ENOUGH:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

U.S. Army Spc. Caleb Joye, of Manning, South Carolina, resting on the roof of a house in Ramadi June 19, 2006. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
“The Degradation Of U.S. Forces In Iraq Is A Direct Consequence Of The Derangement Of Political Leadership In Washington”
“Rumsfeld Is Incapable Of Telling The President That There Is No Battle, No Campaign, That Can Win The War”

Jeffrey Record, a prominent strategist at a U.S. military war college, told me: “Perhaps worse still, conventional wisdom is dangerously narcissistic. It completely ignores the enemy, assuming that what we do determines success or failure. It assumes that only the United States can defeat the United States, an outlook that set the United States up for failure in Vietnam and for surprise in Iraq.”

Jun. 08, 2006 By Sidney Blumenthal, Salon Media Group, Inc. [Excerpts]

The Bush way of war has been ahistorical and apolitical, and therefore warped strategically, putting absolute pressure on the military to provide an outcome it cannot provide — “victory.”

From the start, Bush has placed the military at a disadvantage, and not only because he put the Army in the field in insufficient numbers, setting it upon a task it could not accomplish.

U.S. troops are trained for conventional military operations, not counterinsurgency, which requires the utmost restraint in using force. The doctrinal fetish of counterterrorism substitutes for and frustrates counterinsurgency efforts.

Conventional fighting takes two primary forms: chasing and killing foreign fighters as if they constituted the heart of the Sunni insurgency and seeking battles like Fallujah as if any would be decisive.

Where battles don’t exist, assaults on civilian populations, often provoked by insurgents, are misconceived as battles. While this is not a version of some video game, it is still an illusion.

Many of the troops are on their third or fourth tour of duty, and 40 percent of them are reservists whose training and discipline are not up to the standards of their full-time counterparts. Trained for combat and gaining and holding territory, equipped with superior firepower and technology, they are unprepared for the disorienting and endless rigors of irregular warfare.

The Marines, in particular, are trained for “kinetic” warfare, constantly in motion, and imbued with a warrior culture that sets them apart from the Army.

As Bush’s approach has stamped failure on the military, he insists ever more intensely on the inevitability of victory if only he stays the course.

Ambiguity and flexibility, essential elements of any strategy for counterinsurgency, are his weak points.

Bush may imagine a scene in which the insurgency is conclusively defeated, perhaps even a signing ceremony, as on the USS Missouri, or at least an acknowledgment, a scrap of paper, or perhaps the silence of the dead, all of them.

But his infatuation with a purely military solution blinds him to how he thwarts his own intentions.

Jeffrey Record, a prominent strategist at a U.S. military war college, told me: “Perhaps worse still, conventional wisdom is dangerously narcissistic. It completely ignores the enemy, assuming that what we do determines success or failure. It assumes that only the United States can defeat the United States, an outlook that set the United States up for failure in Vietnam and for surprise in Iraq.”

Haditha is a symptom of the fallacy of Bush’s military solution.

The alleged massacre occurred after the administration’s dismissal of repeated warnings about the awful pressures on an army of occupation against an insurgency.

Conflating a population that broadly supports an insurgency with a terrorist enemy and indoctrinating the troops with a sense of revenge for Sept. 11 easily leads to an erasure of the distinction between military and civilian targets.

Once again, a commander in chief has failed to learn the lessons of Algeria and Vietnam.

Above all, the Bush way of war violates the fundamental rule of warfare as defined by military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz: War is politics by other means.

In other words, it is not the opposite of politics, or its substitute, but its instrument, and by no means its only one. “Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd,” wrote Clausewitz, “for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa.”

Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, meanwhile, reinforces Bush’s rigidity as essential to “transformational” warfare; by now, however, the veneer has been peeled off to reveal sheer self-justification.

Rumsfeld is incapable of telling the president that there is no battle, no campaign, that can win the war.

Saving Rumsfeld is Bush’s way of staying the course. But it also sends a signal of unaccountability from the top down.

The degradation of U.S. forces in Iraq is a direct consequence of the derangement of political leadership in Washington.

And not even the elder Bush can persuade the president that his way of war is a debacle.

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.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Local Marine, Salvador Guerrero, Killed

Jun. 13 By Sandy Mazza, Staff Writer, Whittier Daily News

Marine Lance Cpl. Salvador Guerrero, 21, died in combat in Al Anbar province, Iraq, June 9, 2006.

WHITTIER: The last time Rosa Guerrero saw her son Salvador, he was boarding a plane in his Marines dress uniform and taking long last looks at her.

He left Rosa with a kiss that day about three months ago from Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms en route to Iraq. Watching him board the plane, she longed for the day he would come back.

On Friday, three Marine officers visited Rosa at her Whittier home, and told her that her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Salvador Guerrero, 21, died in combat in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Before Friday, Rosa didn’t know her son was stationed in Iraq. He told her he was training in Japan, because he didn’t want to worry her, said his aunt Maria Vega.

When he called home, he told her that he was training – not fighting guerrilla insurgents.

“He would call and say `Mom I’m really tired, I just got back from training’,” Vega said. “He’d say `Mom, I just have a few months to go before I come home. Every day is going by so fast’.”

Guerrero was an ammunition man assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Marine Expeditionary Force, in June 2005, according to Twentynine Palms Spokeswoman 1st Lt. Christy Kercheval. Guerrero dreamed of being in the military from a young age, said Vega. After graduating from Frontier High School in 2003, he tried to enlist but was turned away because of his weight.

At about 250 pounds, Guerrero set out to lose nearly 100 pounds so he could enlist. After months of running and working out at a gym, he reached about 170 pounds and was accepted by the Marines, said Vega.

“After he went in the Marines, it was a complete transformation for him,” said Vega. “He worked out at the gym and went running. That’s how hard he wanted to be in.”

Even the grueling, rigid training he received at boot camp was a joy, said Vega.

He called his mother crying from boot camp one day – not because he wanted to leave, but because he wanted to stay.

“I may not stay here,” he told her. The Marines said a tattoo he had of an angel was controversial, and worried it might be gang related.

“That’s good,” she said, relieved her son might come home.

“No, it’s not,” he said, worried that his dream of being in the military might soon end. After an investigation, the tattoo was found to be harmless, said Vega.

“If he would have been sent back, that would have been such a disaster for him,” said Vega.

Guerrero, who was nicknamed Junior, took comfort in the small things that reminded him of home while he was away. He loved attending a Catholic church at the base, said Vega.

While in the military, Guerrero was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Sea Service Deployment ribbon, according to Kercheval.

Guerrero is the sixth person from the area who has died in Operation Iraqi Freedom since 2003.

He is survived by his mother Rosa, his father Salvador, his 16-year-old brother Rudolpho, and an extended family.

Soldier From Milwaukie Killed

June 19, 2006 By KATU

MILWAUKIE, Ore.

A 22-year-old graduate of Rex Putnam High School has been killed in Iraq.

Robert Jones was killed last week according to a brief conversation Monday morning with his father.

Jones graduated from Rex Putnam High School in 2002, according to school records.

Jesse Alan Givens, Who Died On The Day Bush Announced “Mission Accomplished”

[Dailykos.com]

Blast Kills Bronx G.I.

June 11, 2006 Madison J. Gray, Daily News

An army reservist who was a beloved father of two, avid truckdriver and son of the Bronx was killed Friday in Iraq.

Sgt. Jose Velez, 35, of Bruckner, died after a roadside bomb blew up the vehicle he was driving during a patrol in Kirkuk, the Defense Department said.

Tomorrow would have been Velez’s 36th birthday, said his ex-wife, Evangelique Velez, 32, who was married to Jose for seven years and continued to live with him after their divorce.

“He was very patriotic. He loved America,” she said. “He was brave, and we were proud of him.”

Jose Velez is survived by his daughter with Evangelique, 7-year-old Melody, and by his son, Christopher, 11, from a previous relationship.

“He was very special to me,” said Melody, who clutched a photograph of her father.

Before leaving a month ago for Iraq, Velez was driving trucks for Conway Central Express of Elmhurst, Queens, his ex-wife said.

He was a member of the 773rd Transportation Company, based in Fort Totten, Queens. Evangelique Velez said he joined the company four years ago.

FUTILE EXERCISE:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!

U.S. soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team search a house in Ramadi, June 7, 2006. REUTERS/Cpl. Richard A Hilario/Handout (IRAQ)

7 U.S. Troops Wounded In Search For Missing Soldiers

June 19 SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer

The US military said today that seven American troops have been wounded, three insurgents have been killed and 34 detained during an intensive search for two missing American soldiers.

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Resistance Wipes Out Two Convoys:
Occupation Troops One Mile Away Do Nothing

June 19, 2006 By CARLOTTA GALL, The New York Times Company & AP

KABUL, Afghanistan

Taliban guerrillas ambushed and killed 32 people, among them a former local government official, and all of them relatives and tribesmen of an influential parliamentarian, in the southern province of Helmand.

The siege, in broad daylight on Friday, was the latest sign of the strength of the Taliban insurgents in the poppy-growing province, where NATO and Afghan Army troops have recently deployed in a new effort to contain the spreading insurgency.

The first attack, initially reported Sunday, was on a convoy carrying a former district chief in Helmand province, leaving the ex-official and four of his bodyguards dead, said the governor’s spokesman, Ghulam Mohiudin.

The second attack occurred several hours later when 30 of the slain official’s relatives went to collect his body, his brother Dad Mohammed Khan said Monday.

Dad Muhammad, the legislator, spoke on Saturday about the attack on his family. He served as the intelligence chief of Helmand after the fall of the Taliban, and is now an elected member of Afghanistan’s upper house of Parliament.

Mr. Muhammad said his two brothers, one of whom was the former chief of Sangin district, and a 15-year-old son were killed in the fighting which lasted most of the day Friday.

Another son was among five people injured, he said. Ten more people were missing and thought to be abducted by the Taliban. All of those killed were relatives or supporters, he said.

“We buried 32 people,” Mr. Muhammad said. “Ten are missing. They are in Taliban hands; we don’t know if they are dead or alive.” He ruled out a personal vendetta, and said the Taliban were responsible and had a force of about 2,000 in the area.

The attack happened just a mile outside the town of Sangin, and a mile or two from a military base where British and Afghan Army troops are stationed. Neither the local police, nor the military came to their aid, Mr. Muhammad said.

The Taliban first ambushed his brother’s car at 7 in the morning as he was returning to his home. When his second brother, his sons, and tribesmen came to their aid, they were also ambushed and fought a fierce battle until 3 p.m. on Friday.

Mr. Muhammad was speaking from Kabul and said it was too dangerous for him to travel to his home. His surviving relatives were now under siege from the Taliban in their home in Sangin, he said.

TROOP NEWS

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

The casket bearing Army Sgt. Daniel Robert Gionet, is taken from St. Patrick’s Church in Pelham, N.H., June 16, 2006. Gionet, a newlywed and Army medic, was killed June 4 when an explosion hit his tank in Taji, Iraq. He was 23. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

EVENT TO BRING TROOPS HOME IS ENOUGH TO BREAK YOUR HEART

It was a very moving, but painful, emotional experience for me and very sad to see the boots of 19 of my husband’s comrades who died in Iraq — a pain indescribable when seeing all 2,500 soldiers who were killed in this war and the shoes of innocent Iraqi citizens also killed.

June 18, 2006
Letters To The Editor
Staten Island Advance

The Eyes Wide Open event in Washington, D.C., broke my heart.

On May 13, I attended the American Friends Service Committee’s Eyes Wide Open Exhibit on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families For Peace (families of loved ones killed in this war). The exhibit is of combat boots of dead soldiers; commemorating the casualties of the Iraq war.

It was a very moving, but painful, emotional experience for me and very sad to see the boots of 19 of my husband’s comrades who died in Iraq — a pain indescribable when seeing all 2,500 soldiers who were killed in this war and the shoes of innocent Iraqi citizens also killed.

We listened to the brokenhearted families talk of losing a loved one as a result of this senseless, illegal, immoral war.

We heard the speeches of veterans, forever scarred and hurting from losing friends, we listened to Iraqi people talking about the suffering that civilians there go through every day, the truth about what is really happening, no rebuilding in sight except permanent military bases, more deaths every day, more destruction.

Every day I mourn for the loss of these soldiers, innocent civilians.

We need to do more to stop these senseless deaths. We are all responsible.

We need to say Bring the troops home now. Write to the president, your congressman, tell them enough is enough!

Visit www.votersforpeace.us and say you will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or president who does not make an end to the war in Iraq and prevent any future wars of aggression!

Supporting our troops means bringing them home now, not being made to fight unjust wars. Supporting our troops means that they are taken care of properly when they return home, not forgotten about and tossed to the side, like after Vietnam.

This past Memorial Day, I hope everyone remembered what the day really stood for, not barbecues and parties — on this day we must mourn the loss of our soldiers and innocent citizens who have died.

DEBRA ANDERSON
WEST BRIGHTON

Iraq Veterans Against The War Announce They’ve Now Become An INTERNATIONAL Anti-War Group.

VietNam Veteran Against the War National Organizer (and Vet For Peace President ) Dave Cline; Veteran For Peace Executive Director, Michael McPhearson; VFP Nat’l Organizer, Elliot Adams; Cindy Sheehan; Philadelphia Veteran For Peace, Chapter # 31 member, Bill Perry; Iraq Veterans Against the War Organizer, Garret Reppenhagen, Gold Star Families for Peace Co-Founder, DeDe Miller

Peace Has No Borders; A Festival of Resistance, June 17th, 2006, in Ontario, Canada was an historic opportunity for concerned citizens from Canada and the U.S. to unite our efforts in support of U.S. war resisters who are saying NO to the horrific Iraq war.

www.ivaw.net

Marine General Says Semper Fuck You:
He Wants More Dead & Brain Damaged Marines;
He Defends Marine Helmet That “Provides About Half The Blast Impact Protection Of The (Army) Helmet

June 19, 2006 By Matthew Cox, Army Times staff writer

Lawmakers recently grilled a Marine leader over why the Corps’ combat helmet isn’t more like the Army’s.

Responding to testimony that a private organization had provided 6,000 deployed Marines with special helmet inserts to reduce head injuries, the lawmakers wanted to know why the Corps itself was not providing the added protection as the Army does for soldiers.

“Apparently we have thousands of military personnel who believe the helmet they are being issued does not provide them satisfactory protection,” said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., during a Thursday hearing held by the Tactical and Land Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

“The Marine Corps’ own testing indicates that their helmet provides about half the blast impact protection of the (Army) helmet, said Weldon, subcommittee vice chairman. “We need to understand why this is acceptable.”

Maj. Gen. William Catto, commander of Marine Corps Systems Command, said he hasn’t seen proof that the Army’s helmet, or its padded suspension system, provides better protection than the Marine helmet.

The issue was driven in large part by Dr. Robert Meaders, a former Navy flight surgeon who started “Operation Helmet” more than two years ago to help his grandson’s Marine unit upgrade their helmets before going to Iraq. The effort has garnered support from across the country including donations from Hollywood stars such as Cher, who attended the hearing.

The special shock-absorbing pad system provided through the organization attaches to the inside of the helmet. It is the same one the Army uses in the Advanced Combat Helmet.

The Marine Corps’ Lightweight Helmet, issued to more than 130,000 troops, uses a sling suspension system that Meaders and other experts say does not provide the same impact protection.

The Army adopted the ACH in 2002 and has fielded about 660,000 of these helmets.

The helmet is more comfortable to wear than the Army’s previous headgear, Sgt. 1st Class Jerry Lutz of the Army’s Project Manager Clothing and Individual Equipment told lawmakers.

Catto said the Marines issue the ACH to special units such as Marine Recon teams but he is not convinced it’s the answer for the entire force.

“All I’ve heard about the ACH is it provides better crash protection, and it’s more comfortable,” Catto said.

[OK, time to send this brasshole to Iraq, where he can experience personally whether or not it’s desirable to have “better crash protection” when the IED goes off under his worthless butt. Severe brain injuries have been sustained by troops in exactly that situation when their heads get banged around from the explosive force of the detonation, even if not otherwise wounded. That’s what crash protection helmets help defend against. But it’s obvious Catto is too blind and stupid to get a grip on that. T]

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

$100,000 Reward For Missing U.S. Soldiers?
“I Will Not Do It Even If They Pay $1 Million”
“They Deserve All That They Are Facing”
“We Are Living A Hard Life Because Of Them”

June 19, 2006 By Chantal Escoto, The (Clarksville, Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle

One soldier who was killed and two others taken prisoner at a checkpoint in Yusufiyah, Iraq, Friday belonged to the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

A Youssifiyah resident, who said his house was searched by U.S. soldiers Sunday afternoon, also said the Americans used translators to offer $100,000 for information leading to those who took the soldiers.

He said he would not cooperate because he was angry with the Americans.

“I will not do it even if they pay $1 million,” the resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.

“They deserve all that they are facing … We are living a hard life because of them.”

Assorted Resistance Action

June 19 2006 Express Network Private Ltd. & SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer & Reuters

BAGHDAD, IRAQ: A parked car bomb struck an Iraqi army convoy on Monday. The explosion occurred at 10 a m on Mustansiriyah Square in eastern Baghdad, Lt Ahmed Muhammad Ali said. He said three soldiers and two civilians were killed.

Guerrillas also killed police Col Abdel-Shahid Saleh as he was heading to work west of Karbala, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad.

A policeman was shot in western Baghdad.

A sniper killed an Iraqi soldier 25 miles west of Baghdad.

Guerrillas killed a senior police officer and wounded two of his bodyguards Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE
END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

“Who Are The Good Guys And Who Are The Bad Guys In Iraq?”

18 June 2006 By Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch.com [Excerpt]

Led by Iraq’s Baath party and by Iraqi military officers and their tribal and clan allies, a thriving insurgency did develop within months of the March 2003 invasion. Some of the resistance is, of course, still made up of Iraqis passionately loyal to the person of Saddam Hussein.

But studies of the insurgency show that most of its fighters are loyal to the Baath party, whose origins were among left-leaning Arab nationalists, or they are loyal to a more specific version of Iraqi nationalism, or they simply oppose the foreign occupation of their country.

But the fact that a prolonged insurgency followed the invasion and that U.S. casualties mounted is the result of the Iraqi people’s unwillingness to submit to an American diktat.

Viewed from that standpoint, it’s at least worth asking: Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in Iraq?

Are the good guys the U.S. troops fighting to impose American hegemony in the Gulf? Are the good guys the American forces who have installed a murderous Shiite theocracy in Baghdad?

Are the good guys the Marines who murdered children and babies in Haditha in cold blood? Are the good guys the U.S. officers who brought us Abu Ghraib, or the generals who signed off on their methods, or the administration that set them on such a path in the first place?

Who was it, after all, who pulverized the institutions of the Iraqi state and society?

What do you think? Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Send to contact@militaryproject.org. Name, I.D., withheld on request. Replies confidential.

Jarhead: A Second Look
“The America That These Men Were Supposed To Defend Has Little Use For Them Once The Shooting Stops

10.10.05 Socialist Worker (Canada)

[When this film came out last year, it got slammed pretty hard, from both the left and the right. Here’s an old review that takes a favorable look at Jarhead. Thanks to L, for sending in. T]

Jarhead, based on ex-US Marine Anthony Swofford’s memoir of his time in the Marine Corps fifteen years ago, follows Swofford and his platoon mates as they train for dirty as elite scout/snipers, then deploy to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield.

Upon deployment, the soldiers spend six months in the desert, waiting. Waiting to go to a war that never seems to develop. Waiting to use the skills they’ve so painstakingly acquired.

Through all the waiting, they train, they fret about their girlfriends back in the US, they train, they play football in searing heat wearing sealed chemical- weapons suits, they train, they indulge in mock homoerotic sex games to the consternation of their superiors, they train, and they almost kill each other accidentally or not.

They lose all contact with their lives in the US, all but one of them lose their spouses or partners, and none of them ever get to do the one thing they’ve spent ages preparing to do — kill people. And it drives them crazy.

When war finally begins, it is nothing like what they expected or trained for. As one of the snipers laments at the beginning of hostilities, with jet planes screaming overhead, the bulk of the war will be conducted by those planes. The elite Marine snipers, with their Olympian conditioning and highly-developed skills, are simply too slow and have too little firepower to matter much in this new, high-tech war.

This point is underscored when the unit marches on foot into Kuwait and comes upon the infamous Highway of Death, in which thousands of people were massacred, incinerated from the air as they tried to flee back to Iraq.

The soldiers are like lost little boys as they wander through this boneyard, with Swofford stepping aside at one point, sitting amongst a circle of blackened corpses still seated around a cook-fire, and vomiting onto his boots.

Swofford and his platoon-mate Troy are finally given a chance to prove themselves, being ordered to infiltrate Iraqi-held territory and assassinate a Republican Guard commander in his watchtower.

With the officer literally in their gunsights, their ‘kill’ is taken from them by the appearance of a US Army Major who orders an air strike on the tower, obliterating it and the man inside. The two marines are outraged, with Swofford needing to restrain Troy from assaulting the Major for denying them their kill, and thus their identity as real soldiers.

There is no combat to be seen in jarhead. None.

As Swofford says regretfully towards the end of the film, his comrades celebrating the end of the fourday war, “I never fired my weapon.”

Along with all the members of his unit, all these men who’ve spent their entire adult lives preparing to kill and defining themselves by it, he then fires harmlessly into the air, again and again.

Jarhead is not politically didactic, explicitly arguing why war is good or bad.

Rather, it’s a look at what it means to be an American soldier at the beginning of the 21st century, and how American militarism both reinforces and is reinforced by jingoistic myths about what it means to be a man.

The soldiers are officially greeted as heroes upon their return to the US, but get a glimpse of the future that awaits when a homeless Vietnam veteran, still in his Marine Corps jacket, gets onto their bus during a victory parade chanting “Semper Fi” (the Marine Corps motto) and thanking them for restoring the honour of the Corps.

The point is further made at the film’s end, as we see one of these elite snipers loading boxes in a grocery store (he’s black), and see another of them, Troy, being buried after committing suicide.

Clearly, the America that these men were supposed to defend has little use for them once the shooting stops.

Jarhead is that most rare of American movies, a major Hollywood blockbuster that is thoughtful, critical and intelligent.

If you’re looking for a lot of things that go ‘bang’, avoid this film. But if you want a story that will make you think, that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre, then Jarhead is it.

OCCUPATION REPORT

U.S. OCCUPATION RECRUITING DRIVE IN HIGH GEAR;
RECRUITING FOR THE ARMED RESISTANCE THAT IS

Foreign fighter from the U.S. Army occupying an Iraqi citizens home in Ramadi, June 18, 2006. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

[Fair is fair. Let’s bring 150,000 Iraqis over here to the USA. They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, butcher their families, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it “sovereign,” and “detain” anybody who doesn’t like it in some prison without any charges being filed against them, or any trial.]

[Those Iraqis are sure a bunch of backward primitives. They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country. What a bunch of silly people. How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by George Bush. Why, how could anybody not love that? You’d want that in your home town, right?]

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Notes From A Lost War:
Cable From Baghdad Embassy Portrays Iraq Occupation As A Disaster;
Guards In The Green Zone “Are Now ‘Taunting’ Embassy Personnel”;
“A Few Staff Members Approached Us To Ask What Provisions Would We Make For Them If We Evacuate”

June 19, 2006 By Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher

The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked “sensitive,” that it says shows that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, “the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees.”

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, “the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees’ constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.”

It’s actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women’s rights, and “ethnic cleansing.”

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from “AMEmbassy Baghdad” on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad — the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: “Snapshots from the Office — Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.”

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, “An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militias are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq.”

Among the other troubling reports:

— “Personal safety depends on good relations with the ‘neighborhood’ governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.”

— One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

— Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report “pervasive” harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices “have diminished the quality of life.” Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods “have visibly deteriorated” and one of them is now described as a “ghost town.”

— Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May…”some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.” One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

— It has also become “dangerous” for men to wear shorts in public and “they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts.” People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

— Embassy employees are held in such low esteem their work must remain a secret and they live with constant fear that their cover will be blown.

Of nine staffers, only four have told their families where they work. They all plan for their possible abductions. No one takes home their cell phones as this gives them away.

One employee said criticism of the U.S. had grown so severe that most of her family believes the U.S. “is punishing populations as Saddam did.”

— Since April, the “demeanor” of guards in the Green Zone has changed, becoming more “militia-like,” and some are now “taunting” embassy personnel or holding up their credentials and saying loudly that they work in the embassy: “Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.” For this reason, some have asked for press instead of embassy credentials.

— “For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events…We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their ‘cover.’”

— “More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate.”

— The overall environment is one of “frayed social networks,” with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. “One colleague told us he feels ‘defeated’ by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,” which is now reaching 115 degrees.

— “Another employee tell us that life outside the Green Zone has become ‘emotionally draining.’ He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral ‘every evening.’”

— Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off.

“Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without. … One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.”

— The cable concludes that employees’ “personal fears are reinforcing divisive sectarian or ethnic channels, despite talk of reconciliation by officials.”

The final line of the Cable is: KHALILZAD

This Is Not A Satire:
British Government To “Transfer Province To Iraqi Forces;”
British Occupation Troops Will Stay There

19/06/2006 Telegraph Group Limited

Iraq’s prime minister has announced that Iraqi forces will next month take over security in the southern province of Muthanna, where British troops currently oversee multinational forces.

“Muthanna is the first Iraqi province that will have the honour of being transferred from multinational forces to Iraqi forces,” Mr Maliki said.

Downing Street hailed the handover of Muthanna province, one of four in the British area of responsibility, to the Iraqi government as a “significant step”.

Asked if there was now a deadline for all multinational troops to be withdrawn from the province, Tony Blair’s official spokesman said: “In terms of the deployment of the troops, that’s a matter for commanders on the ground.

But the Government stressed that the handover would not mean that the 150 British troops deployed in that province would be brought home.

HOW ODD:
NO IRAQIS FOUND SUITABLE TO GUARD THEM?
HOW CAN THAT BE?

U.S. Military policemen stand guard as Iraqi National Security minister Sherwan al-Waili, right, and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, center, observe the release of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison June 19, 2006. (AP Photo/Wathiq Khuzaie, Pool)

OCCUPATION PALESTINE

Statement Of A Holocaust Survivor:
“We Stand Against Zionism”
“A United Resistance Can, Like The Anti-Nazi Resistance Of My Childhood, Win Out Against The Oppressors”

Just as Hitler and his supporters struck down the Jewish people with inhuman violence, so Ariel Sharon and his allies strike out against the Palestinians.

November 2005, Socialist Worker (Canada)

Suzanne Weiss addressed the demonstration In Toronto on November 14, organized by the Coalition Against Israel’s War Crimes, to protest the invitation of war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Here are her words:

I feel the suffering of the Palestinian people with particular sharpness because it is similar to what I, my family, and my community suffered in my young years at the hand of Hitlerism.

I was born to a Jewish family in France during the Second World War. The French Vichy government was rounding up Jews, solely because of their religious and ethnic background, and deporting them to Hitler’s concentration camps.

That’s how my dear mother landed in Auschwitz and died in the gas chamber.

I was a child, and I am alive today because the anti-Nazi resistance placed me in the hands of a courageous peasant family, who hid me. This resistance united people of many political persuasions and religious beliefs. They were Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, for there were Muslims in the French resistance.

Just as Hitler and his supporters struck down the Jewish people with inhuman violence, so Ariel Sharon and his allies strike out against the Palestinians.

To oppose Sharon is not anti-Semitic. It is anti-Zionist.

The aggressive policies in the Middle East of Sharon and the Zionists are against the interests of Jewish people and Palestinians alike, all of whom have a stake in a peaceful and united Middle East.

Zionism imposes on the Israeli people an eternal war against their neighbors in a climate of hatred and fear.

Palestinian liberation offers the Jewish people in the Middle East the prospect of brotherhood and peace.

In this audience today, standing against the invitation of Sharon to Toronto, are human rights fighters from different communities: Muslims, Christians, Jews, and free thinkers.

We have gathered here a united resistance of everyone who defends justice and human dignity.

A united resistance can, like the anti-Nazi resistance of my childhood, win out against the oppressors.

We stand with the vast majority of humanity which, through the United Nations, has overwhelmingly condemned Sharon and the Zionist abuses of human rights. The Canadian government should cease its support of Ariel Sharon and the Zionist regime of Israel.

We stand against Zionism. And we stand for freedom for the Palestinians, and for a peaceful and united Middle East.

Suzanne Weiss
Toronto

[To check out what life is like under a murderous military occupation by foreign terrorists, go to: www.rafahtoday.org The occupied nation is Palestine. The foreign terrorists call themselves “Israeli.”]

CLASS WAR REPORTS

Overwhelmed ERs ‘At Breaking Point’
“In Some Cities, Emergency Workers Save Half Of The Victims Of Cardiac Arrest, But In Other Places, They Save Only 5%

6.15.06 Associated Press & By David Brown, The Washington Post

Emergency medical care in the United States is on the verge of collapse, with the nation’s declining number of emergency rooms dangerously overcrowded and often unable to provide the expertise needed to treat seriously ill people in a safe and efficient manner.

Long waits for treatment are epidemic, the reports said, with ambulances sometimes idling for hours to unload patients. Once in the ER, patients sometimes wait up to two days to be admitted to a hospital bed.

“This is a crisis that could jeopardize everyone in this room, and all their loved ones,” A. Brent Eastman, a surgeon and chief medical officer of the ScrippsHealth hospitals in San Diego, said at a daylong conference on the reports, which were prepared by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.

“There is just such a gap between what the public knows, or thinks it knows, and the reality. And it is getting worse,” said Robert B. Giffin, the Institute of Medicine staffer who headed the study.

A study by the Government Accountability Office in 2003 found that 20 percent of emergency departments had to “board” patients in hallways or other temporary space, for an average of eight hours, before a bed opened.

Half a million times a year, about once every minute, ambulances carrying sick patients are turned away from full emergency rooms and sent to others farther away. It is a sobering symptom of how the nation’s emergency-care system is overcrowded and overwhelmed, “at its breaking point,” concludes an investigation by the Institute of Medicine.

“The safety net … has large holes,” said co-author A. Brent Eastman, chief medical officer at ScrippsHealth in San Diego. “You may not be caught and saved when your life depends on it.”

How many people die as a result?

The two-year investigation couldn’t come up with an answer; there is little tracking of how emergency patients fare after that frantic 911 call or race to the hospital. But there are troubling clues.

For example, in some cities, emergency workers save half of the victims of cardiac arrest—but in other places, they save only 5%.

This nationwide crisis comes from just day-to-day emergencies. Emergency rooms are far from ready to handle the mass casualties that a bird-flu epidemic or terrorist strike would bring, the institute said in a three-volume report.

“If you can barely get through the night’s 911 calls, how on Earth can you handle a disaster?” asked report co-author Arthur Kellerman, Emory University’s emergency-medicine chief.

Even a school-bus crash would qualify as a disaster for most hospitals: Although children make up more than a quarter of all ER visits, only 6% of emergency departments have all the supplies needed—such as child-sized equipment— to treat pediatric emergencies, and few have doctors trained in children’s care either, the Institute of Medicine panel found.

Received:

Absent Without Leave

From: Tom Pearson
To: GI Special
Sent: June 19, 2006 8:22 AM
Subject: Absent Without Leave

I am working on a film about soldiers who feel compelled to go absent without leave. I have been in touch with Clancy Sigal who suggested that I email you.

I am looking for soldiers who are currently absent without leave who would be prepared to talk to me about their experiences on or off the record. Can you help?

Best wishes,
Tom

Tom Pearson
Blast Films
Tel 0207 267 4260
Fax 0207 485 2340

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

NEED SOME TRUTH? CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER

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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