The Center for Justice and Accountability (cja.org) "works to deter torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world by helping survivors hold their persecutors accountable." It's a tricky time to be involved in an anti-torture project in the U.S., which makes this work all the more admirable. Be sure to see their resolutions in support of human rights with regard to the U.S..

Just in case you were wondering: Iraq Coalition Casualties Count (icasualties.org).

Unfortunate unilateral action of the week: It's one thing to pursue a dangerous criminal; it's another to simply bomb a village where the criminal may or may not be. BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | 'Zawahiri' strike sparks protest (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/14/06) has a grim, Keystone Cops sort of flavor that is completely discouraging. This approach is consistent with the US military approach to threats within Iraq, but that isn't helping, either.

A sad anniversary. BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay's unhappy anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/11/06). The 'war on terror (and international law) has meant that the US' lawless, foreign military gulag, Guantanamo Bay, has existed publicly for 4 years. The system that it is supporting has produced no successful convictions, just a long string of embarrassments as the men who were so hastily rounded up and deprived of their liberty are quietly dumped in or near their home countries.

Whoever thought the US would sink so low as this.

U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding: Documents Show Much of the Funding Diverted to Security, Justice System and Hussein Inquiry (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

An aside: the insurgency didn't actually get the money, despite the comment that the insurgency was eating money. It's just more polite to say that, rather than to point out the high overhead costs of an unpopular military occupation.

Photographs From Iraq: December 2005 : SF Indymedia (sf.indymedia.org)

The New Yorker: Fact: UP IN THE AIR - Where is the Iraq war headed next? by Seymour Hersh (12/5/05, newyorker.com).

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: "I said to the President, 'We are not winning the war.' And he asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.' The President, he said, 'appeared displeased' with that answer.

Hersch has published a variety of very interesting articles about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here's something I haven't thought much about, because it isn't often mentioned in the corporate media:

The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004.... Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance.

(Bold emphasis mine.) There are several interesting items in this particular Hersch article - go give it a read.

A look at the big picture. EducationGuardian.co.uk | eG weekly | Paul Rogers: Peace studies in our time (education.guardian.co.uk):

He explains the thesis: 'The real long-term conflict in the world is between an elite and the marginalised majority.' In it he describes the spectacle of a World Bank conference on poverty cocooned in a five-star hotel amid the squalor of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and the grotesqueness of a gated community in South Africa surrounded by a 33,000-volt fence.

It seems obvious that the developed world is pushing the overall world into a variety of painfully unjust, inequitable situations, and that there is resistance to this. What's funny is how rarely this situation is acknowledged.

He doesn't read the newspapers. Or the editorials. Or the interviews. Or the blogs. President Gives Both Reassurance, Warnings on Iraq (washingtonpost.com, 12/18/05):

'I don't think I got it wrong,' Cheney said. 'I think the vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what the United States did. I think they believe overwhelmingly that they're better off today than they were when Saddam Hussein ruled.'

Like a bad penny, he's back! Iraqi Oil Minister Resigns to Protest Higher Fuel Prices (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

...over the weekend, the government named Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister.

No way! NO WAY!

What the so-called war on terror is costing us at home, or, the perils of a government that engages in purposeless domestic spying. Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program (washingtonpost.com, 12/22/05):

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

'For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap,' said the official. 'They couldn't dream one up.'

They couldn't dream one up? What does that tell you about the folks doing the spying?

A Life, Wasted: Let's Stop This War Before More Heroes Are Killed, by Paul E. Schroeder (washingtonpost.com, 1/3/06) is an eloquent clarification of what it really means to LIVE as a hero, and a challenge to the near silent opposition to the war of so many.

He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either.

It's a good, but sad, read.

Everything is going great now, right? From a BBC Correspondent: Iraqi ship ploughs on in choppy waters (news.bbc.co.uk, 12/27/05):

So the Shias dominate, the Kurds are a strong minority, the secular are suffering but the Sunnis are protesting. Indeed the main Sunni grouping, the Iraq Accord Front, claiming fraud, is threatening to boycott the assembly if there is no re-run vote in some areas. Since there will be no re-run, it remains to be seen if this threat will be put into practice.

...And even if the Sunnis do join the assembly, it may be that they are simply opening up a new front to urge the removal of US and other foreign forces. It does not mean that the insurgency will end.

The election may be over but the war is not.

All of this makes you wonder why the Sunnis showed up for the election at all, doesn't it? They claim fraud, the correspondents shrug; the ticket that won the initial election won on an anti-occupation platform, but there's no way to make that happen under the system the Americans imposed...

I'm not including a quote from an American about how the country is likely to tear itself apart. But it's now being acknowledged at official levels to adjust American expectations.

The Iraqi election is supposed to be another victory and vindication of Bush, but... BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraqis condemn 'election fraud' (news.bbc.co.uk, 12/27/05)

Thousands of Iraqis have staged a protest in Baghdad about results from the recent parliamentary elections, which they say were tainted by fraud.

Of course, the US has been suffering from the same sort of electoral problems, so that's not really news here.

And now, a little levity. Voice Of God Revealed To Be Cheney On Intercom | The Onion - America's Finest News Source.

Freedom, democracy and other things we don't understand

Do you ever read the news, and think you're actually reading a clever parody? I've been having that experience quite a bit lately. I think my favorite recent experience was reading a New York Times article in which the paper - the paper of Judith Miller - expressed shock and horror at the idea of the US Government paying off Iraqi news outlets to print propaganda stories. This was on the front page - NOT, as you might think, on the "Irony" pages.

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If I had to choose the top stories about the moral, ethical, and political disaster that the war in Iraq has become, my top choice would surely be CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons, by Dana Priest (washingtonpost.com, 11/2/05). This article has inspired international investigations, carefully worded denials by foreign governments (some of which amount to selective confessions), court actions, and some dramatic concessions from the Bush Administration's Department of State about international law.

The gist of this report is that the U.S. now maintains a "hidden global internment network" beyond the reach of law.

[T]he CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

The CIA's response to these allegations? CIA prisons leak 'to be probed' (news.bbc.co.uk, 11/9/05) - yes, the CIA wants to engage in a criminal inquiry over LEAKING the information, not over the conduct itself. Their plans validate the information - they would not prosecute a leak if the information weren't true.

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I suppose the next topic would be the fact that the U.S. is admitting that Iraqi civilians have been killed. Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000 (washingtonpost.com, 12/13/05) is a strange concession to reality by an administration which, famously, has claimed it is impossible to know how many civilians have died as a result of its invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Bush's number is actually similar to a number tabulated by Iraqbodycount.net. Their figure, made by tabulated various reports, is in the high 20,000s. (See Iraq Body Count: War dead figures, news.bbc.co.uk, 12/14/05).

However, both figures are a fraction of the likely number of dead, as they are tabulated from media reports, which record very little of what happens to civilians. The BBC article also notes:

One study, published by the Lancet medical journal in October 2004, suggested that poor planning, air strikes by coalition forces and a "climate of violence" had led to more than 100,000 extra deaths in Iraq.

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The U.S.' nearly complete abandonment of Afghanistan has not been considered much of a news story. Even looking at the BBC link site, "Afghanistan's Future", there are a lot of discouragingly old articles.

It's as if that failed experiment in U.S. interventionism ceased to exist when things went bad. Current elections with dismally low turnout aren't making the effort something the U.S. government wants to call attention to right now. Five years in, rebuilding has largely been dropped, and stability isn't near at hand.

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U.S. Troop deaths are obviously news. Back in October, when the 2000th death was recorded, there was quite a fuss. (Americans are, after all, rather superstitious about numbers.) Death toll an awkward yardstick on Iraq (news.bbc.co.uk, 10/25/05) didn't give much hope that things would improve.

Meanwhile, a leading military think tank said continuing violence and instability was likely to mean US troops would probably have to remain in Iraq until well after the US presidential elections in 2008.

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The continually poor conditions in Baghdad are no longer news: they aren't new, by definition.

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Saddam Hussein's trial is also big news, but nothing is really happening in it, so far as can be interpreted from the news we get here.

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Scandals associated with the new Iraqi government and police forces engaging in prisoner abuses, sowing distrust and reminding everyone of the corrupt old regime, are a topic I posted about previously. I haven't noticed any "new" allegations, but it appears that the populace are coming to dread their police as they once dreaded the ousted regime's police.

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And then there are the elections in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I've posted a few links about those today (below): the more you read, the more you doubt that anyone is happy with the outcome.

Enjoy the collection of links below from stories which caught my interest recently. I haven't grouped them in any special order, but I hope you also find them interesting.

t r u t h o u t - Iraq Sunni, Shiite Groups Threaten Boycott of Government (truthout.org, 12/22/05):

Allawi representative Ibrahim al-Janabi took the accusations one step further and described last week's elections in all 18 provinces as 'fraudulent.'

"These elections are fraudulent, they are fraudulent, and the next parliament is illegitimate. We reject all this process," al-Janabi told a news conference.

Iraq parties unite to reject poll (news.bbc.co.uk, 12/22/05). 35 parties are allegeding widespread fraud in the current elections. The allegations from "Sunni Arab and secular parties" are being dismissed by other groups who think they'll gain. Which is a bad sign about the current system not really being set up to benefit everyone.

Not yet enjoying liberation. t r u t h o u t - Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed: Iraqis Have Dim Hopes for 2006 (truthout.org, 12/21/05):

The majority of Iraqis in Baghdad now fear the security forces, as dozens of people each week are 'disappeared' by police and soldiers around the city and new torture chambers have been discovered recently. . . .

"Nothing is good in Iraq now," said the doctor. "Torture, detained friends, pillaging of houses, seeing neighbors suffering from poverty, no electricity, no water and gun fights everywhere. We have no relief from this suffering now."

Truth, democracy... Well, okay, just democracy. Sort of.

One of the more interesting stories of recent U.S. persuasion efforts was the news that the US has to pay off the press in Iraq to get the sort of perspectives they want to appear in the newly "free" press. U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press (latimes.com, 11/30/05) provides some unfortunate and fascinating information about the workings of PR firms in the employment of the Pentagon, who generate propaganda, translate it, and distribute it.

[My first thought was that, if they have to TRANSLATE it into Arabic, they're not using the right people. But this is an American operation, so letting actual Iraqis write the propaganda directly probably wouldn't work - because Americans might not think they were "in charge."]

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled 'The Role of Press in a Democratic Society.

I think my favorite part of the article is this:

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

One of the disturbing side effects of this scandal has been a lax attitude toward the entire idea of propaganda in "free" societies. Rather than complete condemnation of this tactic, there are now casual debates on news programs about the relative appropriateness of undermining ACTUAL freedom of speech with purchased government propaganda, which is justified by saying that the purpose is important.

That lesson about the ends justifying the means? We haven't learned that yet.

And that important purpose for which we are disposing of the free press and an open society? Yes, it's part of an extraordinarily belated effort to - say it with me - win hearts and minds. Having the U.S. military bombing Iraqis didn't win their hearts or minds, but manipulating their newspapers will surely make them feel better, according to this logic.

I think the U.S. public has become so accustomed to being lied to by its leaders, that this fails to shock to the extent it should.