The Pennsylvania Progressive

Meanwhile In Iraq...

I saw another war supporter on television today (CNN) repeating the mantra that the generals on the ground should be trusted to give the President advice.  This is wrong because these aren't generals but sycophants.  Every general who told George W. Bush what he didn't want to hear has been fired.  Their replacements, for the most part, have been incompetent.  Gen. Petraeus may be the notable exception.  Does anyone remember General Shinseki?

Secondly the military in this country is run by civilians.  Our system is one of civilian decision making rather than having the military make all final, strategic decisions.  This mentality turns that inside out.  It is the President's job to listen to his military generals and admirals but then to make his own decisions based on ALL the advice available.  George W. Bush's failures stem from his refusal to allow any dissent or dissenting opinions in his White House.  No on eis allowed to play devil's advocate because Bush equates that with disloyalty.

Unfortunately this means 4,000 Americans have died in vain in Iraq.  That is one of the most horrible facts of this conflict and why we need to withdraw.  No amount of further deaths will bring  honor to this illegal war.  The President has stated that we must continue killing and dying so those already dead "will not have died in vain."   How many more dead soldiers will that require?  Even the President cannot answer that question.

Meanwhile In Iraq...

President Bush just announced his new policy direction for Iraq:  stay the course.  I understand this news may come as a shock to some people but, well, it's true.  After allowing two days to pass where what the president had decided on Monday was not at all affected by what happened Tuesday and Wednesday during the Petraeus/Crocker dog and pony show to Congress, nothing changed.

Dana Perino, White House press spokesperson, appeared on TV this morning and was asked to define victory.  She responded with a statement which said an Iraq which is stable enough to govern and defend itself.  My what a comedown this is from George Bush's earlier definition of victory: a democratic Iraq which would be a beacon for democracy and catalyst for a domino effect of democracy throughout the Middle East.

Instead we're getting a domino effect of war and instability.  Iran's influence is greatly enhanced and ours greatly diminished.  Five years into this war and we're no nearer the more modest goal of a country capable of even providing essential services to its people.  Food, water and electricity remain as scarce in Iraq as security.

What we have achieved in Iraq is this:

A government incapable of policing itself and rooting out war profiteering and massive corruption.

A government incapable of making substantive progress on reconciliation and cooperation.

Leaders installed under an American written constitution who are ineffective and regularly replaced.

An ineffective native army equipped and trained by us which refuses to fight for itself or defend itself.

Local populations unwilling to assist us except against a worse common enemy.  Once that enemy is routed guess who they'll turn on again?  Their occupying force?

Guess what this reminds me of?  Yup, Vietnam.  History holds that should we refuse to learn from it we are fated to repeat it.  Either we're too stupid or too insane to look at Iraq, see the same mistakes we made in Vietnam and change our policy.  Therefore the results are the same:  defeat.  Bush outlined the tragic consequences of loss in Iraq during today's speech.  They speak to his massive and historic policy failures as President.

George W. Bush lost Iraq because he never had an effective plan to win.  He lost the peace because he didn't have a plan to secure the peace and win the people.  He's more concerned with sealing our border with Mexico than the one which is far more important:  Iraq's.  We are weaker for this war.  Announcing that new troop deployments to Iraq will max out at twelve months is, I suspect, something our soldiers even doubt is possible.  If the surge is successful, as Bush claims, why would he cease it as this policy will do?  We cannot maintain the surge with twelve month troop deployments.  He is inconsistent and contradicts his own policy.  No wonder they fail.

Lieberman Says Iranian Special Forces In Iraq

Sen. Joe Lieberman dropped a bomb today at the Senate Iraq hearings:  Iranian special forces are training rebels in southern Iraq.  This information was confirmed by Gen. Petraeus.  This confirms the warnings and concerns of everyone who opposed our invasion of Iraq five years ago.  These experts predicted such disastrous consequences if Bush invaded Iraq.  Once again those predictions of terrible consequences are being met.

Petraeus also warned today that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would mean Iran "would fill the vacuum."  That, of course, has already happened because of the lack of decent security or functioning governmental entities in Iraq.  Bush's people have again confirmed the disastrous policy consequences of their failed policies.  Of course no one is advocating a "precipitous withdrawal" from Iraq.  The repetition of this term seems designed to scare American voters by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Petraeus' Testimony

Gen. David Petraeus testifies to Congress today about the "progress" in Iraq.  What progress?  Peace, security or any semblance of normal existence for Iraqis is nowhere nearer than since we invaded and toppled Saddam's statue in a show orchestrated by The Pentagon for American television viewers.  There is no peace in Baghdad, no political solution, in fact, violence has surged upward again in recent weeks.  If the decline in violence right before Petraeus' September testimony was significant then this surge also must be.

The objective of the American escalation was to create an opportunity for the three major factions to find and render a viable political solution which will last.  That, the major and primary goal of this strategy, has failed.  It has now been over a year since George Bush initiated his surge and we continue to see rising Iranian influence and a peace which can be shattered whenever Moqtada al Sadr desires.  We are at the whim of a radical, Iranian controlled cleric.  That is NOT an acceptable political solution but is the reality on the ground.

Members of Congress should be asking these questions ad nauseum because they are all that's relevant to this discussion:

Has the surge produced a political settlement?
How will remaining there indefinitely change that outcome?

This is the crux of the matter and if the General cannot answer these questions it's time to come home.

Update:  Watching the hearing on television it seems the biggest achievement since September is an Iraqi flag.  This keeps getting mentioned as if it's at all significant.  So American soldiers are now getting killed under a new Iraqi flag.  Big whoops.  Petraeus is asking for more time, another open ended commitment with no goals, benchmarks or timetables.  This is a continuation of the same failed policies of the past five years.

Blackwater Contract Renewed

So much for the myth of Iraqi sovereignty.  The U.S. State Department is renewing its contract with Blackwater USA.  This is being done despite demands by Iraq's government that these cowboy mercenaries be banished from their country.  We now know exactly how much sovereignty Iraq has:  none.  We call the shots there, quite literally from the barrels of our guns.  The Blackwater private soldiers do this frequently killing Iraqi civilians for sport.

The larger issue here is the privatization of government.  In this case we have privatized much of our military infrastructure.  Almost all traditional logistical and support services have been privatized.  These contractors and their companies are above the law, there is little or no legal accountability for them in Iraq, and no justice for victims.  These war profiteers are receiving no bid contracts, there is no auditing or prosecution of them for fraud, employees are being raped with no consequences, and there is nothing the Iraqi government can do about the abuses to their citizens.  See, in reality they have no sovereignty.  They do not control their own country, they are not a real nation.  They are what we allow them to be.

Blackwater is merely a symptom of larger problems, bigger issues.  GI's no longer peel potatoes, do laundry, drive trucks or make their own camps.  This is all privatized and done, for profit, with your tax dollars.  The corporations getting this work all contribute generously, surprise, surprise, to Republicans who privatized the work to their corporations.  It's a very cozy relationship.  The profits get recycled into dividends to people like Dick Cheney who try and start more wars for more profits, into more campaign contributions to Republicans in Congress and the White House who award more war profiteering contracts, into more corrupt payoffs to the likes of Duke Cunningham, into everything but veteran benefits for our returning wounded or armor for their vehicles.

Meanwhile Blackwater was allowed to roam Baghdad's streets gleefully slaughtering Iraqi civilians who got in their way.  This is what has been fueling the rebellion against our occupation and resulting in more American GI's being killed and wounded.  The end result?  Renew their contract.

Meanwhile In Iraq...

One thousand Iraqi Army soldiers refused to fight in and around Basra leading many to wonder why we continue to fight for them.  If the Iraqis have no desire to stem the violence, no wish for a democratic state why are we dying for this on their behalf?   Even worse, those who did fight also engaged in executions of captured Shiites.

In Washington, as the release of Justice Department memos illustrated the pattern of war crime behavior by America, the political spin is beginning in advance of General Petraeus' report to Congress on the progress of the war.  This got intense last September as the spin and lies escalated to a ridiculous level.  The decrease of violence in Iraq is primarily due to al Sadr's decisions and not much else.  Meanwhile reports say he was ordered to cease the most recent violence on orders from Tehran.  Those who still believe the myth that the surge has been effective need to comprehend who is really making policy and  who is really in control of things in Iraq:  Moqtada al Sadr.

Between the presidential election and our economic troubles it's easy to forget Iraq.  The war continues however, the death and destruction know no abatement, both Americans and Iraqis continue dying and the corruption goes on with no accountability.  Soldiers are being electrocuted in showers, companies continue making billions of dollars in profits providing services the Pentagon used to perform at no profit and no one is being prosecuted for war profiteering.

The idea of this series has been to remind us of Iraq and remember what is going on there and why.  No one has yet explained to my satisfaction why we invaded the country.  I think voters are owed an explanation when Petraeus reports to Congress.  Is it not time the country received an honorable answer to this question?

Friday and Saturday saw 72 Iraqis killed and 65 wounded.  Fighting between the Iraqi Army and the Mahdi Militia (Sadr's private army) is resulting in civilians killed, including some by U.S. air strikes.  21,000 Iraqis have been released from prison in some good news.  Of course the bad news is how we have arrested thousands of Iraqis for no reason, rounded them up, sent them to Abu Ghraib and elsewhere with no due process, then tortured them.  Then we wonder why they hate us and become rebels insurgents.

It might mitigate feelings if we actually were aiding the refugee situation.  The chaos we brought to Iraq has caused about 20% of the population, primarily the professional and middle class, to flee.  These refugees are mostly in Jordan and Syria.  They fled the sectarian "cleansing" being carried out by militias bent on eliminating Sunnis from Baghdad.  Now, as their visas and funds are running out they are returning to Iraq.  We have contributed almost nothing in aid to these people and have refused to allow all but a trickle to emigrate here.

Health services inside Iraq are abysmal.  Since so much of the professional class fled the country there are severe shortages of medical personnel.  The lack of electricity and clean, potable water has caused epidemics.  The constant violence, abated but not eliminated, result in more medical care needs.  According to the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes:

"At least four million people do not have enough food while around 40 percent of the 27.5 million population do not have access to clean drinking water, and 30 percent do not have access to reasonable health services. Most of the increasing number of internally displaced people have little or no access to proper health care, food assistance, sanitation and other services, he said."

This entire Iraqi debacle has greatly increased Iranian influence and stature in the region and diminished ours.  This is the complete opposite of what George W. Bush intended.  Every time I see a bumper sticker on an American car saying "we cannot afford to lose" it reminds me why, since it was so important, President Bush made no attempt to win this war.  Once he made the bad decision to invade it was imperative upon him to insure we were successful.  Instead almost every decision made was designed to lose the war and the peace.  Worse, no one has been held accountable for these failures.  No one in Washington wants to play the blame game so no one has paid the price for the death and destruction, the trillions it will cost, or the loss of our position in the world community of nations.

You can change that in November.

Bush Authorized to Use Military Force Domestically

There have been numerous troubling signs that George W. Bush desires to use force, military force, within the country and a new publicly available legal memo outlines the justification for such action.  Some fetid right wingers have always wanted to repeal Posse Comitatus, the law which says the government cannot use military force within the nation.  This Act is one of th epillars of our free society and means the Army cannot set up check points and demand your ID papers whenever they please, seize your home or other assets for their use, and rule by force.

Bush has mentioned several times his interest in repealing this restriction and has actually set up a domestic, North American military command structure.  The 2007 DoD authorization bill allows Bush to suspend the constitution and declare martial law in the case of an emergency like 9/11.  He has continuously eroded our constitutional civil rights and this newly released memo simply shreds what remains of the Fourth Amendment.

Be scared, by this, very scared.  These actions go so far beyond what any other Administration or President has tried to do in terms of acquiring and wielding unprecedented power in the White House.  This is on a scale never before seen in this country.

This memo was written on October 23, 2001 by the Office of Legal Counsel and said the military could seize your house, someone specifically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, in the case of "further large-scale terrorist activities."  Of course it's up to George W. Bush to define that term.  The Washington Post notes:

The Fourth Amendment assertion is one of several far-reaching legal arguments revealed by the disclosure Tuesday of a 2003 Justice Department memo that authorized harsh military interrogations. In its footnotes, asides and central text, that 81-page memo asserted nearly unlimited presidential powers during a time of war, although the Justice Department later said the military should not rely on its reasoning.

The document disclosed, for example, that the administration's top lawyers had declared that the president has unfettered power to seize oceangoing ships as commander in chief; that Congress has no ability to pass legislation governing the interrogations of enemy combatants; and that federal laws prohibiting assault and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives.

One section discussed to what extent the president might be allowed to legally maim a prisoner, such as through the use of a "scalding, corrosive, or caustic substance." A footnote argued that Fifth Amendment guarantees of due-process rights "do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign against the Nation's enemies."

These are not actions allowed or condoned in a free and open society.  The Fourth Amendment requires that the government honor your home and property unless they convince a judge, with probable cause, that a warrant is needed to do so.  Bush has completely shattered this basis of law with the consent of Congress through the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and memos by lawyers such as this.  These have been the basis for extralegal searches via wiretap, national security letters and the sort of banking surveillance which caught New York Governor Elliott Spitzer.  Bush has claimed these new powers would only be used for national security investigations and only used to prevent terrorism but I doubt Gov. Spitzer would agree they've honored those claims.  These unconstitutional searches are being used politically.

More American Torture Alleged

A German is accusing the United States of torturing him while in American custody.  Murat Kurnaz says he was hung by his arms from ceiling rafters at an aircraft hanger in Kandahar, Afghanistan in freezing conditions.   He also said physicians assisted with the torture.   This lasted for five days.  Kurnaz was eventually transported to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, held for five years and released.

Following the 9/11 attacks our government offered bounties to Afghanis for Arabs living in their country.  As a result any Arab there at the time was liable to be arrested, tortured and detained at Gitmo for nothing more than the mistake of his ethnicity.   A taxi driver in Afghanistan was tortured to death.

President Bush keeps insisting "we do not torture."  John McCain, a victim of torture himself while a prisoner of war, voted to authorize torture earlier this year.  Using torture against our perceived enemies means our own soldiers, sailors and airmen would also be subject to such inhumane treatment.  Is this what you want for your children, grandchildren or other family members?

Such information degrades our country, our hallowed principles of human rights, and only creates more embittered enemies determined to seek revenge.  This creates more terrorists, not fewer.  Honor is a most valued principle among these cultures and dishonoring families and people demands revenge.  We keep asking why these people hate us and why they attack us so let's remember these actions when it happens again.  Yes, we do sow the seeds of terrorism and motivate attacks against us by terrorists by our actions and inactions.

Ignoring the desperate plights of the world's poor while flaunting our riches also creates enormous resentment.  Refusing to share our wealth with the world's poor also breeds terrorism and hatred.  The world sees us as greedy and selfish in our foreign policy, our refusal to provide a level of aid anywhere near comparable with other western democracies.  We're a target because we make ourselves a target.  We then wonder why we get hit....

Murat Kurnaz, one day, will be one of these reasons.

General Stewart Responds to Tammi Hetherington's Letter

Retired General Walter Stewart has sent me the following letter about Tammi Hetherington's letter regarding Hillary Clinton's Bosnian visit.  I published Tammi's letter Wednesday and it has received national attention.  In that article I quoted General Stewart to provide context and background on the issue of valor theft.  I added his letter to that article as an update but have been asked to publish it on its own for those who might miss it there.

Dear Mr. Morgan,

 

Thank you for providing a forum that is generating such meaningful discussion on the topic of Senator Clinton’s “valor theft.” I am particularly impressed with the letter sent to you by Bosnia veteran, Tammi K. Hetherington, a former specialist with the 22^nd Signal Brigade, 1^st Armored Division, United States Army. I commend Tammi for her service to the nation – service that continues in her courageous willingness to speak truth to power. I commanded thousands of fine soldiers during my almost four decades of active and reserve service, and I would have been honored to have had Tammi among them.

 

Before I go on, I want to correct misreporting about my service as a Guardsman and as an Army major general in Europe. I was never “leader” or “commander” of the Pennsylvania National Guard because that authority belongs to the Adjutant General. I did hold the same military rank as an adjutant general – major general – but did so as commander, 28^th Infantry Division, and as the deputy commander of the State Area Readiness Command (figure that one out). In Europe, my service was at Headquarters, United States European Command (HQUSEUCOM), not at the Army command (USAREUR). EUCOM is the superior headquarters and USAREUR reported to us.

 

I know this minutia seems irrelevant, but in the military accurate representation of titles and performance are at the core of ethics. This is why fabrication of service or battle credentials – what we call “valor theft” - is so offensive to service members and veterans (or should be). Be you soldier or civilian, if you didn’t “earn it” in service to your country, for shame that you might be wearing it or talking about it - and it is equally shameful for those who have served with honor to defend the dishonor of others. Valor theft degrades every service member and veteran, and, as a point of honor, I call on the former admirals, generals, and service veterans who are publicly in support of Senator Clinton to renounce that support. Continue it, and her dishonor is your dishonor.

 

I proudly acknowledge that I changed voter registration so I could vote for Senator Obama in Pennsylvania’s presidential primary. With 4000 dead in the supra-strategic national tragedy that is Iraq I could not but do otherwise. As a leader of soldiers I had one rule for advocating others to higher rank: would I want that person commanding my children in combat. For me, Senator Obama - a rational thinker not dumbed-down by “years in Washington” - is the person for elevation to commander-in-chief. And as to Senator Clinton, were she a sergeant seeking promotion, her known fabrication of battle facts would disqualify her. I have been under fire many times, so much so that the incidents run together, but you can bet I remember the first time.

 

And let me put to rest the security situation at the Tuzla Airport during the March 1996 FLOTUS (first lady of the United States) visit. In the video clip, as she bends to caress the small girl, movement among those behind her reveals a stocky officer wearing four stars on a fatigue cap. I am certain that officer is Admiral “Snuffy” Smith, the senior commander of forces in the Bosnia operation. But Admiral Smith or no, top ranking officers in a war zone don’t wear soft caps unless the security situation warrants it.

 

Senator Clinton’s recollection of being under fire at Tuzla is an unarguable fabrication – a reprehensible act of valor theft, no ifs, ands, or buts.

 

Sincerely,

 

Major General (Retired) Walter L. Stewart, Jr.

Former commander, 28^th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania Army National Guard

Former Director for Reserve Affairs (ECRA), HQUSEUCOM, Stuttgart, Germany

Ps. Tammi, this one is for you, and for all those who served with you.

The Myth of the Surge

John McCain has been on the campaign trail lying to Americans that his plan for the "surge," an escalation of American forces in Iraq, has been responsible for the reduced level of violence.  George W. Bush keeps insisting things are on the road to victory though he fails to define what victory entails.  They have so redefined and dumbed down their definition of "victory" it seems that a one hundred year military presence in Iraq means we win.

The truth is the decrease of violence in Iraq has been accomplished by Moqtada al Sadr, not the surge.  The shia leader established a cease fire for his Mahdi Militia and extended it until recently when his militia increased its violence and the myth of the surge crumbled.  Now American forces are using armored units to try and quell the violence.

Al Sadr controls the level of violence in Iraq, not George Bush, not John McCain.  There is security there or isn't depending on his orders to his followers, not because Bush and McCain sent more American GI's.  This week is visible proof of this as the militias are, again, engaged in violence and the lower levels of violence disappears.