Web www.williambowles.info

thomasfbarton@earthlink.net Print it out: color best. Pass it on.

SOMETIMES DREAMS COME TRUE

[Thanks to David Honish, Veterans For Peace, who sent this in.]

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Local Marine Killed Serving In Iraq

May 26 The Piedmont Channel

Marine Adam Lucas, of Greensboro, was killed by enemy fire early Friday morning while serving in Iraq, WXII12 News reported.

Lucas, 20, left for Iraq two months ago and was set to come home in the fall, his father said.

The soldier planned to get married next year and drive his truck again, which was still parked in his parents’ driveway.

He last spoke with his family on Mother’s Day.

Lucas attended Northwest Guilford High School.

Cobra Down In Resistance Territory:
2 Marines Missing

05/27/06 AP

A U.S. Marine AH-1 Cobra helicopter crashed in an insurgent stronghold in western Iraq on Saturday, and two crew members were missing, the U.S. military said.

The helicopter was on a maintenance test flight when it went down, and search-and-rescue efforts were under way, the statement said.

“We are using all the resources available to find our missing comrades,” Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Salas said.

The statement did not specify where exactly the helicopter crashed in Anbar, a huge, insurgent-infested province extending from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders.

Resistance Snipers Targeting U.S. Digital Cameras:
“Falluja Has Resurfaced As A Major Stronghold Of Anti-U.S. Resistance”

May 22, 2006 By Mursi Abu Taug, Azzaman

Anti-U.S. rebels active in areas west of Baghdad have turned their wrath against the highly advanced digital cameras U.S. troops have installed to monitor their movement.

The cameras can monitor movement of people at least three kilometers away and have apparently restricted the rebels’ ability to raid U.S. camps.

Residents say they have counted at least 35 such cameras guarding U.S. troops’ concentrations close to the restive city of Falluja.

And recently several of these high-tech cameras were destroyed mainly by rebel sniper fire.

U.S. troops have introduced latest technologies in their bid to quell the rebellion against their presence in the country.

The rebels use Baghdad and the areas west, east and north of it as a main base for their attacks.

Falluja has resurfaced as a major stronghold of anti-U.S. resistance despite a massive U.S. assault that had almost turned the city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants into ruins.

Rebel attacks have intensified recently and the U.S. finds it increasingly difficult to subdue the city.

The Americans control all entrances to the city and have remote control digital cameras guarding volatile quarters.

But the rebels still find ways to infiltrate Falluja and mount suicide raids on U.S. convoys.

U.S. troops are also targeted by rebels stationed outside the U.S.-controlled cordon.

Massacre In Haditha:
The Chickens Come Home To Roost

[Thanks to Phil G., who sent this in. He writes: I think the “total breakdown in morality” began a little earlier than this. –PG]

[For more, see GI SPECIAL 4D12: THE HADITHA MASSACRE, April 12, 2006 at
www.williambowles.info/gispecial/ 2006/0406/120406/gi_4d12_120406.html]

May 27, 2006 By Tony Perry and Julian E. Barnes, L.A. Times Staff Writers & May 28, 2006 Paul Harris in Washington and David Smith in Basra, The Observer

Photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team have convinced investigators that a Marine unit killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them “execution-style,” in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed an American in November, officials close to the investigation said Friday.

The pictures are said to show wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, who included several women and six children. Some were shot in the head and some in the back, congressional and defense officials said.

One government official said the pictures showed that infantry Marines from Camp Pendleton “suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results.”

Claims that US marines massacred Iraqi civilians threaten to undermine public support for keeping British troops in the country, the UK’s most senior military officer said yesterday. The Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, said that reports of the unprovoked killing of up to two dozen unarmed Iraqis would be ‘appalling’ if proved accurate.

Of the dead Iraqis, 19 were in three to four houses that Marines stormed, officials said. Five others were killed near a vehicle.

Some lawmakers are asking the Marine Corps why an investigation wasn’t launched earlier if the intelligence team’s pictures contradicted the squad’s account.

The pictures from the intelligence team would probably have been given to the battalion intelligence officer, and they should have raised questions immediately, one congressional aide said.

The intelligence teams typically comprise Marine Corps reservists, often police officers or other law enforcement officials in civilian life who travel with active-duty battalions or regiments. [Well gee, this is really hard to figure out. You get a bunch of cops who spend their lives covering up each others’ murders of unarmed civilians reviewing the evidence? What did you expect? T]

A documentary shown this week on the A&E Network detailed the frustrations of a company of Marine reservists who had 23 members killed and 36 wounded during a deployment last year in Haditha.

One Marine sergeant, in an interview after his unit had returned to Columbus, Ohio, remembered a raid in which he burst into a home and came close to killing two women and a teenage boy out of rage for the deaths of fellow Marines. Sgt. Guy Zierk, interviewed in the documentary, “Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company,” said he knew at that point that he had been in Iraq too long.

MORE:

The Guilty

[Thanks to Phil G, who sent this in.]

May 27, 2006 By Joshua Holland, AlterNet [Excerpt]

The guilty include not only the Bush administration’s hardliners who conjured up this war, but also the Democratic hawks who enabled them and the media that spun their glorious war narrative and convinced so many ordinary citizens to jump on board.

[Z writes: Ishikawa and Kuroshima would understand: insert troops into a hell on earth and there’s no way to prevent atrocities. Yet the real fiends in their capital suites are never spattered with a single drop of blood. Solidarity, Z]

U.S. Campaign To Recruit More Resistance Fighters Doing Just Fine

5.27.06 Reuters

U.S. snipers were operating from the safety of houses in Ramadi.

Stuart McDill reports

SOUNDBITE: “They came to our house for dinner and while I was driving them home there was an American convoy in front of us and they opened fire on our car and killed my cousin.”

Government Loses Control Of Baquba As Rebels Intensify Attacks

May 11, 2006 By Samah al-Makhzoumi, Azzaman

Rebels spread control over most of Diyala Province of which the city of Baquba is the capital.

The city’s nearly 350,000 live in a state of terror as the security forces charged with keeping law and order can hardly protect themselves.

Fearing for their lives, many government employees have left their jobs. Government offices and vehicles are targets of frequent attacks and even schools and colleges in the city are not spared.

On Wednesday 11 government officials were killed and three others seriously wounded. The gunmen had stopped a bus carrying the officials, told the passengers to get off, separated men from women. They forced the men to stand in a straight line and opened fire on them as terrifying women looked on.

Baquba is only 50 kilometers to the northeast of Baghdad which U.S. forces have yet to subdue.

REALLY BAD IDEA:
NO MISSION;
HOPELESS WAR:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

U.S. Marines from 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment’s Kilo Company run across a war-battered road to avoid snipers on their way back to a base at the headquarters of the provincial government of Anbar province during a patrol in Ramadi April 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Todd Pitman)

Notes From A Lost War:
“It Is Nearly Impossible To Tell The Good Guys From The Bad”

May 27, 2006 Anna Badkhen, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer [Excerpts]

On a moonless, hazy night, a willowy shadow of a man holding an AK-47 lurked in an empty east Baghdad alley behind a row of rusted, empty market stalls. As an American convoy approached, the man disappeared into the dark. The U.S. armored humvees rattled past the alley.

Who was he, and what was he doing out in the street after the midnight curfew?

The soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division who saw him said he was probably a member of one of the many vigilante teams that have sprung up in this heavily Shiite region of Baghdad and all across Iraq’s capital. Not trusting U.S. or Iraqi forces to defend them, neighborhoods are setting up their own militias and checkpoints.

“It’s a way of people saying: ‘Not in my street,’ “ said Capt. Brandon Iker of the 10th Mountain Division, whose 1-87 infantry battalion of the 1st brigade patrols Ghazaliya, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad.

But the man behind the cordon of market stalls also could have been one of the thousands of plainclothes security forces with questionable loyalties.

Or he could have been an insurgent plotting an attack on American or Iraqi forces.

U.S. military officers acknowledge that Baghdadis have a legitimate reason to want to protect their streets and mosques.

But they also worry that such self-styled neighborhood guards are adding to the number of plainclothes gunmen fighting for control over parts of the city, and that most of the time it is nearly impossible to tell the good guys from the bad.

The fact that insurgents use quiet neighborhoods and mosques to plot their operations and store ammunition makes it even harder to tell between the neighborhood watch and the elusive insurgents.

TROOP NEWS

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

April 28, 2005 National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 152

“Vets Angered By What They Saw And Did In Vietnam Used Oleo Strut And Other Places As Rallying Points For Antiwar Protests”
“The GI Movement Was Born”

May 19, 2006 Christina Talcott, The Washington Post Company

Film Notes

Filmmaker David Zeiger says his Vietnam War documentary “Sir! No Sir!” emerged only during “the ramp-up before the Iraq war, which was what forced me to make the film.”

Zeiger’s career has included the “Senior Year” series on PBS (about students at Los Angeles’s diverse Fairfax High School) and his 2003 concert film, “Night of Ferocious Joy,” featuring Ozomatli, the Coup, Blackalicious and other groups.

Three years ago, Zeiger realized it was time to tell a story from his youth: In 1969, the 19-year-old dropped out of college and moved to Killeen, Tex., to work at the Oleo Strut coffee shop just outside the Fort Hood Army base.

That coffee shop was one of a network of venues set up for soldiers, especially those just back from the war, to relax and socialize off-base. (”Oleo strut” refers to an aircraft shock absorber.)

Soon enough, vets angered by what they saw and did in Vietnam used Oleo Strut and other places as rallying points for antiwar protests, and the GI Movement was born.

“I felt that I had a big burden,” Zeiger says. “I knew how diverse and intense and wild this movement was, and I knew that this was really the only chance I had to make a movie about this movement. . . . A lot depended on it because these were the years that shaped their lives.

“It was this history that had been buried, covered up, and I owed it to them to do it right.”

“Sir! No Sir!” chronicles the GI Movement from 1965 to 1975, blending archival footage with interviews of Vietnam veterans (many of whom were jailed for protesting) and civilian antiwar activists (including Jane Fonda).

He also examines how the GI Movement was covered up by politicians, movies and rumors.

Zeiger used clips from national news programs and displays of troops’ underground newspapers and included scenes from other documentaries and soldiers’ personal home movies.

More than 30 years after it ended, the Vietnam War is still a hot-button topic in this country, and Zeiger acknowledges that the participants in his film took risks in allowing on-camera interviews:

“There are stories in this that are very damning of the war and of the military and government. . . . The risk is drawing fire from the other side, from people who’ve always denied that this happened. . . . You can say what you want about the film, about individuals . . . but you can’t deny that this (the GI Movement) happened and that it represented a very significant group of soldiers.”

One story the film recounts, then dismisses as fiction, is the often-repeated one about antiwar protesters spitting on returning vets and calling them baby-killers.

“People rattle this off as if it were fact, like the assassination of Martin Luther King,” Zeiger says. “I take no credit for (disproving it): it was Jerry Lembcke,” whose book “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam” contends that those stories were largely fabricated to denigrate protesters, citing a lack of photographic evidence and the incident’s improbability.

Though the film makes no mention of the Iraq war, Zeiger himself finds many similarities.

He calls “incredibly hypocritical” the government’s reaction to reports of brutality, especially the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and torture at Abu Ghraib: “The antiwar people usually say these are the logical results of how the war is conducted, with the blame going all the way up to George Bush and Rumsfeld, or Nixon and Kissinger.

Meanwhile, the government turns around and says, ‘No, it was the soldiers, the low-level officers and GIs,’” calling the acts isolated incidents of aberrant behavior.

Zeiger says that, despite the parallels, Iraq isn’t simply a mirror of Vietnam.

Still, he says, “the people in this country who are not being isolated from or protected from the war in Iraq are the troops. And they’re no different from anyone else, they’re just as capable as anyone of knowing right from wrong.”

Sir! No Sir!:
At A Theatre Near You!
To find it: www.sirnosir.com/

MORE:

“Soldiers Were Also Refusing To Go On Patrol, And Officers Who Ordered Them To Undertake Dangerous Patrols Were Putting Their Own Lives At Risk”
“With This Avoidance Of Combat Went Political Resistance”

Vietnam: They Stopped An Imperial War

[Thanks to William Bowles who sent this in. Check out his work at ww.williambowles.info/ ]

25.5.2006 James M Skelly, openDemocracy Ltd

In his book Home from the War, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton summed up the sentiments of soldiers who had realised the absurdity of their situation in Vietnam.

The basic response was: “I don’t know why I’m here. You don’t know why you’re here. But since we’re both here, we might as well try to do a good job and do our best to stay alive.”

The deeper problem for American soldiers in Vietnam was that the war had lost its mythic status. As Lawrence LeShan notes, such wars “are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is: organized murder”.

However, the political and military leadership during Vietnam did everything they could to maintain that this was not what the conflict was about.

In his book, Rumor of War, Philip Caputo wrote about his experience in Vietnam as a platoon leader charged with the murder of two civilians by the unit under his command. The army wanted to try him as a common criminal, because, Caputo argued, the civilian deaths could not be revealed as the inevitable product of the war itself. Caputo believed the truth could not be spoken of because it would have raised “the question of the morality of the American intervention in Vietnam.”

So many responded to this crisis of meaning by avoiding combat and resisting the war effort, that it eventually became clear that the war could not be won.

In 1971, in an article in Armed Forces Journal titled “The Collapse of the Armed Forces”, marine Colonel Robert Heinl wrote that by mid-1971 there had been 4,400 active-duty applicants for conscientious-objector status; at any given time 10% of active-duty personnel had either deserted or were absent without official leave; between 1966 and 1971 the Pentagon reported over 500,000 “incidents of desertion” (meaning that soldiers were absent for more than thirty days).

Soldiers were also refusing to go on patrol, and officers who ordered them to undertake dangerous patrols were putting their own lives at risk. In three and a half years, according to Heinl, there were 551 reported incidents of “fragging”, the practice of throwing fragmentation grenades into the tents of officers thought too demanding. These attacks killed eighty-six and left 700 wounded.

With this avoidance of combat went political resistance.

A government-sponsored survey found that 25% of the lower ranks participated in what were called dissident activities and 79% were open to such activities.

In 1970 and 1971 there were ninety underground anti-war newspapers published by soldiers, twenty-six anti-war coffee houses located near military bases, as well as several anti-war organisations for active-duty military personnel (such as the Concerned Officers’ Movement in which I was involved).

Sir! No Sir!:
At A Theatre Near You!
To find it: www.sirnosir.com/

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed services. Send requests to address up top.

“One, Two, Three Many Olympias”:
“We Are Working To Stop The War Machine By Standing In Front Of The Machines Of War As They Attempt To Enter Our Port”

[Photo from Ron Jacobs]

From: Ron Jacobs
To: GI Special
Sent: May 27, 2006
Subject: One, Two, Three Many Olympias

There’s a great tradition amongst the world’s citizenry that is perhaps best expressed in the words spoken by the late Berkeley radical Mario Savio. It was during the Free Speech actions of 1964 that were aimed against the University of California’s repressive administrative dictates against student and staff political activity that Mario said:

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Now, there are many folks around the world that have felt that the operation of the machine has been odious for a long time, and there’s more of us joining every day, but there are very few examples of anyone putting their bodies on any gear.

I suggest that is why we find ourselves in the state we are in today. Too many of us have given up on stopping the machine from working at all. If there was ever a better time to awake from our slumber, that time is now. The litany of death, repression, and exploitation of every form imaginable has grown too long. As others have started to hint at, the time for mere protest is over.

In Olympia, Washington, a small town with a sizable number of citizens that are opposed to Washington DC’s wars and other excesses of the imperial state, there have been a number of actions that attempted to prevent the loading of ships that were bound for the battlefields of Iraq.

These actions stepped up a notch or two during the week of May 22-28th, 2006.

For those of you a little thin on US geography, Olympia is at the southern-most tip of the Puget Sound—the part of the Pacific Ocean that serves the much larger ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Yet, the Port of Olympia does a fair amount of cargo business.

Given the close proximity of Fort Lewis, one of the larger US Army bases that is home to the so-called Stryker Brigade, it has become on e of the ports used to keep the troops in Iraq supplied with weaponry and other tools of war, most notably the Stryker Fighting Vehicle itself..

I used to live in Olympia from 1987 until 1992. During that time, we organized several protests and direct actions against the US wars in Central America and the middles East. There were several other radical impulses growing in town at the time, as well. Without delving into those, let it suffice to say that the movement that was built against the first Gulf War in 1991-1992 created enough stability among anti-imperialists and other folks opposed to war to organize a permanent anti-imperial and anti-racist group in the town.

That group, known as the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (OMJP), dissolved and then reformed after the events of September 11, 2001. OMJP serves as an umbrella for many other groups with parallel philosophies. It is one of these ad hoc groups within OMJP that organized the aforementioned actions. That group calls itself the Port Militarization Resistance (PMR).

In a recent statement to the community and the media, OMJP and PMR spoke about the complicity of the common citizen. In part, it read :

“The weapons shipments, and the use of our public property to prolong and supply the war in Iraq have made us complicit in crimes against humanity. We refuse to be complicit any longer. We will continue to utilize every available instrument of democracy, including direct action and disruption when necessary. We are working to stop the war machine by standing in front of the machines of war as they attempt to enter our port.
“
Just as soldiers have a responsibility to disobey unlawful orders we have a responsibility to refuse to cooperate with the American Empire.

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

In an effort to get the story from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, I sent some questions via email to the spokespeople for Port Militarization Resistance. What follows is the exchange between one of the spokespeople, Drew Hendricks and myself.

Ron: What’s going on up there in Olympia with the convoy blockades? Are the trucks being blockaded military vehicles? What are they carrying and where are the materials bound?

Drew: The vehicles being blocked are a type of combat vehicle known as the Stryker Vehicle. They are armored vehicles with mounted weapons and they each carry troops into patrols or battles. Sixteen people (as of Thursday) have been arrested for blocking the movement of these vehicles, in various ways, toward the Port and from there to the war in Iraq.

Ron: Can you give me a brief history of what came before the current protests? Does Olympia invite the supply ships to their port or were they forced on them by the US government?

Drew: Military shipments began in 2004, and have continued sporadically since then. So far, this is the first combat brigade to go OUT through the Port of Olympia. We have seen tanks and other weapons arriving in Olympia, but blocking them from re-entering the US seemed to us to be inappropriate, despite the fact we don’t support the Port profiting from the war.

The Port Commissioners have been asked if they had invited the military to use our Port, and they have been quoted in the local corporate newspaper to the effect that they did solicit the business of the Military. But I have not seen any memo or document which says this is the case, and I did not conduct the interview I remember. I’m not sure I can even cite when it was published…

Ron: What kind of support do you all sense for the current actions? Do you think the current actions are crystallizing the contradictions of each citizen’s complicity in US imperialism? Or are they just pissing people off across the board?

Drew: We have certainly angered many people who do not understand what we are doing, and they have been vocal about their misconceptions and their anger in many forums. Some people who do know what we are attempting are also angry – but I have not heard from any of them directly. No one I have read so far actually defends Empire. Most are in denial that we are, in fact, complicit in supporting Empire through this use of our public property. We have not had any polling done to see what the average responses would be.

Ron: What kind of charges are people being arrested on?

Drew: I was arrested at 3:15AM on Tuesday, May 23rd for Burglary, Second Degree.

I was held for 14 hours in Thurston County Jail and then charged with Trespassing, Second Degree. I was released on personal recognizance until trial. I have not yet received my court date. Most others have been arrested by OPD (Olympia Police department) or Thurston County Sheriff’s Department in the streets outside of the Port’s marine terminal, and were held for a few hours. Some were not charged, and some were detained and released at the scene. Most arrests have been for pedestrian interference.

Ron: These attempts to actually prevent material support to the US war reminds me of similar actions during the US wars on Vietnam and Central America.

The Vietnam Day Committee troop train blockades in the East Bay, the attempts to block trains in San Diego that Olympia resident Peter Bohmer was involved in, and the train blockades during the US wars in Central America that resulted in Brian Willson losing his legs are the examples I recall the easiest. Do you think that these actions in Olympia can move beyond the primarily symbolic affect of the aforementioned acts?

Drew: We have not been destroying the crated material, damaging the combat vehicles, or dumping the cranes into the Sound, so the protests are likely to remain symbolic. The only way I can see the actions move beyond that symbolic effect is if they are emulated all across the country and we start to have a national conversation about what we are doing locally to stop the war in Iraq.

Ron: If so, how?

Drew: The only way I can see the actions move beyond that symbolic effect is if they are emulated all across the country and we start to have a national conversation about what we are doing locally to stop the war in Iraq.

Ron: How long do the groups organizing these actions intend for them to last?

Drew: As long as we draw breath and the military occupies our port. We have only so far planned for the next day. Each day, we change tactics slightly. Each day we brainstorm new ways to make this work better.

Ron: Anything else?

Drew: We’re considering how to resist the arrival of a ship. We’re frightened of the possibility that the Coast Guard will shoot us. We’re trying to figure out how to accomplish one without the other.

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

(Before I sent this article out, I received a short missive from a young woman named Rosaire. The message was sent to me via Sandy Mayes, one of the members of the collective that publishes Olympia’s monthly alternative newspaper, Works In Progress. Her message provides another view on the nature of the protests and the response from Olympia’s citizens.)

Rosaire: Hi Ron, I only have a few things to add to Drew’s comments.

I would like to add that the response from the majority of people has been positive. Throughout this campaign many people have gathered at intersections – myself one of them, with signs protesting the war.

The support from drivers has been very supportive.

There are a few middle fingers and “get a job”s, but they are few compared to the number of thumbs-up and two-fingered peace signs.

Also, I have a few words to say about the symbolic nature of the civil disobedience. I agree with Drew, that if this is going to be effective in the terms of actual stoppage, that more people throughout the country need to be doing these actions, but I would also add that we need to draw in more from the Olympia community too.

Right now, these activities are being done by a handful of very dedicated people, and for the most part, the arrest have been completely spontaneous – which can be both good and bad. We don’t just need more actions, but must also improve on the quality of our actions – both in the terms of numbers and forethought.

For those reasons, I think it is a bit fanciful to view the main objective of these actions as stoppage, and judge it as such. Currently, that goal just is not possible.

Instead, I think we ought to view the main objective of these actions as inspiration to others – as a shot hear around the world, or at least in our community. We are setting an example that others can mimic, draw from, and improve on. Judged in those terms, I think we are being, and will continue to be, quite successful.

Ron: Thanks a lot and keep up the good work. May there be many more such actions across the country.

A Private In The U.S. Army Gets $3,104 Per Month:
Gen. T. Franks (Ret’d) Gets $5 Million For His Memoirs

5/3/2006 Aljazeera

Another important war profiteer is Tommy Ray Franks, a U.S. retired General who led the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein and was commander-in-chief of the American occupation forces.

He is now collecting $5 million for his memoirs. Reports say Camden Country, New Jersey authorities paid Franks $75,000 for one speech.

Also Paul Bremer, who led the Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion, gets as much as $40,000 per speech. He too received a $100,000 advance for his book. One must wonder what exactly can these people say about the Iraq War debacle, except not to launch a war without proof.

A private in the U.S. Army gets $3,104.00 per month. A captain receives $3,637.00 a month. A one star general makes $12,809. Each category includes an extra $625 a month for combat pay.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Assorted Resistance Action

A police vehicle in which a policeman was killed and an officer wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in the western district of Mansour in Baghdad May 27, 2006. (AP Photo/Asaad Muhsin)

27 May 2006 Reuters & AFP & Xinhua

In Baquba, gunmen shot up the convoy of Kahtan al-Bawi, chief office administrator for the police and brother of city chief of police Gassan al-Bawi, killing him and two other officers. Two other bodyguards were seriously wounded.

Three police officers were wounded in a roadside bombing west of the city.

An Iraqi army major was killed and three soldiers were wounded when guerrillas in a car blocked their patrol and opened fire on a main road 40 km (25 miles) south of Kirkuk, police said.

Police Colonel Kamil Guaim was seriously wounded when a roadside bomb went off near his house in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

In Baghdad, one police officer was killed wounding three others when a bomb was set off against their patrol in the upscale Mansur district, an interior ministry source said.

Another two police officers were shot dead in separate incidents in Tikrit and another in Kirkuk.

Two Iraqi army soldiers were killed and three wounded in an attack on an army checkpoint near Dujail, north of Baghdad, police said.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

“Terrorism is simply the violence that you don’t like.” Phil Rees, BBC correspondent

“The U.S. Military, In Fact, Is No Longer Pursuing A Strategy For ‘Victory’”
“Bush Doesn’t Know That He Can’t Achieve Victory”

05/25/06 By Sidney Blumenthal, Salon [Excerpts]

Bush has been proclaiming Iraq at a turning point for years.

“Turning point” is a frequent and recurring talking point, often taken up by the full chorus of the president (”We’ve reached another great turning point,” Nov. 6, 2003; “A turning point will come in less than two weeks,” June 18, 2004), vice president (”I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I’ll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point,” Feb. 7, 2006), secretary of state and secretary of defense, and ringing down the echo chamber.

This latest “turning point” reveals an Iraqi state without a social contract, a government without a center, a prime minister without power and an American president without a strategy.

In his speech on Monday referring to another “turning point,” President Bush twice spoke of “victory.”

“Victory” is the constant theme he has adopted since last summer, when he hired public opinion specialist Peter Feaver for the National Security Council. Feaver’s research claims that the public will sustain military casualties so long as it is persuaded that they will lead to “victory.”

Bush clings to this P.R. formula to explain, at least to himself, the decline of his political fortunes. “Because we’re at war, and war unsettles people,” he said in an interview with NBC News last week.

To make sense of the disconcerting war, he imposes his familiar framework of us vs. them, “the enemy” who gets “on your TV screen by killing innocent people” against himself.

Newsweek reported this week that the U.S. military, in fact, is no longer pursuing a strategy for “victory.” “It is consolidating to several ‘superbases’ in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state.

Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure, and casualties, inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared.

But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq’s chaos in the region.”

Yet Bush continues to declare as his goal (with encouragement from his polling expert on the NSC) the victory that the U.S. military has given up on.

Bush doesn’t know that he can’t achieve victory.

He doesn’t know that seeking victory worsens his prospects. He doesn’t know that the U.S. military has abandoned victory in the field, though it has been reporting that to him for years.

But the president has no rhetoric beyond “victory.”

With every proclaimed “turning point,” “victory” becomes ever more evanescent.

He has no policy for victory and no politics beyond victory.

“That’s One Reason Why They’re Shooting At U.S. Soldiers”

5/3/2006 Aljazeera

Commenting on the effect of the massive theft of Iraqi wealth, Alan Grayson, a Virginia attorney involved in filing lawsuits against contractors, said: “Like a colonial power, the Bush administration took Iraq’s oil money, and wasted it. The Iraqis well know that. That’s one reason why they’re shooting at U.S. soldiers.”

What do you think? Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Send to thomasfbarton@earthlink.net. Name, I.D., address withheld unless publication requested. Replies confidential.

Bring The Troops Home, Or Send Your Own

May 26, 2006 By Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi-American doctor, quoted by David Swanson, Afterdowningstreet.org

Many Iraqis want the tanks and planes to leave and electricity and water to stay. They want employment, security, and a decent quality of life.

As scores of Iraqis die every day, it does not matter if you call it civil war, sectarian strife, or democracy; it is, by design, an American killing field, a smokescreen for stealing oil, and for establishing permanent military bases to defend American business interests.

Bring the troops home, or send your own.

“Yes, We Should Pray For The Troops”
“We Should Pray That The Troops Come Home Now”

May 20, 2006 by Laurence M. Vance, Lew Rockwell.com [Excerpt]

Yes, we should pray for the troops.

We should pray that the troops come home. We should pray that the troops come home now.

We should pray that the blood of not one more American soldier is shed on foreign soil.

We should pray for the healing of the thousands of U.S. soldiers who have been injured in the senseless Iraq war.

We should pray for an end to this unconstitutional, immoral, and unjust war. We should pray that Congress ends funding for this war.

We should pray that Bush leaves office a disgraced commander in chief.

We should pray that young, impressionable students are not ensnared by military recruiters. We should pray that pastors stop recommending military service to their young men (and women). We should pray that families stop supplying cannon fodder to the military. We should pray that the troops actually start defending this country instead of every other country. We should pray for a change in U.S. foreign policy that can make this all possible.

It is my hope and prayer that this Armed Forces Day serve as day of reckoning as to the true nature of the U.S. military.

The troops must be brought home, not just from Iraq, but from every corner of the globe.

The military must be scaled back to coincide with a return to the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Founders.

U.S. soldiers should be limited protecting our shores, guarding our borders, and patrolling our coasts.

The peace of the world depends on it.

[The Lord helps those who help themselves.]

OCCUPATION REPORT

“About 150 Angry Protestors Took To The Streets In Wasit City”
“Liars And Fear Merchants”

8 May 2006 (IRIN)

Residents of Wasit province, some 160km south of Baghdad, have accused local officials of corruption and collaboration with black-market fuel dealers.

“Local officials are ordering fuel stations to close as early as 3:00 p.m. on the pretence that the security situation is bad,” said Jassim Mohamed, 47, a taxi driver. “But in reality, they’re encouraging these stations to sell fuel on the black market. Officials are making money by creating the crisis.”

On 4 May, about 150 angry protestors took to the streets in Wasit city, the provincial capital, blocking roads and burning tyres close to a nearby a fuel station. Along with claims of corruption over fuel distribution, protestors also blamed local officials for neglecting to set up generators and provide the province with adequate electricity.

Like many Iraqis, Kudheir Yassin, 36, is forced to buy fuel from the black market to avoid hours-long queues at legitimate petrol stations. For this he pays prices that are some 60 percent higher than the highest prices at local gas stations. “I can’t waste hours in a queue and then be told to come back tomorrow,” Yassin said. “So I have to buy from the black market to supply my car and generators.”

Yassin went on to note that dozens of industrial power generators had been sent by the central government in Baghdad, “but provincial officials say they can’t operate them due to lack of fuel”. With citizens receiving an average of only five hours of electricity a day, Yassin went on to accuse local officials of being “liars and fear merchants”.

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

[Thanks to David Honish, Veterans For Peace, who sent this in.]

Bush Regime Idiots Declare War On Allergy Meds Buyers:
I.D. Required Now To Buy Children’s Motrin:
Keeping A List Of Buyers For The Government Will Stop Evildoers!

May 22, 2006 By Janelle Nanos, New York Magazine

If civil-liberties-minded New Yorkers were already annoyed by the USA Patriot Act, the recent arrival of the worst allergy season in 50 years (this month, the city jumped from 88th to 11th on the list of worst U.S. cities for allergies) has really made it hit home.

The revision of the act, signed by President Bush on March 9, takes aim at an insidious threat to our nation: Sudafed, Claritin-D, and Children’s Motrin.

These over-the-counter meds use the decongestant pseudoephedrine (PSE), which is also used to make crystal meth. The revamped Patriot Act, which went into effect in April, limited each sale of PSE-containing drugs to 3.6 grams (about 120 pills) per person per day.

In September, drugstores will be required to move them behind the counter and enter the buyer’s name in a registry that tracks sales.

Many larger chains are already requiring I.D., turning checkout into something Soviet-esque.

Within days of the new regulations, parents were already getting sniffly (”I hate that I can’t buy more than one box of Claritin-D at a time; I missed out on a great sale”) on Urbanbaby.com.

New York DEA agent Matthew Barnes explains that it takes about ten packages of Sudafed, combined with ingredients such as antifreeze, lye, battery acid, and fertilizer, to produce one ounce of meth.

Despite the fact that 70 percent of meth is smuggled in from Mexico-border “superlabs,” Barnes says that the new restrictions will help hinder meth production in “small toxic labs” throughout the country.

Lawyer and Rite Aid customer Eric Amin worries the government registry could be used to track and deport sneezy immigrants.

To avoid the hassle of giving his information, he bought nasal spray.

SATAN

“ The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan.” US Marine Colonel Gareth Brandl (Photo May 25, 2006. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

[Thanks to Phil G, who sent this in.]

Welcome To Occupied Baltimore:
Home Of Stupid Criminals In Police Uniforms;
Couple Arrested For Asking For Directions

May 17, 2006 WBAL

BALTIMORE: Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions .

“In jail for eight hours — sleeping on a concrete floor next to a toilet,” Kelly said.

“It was a nightmare,” Brook said. “I was in there thinking I was just dreaming and waiting to wake up.”

Collins reported it was a nightmare ending to a nearly perfect day. He said the couple went to a company picnic and watched the Orioles beat Kansas City. It was their first trip to Camden Yards and asked two people for directions to Interstate 95 South when they left.

Collins said somehow they ended up in the Cherry Hill section of south Baltimore. Hopelessly lost, relief melted away concerns after they spotted a police vehicle.

“I said, ‘Thank goodness, could you please get us to 95?” Kelly said.

“The first thing that she said to us was no — you just ran that stop sign, pull over,” Brook said. “It wasn’t a big deal. We’ll pay the stop sign violation, but can we have directions?”

“What she said was ‘You found your own way in here, you can find your own way out.’” Kelly said.

Collins said the couple spotted another police vehicle and flagged that officer down for directions. But Officer Natalie Preston, a six-year veteran of the force, intervened.

“That really threw us for a loop when she stepped in between our cars,” Kelly said. “(She) said my partner is not going to step in front of me and tell you directions if I’m not.”

Collins reported the circumstances got worse. Kelly pulled 40 feet forward parking next to a curb and put his flashers on while Brook was on the phone to her father hoping he could help her with directions. Both her parents are police officers in the Harrisburg, Pa., area.

“(Brook’s father) was in the middle of giving us directions when the officer screeched up behind us and got out of the car and asked me to step out. I obeyed,” Kelly said. “I obeyed everything — stepped out of the car, put my hands behind my back, and the next thing I know, I was getting arrested for trespassing.”

“By this time, I was completely in tears,” Brook said. “I said, ‘Ma’am, you know, we just need your help. We are not trying to cause you any trouble. I’m not leaving him here.’ What she did was walk over to my side of the car and said, ‘Ok, we are taking you downtown, too.’”

Collins said the couple was released from jail without being charged with anything.

Brook is now concerned the arrest may complicate a criminal background check she’s going through in her job as a child care worker.

Collins said police left Kelly’s car unlocked and the windows down at the impound lot. He reported a cell phone charger, pair of sunglasses and 20 CDs were stolen.

Baltimore City police said they are looking into the incident. [And the check is in the mail.]

Received:

“My Heart Goes Out To You”

From: Agnes Nicolay
To: GI Special
Sent: May 27, 2006

Hi.

I just came across the story about the awful disrepectful treatment of your fallen Soldiers in Iraq.

I am a 63 year old widow living in Britain and I find it so awful and disgusting of hearing about this. It is very disturbing for me to hear that your brave soldiers are not being giving the respect due to them.

I just want to say I am so sorry for you and all the others and hope the Army will have the decency to admit that changes are due.

The Military should stop thinking about the cost and have some compassion in their hearts. I bet it would be different if it would be one of their own sons. If you have the opportunity you can tell them that people in Britain are disgusted over this.

My heart goes out to you and the other families.

God bless you all.

Linde
(United Kingdom)

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Telling the truth – about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington – is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance – whether it’s in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you’ve read, we hope that you’ll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.  www.traveling-soldier.org/  And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.net

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