm completely open to believing that exit polls aren't accurate. The problem is that they should be inaccurate in more than one direction -- they shouldn't always favor Kerry inaccurately, they shouldn't always be inaccurate by about the same percentage. See Odds of Bush gaining by 4 percent in all exit polling states 1 in 50,000; Evoting/paper variance not found to be significant (bluelemur.com, 11/08/04).

Then, there were the "glitches" that resulted in more votes than voters. In Should America Trust the Results of the Election? Commentary (washingtondispatch.com, 11/05/04), Shane Cory points out a few fun (not) facts:

In one voting precinct in Gahanna, Ohio, 4,258 voters supposedly cast an electronic ballot for George Bush while only 260 voted for John Kerry. While it is vaguely possible that over 94% of voters in the precinct supported George W. Bush, it is a hard number to believe considering that only 638 voters were counted at the polling center.

Ooops. What was it that Barbie doll used to say? "Math is hard?"

There are also some odd results out of Florida: the average Republican gain was 29%, which isn't too far ahead of the Dems, but doesn't really explain a 700% gain in Republican votes in one particular county.

Seven hundred percent? Congrats to whoever organized that voter drive, but because it's so far out of the norm for the state, it really ought to be checked for accuracy. Unless they also have a town called Gahanna, in which case everything is explained. :-)

Infamous Broward County had a problem to put it back into the news. Software Flaw Found in Florida Vote Machines (michaelmoore.com repost from the Palm Beach Post, 11/05/04) provides this:

Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone ... down.

It turns out the software used in Broward County can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would ever be designed to vote backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman.

Here's a nationwide compilation of computer voting glitches and other problems compiled from the media at votersunite.org. This list shouldn't be interpreted to mean that each and every problem resulted in people being denied votes, I should emphasize: it just belies the "everything went perfectly" stories you've likely heard.

Greg Palast argues in 'Kerry Won' (tompaine.com, 11/04/04) that racist "spoilage" practices which results in minority voters having their ballots or identity rejected are responsible for Bush's margin of "victory."

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts?Democratic turf... Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter.... Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president....

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Racism is pretty icky, too.

And there was some odd behavior on the part of Republican election officials. In George, John, and Warren (msnbc.com), Keith Oberman reports on some odd events in Ohio:

[Friday] the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had ?locked down? its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.

...County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.... The State of Ohio confirms that of all of its 88 Counties, Warren alone decided such Homeland Security measures were necessary.

In other counties, reporters were allowed to observe the balloting.

Have I already mentioned that Bush campaign co-chair & Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was in charge of the election and vote counting there? (michiganimc.org) And after failing to mail absentee ballots out, had to be taken to court to allow those who hadn't received their ballots to vote?

In The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy (commondreams.org, 11/04/04), Thom Hartmann asks:

Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?

Which is an excellent question.


*

My e-mail peer group, most of whom I believe to be Democrats, have split into two camps. One camp wants the voting irregularities investigated, so this administration won't hang under the cloud of illegitimacy that the first Bush Administration held. The other camp thinks that we need to absorb a Kerry loss unquestioningly and immediately, and ignore anything dubious because it's unlikely to change the outcome.

I am uncertain as to who actually won the election: it looks like Bush, but enough doubts have been raised that some verification is in order. But that's not what concerns me about the comments I've heard. I'm shocked that anyone I know finds the disenfranchisement of large numbers of Americans -- many of whom happen to be ethnic minorities -- acceptable. Even if we were all satisfied with a Bush win, we cannot say it's fine that "non-white" and/or poor people had their right to vote 'challenged' by partisan monitors and were forced to vote provisionally, that people in swing states had to appear in court to verify their identity in the face of baseless charges from local Republican Party officials, that people were turned away from polling places, and that voting equipment can't do basic math can be tolerated. These issues need to be corrected NOW. I don't see how our nation benefits from "getting over" discrimination and math-impairments without correcting it.

We're a great country with a long tradition of opportunity. Now isn't the time to backslide. Let's get this right. Let's get this fixed now. And let's toss everyone who tried to defraud citizens of their voting rights in jail, regardless of who won, as a deterrent to future anti-democratic activism here.

The U.S. election has ended, and as expected, the impact on Iraq is largely negligible. Both candidates wished to continue and win the war: they only disagreed on how it would be funded and who should be obligated to staff it.

And so the dire misery of the Iraqi people and the soldiers stationed there continues.

*

Conveniently just after the U.S. elections are over, Iraq declares state of emergency. Violence is on the upswing, and insurgents are increasingly successful at killing large numbers of police in single attacks.

One aspect of violence which will not be curtailed by the declaration of the state of emergency is the U.S.' planned attack on Falluja.

The BBC's Paul Wood, embedded with the US Marines, says they believe that Falluja will be their biggest engagement since Hue, the Vietnamese city they captured in 1968, losing 142 men and killing thousands of the enemy.

It is reported from inside Falluja that insurgents, tribal chiefs and Sunni Muslim clerics have invited the media to enter the city under their protection to witness any assault, which they described as a crusade against Islam.

This is the success story that U.S. president Bush has been trumpeting. If this is success, I would hate to see what failure looks like.

Concerns mount as the U.S. plans to invade Falluja(h) with a vast military force: Kofi Annan's letter: Falluja warning (news.bbc.co.uk, 11/06/04): "UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has sent a letter to the leaders of the US, UK and Iraq expressing concern that the planned assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja could undermine elections due in January."

Fixing the problem of Falluja (news.bbc.co.uk, 11/07/04):

Some of those who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom - as last year's invasion is called - wonder what happened to the 'flowers and sweets' that greeted them so promisingly at first.

'Everyone was so friendly when we got to Iraq,' said one 19-year-old, slightly bewildered. 'I just don't know what happened.'"

The inability of US forces to comprehend the impact on people of occupation, even at this date, is stunning. But it gets weirder:

"The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy," said Colonel Brandl.

"But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."

Hey, embedded reporters can be good for something after all! There's quite a fuss going on over the missing 380 tons of explosives that the International Atomic Energy Agency attempted to call the U.S.' attention to, but which the U.S. ignored for a few months due to other priorities.

This article provides a very detailed chronology of events involving U.S. forces at the site, from the time the IAEA visited and confirmed their seals were still on the explosives, until "...late May, when a U.S. weapons inspection team declared the depot stripped and looted." Of course, no fuss was made about it then by the U.S., but the Iraqi government only reported to the UN a week or so ago that these were still missing. Pentagon seeking to account for movement of munitions: "On April 18, a Minnesota television crew traveling with the 101st Airborne shot a videotape of troops as they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa that shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency."

Scientists estimate 100,000 Iraqis may have died in war (sfgate.com, 10/28/04).

Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.

The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and air strikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.

"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.

Read the whole thing. The researchers who conducted the nationwide study even made modifications to exclude coalition violence in Fallujah to check their conclusions for the rest of Iraq. And they believe that the problem is structural:

"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.

In a demonstration of... something, officers with military rifles have been showing themselves off on our local commute trains. One of my friends pointed out that their powerful guns would be useless against any substance-based attacks (chemical or biological), and that the bullets, if used, would penetrate multiple train cars, hitting countless civilians. Sadly, killing civilians to "save" them isn't as remote a possibility as I would like.

In Moscow theater siege remembered - Oct 26, 2004 (cnn.com), a memorial service was held for the victims of the Chechen hostage crisis of two years ago. In that tragedy, nearly all 130 victims of the siege died at the hands of their rescuers, overzealous Russian special forces who gassed the theater prior to storming the building. The gas knocked out the hostages permanently, saving them from the hostage takers... by ending their lives.

Authorities held a separate memorial ceremony, so they would not have to face the victim's relatives.

"For two years, we have been trying to persuade the government to draw conclusions from the tragedy so that it doesn't happen again, but no such conclusions have been made," Tatyana Karpova, co-chair of a group of former hostages and victims' relatives, said in a reference to recent terror attacks...

How long will it take for authorities to learn?

*

Short update: Thailand's Prime Minister is sort of apologizing for the 78 suffocation deaths mentioned earlier (ccn.com, 10/27/04). But only sort of.

But several Thai officials, including Thaksin, say Ramadan fasting was a contributing factor in the deaths, saying they were weak because of dawn-to-dusk fasting during the Muslim holy month.

"There are some who died because they were fasting, and they were crammed in tight," Thaksin told reporters on Tuesday.

"It's a matter of their bodies becoming weak."

I'm sure this will go over ever-so-well with the victim's families. At least the Russian officials responsible for the gas deaths at the theater didn't announce that their victims were partly to blame for breathing too much.

*

Allawi blames US 'negligence' for massacre (guardian.co.uk, 10/26/04). Though Allawi is waiting for the results of an official investigation into the killing of busloads of newly trained national guard troops, he is raising hard questions about why they were unarmed and unguarded during their final bus ride.

Radio news reports have expressed concerns that the mass execution of the guards by persons in police uniforms was 'an inside job,' with the local Iraqi forces easily infiltrated by malevolent persons because of the desperation for recruits.

*

There are some interesting comments about how the public doesn't know the full scope of events occurring in Iraq in Troops back from long, hard combat (guardian.co.uk, 10/26/04).

"I've stood before a company of soldiers who have the same haunted gaze as soldiers from the second world war and Korean war because they've been subjected to the most extraordinary events which to a large degree have gone unreported," Brigadier Andrew Kennett, commander of the 1st Mechanised Brigade, told Soldier magazine.

The article goes on to express fears that the soldiers will have difficulty adjusting to civilian life again, and will be troubled and frustrated.

It's interesting that such concerns for the well being of returned soldiers here in the U.S. has been muted, except by domestic violence prevention groups and other non-profits. Perhaps because so few of our troops are returning?

*

Tons of explosives gone missing: whose fault?; White House plays down breach of Iraq's 'Fort Knox of explosives.' (csmonitor.com, 10/26/04) provides a good summary of the discussion over the loss of 380 tons of explosives from a site the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly pointed out to the Bush Administration as an area of concern.

Some partisan outlets appear to think the breach is no big deal. NBC cites reports of visits to the site during which the explosives were not sought as possible evidence that the weapons were taken prior to the invasion, but

However, other US outlets, including NBC's own news website, quoted Pentagon officials who said a search of the site after the US-led invasion had revealed the explosives to be intact.

The IAEA verified the materials were present in January of 2003 (iaea.org, PDF), and having advised the U.S. of where they were, the U.S. should have verified their presence AND taken control of their location. But they didn't.

The White House hasn't had much of an explanation so far. Bush aides try to explain missing weapons (thestate.com, 10/6/04 repost from nytimes) offers this:

White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the agency in May 2003 about the vulnerability of the stockpile to looting never resulted in action. At one point, McClellan pointed out, “there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Well then.

*

Why is it that U.S. forces, the Allawi government, AND the insurgents all hate reporters? Media in Iraq see through a shrinking window (csmonitor.com, 10/27/04) reports that 44 journalists have been killed since March 2003, and the press is free - free to receive death threats and non-cooperation from the government.

Beside getting short shrift from officials in Iraq, local journalists and photographers - while at least able to get to the scene of an attack - find they are frequently prevented from working by Iraqi police or US forces.

"After the liberation, we thought life would be better, but it's the opposite," says Samir Hadi, a veteran photographer who shoots for Al-Mada and has been held back from attacks scenes by Iraqi forces.

"This is the same style as the Saddam regime," he laments. "We face many attacks and explosions both from American and terrorist forces. Now they never let us shoot pictures."

It's as if everyone in some position of power - the occupiers, interim government, and violent rebels - are all embarrassed of their activities. Are they?

Tell me there's some good news, that nations are learning from their mistakes.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

Is this supposed to make us feel better about attacking Iraq, which had nothing to do with September 11th?Yahoo! News - Kerry Ridicules Bush on Terrorism Remark:

In a taped interview with Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes," Bush was asked whether the nation would always be vulnerable to another terror attack and whether Americans would always have to live with that.

"Yes, because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once," Bush said. He said the nation is safer from terrorism, but "whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up — you know, up in the air."

Morley's World Opinion Roundup: Is God an American Voter? (washingtonpost.com, 10/26/04) quotes numerous, previously Bush supporting conservative papers (including some owned by Rupert Murdoch) expressing disgust over Bush's exploitation of religion in this campaign. With Bush supporters going on record as saying that Bush is doing God's will by attacking Iraq, prior supporters dislike the false link made between extremism and the actual will of God. Interesting bit from "London's reliably conservative Daily Telegraph":

"To those who see war as an occasional and necessary evil, the developing situation in Iraq is a disaster. Violence is feeding violence. The Abu Ghraib pictures, the rounding up and detaining of thousands of civilians and the cockpit-shot film of an American pilot firing missiles into the streets of Fallujah: all of that has fuelled and will fuel decades of future rage and resentment," he writes.

"But for any Christian who is driven by an apocalyptic and millennial vision, these events are exactly what should be happening. Terrible and desperate violence, blood and grief are all, for them, mileposts on the road to God's dominion," Nicolson says.

If the message is that religious extremists are misdirecting previously conservative impulses, and non-extremist conservatives are annoyed, I think it's nice for them to share that.

There's some more sharing In the previous World Opinion roundup, which strikes a positive note:

In a poll and survey by the Israeli daily Haaretz, leading international journalists found Americans are held in much higher esteem than their president in eight out of 10 countries where the review was conducted.

Which would be more complimentary if we knew exactly how much higher in esteem Americans are held. I mean, if it's just RELATIVE, it may not be saying much.

Let me report sad news about someplace that isn't Iraq. 78 Die in Military Custody in Thailand (washingtonpost.com) (washingtonpost.com, 10/26/04). That total excludes 6 rioter-protesters who were shot dead by police, and others who were injured.

All happened to be Muslim, protesting the arrest of several prisoners accused of stealing state weapons in support of a separatist movement.

Here is a comment from the Thai government:

"The protesters had several motives, but the main reason was separatism," [ Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] said, speaking before the announcement of the 78 suffocation deaths. "I cannot allow the separatists to exist on our land."

He added: "We cannot allow these people to harass innocent people and authorities any longer. ... We have no choice but to use force to suppress them."

Because violent suppression has worked so well in places like Chechnya, Iraq, and Palestine??? Do you get the impression that the Prime Minister has a lot of guns and very few ideas?

Here is an interesting opinion piece: The colonial precedent: the growing brutality and deception of the Iraq war mirrors Britain's recent imperial history, by Mark Curtis (guardian.co.uk, 10/26/04):

British ministers' claim to be defending civilisation against barbarity in Iraq finds a powerful echo in 1950s Kenya, when Britain sought to smash an uprising against colonial rule. Yet, while the British media and political class expressed horror at the tactics of the Mau Mau, the worst abuses were committed by the occupiers. The colonial police used methods like slicing off ears, flogging until death and pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight.

British forces killed around 10,000 Kenyans during the Mau Mau campaign...

Guerrillas resisting British rule were routinely designated 'terrorists', as now in Iraq. Britain never admitted that it was opposing a popular, nationalist rebellion in Kenya. Similarly, leftwing Malayan insurgents fighting British rule in the 1950s had strong popular support among the Chinese community but were officially called 'terrorists'. In secret, however, Foreign Office correspondence described the war as being fought 'in defence of [the] rubber industry', then controlled by British and European companies.

Wouldn't it be nice if such comparisons weren't so easy to come by?

Today's news: tragedy. Yesterday's news: tragedy. Tomorrow's news...

I have been terribly discouraged about the way things are going in Iraq. Every day I hear of an increased death toll. (Iraq Rebels Kill Nearly 50 Army Recruits, U.S. Envoy (reuters.com, 10/24/04), for example). Every day I hear plans of a new military assault on some town. The CIA appears to have found a new way to violate the Geneva conventions (reuters.com, 'Senators Question U.S. Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners,' 10/24/04). The Bush Administration has reacted somewhat strangely to a poll showing Iraqis prefer religious candidates for their upcoming elections (washingtonpost.com, 10/22/04), which make me wonder if the elections will be permitted to occur if both US and 'insurgent' forces choose to oppose them.

I'm not SURPRISED, however. This is pretty close to the worst-case scenario warned of by the peace movement. (And now, we hear, by Pat Robertson, which I never would have guessed.) Which still hasn't been acknowledged, and may never be. I'm not concerned with the peace movement being able to say 'I told you so,' - I'm concerned with the U.S. making the same mistakes repeatedly, choosing between falsely limited options over and over, and making things worse, as they have been.

A very thorough summary of recent violence is provided at Professor Cole's blog, Informed Comment. (juancole.com) (As is an interesting analysis of an Eminem song which expresses anti-Bush sentiments. Of all things. Pat Robertson AND Eminem suddenly agree with me on something? Is the world ending so soon?) It's a litany of bad news.

*

I had a chat with my partner about the troops in Iraq. He (more or less) asked if U.S. forces needed to stay to help ensure the election occurs. This question would make sense if U.S. forces appeared to be contributing to stability, and if they had credibility with the local people. Has this been demonstrated?

If soldiers feel unsafe making routine deliveries in Iraq ("Platoon Defies Orders in Iraq" reposted at truthout.org, 10/15/04), how is the U.S. presence supposed to help maintain order?

It appears that U.S. forces and those who work with them are the primary targets of so-called insurgent attacks. If the U.S. absented itself, some of the passion for repelling invaders would lose its source. The U.S. presence, because it is so unpopular, unintentionally taints those things it touches: if the U.S. military protects a charity (or an interim leader), it appears that the military and charity are collaborating, which draws attackers and kidnappers, which draws more military support... The cycle needs to end. Angry Iraqis aren't going to leave their home country, but the occupying U.S. certainly could.

So I believe that a U.S. endorsed and guarded election will carry the same occupiers taint that has inspired so much reactionary violence. This isn't a new argument, but still one that should be considered more carefully than it has been by leaders who won't change course, and are heading in the wrong direction.

This is barely on topic, but it is fun commentary on a very strange incident. Riba Rambles: Musings of a Mental Magpie writes twice (also see here) on the announcement from evangelist and Bush supporter Pat Robertson on his warnings to Bush about how the casualties in Iraq would be severe. Bush, for his part, denied that there would be any casualties at all.

Robertson's website, which Riba quotes from, provides several comments consistently in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I never would have guessed.

Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll (washingtonpost.com, 10/22/04 forthcoming edition, page 1):

'The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if an election were held today,' said a U.S. official who requested anonymity...

The very informative blogger, Salam Pax, visits Washington and writes a report for the UK Guardian. Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | The Baghdad Blogger goes to Washington: day one (guardian.co.uk, 10/22/04 edition (forthcoming)):

"Ultimately, the conversation turns to Iraq. We all seem to agree that even if John Kerry gets elected as president it is too late for a drastic change in policy. I am surprised at how much everyone here seems to have bought what the Bush administration has been selling them - especially the line about a well-educated Iraqi middle class that will take over and transform Iraq into a democratic paradise.

To tell you the truth, I bought into that as well - and boy were we wrong. That educated middle class was everywhere around the world, but not in Iraq. What it decided to do was to shut its mouth or turn religious.

This is an interesting comment from someone who supported the U.S.' initial nation-building plans.

You may, at times, have wondered how the current leadership of the United States could keep digging itself deeper and deeper into trouble in Iraq. It seems like, no matter what horrific events occur there, the reponse is to deny reality, and then to do the same things again. And again. What gives?

This may offer some insight. The New York Times Magazine article: "Without a Doubt," by Ron Suskind (nytimes.com, 10/17/04) has some of the most frightening quotations I have yet seen about the difficult times we face. Namely:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

That would explain a few things, wouldn't it?

Iraqis are subsidizing their occupiers and the big corporations of their occupiers

At a time when the U.S. insists that the main barriers to reconstruction projects in Iraq are terrorists who know the reconstruction will bring peace and stability, the U.S. is undermining reconstruction by allowing American corporations to take Iraqi money as compensation for lost profits as a result of the prior Iraq war.

Guardian | Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? by Naomi Klein (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) provides disturbing details.

Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website....

But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent just $29 million on reconstruction projects.

So the U.S. taxpayers have forked out $29 million for Iraqi reconstruction, much of which is actually going to Halliburton. Iraqi taxpayers have forked out $1.8 billion, $18 million of which has gone quite directly to Halliburton. Meanwhile, the Iraqis in many places have no power, safe drinking water, physical security, medicines...

Yet the corporations are making out like bandits. Which they are.

It is just amazing, how unjust this arrangement is.

Aside from election speculation, the hot news story right now is about reservists currently detained for disobeying orders. Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Doubts about US morale in Iraq as troops refuse 'suicide mission'. (guardian.co.uk, 10/16/04) Many of the Guardsmen, who raised concerns about operating a fuel convoy without the routine defensive support they were familiar with, contacted their families back home when they were detained. The story has hit the papers as a result of statements from their families.

Is the U.S. once again paying cash to anyone who will tell them what they want to hear? Morley's World Opinion Roundup item, "Insurgent Zarqawi's Dark Genius" (washingtonpost.com, 10/05/04) quotes foreign papers whose sources say the U.S. is paying people to tell them that so-called terrorist mastermind al Zarqawi is behind every problem that arises.

Didn't the U.S. go through this before? Over WMDs? And didn't that result in some wretched results?

Morley quotes Sami Ramadi's article, "The true face of Iraqi resistance" (guardian.co.uk, 09/30/04) which suggests the U.S. is happily using Zarqawi as a fall-guy regardless of the truth or untruth of the information they have purchased, because it is convenient to have a bad guy.

The occupation forces have admitted that the attacks on them by the resistance rose last month to 2,700. And how many of these 2,700 attacks a month were claimed by Zarqawi? Six. Six headline-grabbing, TV-dominating, stomach-churning moments.

Just as Iraq's 25 million people were reduced, in the public's mind, to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, ready to be unleashed within 45 minutes, the resistance is now being reduced to a single hoodlum.

It is surely more easy to motivate U.S. troops into believing that they are fighting for good and against evil with a convenient bad guy. But if the war they are fighting exists only internally, they will spend all of their time confused and misdirected when they are fighting a different war against rebels with no ties to their imagined villain externally.

Bush keeps saying that everything in Iraq is grand, and that "Peace is on the march." He didn't say what direction it's marching in. Inside besieged Falluja(bbc.co.uk, 10/16/04):

The mood in the city is grim.

It is start of Ramadan, but there is nowhere to celebrate and no food to celebrate with.

Read more on how people are fleeing town.

The raiding of mosques right before a holy period surely isn't good for the morale of Iraqi civilians, either. U.S. hits Sunni hot spots -- 7 mosques raided, Muslim leaders irate over air strike destruction, arrests (sfgate.com, 10/13/04). Interestingly, the US is warning of an increase in violence -- by Iraqis. We should draw no correlation to the new military campaigns by the U.S., apparently.

Interesting comment from this article:

In a separate statement read Friday in Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere, Fallujah clerics threatened a civil disobedience campaign across the country if the Americans try to overrun the city.

The clerics said if civil disobedience were not enough to stop a U.S. assault, they would proclaim a jihad, or holy war, against all U.S. and multinational forces "as well as those collaborating with them."

They insisted that the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was not in Fallujah, claiming his alleged presence "is a lie just like the weapons of mass destruction lie."

"Al-Zarqawi has become the pretext for flattening civilians houses and killing innocent civilians," the statement said.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the article now claims that Fallujah was controlled by "radical clerics" (note the plural) now that local religious leaders are planning protests. Funny, until recently, there was only ONE radical cleric. Perhaps they don't want to give up using the title, now that their favorite cleric so labeled is running for mainstream office?

Still not winning hearts and minds: After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts From Scratch (washingtonpost.com, 09/19/04):

"'The citizens are frustrated; everyone is frustrated,' he said. 'My house, for example, has been searched three times, and the last time they were very aggressive. They broke down my door. I was asleep in my house with my children, and suddenly [a soldier] was standing in front of me. I said, 'I am a doctor.' He said, '[Expletive] you.' '"

Things aren't going smoothly on the home front, either: Influx of Wounded Strains VA (news.yahoo.com/washingtonpost, 10/03/04)

An interesting compilation of international attitudes about U.S. policy under the Bush Administration: U.S. Policies Stir More Fear Than Confidence (news.yahoo.com/latimes, 10/03/04). There are some very unfortunate sentiments expressed resulting from the way in which the U.S. has chosen to use force.

The recent news about Iraq is a litany of horrors: Children massacred by Iraq bombs (bbc.co.uk, 09/30/04), reports that 34 kids were killed by a car bomb while pursuing sweets from U.S. soldiers, and that the U.S. killed a woman and child while engaging in house-bombings. In 'Scores die' in Samarra assault (bbc.co.uk, 10/01/04) the U.S. claims a precise estimate of 109 "insurgent" kills, while local hospitals report a high number of injuries, including to civilians.

On a different note, one correspondent notes that the use of force will not succeed in bringing order to Iraq on its own, and says that other efforts are afoot. Analysis: Battle for Iraq's future, by Jonathan Marcus (bbc.co.uk, 10/01/04) suggests that military campaigns which level cities and kill civilians won't create peaceful settings for elections, but that Allawi claims to be in negotiations with representatives from insurgent groups. If all the major Iraqi groups are represented in negotiations of the country's new constitution, peace may be achievable. Negotiations are a refreshing change from the force-only approach many of the parties in Iraq had taken.

Two Italian aid workers, who had been kidnapped in Iraq and were feared dead, were released and have created a controversy by insisting that resistance to puppet governments, such as Allawi's interim government in Iraq, is legitimate. Italy split over hostages' views (bbc.co.uk, 10/02/04) The two Simonas, Pari and Torretta, urged Italy to withdraw troops from Iraq, and condemned the kidnapping of civilians.

Their abductors gave them embroidered kaftans (British spelling) as gifts. The women feared they would be killed until they were freed, so I imagine the kaftans were quite unexpected. (understatement)

Their entire story has not been told, but should be interesting: one of the women was fluent in Arabic and had been doing aid work in Iraq for a long time, and so was likely able to communicate with their captors in a way that many other kidnap victims had not. The women were unaware of the unfortunate fates that hostages held by others in Iraq had recently suffered.