Especially bad news, which has been casually referenced in a few articles, but not specifically remarked upon by the U.S. government representatives. BBC NEWS | Middle East | UN fails to agree Lebanon truce:

The UN Security Council has failed to agree on a statement calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon, despite pleas from the Lebanese prime minister.

Lebanese diplomats blamed the US for blocking the ceasefire move.

There will apparently be quotes on this soon from the Administration. My guess is that they will be bizarre quotes.

[Postscript: oh yes, they are bizarre. See 'We Are Not Colluding' on July 19th.]

Interest background reading: List of the UN resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

There are a variety of very carefully worded Wikipedia entries on the topic of the Middle East conflicts, including Israel's various... departures from international law. (They're worded like that.) Some of them are quite interesting, in that they shed light on the Israeli point of view that they shouldn't be punished for breaking international law or committing war crimes, and the general UN assembly is just picking on them.

Wow.

Part of the lesson of this long list is that heavily armed allies of the U.S. don't need to pay the UN much attention.

Oh look, another war.

There's something painfully discouraging about what's happening in Lebanon right now. I'm old enough to remember the last time that Beirut was bombed, and it was terribly sad then, also. There are certain sort of cities everywhere in the world, despite differences of construction and topography, that still somehow feel familiar. City people can recognize that as a place they might live.

In the early 90s, I worked at an architecture firm that had designed a building in Beirut. They had a photo of it on the wall, and it was such a sad photo: it was the cover of Time magazine, with their building in the foreground, and the city smoldering behind them.

So sad.

And it's happening again.

Anxiety Grips Civilians in Lebanon, Israel (washingtonpost.com photo gallery, 7/16/06).

Israel bombed gas stations, fuel tanks, roads and the last bridge on the highway to Damascus, the major route out of the country.

Near Tyre, fleeing civilians were killed by Israeli helicopters. Israel bombed the airport, and is imposing a sea and air blockade.

This is HORRIBLE.

I'm one of those peculiar people who believes that killing is wrong. Like those folks who believe in international law and human rights, I believe that the civilians of Lebanon have a basic right not to be bombed by neighboring countries who are mad at one of many, many political groups in the government. I do not support terrorism by either Hezbollah nor the State of Israel, and both sides are engaging in it. Israel happens to be doing it on a larger scale, and as an actual government it should know better.

I also believe in treating others as one would like to be treated. I do not believe that it sets a reasonable precedent to say that if any country is home to a group that kidnaps your nationals, you can bomb their home country. I am not only writing this because it came to light earlier that the U.S. has been kidnapping LOTS of foreign nationals, but you can see that there could be a concern there.

If this isn't obvious, killing civilians is a crime. It is always a crime. Just because one killer is your ally, doesn't erase that.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan... BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Refuge from the real Afghanistan:

"The only Afghans that many of these people meet are the ones circulating with the trays of Chardonnay or Merlot at parties."

Ouch. This is an interesting picture of the haves and have-nots in Kabul, a city that is still not safe to wander around in.

It's not a very positive endorsement about what 'nation building' amounts to currently.

What's an Iraqi Life Worth? by Andrew J. Bacevich (washingtonpost.com, 7/7/06), discusses the alarmingly, anti-Iraqi remarks that various U.S. officials have made in the course of 'liberating' the Iraqi people, and points out that policies that cost Iraqi lives do not aid the U.S.' mission there.

For all the talk of Iraq being a sovereign nation, foreign occupiers are the ones deciding what an Iraqi life is worth.

Yes, sometimes he means that literally, as in when civilians are 'accidentally' killed, and the U.S. pays some form of cash compensation.

Iraq Body Count (iraqbodycount.net).

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq: Min 38764, Max 43192.

Another good resource. The Institute for Policy Studies: The Iraq War (ips-dc.org). As of this writing, many of the articles haven't been updated since April, but are still good resources, because nothing has improved since then, and so the information offered is still highly relevant.

A practical item: Ending the Iraq Quagmire: A Real Exit Strategy, a PDF outlining the steps for the U.S. to execute an effective, orderly withdrawal that leaves the Iraqis in charge. Included are the withdrawal of the economic laws that the U.S. has passed to its own benefit, and restrictions on debt forgiveness which would favor international investors over Iraqis.

Non-random violence. GIs May Have Planned Iraq Rape, Slayings (washingtonpost.com, 7/1/06) reports that the group from which the accused soldiers came appears to have been a victim of vengeance attacks associated with the crime, the aftermath of which inspired soldiers who were aware of the crime to come forward.

I still find it peculiar that this story is being publicized. The foreign press has reported many such crimes, going back to the treatment of women in Abu Ghraib (some of whom appeared on films shown to various U.S. government officials as part of their abuse investigation), but our newspapers routinely gloss over such things. Until now. I suspect that by the time revelations of the abuse of female prisoners (and children) were revealed to the U.S. media, they believed the Abu Ghraib story was already out of fashion, but I'm still unsure why this story is making the papers, and the others are passed over. Is it the foreign press' graphic coverage? Something about this unit, aside from the possible revenge killings? I hope the reason this incident is being separated out from the others is revealed.

The longer we're there, the more things like this will surface: another reason to bring the troops home. Troops Facing Murder Probe (washingtonpost.com, 6/30/06):

The case in Mahmudiyah, a rural town in a Sunni Arab region dubbed the Triangle of Death for the insurgent attacks and crimes that are common there, was the latest in a string of allegations of unlawful killings -- and subsequent coverups -- by U.S. forces in recent months, beginning with reports in March that Marines killed 24 unarmed civilians in the western town of Haditha. Investigations continue into that case.

In June, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged with murder and other crimes related to the shooting death of a crippled man in Hamdaniya, west of Baghdad. Residents there said the soldiers planted a rifle and a shovel near the victim's body to make it look as if he had been burying roadside bombs.

Later in June, three soldiers were charged with murdering three Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody and threatening to kill another soldier who saw the incident. And last week, two Pennsylvania National Guardsmen were charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed man in the western city of Ramadi and with trying to cover up the crime.

I know I've been quoting the Washington Post quite heavily of late, but their coverage has been succinct and quite good for getting an overview of the situation. I recommend them.

From military victory to peace: reframing US goals for Iraq. For the past few years of war, the pro-war camp's underlying theme has been the same: the U.S. cannot leave Iraq until the U.S. WINS.

Winning has been redefined several times already. Winning meant finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Those didn't exist, so winning became capturing Saddam Hussein. He wasn't the entire problem, so winning became installing a new government - ANY government - in Iraq. This plan was revised several times, when it became clear that a hand-picked puppet government wouldn't suffice, and that there was plenty of agitation for democracy. So installing a passable democratic, non-proportionately-representative government that could still allow us to take oil was next. The interim government didn't count, the 'unity' government is just getting established, but the country has been in a spiral descent toward civil war. This prevented 'rebuilding Iraq' from being the next measure of success. Winning is being redefined again, sometimes associated with defeating the less pro-US side(s) of the civil war, sometimes not with any clear goals. But peace? Peace isn't usually a word that comes up in this context.

A Road Map Home ( washingtonpost.com, 6/28/06) discusses the idea of winning the peace.

I asked Khalilzad how he would answer members of Congress who are indignant that insurgents who opposed the U.S. occupation might be pardoned by the Iraqi government. 'They need to understand that we want this conflict to end,' he said, and stressed that Iraqi and American hopes of reducing U.S. forces can be achieved only if the insurgents agree to stop fighting and recognize the Iraqi government's authority. 'The biggest thing we can do to honor those who sacrificed here is to achieve the cause they fought for' by creating a peaceful and democratic Iraq, he said.

What is proposed is controversial to Americans, who have reduced the current conflict to one between good guys (our side and our allies) and bad guys (everyone else), and under our rules, bad guys should always be punished. The idea of reconciliation is... abstract.

But it's being proposed. By someone other than the U.S. Which is novel: the U.S. hasn't been especially open to proposals for Iraq that do not originate somewhere within the U.S. White House. But it happened.

No Kangaroo Tribunals! A Governing Philosophy Rebuffed (washingtonpost.com, 6/29/06):

In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

Ah, what understatement. Go read this.

Playing politics. It's a peculiar time in the U.S. as far as the war in Iraq goes. The far away war is considered to be a massive political liability for the current administration, but traditional knee-jerk patriotism keeps surfacing to cloud the issue of what can be done about it. With our largely docile media, a politician can get away with saying just about anything.

The popular approach has been: the war = our soldiers. So if you oppose the war, you are not "supporting the troops" (of course, the troops who disapprove of the war do not count, because they do not officially exist for political purposes). This is a completely simplistic and nonsensical statement: the same people who put the troops in harms way, cut their pay, cut their benefits, and refuse to treat them for war-related illnesses claim to hold the moral high ground in 'supporting' them. But the media represents this as true, and so it is widely accepted. Even after Vietnam, in which a few soldiers discredited the war effort in the eyes of the media (rather than the powerful who caused the war in the first place), it sort of became okay to support the WAR without supporting the troops as an awkward, temporary workaround.

The fundamental war/troops confusion from Vietnam is being revived and applied to the current war. Staying on Message -- Nixon's Message (washingtonpost.com, 6/27/06) is an interesting read. Here's a sample to induce you to read the entire opinion piece:

Today Republicans in general and Karl Rove in particular have resurrected the Nixon game plan. They are not mounting a point-by-point defense of the administration's plan for Iraq, not least because the administration doesn't really have a plan for Iraq. When Senate Democrats brought two resolutions to the floor last week, each calling for a change in our policy, the Republicans defeated them both, but they pointedly failed to introduce a resolution of their own affirming the administration's conduct of the war. That, they understood, would have been a loser in the court of public opinion. Instead, they walked a tightrope: not really defending the war per se but attacking the Democrats for seeking to end it. This was Nixonism of the highest order.

Go read this, and see how world events can be reduced to simplistic characterizations for the game known as politics.

Wrong direction. Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule (latimes.com, 6/05/06):

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans 'humiliating and degrading treatment,' according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

Go read the whole article - there are some great quotes.

Steps like this permanently prevent the U.S. from claiming the moral high ground in any conflict. This could not be what is intended.

Human rights exceptionalism. The war in Iraq has hurt Americans in many ways: increased our taxes, decreased our civil liberties, killed our relatives and peers, reduced our public services, resulted in racial hysteria, damaged our economy, thrown our government into insurmountable debt, and made us less secure at home and abroad.

European governments are also catching some harm for their role in assisting the U.S.' less savory activities associated with the so-called war against global badness. Europe under 'rendition' cloud (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/7/06) notes that not only have Poland and Romania tarnished their international reputations by hosting U.S. 'black' facilities, where untold human rights violations have occurred, but Sweden, Bosnia, the UK, Italy, Macedonia, Germany and Turkey have all aided and abetted the U.S. in a variety of ways. This puts the EU in an awkward position of wanting to enforce human rights everywhere, but having its own members shun that responsibility at key points in its dealings with the U.S. government.

The goal of the investigation is to prevent these sorts of human rights violations from occurring again. But with the violator countries unwilling to admit their guilt, it's hard to get to a point where such events can be prevented with any certainty.

Who wants to be a citizen of a country whose government 'disappears' its citizens, or who permits other governments to 'disappear' citizens to undisclosed locations in its country?

Blinded by denial. One of the more interesting things about the tragedy at Haditha is the way the military has changed its story over time. Probe Into Iraq Deaths Finds False Reports (truthout.org, originally from washingtonpost.com, 6/1/06, which now has a shorter article up) describes not just the revisionism the military's spokesmen used, but their overt hostility toward the press involved in factual inquiry.

Bargewell's report also is expected to address why the Marine Corps let stand statements issued by official spokesmen that were known to be false at least two months ago. On Nov. 20, the day after the shootings, Marine Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool told reporters that the Iraqis died in a crossfire, stating that, 'Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents.' Time magazine, which first began making inquiries about the incident in January, reported that when one of its staff members asked Pool about the allegations, he accused the journalist of being duped by terrorists. 'I cannot believe you're buying any of this,' the magazine said the officer wrote in an e-mail. 'This falls into the same category of any aqi [al-Qaeda in Iraq] propaganda.' Another military representative, Lt. Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, told the magazine that insurgents caused the civilian deaths by placing the Iraqis in the line of Marine fire.

In March the magazine broke the news that Marines had killed Iraqi civilians at Haditha.

(Bold emphasis added.)

Just because something looks like propaganda, doesn't mean it isn't true, as we learned from Abu Ghraib. (Well, we should have learned that from Abu Ghraib.)

Unfortunate parallels. BBC NEWS | Middle East | Haditha: Massacre and cover-up? (5/31/06).

Media commentators have spoken of it as 'Iraq's My Lai' - a reference to the 1968 massacre of 500 villagers in Vietnam.

I read a book on My Lai, actually, years ago. It was a very interesting story. A soldier witnessed the massacre of civilians by fellow soldiers, but had a heck of a time getting anyone to investigated. When the story finally went public and an investigation occurred, the soldiers responsible for the massacre were all eventually excused for their crimes (serving very limited sentences and then being forgiven), and went back to their normal, civilian lives after ruining the reputation of nearly all soldiers. The officials and politicians responsible for the war didn't couldn't separate atrocities from the overall war effort, and not wanting to tarnish the war effort, swept the crimes aside. The damage they did to the entire concept of 'military justice' is still with us.

Perhaps it's a bit late to start. 'Ethics training' for US troops (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/1/06)

The US military is to put all troops in Iraq through ethical training, in the wake of the alleged murder of civilians in Haditha, US press reports say.

General George W Casey is expected to order that 'core values' training begin immediately, the reports say.

This article goes on to remark that the Haditha massacre may have an adverse impact on U.S. public opinion. But I think PR is a different course entirely.

In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre (washingtonpost.com, 5/27/06):

The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.

Not what 'liberation' usually means. BBC NEWS | Middle East | No quick fixes for new Iraq government (BBC, 5/21/06) provides a sad update on what Iraq is like now.

The Baghdad morgue has said that violence-related deaths have been running at an average of 1,100 a month since February. . . Sunni leaders have blamed some of the killings on Shia militias operating under cover of the Shia-run interior ministry. Public trust in the security forces has been deeply shaken, especially among Sunnis.

A recent report by the inspector-general of the Iraqi oil ministry said that billions of dollars a year were being lost to outright theft and smuggling, with official collusion, throughout the oil industry. . . .

Services and utilities, especially electricity, and the employment situation have also deteriorated, adding to public disillusion with life and the authorities.

I assume this is why coverage of Iraq has been reduced to smaller and smaller news items in U.S. papers: there's so little to feel good about, that they'd prefer to fill the pages with, well, anything else.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq Body Count: War dead figures (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/15/06): Iraq Body Count currently puts the total number of civilian dead at 34,830 - 38,990.

The issue of counting the number of Iraqis killed since the US-led invasion is highly controversial and the figure is disputed. The US and UK military authorities do not record the number of civilians killed by their forces.