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GQ Magazine has posted about a dozen cover sheets for Department of Defense briefings that were published during the Iraq War.  The briefings depict U.S. soldiers as Christian crusaders fighting a Holy War against Muslims. 

The A.P. reports:

For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms, and Ephesians and Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.

The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers’ deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

This is exactly the kind of response that bin Laden hoped to get from the U.S. so that he could claim we are fighting a Holy War against Muslims.  And he got it…  six years later.  He’s most likely seen these by now and is no doubt preparing a response and a call to arms for his Muslim crusaders.  “Bring ‘em On!”

Rumsfeld and his staff had to have known that this stuff would eventually see the light of day.  It always does, so it’s really amazing and scary that top officials in our government can be so audaciously rigtheous and stupid.

On April 28, 2004 we first saw this photograph taken by a member of the U.S. Military stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq.

Thank you George W. Bush.
Thank you Dick Cheney.
Thank you Donald Rumsfeld.
Thank you Jay Bybee.
Thank you John Yoo.
Thank you Stephen Bradbury.

Thank you.  Thank you all for this sensational icon of American insolence.

Bush gave his farewell speech yesterday. Did anybody watch it?  I didn’t, but I read parts of it.  Here’s what he said about Iraq:

Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.

And on the next page of the paper, here’s what I read about what’s happening to Muntader al-Zaidi, the shoe throwing journalist in Baghdad:

…Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, who was immediately arrested, has been allowed only two visitors — and none since Dec. 21, according to those close to him.

…

On Thursday, Dhiyaa al-Saadi, Mr. Zaidi’s lawyer, said he had recently seen medical records that were part of Mr. Zaidi’s court file, which he said added credence to the journalist’s claim that he had been beaten and tortured after his arrest by the security detail of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, on Dec. 14.

Mr. Saadi said two medical reports conducted by government physicians within a week of Mr. Zaidi’s arrest described bruising that covered the reporter’s face and body, but was especially severe on his legs and arms; a missing tooth; a gash on the bridge of his nose; and what appeared to be a burn mark on his ear.

…

Mr. Zaidi threw his second shoe at the president before security guards restrained him. Both shoes missed. As he was pulled from the room by the guards, Mr. Zaidi was seen being beaten.

Teach them to torture and they will follow.

The Washington Post has confirmed that the United States has used torture at Guantanamo Bay. 

From the Reuters article:

The Pentagon official overseeing the tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

“We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani,” Susan Crawford said in an interview with the newspaper. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

I can only hope that once Obama gets into office he will look into the activities and punish all who were involved, up to and including George W. Bush.

But, we will need to hold Obama accountable for investigating the former administration.  I am concerned about the possibility that he will attempt to downplay the crimes of the past administration.

From his recent TV interview, Think Progress reports:

Q: The most popular question on your own website is related to this. On change.gov it comes from Bob Fertik of New York City and he asks, ‘Will you appoint a special prosecutor ideally Patrick Fitzgerald to independently investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping.’

OBAMA:We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we’re going to be looking at past practices and I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. … My orientation is going to be moving foward.

As a nation, we need to watch this closely over the next year and let our representatives in Congress know how we feel about the United States committing War Crimes.

Palin’s term “Victory” is useless and illuminates a fundamental misunderstanding of the war here in Iraq. There is no Victory.  There never was and never will be.  That’s not just my opinion.  It’s the belief expressed daily by senior military officers.  The search for Victory in Iraq or in the “War on Terror” is futile and a dangerous notion that derails any chance for the measured control of extremism or religious fanaticism.  You can’t kill it with bullets.

When the war began the US Army and Marines came in as warriors.  They kicked down doors and hunted down bad guys.  A day before a major sweep of the lawless town of Samarra I walked along an old gravel pit to survey the men and machines that would make the assault.  “General, how are we doing?”  The one star looked at me, and answered “We’re killing a lot of bad guys the question is are we making them faster than we can kill them.”  That was in 2003.  Even then they knew the fundamental problem.  Now, if you go out and visit the soldiers they are consumed with such tasks as spraying date crops, getting a bus factory back on line or handing out microgrants.  The warriors are nation builders.  At the direction of General Petraeus they also became police–his order was not to kill but to secure the Iraqi public.  Once those Iraqis, who want what we want, believed they could do the right without being killed–they took control of their lives and turned in the bad guys.  If anyone declares a victory it’s them.

Victory for the U.S. implies an end.  There is no end–it’s a process that requires the use of all the tools, including diplomacy, money, and a measured use of human lives.  It’s not just a fight with bullets and guns.  It’s also about poverty, education and the eradication of desperate men with little hope. There were a hundred Osama Bin Ladens before 9-11 and there will be a hundred more after him.

It’s dangerous to talk about Victory.  It shows that the lives of 4178 soldiers have meant nothing. At least their sacrifice should have taught us to stop talking about “winning.”

Ronen Bergman wrote a column for the New York Times yesterday about the decline in suicide bombers (they’re running out of volunteers) and how  terrorists may soon train dogs to carry bombs that will be detonated by remote control.

Seven years after 9/11, it may well be that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of suicide terrorism and a shift toward advanced technologies that will enable jihadist bombers to carry out attacks and live to fight another day.

…

Avoiding suicide has become the major topic on Al Qaeda’s two main Web platforms for discussing the technological aspects of jihad, the forums Ekhlaas and Firdaws. “Those overpowering Satan’s seduction are few, and we sacrifice those few since they may win us Paradise,” read a posting on both sites this summer on the subject of “vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.” It continued: “Yet, keeping them alive is beneficial for us, since every one of them is tantamount to an entire people. So we must find a way to save those lives and harness that zeal.”

…in a document posted last month at Maarek, the most sophisticated jihadist forum for discussing explosives manufacturing, a prolific technical expert calling himself Abu Abdullah al-Qurashi suggested training dogs to recognize American troops’ uniforms, then releasing other dogs carrying improvised explosive devices toward American soldiers so the bombs can be detonated from a safe distance. The author begins with the following words: “I.E.D. operations, but this time, with dogs. Yes, dogs! Brothers, some may find my words fantastic. But, believe me, we should better let a dog die, than let a Lion of Islam die!”

…

Another hurdle Western forces may face is that a new emphasis on remote execution would significantly change the profiles of the terrorists. The uneducated, enthusiastic youths from weak economic backgrounds who have formed the bulk of Al Qaeda’s followers — and whom our intelligence services have spent a decade identifying and neutralizing — will give way to a new type of activists: electricians and robotics experts will join the qualified chemists who make the explosives in order to carry out non-suicide attacks.

I expect we’ll soon be hearing about a sudden decline in the dog population in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From Amy Goodman’s interview with Gore Vidal on DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote two books during the Bush administration. Two of the books you’ve written are Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War. Why these two?

GORE VIDAL: Well, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, that’s my main book during that period. That was the foreign policy of the Bush administration: perpetual war. This was also Harry Truman’s dream. He started the Cold War. If any history had been imparted to our people, they’d know all this. And if you think I enjoy having to be the one to tell them about it, I don’t.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about Dreaming War?

GORE VIDAL: Well, same thing. They were dreaming war. You can see little Bush all along was just dreaming of war, and also Cheney dreaming about oil wells and how you knock apart a country like Iraq and of course their oil will pay for the damage you do. For that alone, he should have been put in front of a firing squad.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you believe in the death penalty?

GORE VIDAL: No. But in their case, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, here we are, moved into the sixth year of the war with Iraq, longer than the US was involved in World War II.

GORE VIDAL: Yes, incredible. That was such a huge operation on two great continents against two modern enemies. And we’re fighting little jungle wars for no reason, because we have a president who knows nothing about anything. He’s just blank. But he wants to show off: ‘I’m a wartime president! I’m a wartime president!’ He goes yap, yap, yap. He’s like a crazed terrier. And look where he got us.

I didn’t realize—I think I’ve always had a good idea about my native land, but I didn’t think that institutionally we were so easy to overthrow, because it was a coup d’etat, 9/11. The whole went crashing. And when we got rid of—when they got rid of Magna Carta, I thought, well, really, this wasn’t much of a republic to begin with.

It’s called “A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq,” and here are it’s two key points as outlined in an opinion piece in today’s Seattle Post Intelligencer:

First, the United States must find a way to sensibly end its military mission in Iraq — and use the political, diplomatic, humanitarian and economic tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative consequences of the war. Second, the Iraq War has done irreparable damage not just to Iraq but to our country, and the time has come to reform our institutions and put the checks and balances in place to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated.

What about the details?  Here’s how they plan to exert the power of Congress on the executive branch to prevent future colossal failures like Bush’s Iraq War:

It calls for incorporating war funding into the regular defense budget instead of using “emergency supplementals”; eliminating the president’s use of signing statements to alter the substantive meaning of a law passed by Congress; repealing parts of the Military Commissions Act that suspended habeas corpus; and ending the use of wiretapping without a FISA warrant.

Great!  Come on Democrats, let’s put this plan into action! 

Oh wait, there’s a problem… the forty Democratic sponsors of this plan aren’t in congress yet.  They are all running for office.  The group is led by Darcy Burner, who is running against Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th district.

You can show your support by endorsing the plan here. 

But to put the plan into action, we’ve got to get these people elected.  So come November, vote for these candidates!

The ongoing fighting in Basra and Baghdad between forces of the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the militia of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr should explode the comfortable notion held by proponents of the occupation in Iraq that the so-called “surge” of American troops was primarily responsible for the quelling of violence over the last six months or more.

This is not to disparage the drastic improvement in the manner in which United States forces now conduct security operations in Iraq. The employment of classic counterinsurgency tactics such as frequent foot patrols in towns and city neighbourhoods, the establishment of a permanent presence in key areas, funding infrastructure improvements and the utilization of special operations units to target high value terrorist targets, have all contributed significantly to a better security environment.  The fact is, however, that violence is down mainly because the Sunni Awakening and the truce called by al-Sadr means that as much as 80% or more of the people who were shooting at or blowing up Americans and causing general mayhem in Iraq stopped doing so.   The key contributor undoubtedly has been that Sunni tribes in Anbar Province and elsewhere who had formed the most formidable part of the insurgency, joined the Americans in combating al-Qaida in Iraq, a threat they saw as far more deadly in the long term than a temporary foreign occupation.  That assistance which has taken the form of providing local forces for security and precious actionable intelligence has enabled the American forces to inflict substantial damage on al-Qaida in Iraq.  And since the latter had instigated a disproportionate amount of the most murderous violence against civilians, the positive effect has been dramatic.

Yet we shouldn’t kid ourselves that the US controls the agenda.  Hopefully the Mahdi Army will be defeated by the American-backed Iraqi Army in the current struggle for control of Basra.  If the rogue Shiite militia emerge the victors or at least fight the government to a draw, al-Maliki will be considerably weakened – and so will the American position in Iraq.  And if the Sunnis become disillusioned with the government and no longer see the alliance with the Americans as in their interests, the violence could yet again spin completely out of control.  And even 160,000 American troops will not contain it.

Both of the potential Democratic nominees to take on Senator John McCain are right to advocate a change to national policy that envisions a military withdrawal from Iraq.  Every time McCain and the Bush administration engage in fear mongering on the dire consequences of what they term a “retreat” from Iraq, it is an admission that the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was a calamitous miscalculation that has created in its wake a failed state, one that cannot be trusted to stand on its own feet without the perpetual presence of American soldiers and Marines.  The only way we will ever find out for sure is to treat the Iraqis like adults and allow them to manage their own affairs rather than create a dependency on Americans that is bad for them and not in our own strategic interests, given the debilitating effect on our Army and Marine Corps, the disproportionate resources expended on the endeavour and the more critical effort in Afghanistan which is being short-changed.  By setting a time-table for withdrawal, the Iraqis will have a powerful incentive and imperative to negotiate a real reconciliation.
 
It could, of course, also go the other way and the country descends into civil war. In which case we will have, hopefully, a Democratic administration that will prepare for the worst by working with all neighbouring states, including Iran and Syria, to contain and minimize the fallout from a return to chaos in Iraq. We must be realistic, also, in allowing for the possibility that we will not be able to leave any military presence in Iraq even to conduct training and special operations again terrorists.  Once we declare a firm time-table for withdrawal, a worst-case scenario may be that the Iraqi government, whoever leads it, may insist that it be complete and not permit a residual American military presence to target al-Qaida in Iraq.  On the other hand, whilst resurgence by al-Qaida in Iraq is a possibility, the absence of American occupation forces will likely serve to marginalize the terrorists among all Iraqis regardless of whether they are Sunni, Shiite or Kurd.

Above all Democrats must not flinch from answering the assertion that a stable and democratic Iraq is in America’s national interest and, therefore, justifies our indefinite occupation.  An honest and straightforward response from either Senator Obama or Clinton should be that, whilst a stable Iraq is indeed a benefit and may, in any case, be promoted by such a withdrawal, it is far outweighed by the greater national interest in extricating our military ground forces from Iraq and reforming and redirecting them, as well as our financial and diplomatic resources, to meet more critical domestic and foreign challenges of the 21st century.  Foremost among these is to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and, ultimately, al-Qaida in its safe havens in Pakistan.

Brother,

The upsurge in violence in Iraq this week has been troubling and sent me back to my notes and a couple of authors that I relied on because of their documentation of data and quotes.  It’s too cumbersome to give you chapter and verse citations; suffice it to say that if your pore over two books–Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone–you will have all the references that you need and want.

Knowing that you share a curiosity for the workings of foreign societies, for what it is worth, I decided to summarize my notes on the economic issues of Iraq and to share them with you.  (My notes on religious affiliations and political entanglements exist but in a more esoteric and unmanageable form.)

You need to know that as a Keynesian, my perceptions go against privatization for the sake of privatization and that, as a Marxist, I am well convinced that the economic manifestations of a society reflect the central core of belief of that society–not always flattering to us.

While Iraqis were consumed with the daily emergencies in Iraq we sold it off through privatization.  What we called “nation building” was really “nation creating.”  We destroyed everything that was in existence and established Paul Bremer and the CPA as the ruling government with the mission of redoing everything.

(As an aside, one contractor was convicted in the US of fraud and fined $10 million. He appealed on the basis that he gave his [fraudulent] reports to the CPA, which, he contended, was not an official government and he won when the court in Virginia sided with him.)

Bremer fired 500,000 government workers and 400,000 military (who went home with their weapons) and he was left to govern 25 million people with a staff of 1,500. (Halliburton had a staff of 50,000) Iraq had a number of government-owned businesses ranging from the oil industry to cement factories, medical facilities, and food producers.  It also had 67% unemployment.  In the face of that, in the name of privatization, we stopped food handouts and ended subsidized gas prices.  Then we opened the border to unrestricted imports, permitted foreign companies to own 100% of Iraqi firms (which meant that a Kuwaiti business would buy a factory at fire sale prices, lay off most of the workers and bring Kuwaitis in to staff it).  It destroyed the Iraqi businessmen.  Bremer, taking his orders from the Pentagon, privatized the 200 essential government-owned businesses and cut the corporate tax rate from 45% to 15% — but foreign investors could take out all of their profits and pay no tax.  This is The Chicago School of Economics (Milton Freidman) run amok–as they did in Chile and Uruguay.

Bremer, on his own authority, took $80 billion from the Iraqi oil fund for “discretionary spending.”  $8.5 billion is still missing. 

Eight days after declaring “Mission Accomplished,” Bush announced the establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free-trade effort and appointed Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz, in charge.  This was to give us access to Iraqi oil.  Iraq has one-third of the known oil reserves in the world.  Those who say this fight wasn’t about oil are mistaken.

Although we created a “Marshall Plan for Iraq,” we ran an anti-Marshall Plan.  The original Marshall Plan did not permit foreign ownership of rebuilt factories in Germany and profits and workers stayed in the German economy.  We made no move to rebuild factories in Iraq until 2006, when the blow-back brought us to our senses and the Iraqi government began to exercise more influence in the economy.  (In February 2004, 21% of the Iraqis said that they preferred an Islamic government.  Six months later, 70% had that preference.) 

Our ignorance and incompetence was outstanding but not surprising.  One observer noted, “Conservatives cannot govern well, just as vegetarians cannot make a world-class beef bourguignon:  If you believe that what you are doing is wrong, you are unlikely to do it well.”

Examples,
We gave Creative Associates $100 million to produce new textbooks.  The Iraqis tossed them as not acceptable. 

Research Triangle had a $466 million contract to “bring democracy to Iraq”!  RT is run by Mormons who believed that they could persuade the Moslems that the Book of Mormon was compatible with the teachings of Mohammed.  The point man, Mayfield, was even so audacious as to email that “that the Iraqis will erect a statue of me as their founder of democracy.”

The contractors–Halliburton, Parsons, Bechtel, etc–brought in thousands of foreign workers rather than employ the skilled, out-of-work Iraqis.  In one narrative, a worker tells about a confrontation with the manager of a cement factory that was going under foreign ownership and a huge projected layoff.  He said that before that would happen they would burn the factory down or go inside and blow it up.

Instead of rebuilding cement factories (under Iraqi ownership) the contractors imported cement at 10 times the cost.  When they were brought to their knees in 2006 they got some Iraqi cement factories up and running and expressed surprise that they weren’t is such bad shape and that they had good workers.  The American who put the effort together was called a “Stalinist” by his colleagues because he had abandoned the privatization model.

The American who was put in charge of health care was an opponent of publicly run clinics and tried to even privatize the prescription delivery system to children.  70% of the children’s deaths in Iraq are preventable with proper medication and sanitary conditions.

Often the US contractors would sub-contract with Kuwaiti firms who would sub-contract with Saudi firms who used foreign (often Pakistani) workers.  If they had to use Iraqis, they would go to the Iraqi Kurds.

Parsons was contracted to build 142 clinics.  They built 6 (poorly).

You’ve read recently of several American troops being electrocuted in facilities that are maintained by a Halliburton subsidiary.  The firm said that they had noted the faulty groundings, but “it wasn’t their responsibility to repair them.”

Of 8 water projects that were completed, only one was in operation a year later.

Bremer tried to lock in all of his laws and that was why Bush was so adamant about a new Constitution for Iraq.  The existing Constitution was quite satisfactory–the problem was that Saddam didn’t abide by it.

Much of the chaos that created the blow-back and the civil war could be attributed to Bremer’s (Pentagon-directed) decisions.  The firings removed skilled people from the government and weakened the voice of the secular Iraqis.  It also fueled the resistance with angry people.  And the businessmen who resented the foreign takeovers gave what little money they had to the resisters.

When Bremer left and the Iraqis took over there was poor water quality, no sewage treatment, limited gas supplies, and, at best, two hours of electricity a day.  That’s still true today.

Meanwhile on the home front, as part of the Disaster Capitalism (while the people are still in shock, sock it to them economically) effort, Rumsfeld cut 55,000 jobs from the Department of Defense and the Veterans’ Administration and privatized them.  You wonder how Heath Net had such strong profits and growth–they got the contract to provide medical care for returning, injured military and we know what a lousy job they did to keep the bottom line attractive to shareholders.

In Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr, Shiite cleric, filled the vacuum by creating his large militia but, more important, created a cadre of workers who went into the community repairing electrical problems, providing food and medical care, etc.

This week the Iraqi Army went after al-Sadr’s militia in Basra.  Friday was the deadline for them to surrender their weapons but Malaki has now extended it by ten days.  I think he sees that he is in a losing cause. 

Brother, we created an economic mess–outside of the invasion–beyond all comprehension and we did it in the name of placing the neoconservative ideal of unrestrained capitalism ahead of the wishes of an informed democracy.  Iraqis are well-educated, secular people but we messed it up and now they, more than us, will be paying a heavy price for years to come.  When emotion trumps reason there is no limit to the extremes to which people will go in desperate times.  Don’t you agree that we should get Nixonian and declare a victory and leave?  Let’s support the IMF and the World Bank in reconstructing the Iraqi economy and stop our partisan meddling.

My guess is that you are as outraged by all this as I am.

The Old Viking (and brother)