BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
REMEMBER THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN CELEBRITIES MADE MOVIES AND DID TV SHOWS? REMEMBER THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN WE EXPECTED PRESIDENTS RULE AND WE KNEW PARENTS WERE COMPLETELY UNCOOL AND NO ONE USED WORDS LIKE "SEXY" TO DESCRIBE THEM?
AS THE BOOMERS HIT PUBERTY YET AGAIN, CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARACK OBAMA MAKES LIKE CHARO AND HITS BROADWAY.
AGAIN, REMEMBER WHEN WE EXPECTED PRESIDENT'S TO BE ADULTS. AND TO ACTUALLY DO SOME WORK?
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier Investigation in the DC area in March of 2008. That was broadcast at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday with Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz anchoring Pacifica's live coverage. (It was also broadcast at the IVAW site.) That was their first Winter Soldier. Since then, they've held others, including one in Texas. They recently had another in Pasadena. Iraq Veterans Against the War explains:
Winter Soldier Southwest was a great success. There were more than half a dozen camera crews shooting it for purposes ranging from independent media to anti-war documentaries. The panelists were quite moving and the audience was extremely supportive and full of positive energy. We want to thank everyone that helped put the event together, including all the panelists from VVAW, VFP, MFSO and Gold Star Families. Most profoundly moving was the testimony of the Gold Star Families panel. Quite a number of panelists testimonies have found their way onto the internet already, below is a short list of a few links to what's out there
Wednesday we noted Ryan Endicott, Thursday we noted Christopher Gallagher's and today we'll note Devon Read's. In addition, IVAW notes the testimony of this compilation video and this compilation video. Apologies to Sgt Devon Read because there is so much noise during his testimony you'll see numerous "[. . .]". Noise includes people talking, thumping on tables, and other things. The video also has jump cuts. I have inserted a credit into his speech. For too many years, someone's been consistently robbed of her credit. The issue isn't with Devon Read. But it is a big issue with me and we will go into after the bad transcription (by me) of his testimony:
Devon Read: We're going to start off with something written by Maj Gen Smedly Butler, a US marine. He was one of the only a handful of marines awarded the Medal of Honor twice for separate acts of heroism. Most marines learn about his war record during boot camp. One thing we don't learn about is the book he wrote about war [War Is A Racket]. In this book, he wrote, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is probably the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. It is conducted at the expense of the very few for the benefit of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat infested dug out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the self-same few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations."
9-11 was four weeks after I graduated from the School of Infantry. We were quickly called up to be an anti-terrorism quick reaction force in southern California -- basically perform civilian crowd control in the case of another attack. We also did a lot of ground infantry training. At the end of our one-year activation, we started hearing about a war with Iraq in the news and couldn't believe it. We were completely in denial right up until the day we got extended and deployed for the invasion. We were in denial because we all knew Iraq had no connection to 9-11. But it was 30 years after Vietnam. There were no combat vets left in the military to tell us how horrific war really was. All we had were the glorified version of war in movies. [. . .]
My unit's first contact was as we were providing security as the rest of our regiment was moving northward through a very small town. I was in a mortar platoon and we were getting ready to fire on a building that was firing on our combo. [. . .] mortars fire almost three miles, so most of our targets are called in by others and we never see them. So when we started hearing small arms fire very close by it surprised us. I thought it was one of our own guys firing. And then I heard a ricochet in the vehicle I was standing in. Turned out I was being shot at because I was wearing a radio, like an idiot, standing in the bed of a Humvee, a good five feet higher than anyone else. So we all scrambled [. . . -- possibly 'to a burn'] to identify where we were pretty sure the fire was coming from. And tasked a machine gun with taking out a shooter. The machine gun is a thirty pound beast that no one ever wants to carry so of course it gets assigned to the youngest, newest marine in the platoon. So now this 18-year-old kid is told to fire an M "240 Golf" machine gun at a rate of 650 rounds per minute into the window of an adobe building that we're pretty sure is firing at us. No one ever went to check if we were right. Congratulations and machismo abound of course because he "got some."
We're traveling down a stretch of road dubbed "The Highway of Death." We'd gotten the word that there would be absolutely no civilians in the area. They'd been evacuated or told to stay [. . inside]. And we believed them. Our convoy would rotate battalions on point so some days we'd be out in front, some days we'd be buried in the middle, and this was one of those days we were in the middle. So someone else was up front seeing targets as they were identified. As the very front was a group of Humvees with Tow Missile on the roof -- a very powerful weapon.
We're cruising along when we see a white bus, blown up, smoking on the side of the road. We all assumed it must have been jihadists or something until we pass it and see it's full of families who are trying to escape the town. There's a little girl and her father and she's dragging a suitcase that's blown apart and the clothes are scattered all about. And she's smoldering with her father dead.
I'm sure it was a very simple mistake someone made along the way. But the end result was a bus of civilians was blown up.
The first day we got into Baghdad, April 8th [jump cut in video] over the course of several hours we blanketed a city block, a few apartment buildings, with our mortar shells. Each with blast radius of thirty meters. We heard later there were dozens of Iraqi casualties. We all knew the civilian body count was high but couldn't spend any time thinking about it. [Jump cut in video.]
The point of these three stories is this: War hurts everyone involved. Some people die, some are changed forever. There's really no such thing as a "clean war." Our weapons are designed to kill as many people as possible in as efficient manner as possible [someone whispering over speaker Devon Read "Would you like . . ."] unless they aren't in which case they're designed to maim them so that it will slow down his comrades and his country will be burdened with healing. The disgusting nature of war is very much by design. 18-year-olds run off to some distant land, excited to do their part, excited because of all the heroic stories they've been told, because their leaders told them that a good war story would woo the girls back home.
They weren't told about PSTD or IEDs or what it would be like to lose an arm or a leg or both. Since these things are all inherent in war, war is bad, right? I'm still to believe that sometimes it may be necessary. Essentially, it's a collective action problem.
If we all collectively agree that war is not necessary and that nations should resolve their problems like adults instead of kindergartners then war wouldn't be necessary but it's like John Lennon [C.I. note: and Yoko Ono] said, "War is over if you want it." But of course we can't all collectively agree on anything right now. It's still collectively kindergartners. And unfortunately, very often, the type of personality it takes to get into a position to rule one nation is the same type of personality that makes one want war and sometimes that leads to dictators invading other nations.
This of course is true for Saddam Hussein, a vicious dictator that gassed his own people and invaded sovereign neighbors. And it used to be how I defended the war. I justified the invasion by saying we deposed an evil man. All my friends are very liberal. But they knew not to challenge me about the invasion because I could always win that argument. This happened to me when I finally got out of my unit. I stopped drilling with them every month. Until that point it was necessary for my own well being to be able to believe at least somewhat in the mission because if I got deployed again, what was I going to do? If I was going to have to deploy again and didn't believe in what we were doing, I could get one of my fellow marines killed because I wasn't focused. But once I was out, I was able to re-evaluate the same stories and facts I'd heard a dozen times before, the same memories I had, my own experiences and come to a very different conclusion.
For me the jury is still out on whether there is such a thing as just war -- I still don't know. I still believe that doing service for your country is an honorable thing to do. The problem I have now is that I feel our service has been misused for the last 8 years. On average, two percent of the population has the warrior mentality. The kind of individual willing to place his body between his family and war's desolation. Those few are trained to do their duty and what's necessary to protect their loved ones. These are dedicated individuals who can accomplish a great deal, who have a great deal of influence in the world. So wielding them is an important responsibility. And for the system to work properly, one has to assume that those who have the ability to wield that power will do so responsibly. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, I do not believe that they did so.
In every war there will be civilian casualties. In every war, 18-year-olds will have to shoot blindly to protect his brothers. But when all of the reasons we were given for invading have turned out to either be mistakes or some case flat out lies, it's just wrong. We were told to expect gas attacks at each major city. [. . .] Heavy resistance from the Republican Guard but none of that ever happened. Once foreign passports started to be found, we were told that Syrians and Iranians were training and fighting with Saddam's Ba'athists and it was further evidence they were obviously fostering terrorism that was responsible for 9-11. But we know that's not the case. The truth is that al Qaeda didn't go to Iraq until we started a war there.
I used to justify the continuing occupation by claiming that leaving now would only destabilize Iraq further and that it would collapse into civil war. The problem is, as I said earlier, war hurts everyone involved. It decimates infrastructure, shatters families, steals the future of each person that is killed and forever damages the participants and witnesses alike. War should be truly the last resort. We began this war because of misinformation and false pretenses. There are no reasons the war should continue when the reasons given pale in comparison to the wave of causalities that are inherent in war. Knowing what we know now, the only responsible course of action is to withdraw from Iraq.
I have candidate Obama's Iraq platform here, from 2008. I'd like to read two things. I'd like to read two things. One is a quote from 2002, "What I am opposed to is a dumb war. A war based not on reason but on passion. Not on principle but on politics." He even provided some of his plans to end the war. The first step was, "Immediately begin to pull out troops engaged in combat operations at a pace of one to two brigades every month to be completed by the end of next year." Referring to this year of course. We know immediate withdrawal is the answer. What happened to him?
We elected candidate Obama because of his plan to end the war. President Obama, however, seems to have other plans. We collectively need to stop justifying the continuing occupations. Excuses and catch phrases like "It's better to fight them over there than to fight them over here" are ridiculous and inflammatory. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died. As of today, 4285 Americans and over 100,000 Americans are estimated to have been injured. We know that these wars are unjust, that they must be stopped. And the time is now.
I added the Yoko Ono songwriting credit. The denial of her credit has been going on for years and years. (I'm not referring to Devon Read. Devon Read's a young man. He's not a professional journalist. I'm talking about the journalists who have deliberately denied Yoko her credit. And, yes, I know Yoko but it's not about that.) Want to piss me off? Deny a writer their credit. Want to piss me off even more? Deny a woman her writing credit.
Click here for credit on the song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono (and recorded by both of them together).
It's not a minor point. When Matthew Rothschild was still flirting with revealing his piggish nature to the country (he'd expose himself fully in 2008), he denied Yoko her earned credit. The Nation did the same. (And both were called out for it here.) I'm not in the mood. I wasn't in the mood when drugged out loser John Phillips tried to commandeer sole credit for "California Dreamin'" -- the same drugged out loser who STOLE credit on Hedy West's classic "500 Miles" and had to be called on that repeatedly before he would finally cop to the fact that he didn't write or co-write the song. I'm not in the mood. I don't play with that topic. We always try to credit writers here and not just say "The New York Times." Even the writers I ridicule here get their names mentioned. I take credit very seriously and I take efforts to deny credit and to specifically deny women their credit very seriously. I'm not talking about Devon Read who made an honest mistake as a result of years and years of efforts to deny Yoko co-songwriting credit (on a song she also sings on). I'm talking about 'journalists' like Matthew Rothschild who repeatedly deny Yoko her credit, I'm talking about the journalists launching their revisionary "John Phillips wrote 'California Dreamin' all by himself" -- (yeah, cause he lived it, right? He was the California Girl, right? Spare me the damn bulls**t). The original credit was John Phillips and Michelle Gilliam then updated to John and Michelle Phillips. The only thing more astounding than his ego was how willing the press was to join in rewriting history. And I'm talking about Danny Goldberg writing -- in a BOOK -- that Lindsey Buckingham wrote the Fleetwood Mac hit "Don't Stop." Christine McVie wrote that song. All by herself. I'm getting damn tired of women being stripped of their credit and when Danny can do that, and when a book publisher can put it into print, it shows how little respect there is for women's accomplishments. It's not -- and has never been -- a minor point with me.
The need to erase women's accomplishments, their lives, their roles in battle? That's the same need that drives the silences on crimes against women. And that's how we transition to Abeer.
May 7th, former US soldier Steven D. Green was found guilty on all counts for his role in the Iraq War Crimes from March 12, 2006, when Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was gang-raped and murdered, her five-year-old sister was murdered and both of her parents were murdered. May 21st, the federal jury deadlocked on the death penalty and instead kicking in sentence to life in prison. September 4th, Green is scheduled to stand before US District Judge Thomas B. Russell for sentencing. Yesterday, Green appeared in court as the family of Abeer gave their statements before leaving to return to Iraq. WHAS11 (text and video) reported on yesterday's court proceedings:Gary Roedemeier: Crimes were horrific. A band of soldiers convicted of planning an attack against an Iraqi girl and her family.Melissa Swan: The only soldier tried in civilian court is Steven Green. The Fort Campbell soldier was in federal court in Loussivell this morning, facing the victims' family and WHAS's Renee Murphy was in that courtroom this morning. She joins us live with the information and also more on that heart wrenching scene of when these family members faced the man who killed their family.Renee Murphy: I mean, they came face to face with the killer. Once again, the only thing different about this time was that they were able to speak with him and they had an exchange of dialogue and the family is here from Iraq and they got to ask Steven Green all the questions they wanted answered. They looked each other in the eye. Green appeared calm and casual in court. The victims' family, though, outraged, emotional and distraught. Now cameras were not allowed in the courtroom so we can't show video of today's hearing but here's an account of what happened. [Video begins] This is a cousin of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl raped and killed by Steven Green. He and other family members in this SUV were able to confront Green in federal court this morning. Their words were stinging and came from sheer grief. Former Fort Campbell soldier Steven Green was convicted of killing an Iraqi mother, father and their young daughter. He then raped their 14-year-old daughter, shot her in the head and set her body on fire. Today the victim's family was able to give an impact statement at the federal court house the young sons of the victims asked Green why he killed their father. an aunt told the court that "wounds are still eating at our heart" and probably the most compelling statements were from the girls' grandmother who sobbed from the stand and demanded an explanation from Green. Green apologized to the family saying that he did evil things but he is not an evil person. He says that he was drunk the night of the crimes in 2006 and he was following the orders of his commanding officers. In his statement, Green said if it would bring these people back to life I would do everything I could to make them execute me. His statement goes on to say, "Before I went to Iraq, I never thought I would intentionally kill a civilian. When I was in Iraq, something happened to me that I can only explain by saying I lost my mind. I stopped seeing Iraqis as good and bad, as men, women and children. I started seeing them all as one, and evil, and less than human." Green didn't act alone. His codefendants were court-martialed and received lesser sentences. Green will be formally sentenced to life in prison in September. [End of videotape.] The answers that Green gave were not good enough for some of the family members. at one point today, the grandmother of the young girls who were killed left the podium and started walking towards Green as he sat at the defendant's table shouting "Why!" She was forcibly then escorted to the back of the court room by US Marshalls. She then fell to the ground and buried her face in her hands and began to cry again. The family pleaded with the court for the death sentence for Green. but you can see Green's entire statement to the court on our website whas11.com and coming up tonight at six o'clock, we're going to hear from Green's attorneys. Like WKLY's reports by Hailee Lampert (here and here -- both are text and video), Murphy makes no mention of the grandmother lunging. Nor do any of the reports filed by the AP on yesterday's court room proceedings (click here for one example). Andrew Wolfson is still maintaining that the grandmother "lunged" at Green in his latest piece at the Courier-Journal. Now let's review one more time. A photo of Abeer's sister is shown to the court. After the jury fails to sentence Green to death (meaning he instead gets life in prison), that photo pops up in the Courier-Journal (last Friday) in Wolfson's story and is identified as a photo of Abeer (bottom right hand corner, note there is still no correction). The AP then grabs the photo, stamps "copyright AP" on it and distributes it around the world as a photo of Abeer. It was not a photo of Abeer. I have two people now telling me that Andrew Wolfson was informed of that, including when he requested a copy of the photo. This follows Wolfson's creative reporting (after not being present in the court room) during the trial where he maintained the defense was arguing that the jury hadn't been to Iraq so they couldn't judge Green. As noted here in real time, that would have been something because the judge had issued an order before even opening statements were made stating that would not take place. Marisa Ford had introduced the motion and the judge was responding (in agreement) to her motion. Here's what Wolfson 'reported' May 8th: "The human-rights minister for Iraq attended the first day of trial April 27 but didn't sit through the rest of the trial and wasn't present for verdicts. Green's attorneys had argued that it was unfair to try him in a civilian court, before civilian jurous who could never understand what he went through in an area of Iraq that was so dangerous that soldiers called it the Triangle of Death. Scott Wendelsdorf, another of Green's attorneys, told the jury . . ." Green's attorneys did not make that argument to the jury and were forbidden from doing so by the judge. From the April 21st snapshot, before the trial started, here is the judge ruling on prosecutor Marisa Ford's motion:
THIS CAUSE is before the Court on the United States' Motion in Limine.
The Court having considered the Motion, and the Court being otherwise sufficiently advised, IT IS ORDERED that:
The defendant is prohibited from eleciting, offering, or commenting on the following evidence during the guilt phase of trial:
1. Evidence or argument that the United States could have, or should have, prosecuted the defendant under the Uniform Code of Military Justice;
2. Evidence or argument concerning the resonableness, wisdom, fairness, or consequences of prosecuting the defendant under Federal criminal law instead of under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
3. Evidence concerning the defendant's desire and willingness to be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and his efforts to reenlist in the Army for that purpose;
4. Evidence concering differences or similarities between Federal criminal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including with respect to available charges, criminal penalities, sentencing, and eligibility of parole; and
5. Evidence or argument that only individuals who are in the military or who have military experience, and not civilians, can or should evaluate the defendant's conduct.
Is there some confusion over the above because it's fairly straight forward. Andrew Wolfson who has had serious problems with his reporting on this case and he is the only reporter claiming that the grandmother "lunged" at Green. Translation, she probably didn't lunge at him. At Gulf News, Dr. Mohammad Akef Jamal observes:
The US occupation has its ways of protecting its soldiers. It also has its philosophers and godfathers, and it is only natural that they will try to protect the force's image. However, it is unnatural for Iraqis who returned to Iraq with the invasion forces and who benefited from the change there to join the occupiers in misleading public opinion and hiding facts and truths. Some of these people have, however, set out to justify some of the more egregious American behaviour. This group of Iraqis has called the highly professional torture carried out in Abu Ghraib 'mistreatment', while referring to other crimes, such as murder, as 'mistakes'. Although these people are extremely eloquent in their defence of the US troops' conduct in Iraq, they have chosen to remain silent on the rapes committed by Americans, which have been exposed by humanitarian groups and committees in Iraq.In its 2005 report, Human Rights Watch commented on the issue, while Britain's The Guardian newspaper ran an interview with an Iraqi on the subject.The silence was broken when the news of the horrific Mahmoudiya incident came out. A poor Iraqi family had fallen prey to four US soldiers. The crime was clear, and was premeditated and unprovoked. The soldiers spent a week preparing for it. The family's relatives testified later that Abeer was constantly complaining that the American soldiers at the checkpoint near her father's field, where she worked, were always hitting on her. The incident shook Iraqis and the government was forced to act. Left with no other option, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki asked the Americans to withdraw protection from the four soldiers and allow the Iraqi courts to handle the case against them. The request was rejected by US Deputy Foreign Secretary William Burns.
[. . .]
Also Sunday on CBS, but in the morning, Dave Matthews Band on CBS' Sunday Morning.
Monday on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, the one and only Valerie Harper -- the multiple Emmy award winning actress, Rhoda to many, and who is delivering an AMAZING performance as Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo's play Looped which plays in DC at the Lincoln Theatre tonight through June 28, 2009. She's amazing in the play and will be on Diane's show Monday. At CounterPunch, Phyllis Pollack interviews the one only Grace Slick who is a rock legend and now a painting one as well:
Phyllis Pollack: "Volunteers Of America," can you talk about that, the song "Volunteers?"
Grace Slick: "Volunteers Of America" actually doesn't mean anything. It was something Marty Balin, lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane, and Paul Kantner put together. Now Paul is very political, Marty isn't. Marty writes love songs. That's one of the things I liked about the group. We had several different forums. Mine was kind of sarcastic social humor. Paul is spaceman political, Marty wrote love songs, and Jack and Jorma were blues. So it's like a smorgasbord. You get one of our records, and it's all different s**t. "Volunteers Of Americas" was a print on the side of a truck that Marty saw. He was looking out the window, and a truck went by. It said "Volunteers Of America" on it. I believe it's something like Salvation Army. I don't know what it is, but it's a Salvation Army type deal. But he liked that. He ran it around his head, "Volunteers Of America. That's interesting." So he had the repeated line, "Volunteers Of America," and Paul put more political s**t into the lyric. So it isn't as deep as everybody thinks it is (laughs). It's something Marty saw on a truck (laughs).
Wednesday Drew Barrymore spoke to Aura Bogado (Free Speech Radio News) about marriage equality. At wowOwow, Liz Peek examines the economy. And we'll close with radio. WBAI Sunday, The Next Hour airs eleven to noon EST and features Paul Krassner, Michael Elias, David Dozer with host Janet Coleman and Coleman and Dozer co-host Cat Radio Cafe on WBAI Monday from two to three p.m. EST with guests Mark Kurlansky (The Food of a Younger Land), Zakiyyah Alexander (10 Things to Do Before I Die) and Marina Kovalyov. Live over the airwaves and live streaming at WBAI which also archives the broadcasts (for 90 days only).
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"The US military announces another death"
"Abeer's family confronts Steven D. Green"
"I Hate The War"
"The Blockhead Roberts"
"Noting one of the fallen in the Kitchen"
"Ryan Endicott"
"Friday"
"Very brief"
"it's never just 1 person"
"thoughts on abeer's family"
"Closing thoughts"
"The lynching"
"Grace Slick, Yoko"
"Torture and Lie Face Sara Jane Moore"
"Jeff Biggers is Diane Chambers"
"Barry O The Homophobe"
"The Trouble With Angels"
"I slept through the military coup"
"Nutty Naomi"
"Photos"
"Debra Sweet, Joshua Frank & Jeffrey St. Clair"
"THIS JUST IN! HE NEVER KNOWS WHO HE IS!"
"Barry lives in make believe land"
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Barry lives in make believe land
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O COMPARED HIMSELF TO F.D.R. WHILE VISITING LOS ANGELES THIS WEEK.
LET'S SEE, THAT'S ABE LINCOLN, SUPERMAN, J.F.K. AND NOW F.D.R. THAT BARACK'S COMPARED HIMSELF TO.
NOT SURPRISING WHEN YOU GRASP THAT HE'S A CHANGELING WHO'S NEVER BEEN COMFORTABLE IN HIS OWN SKIN.
IN OTHER NEWS, THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CAN'T STOP SUCKING UP TO ROBERT GIBBS. THEY WEREN'T THIS BAD WHEN BUSH WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE DATA BACKS THAT UP.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier Investigation in the DC area in March of 2008. That was broadcast at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday with Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz anchoring Pacifica's live coverage. (It was also broadcast at the IVAW site.) That was their first Winter Soldier. They recently had another in Pasadena. Iraq Veterans Against the War explains:
Winter Soldier Southwest was a great success. There were more than half a dozen camera crews shooting it for purposes ranging from independent media to anti-war documentaries. The panelists were quite moving and the audience was extremely supportive and full of positive energy. We want to thank everyone that helped put the event together, including all the panelists from VVAW, VFP, MFSO and Gold Star Families. Most profoundly moving was the testimony of the Gold Star Families panel. Quite a number of panelists testimonies have found their way onto the internet already, below is a short list of a few links to what's out there
Yesterday we noted Ryan Endicott, today we'll note Sgt Christopher Gallagher. In addition, IVAW notes the testimony of Devon Read, this compilation video and this compilation video. We'll note Devon Read's testimony tomorrow.
Christopher Gallagher: My unit was 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. I joined the Marine Corps right at 9-11out of patriotism and love for my country. I was part of the invasion force and two tours following that. While sitting around in Kuwait in early 2003, we were told to write a final letter to our families and put it on [. . .] sea bags that were to be left behind and then sent to your family if you died in Iraq. This is a picture of the letter I wrote. Many of the troops, including myself, were sent to Iraq with inadequate armor. I drove a Hummer into Iraq. It had only a plastic canvas for protection while I was driving directly behind armored troop carriers. I was not issued ballistic plates for my flak jacket. Whole battalions of officers were issued ballistic plates along with the line companies. But to the government, I was expendable and did not rate to have such life-saving, personal protection. I vividly remember one night after being up for nearly five days straight I was on a closed parameter roving post outside the commanding operation center when artillery rounds started landing. The next day I found out it was friendly fire. And these rounds were landing only a few hundred yards away -- which if you've ever been around 120 millimeter round, land near you, it's pretty insane. It made me realize how close I had come to death and it made me angry that I didn't have ballistic plates.
After my unit had taken Baghdad and helped pull the statue of Saddam Hussein down, there was a short-lived celebration. This brings me to my next issue -- of where an official Defense Department story meets with true reality on the ground. On April 14, 2003, Cpl Jason Mileo of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines was murdered by a Force Recon Sniper. Cpl Mileo had apparently taken off his helmet and was smoking a cigarette at night with his rifle next to him and was mistaken for an insurgent. I had been providing security at night along with several others of my platoon on that roof. For several nights prior to Force Recon relieving us and I had not noticed anything significant to report in that time. There was nothing out there. I hadn't seen anything. And as soon as Force Recon had taken over, I was hearing shots coming from the roof constantly and it made me wonder what the hell were they shooting at? Then the night of April 14, 2003, my company gunnery sergeant had called from the roof and was raising hell. That's when I found out one of the marines from India Company had been shot by one of the cowboys from Force Recon. On my third tour, I had been on the government issued computer and found the investigation case file for the incident on a military web server. The report went on to say that the platoon commander and the sergeant had been derelict in their duty. They failed to do proper, routine patrol overlay and negated to send in a position report to let the battalion know where they were at. To my knowledge, no one was reprimanded and some were later promoted. The Defense Department stated that he died from hostile friendly fire and that the incident was under investigation. It was a shocking reminder to everybody about the truth and what really goes on down there compared to what the government is telling you at home.
Forced Recon and their tabloid ways proved deadly for my unit once again. April 7, 2005, Lance Cpl Juan Venegas, who was one of the snipers in my unit, was on a mission in Falluja. He was in a hide when a patrol of Force Recon Marines drove up in their Hummers and then, mistaking him for an insurgent, running him over with their vehicles. The official story released by the Defense Department stated that he was involved in a hostile vehicle accident that was under investigation. I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a hostile vehicle accident before. It's a shame that a young man -- through my research -- he wanted to become a boxer and too many lives have been lost that -- you can't take it away from these guys -- they're young men that want to serve their country and this story is just -- it got to me.
And I'm going to go back to my second tour in Iraq. I was stationed at a dam in Haditha. Things were completely different from my first tour. I had seen the presence of contractors doing military jobs such as cooks, truck drivers and security mercenaries like Blackwater. They were doing these jobs and getting paid five times more than I was. At the dam, marines were providing security for the dam below it as were Azerbaijani soldiers who were poorly trained and equipped. They were very trigger happy and shot at and sometimes killed fisherman who got to close to the damn. During that tour it was the first time I noticed the change in the demeanor that the Iraqis had towards us. During the invasion, the streets of Baghdad were filled with people cheering "Bush good, Saddam bad!" In 2004, the Iraqis called protests in the town of Haditha against the occupation. Typical response for this was to have fighter jets fly over the crowd and scare them away. So much for winning the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people we were supposed to be doing. In January 2005, I was stationed in Falluja about three hundred yards from the bridge where the Blackwater contractors bodies were hung in April 2004. We were relieving a marine infantry unit that had fought during the heavy fighting in the city carrying out Operation Phantom Fury. I was the radio operator for an 81 millimeter mortar platoon and our task was to run a checkpoint outside Falluja making sure that no insurgents return to Falluja. During the transition, I met a few young marines who were reservists from an artillery unit. It was there job to clean up all the dead bodies of the insurgents and the foreign fighters after the operation was finished. They had taken all the enemy to a place we called The Potato Factory where the bodies were stripped and checked for identification by CIA agents.
So after we got the checkpoint up and running, smoothly, the marines from my platoon were given jobs such as issuing identification to everyone re-entering the city by retinal scanning them and giving them a badge they had to show to get back into the city they were forced from. After they were retinal scanned with the biometric system known as BATS [Biometrics Automated Toolset System], they had to pass in front of a BATS scanner scan that was supposed to scan for heat variation to see if someone was carrying a weapon. This piece of equipment that probably cost more than most Americans homes, didn't work too well in the heat. If the government hasn't noticed, Iraq is in a desert and it's hot most of the year. Now if you look at this picture behind me, you can see it's winter time and there are no leaves on the tree of course it's going to work when it's cold out. The Iraqis were herded like cattle through the checkpoint as if they were animals. If any Iraqis voiced their opinion for the way they were being treated, the Iraqi police we had at our checkpoint would handle the situation by harassing and assaulting them.
Looking back on my third tour, it seems Orwellian to me with the CIA involvement and all that Big Brother-esque type of equipment and technology being used to enslave the Iraqis in their own country.
I still love my country and I feel that the most patriotic thing we can do is to let the world know that US imperialism is wrong. And I finish today by saying something that I've heard a million times and I've said myself: You can't bring democracy through the barrel of a gun.
Again, we'll note Devon Read tomorrow.
"Most of all I am sorry for the deceased, but aside from them, I am the most sorry for the boys whose family are gone. I know what we did left a hole in their lives, and scars on their minds, and that there is no making up for that. I only hope for them that they can somehow, and I don't know how, move forward, and have a good future despite the nightmare in their past that I helped create. They have my apologies and my prayers, as meaningless as they must seem," declared Steven D. Green in court today. May 7th, former US soldier Steven D. Green was found guilty on all counts for his role in the Iraq War Crimes from March 12, 2006, when Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was gang-raped and murdered, her five-year-old sister was murdered and both of her parents were murdered. May 21st, the federal jury deadlocked on the death penalty and instead kicking in sentence to life in prison. September 4th, Green is scheduled to stand before US District Judge Thomas B. Russell for sentencing. This morning AP reported that Abeer's family would provide testimony to Judge Russell on the damage and destruction to them as a result of the War Crimes and are doing that because they need to return to Iraq. Green's pre-written statement (which he claimed to be the author of) also included, "I am truly sorry for what I did in Iraq and I am sorry for the pain my actions, and the actions of my co-defendants, have caused you and your family. I imagine it is a pain that I cannot fully comprehend or appreciate. I helped to destroy a family and end the lives of four of my fellow human beings, and I wish that I could take it back, but I cannot. And, as inadequate as this apology is, it is all I can give you."
The apology or 'apology' did not go over well with Hajia al-Janabi (Abeer's aunt). Andrew Wolfson (Courier-Journal) reports she denounced Green "as a coward, a criminal and a 'stigma on the United States'," attempted to approach him and was "restrained by a half-dozen court security officers." Wolfson notes that Mahdi al-Janabi then went back to the witness stand to express, "We do not accept your apology at all." WKLY has text and video:
Ann Bowdan: An outburst in federal court after relatives of an Iraqi family killed by a Kentucky-based soldier addressed the suspect for the first time. Steven Green was faced with the death penalty but will receive a life sentence instead. Hailee Lampert was in court today during this morning's and she's live downtown to tell us what happened.
Hailee Lampert: Ann, this was the most emotional, intense court hearing I have ever been to. At one point, the victim's grandmother got so upset she had to be restrained by multiple law enforcement agents who actually began escorting her out of the court room until she literally collapsed on the floor beside the bench where I was sitting. She was literally within arm's reach of me. And she was beside herself. She was that striken with grief.
Hailee Lampert adds that both of Abeer's brothers testified briefly.
Hailee Lampert: And at a certain point, the prosecutor pointed out Steven Green and one of the boys took a moment to look at him. His face remained stoic and cold and he was asked if he had anything to say to the suspect and the boy said "no." Then the man's sister took the stand and said, "I am not honored to look at Steven Green and I don't want to see his face." She said she doesn't understand why Green would would cross all those continents and oceans to come to Iraq and kill her family. She spoke directly to Steven Green, referring to him on multiple occassions as a coward and a criminal without mercy. Then the 14-year-old's grandmother took the stand echoing similar sentiments. Remember for her it was the first time being in the same room as the man convicted of killing her son and his family. Again the prosecutor pointed out Steven Green in the court room and after giving her testimony the elderly woman got up and began approching Green saying she just wanted to get a look at her. But as she began moving closer, law enforcement stepped in and physically held her back until she fell down crying on the ground beside the bench where I was sitting. Now at that point, the judge did allow her to stay in the court once she had calmed down a little but the uncle took the stand as well.
In another report, Hailee Lampert (WLKY -- text and video) quotes the aunt stating, "The wounds are eating my heart. But he has no conscience.." The uncle is quoted stating, "The face of this innocent girl, that face will be chasing you in that dark cell you will be in until the last day of your life. Abir will follow you in your nightmares. On Judgment Day, you will see what your hand has done to us and to your nation."
Throughout the trial, editorial boards repeatedly ignored the case (here for an exception). Today a letter appears in the Salt Lake Tribune:
The decision by the jury for U.S. "soldier" Steven Green is absolutely outrageous ("Sentence for rapist-killer brings Iraqi outrage," Tribune , May 23). A life sentence is unimaginably unjust. The conduct of the U.S. military members involved in this case is as horrific as any act committed by any small group of terrorists. It cannot be condoned; it cannot be tolerated. In essence, we are terrorists. These military members should never have been in Iraq in the first place. I am embarrassed to be a U.S. citizen. I feel anguish for a family that was assaulted, raped and systematically assassinated by U.S. servicemen who scarcely deserve to be called human. Green and his cohorts should be executed. But apparently four murders is not enough. Let us not feel any sorrow for Green, but rather for the members of the Janabi family who were unmercifully slaughtered: a 6-year-old girl; her 14-year-old sister, Abeer Qassim Janabi, who was gang raped and shot in the face by Green with an AK-47; and their parents -- all burned in their home near Baghdad.If this is the price of freedom, who wants it? Tony FratesSalt Lake City
Meanwhile Cindy Sheehan reports she was censored by YouTube. She and Clifford Roddy created a short film entitled finaledit and she posted it to her YouTube page only to have YouTube pull the video down because the realities of war must never be seen, even on the allegedly free speech web. Cindy writes, "I am sorry (sarcasm) that our video 'violated' You Tube's terms of service, but the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan not only violate my terms of service, but international law." Cindy Sheehan's currently on a speaking tour and these are some of the upcoming dates:
Phoenix: June 5th
Dallas: June 7th and 8th
Waco: June 9th
Austin: June 10th and 11th
Nashville: June 14-16
St. Petersburg, FL: June 17-18
Philadelphia: June 20-23
NYC: June 24-26
Cape Cod: June 27-29
New Hampshire: June 30 - July 1
San Francisco: July 3 - 5 (Socialist Conference)
Cleveland: July 8-9 (National Assembly to end the Iraq War)
Pittsburgh: July 11-12
Norfolk, VA: July 15-18
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"ABC News reports on the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community"
"Abeer's family testifies before judge"
"Leave the man alone!"
"burris, st. clair, frank, debra sweet"
"Barack may be post-racial; however, our society is not"
"Brief"
"Get some proof or stop the witch hunt."
"Senator Roland Burris"
"Steve Chapman weighs in on the witch hunt"
"World Can't Wait"
"THIS JUST IN! BETRAYAL!"
"What betrayal looks like"
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O COMPARED HIMSELF TO F.D.R. WHILE VISITING LOS ANGELES THIS WEEK.
LET'S SEE, THAT'S ABE LINCOLN, SUPERMAN, J.F.K. AND NOW F.D.R. THAT BARACK'S COMPARED HIMSELF TO.
NOT SURPRISING WHEN YOU GRASP THAT HE'S A CHANGELING WHO'S NEVER BEEN COMFORTABLE IN HIS OWN SKIN.
IN OTHER NEWS, THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CAN'T STOP SUCKING UP TO ROBERT GIBBS. THEY WEREN'T THIS BAD WHEN BUSH WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE DATA BACKS THAT UP.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier Investigation in the DC area in March of 2008. That was broadcast at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday with Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz anchoring Pacifica's live coverage. (It was also broadcast at the IVAW site.) That was their first Winter Soldier. They recently had another in Pasadena. Iraq Veterans Against the War explains:
Winter Soldier Southwest was a great success. There were more than half a dozen camera crews shooting it for purposes ranging from independent media to anti-war documentaries. The panelists were quite moving and the audience was extremely supportive and full of positive energy. We want to thank everyone that helped put the event together, including all the panelists from VVAW, VFP, MFSO and Gold Star Families. Most profoundly moving was the testimony of the Gold Star Families panel. Quite a number of panelists testimonies have found their way onto the internet already, below is a short list of a few links to what's out there
Yesterday we noted Ryan Endicott, today we'll note Sgt Christopher Gallagher. In addition, IVAW notes the testimony of Devon Read, this compilation video and this compilation video. We'll note Devon Read's testimony tomorrow.
Christopher Gallagher: My unit was 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. I joined the Marine Corps right at 9-11out of patriotism and love for my country. I was part of the invasion force and two tours following that. While sitting around in Kuwait in early 2003, we were told to write a final letter to our families and put it on [. . .] sea bags that were to be left behind and then sent to your family if you died in Iraq. This is a picture of the letter I wrote. Many of the troops, including myself, were sent to Iraq with inadequate armor. I drove a Hummer into Iraq. It had only a plastic canvas for protection while I was driving directly behind armored troop carriers. I was not issued ballistic plates for my flak jacket. Whole battalions of officers were issued ballistic plates along with the line companies. But to the government, I was expendable and did not rate to have such life-saving, personal protection. I vividly remember one night after being up for nearly five days straight I was on a closed parameter roving post outside the commanding operation center when artillery rounds started landing. The next day I found out it was friendly fire. And these rounds were landing only a few hundred yards away -- which if you've ever been around 120 millimeter round, land near you, it's pretty insane. It made me realize how close I had come to death and it made me angry that I didn't have ballistic plates.
After my unit had taken Baghdad and helped pull the statue of Saddam Hussein down, there was a short-lived celebration. This brings me to my next issue -- of where an official Defense Department story meets with true reality on the ground. On April 14, 2003, Cpl Jason Mileo of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines was murdered by a Force Recon Sniper. Cpl Mileo had apparently taken off his helmet and was smoking a cigarette at night with his rifle next to him and was mistaken for an insurgent. I had been providing security at night along with several others of my platoon on that roof. For several nights prior to Force Recon relieving us and I had not noticed anything significant to report in that time. There was nothing out there. I hadn't seen anything. And as soon as Force Recon had taken over, I was hearing shots coming from the roof constantly and it made me wonder what the hell were they shooting at? Then the night of April 14, 2003, my company gunnery sergeant had called from the roof and was raising hell. That's when I found out one of the marines from India Company had been shot by one of the cowboys from Force Recon. On my third tour, I had been on the government issued computer and found the investigation case file for the incident on a military web server. The report went on to say that the platoon commander and the sergeant had been derelict in their duty. They failed to do proper, routine patrol overlay and negated to send in a position report to let the battalion know where they were at. To my knowledge, no one was reprimanded and some were later promoted. The Defense Department stated that he died from hostile friendly fire and that the incident was under investigation. It was a shocking reminder to everybody about the truth and what really goes on down there compared to what the government is telling you at home.
Forced Recon and their tabloid ways proved deadly for my unit once again. April 7, 2005, Lance Cpl Juan Venegas, who was one of the snipers in my unit, was on a mission in Falluja. He was in a hide when a patrol of Force Recon Marines drove up in their Hummers and then, mistaking him for an insurgent, running him over with their vehicles. The official story released by the Defense Department stated that he was involved in a hostile vehicle accident that was under investigation. I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a hostile vehicle accident before. It's a shame that a young man -- through my research -- he wanted to become a boxer and too many lives have been lost that -- you can't take it away from these guys -- they're young men that want to serve their country and this story is just -- it got to me.
And I'm going to go back to my second tour in Iraq. I was stationed at a dam in Haditha. Things were completely different from my first tour. I had seen the presence of contractors doing military jobs such as cooks, truck drivers and security mercenaries like Blackwater. They were doing these jobs and getting paid five times more than I was. At the dam, marines were providing security for the dam below it as were Azerbaijani soldiers who were poorly trained and equipped. They were very trigger happy and shot at and sometimes killed fisherman who got to close to the damn. During that tour it was the first time I noticed the change in the demeanor that the Iraqis had towards us. During the invasion, the streets of Baghdad were filled with people cheering "Bush good, Saddam bad!" In 2004, the Iraqis called protests in the town of Haditha against the occupation. Typical response for this was to have fighter jets fly over the crowd and scare them away. So much for winning the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people we were supposed to be doing. In January 2005, I was stationed in Falluja about three hundred yards from the bridge where the Blackwater contractors bodies were hung in April 2004. We were relieving a marine infantry unit that had fought during the heavy fighting in the city carrying out Operation Phantom Fury. I was the radio operator for an 81 millimeter mortar platoon and our task was to run a checkpoint outside Falluja making sure that no insurgents return to Falluja. During the transition, I met a few young marines who were reservists from an artillery unit. It was there job to clean up all the dead bodies of the insurgents and the foreign fighters after the operation was finished. They had taken all the enemy to a place we called The Potato Factory where the bodies were stripped and checked for identification by CIA agents.
So after we got the checkpoint up and running, smoothly, the marines from my platoon were given jobs such as issuing identification to everyone re-entering the city by retinal scanning them and giving them a badge they had to show to get back into the city they were forced from. After they were retinal scanned with the biometric system known as BATS [Biometrics Automated Toolset System], they had to pass in front of a BATS scanner scan that was supposed to scan for heat variation to see if someone was carrying a weapon. This piece of equipment that probably cost more than most Americans homes, didn't work too well in the heat. If the government hasn't noticed, Iraq is in a desert and it's hot most of the year. Now if you look at this picture behind me, you can see it's winter time and there are no leaves on the tree of course it's going to work when it's cold out. The Iraqis were herded like cattle through the checkpoint as if they were animals. If any Iraqis voiced their opinion for the way they were being treated, the Iraqi police we had at our checkpoint would handle the situation by harassing and assaulting them.
Looking back on my third tour, it seems Orwellian to me with the CIA involvement and all that Big Brother-esque type of equipment and technology being used to enslave the Iraqis in their own country.
I still love my country and I feel that the most patriotic thing we can do is to let the world know that US imperialism is wrong. And I finish today by saying something that I've heard a million times and I've said myself: You can't bring democracy through the barrel of a gun.
Again, we'll note Devon Read tomorrow.
"Most of all I am sorry for the deceased, but aside from them, I am the most sorry for the boys whose family are gone. I know what we did left a hole in their lives, and scars on their minds, and that there is no making up for that. I only hope for them that they can somehow, and I don't know how, move forward, and have a good future despite the nightmare in their past that I helped create. They have my apologies and my prayers, as meaningless as they must seem," declared Steven D. Green in court today. May 7th, former US soldier Steven D. Green was found guilty on all counts for his role in the Iraq War Crimes from March 12, 2006, when Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was gang-raped and murdered, her five-year-old sister was murdered and both of her parents were murdered. May 21st, the federal jury deadlocked on the death penalty and instead kicking in sentence to life in prison. September 4th, Green is scheduled to stand before US District Judge Thomas B. Russell for sentencing. This morning AP reported that Abeer's family would provide testimony to Judge Russell on the damage and destruction to them as a result of the War Crimes and are doing that because they need to return to Iraq. Green's pre-written statement (which he claimed to be the author of) also included, "I am truly sorry for what I did in Iraq and I am sorry for the pain my actions, and the actions of my co-defendants, have caused you and your family. I imagine it is a pain that I cannot fully comprehend or appreciate. I helped to destroy a family and end the lives of four of my fellow human beings, and I wish that I could take it back, but I cannot. And, as inadequate as this apology is, it is all I can give you."
The apology or 'apology' did not go over well with Hajia al-Janabi (Abeer's aunt). Andrew Wolfson (Courier-Journal) reports she denounced Green "as a coward, a criminal and a 'stigma on the United States'," attempted to approach him and was "restrained by a half-dozen court security officers." Wolfson notes that Mahdi al-Janabi then went back to the witness stand to express, "We do not accept your apology at all." WKLY has text and video:
Ann Bowdan: An outburst in federal court after relatives of an Iraqi family killed by a Kentucky-based soldier addressed the suspect for the first time. Steven Green was faced with the death penalty but will receive a life sentence instead. Hailee Lampert was in court today during this morning's and she's live downtown to tell us what happened.
Hailee Lampert: Ann, this was the most emotional, intense court hearing I have ever been to. At one point, the victim's grandmother got so upset she had to be restrained by multiple law enforcement agents who actually began escorting her out of the court room until she literally collapsed on the floor beside the bench where I was sitting. She was literally within arm's reach of me. And she was beside herself. She was that striken with grief.
Hailee Lampert adds that both of Abeer's brothers testified briefly.
Hailee Lampert: And at a certain point, the prosecutor pointed out Steven Green and one of the boys took a moment to look at him. His face remained stoic and cold and he was asked if he had anything to say to the suspect and the boy said "no." Then the man's sister took the stand and said, "I am not honored to look at Steven Green and I don't want to see his face." She said she doesn't understand why Green would would cross all those continents and oceans to come to Iraq and kill her family. She spoke directly to Steven Green, referring to him on multiple occassions as a coward and a criminal without mercy. Then the 14-year-old's grandmother took the stand echoing similar sentiments. Remember for her it was the first time being in the same room as the man convicted of killing her son and his family. Again the prosecutor pointed out Steven Green in the court room and after giving her testimony the elderly woman got up and began approching Green saying she just wanted to get a look at her. But as she began moving closer, law enforcement stepped in and physically held her back until she fell down crying on the ground beside the bench where I was sitting. Now at that point, the judge did allow her to stay in the court once she had calmed down a little but the uncle took the stand as well.
In another report, Hailee Lampert (WLKY -- text and video) quotes the aunt stating, "The wounds are eating my heart. But he has no conscience.." The uncle is quoted stating, "The face of this innocent girl, that face will be chasing you in that dark cell you will be in until the last day of your life. Abir will follow you in your nightmares. On Judgment Day, you will see what your hand has done to us and to your nation."
Throughout the trial, editorial boards repeatedly ignored the case (here for an exception). Today a letter appears in the Salt Lake Tribune:
The decision by the jury for U.S. "soldier" Steven Green is absolutely outrageous ("Sentence for rapist-killer brings Iraqi outrage," Tribune , May 23). A life sentence is unimaginably unjust. The conduct of the U.S. military members involved in this case is as horrific as any act committed by any small group of terrorists. It cannot be condoned; it cannot be tolerated. In essence, we are terrorists. These military members should never have been in Iraq in the first place. I am embarrassed to be a U.S. citizen. I feel anguish for a family that was assaulted, raped and systematically assassinated by U.S. servicemen who scarcely deserve to be called human. Green and his cohorts should be executed. But apparently four murders is not enough. Let us not feel any sorrow for Green, but rather for the members of the Janabi family who were unmercifully slaughtered: a 6-year-old girl; her 14-year-old sister, Abeer Qassim Janabi, who was gang raped and shot in the face by Green with an AK-47; and their parents -- all burned in their home near Baghdad.If this is the price of freedom, who wants it? Tony FratesSalt Lake City
Meanwhile Cindy Sheehan reports she was censored by YouTube. She and Clifford Roddy created a short film entitled finaledit and she posted it to her YouTube page only to have YouTube pull the video down because the realities of war must never be seen, even on the allegedly free speech web. Cindy writes, "I am sorry (sarcasm) that our video 'violated' You Tube's terms of service, but the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan not only violate my terms of service, but international law." Cindy Sheehan's currently on a speaking tour and these are some of the upcoming dates:
Phoenix: June 5th
Dallas: June 7th and 8th
Waco: June 9th
Austin: June 10th and 11th
Nashville: June 14-16
St. Petersburg, FL: June 17-18
Philadelphia: June 20-23
NYC: June 24-26
Cape Cod: June 27-29
New Hampshire: June 30 - July 1
San Francisco: July 3 - 5 (Socialist Conference)
Cleveland: July 8-9 (National Assembly to end the Iraq War)
Pittsburgh: July 11-12
Norfolk, VA: July 15-18
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"ABC News reports on the targeting of Iraq's LGBT community"
"Abeer's family testifies before judge"
"Leave the man alone!"
"burris, st. clair, frank, debra sweet"
"Barack may be post-racial; however, our society is not"
"Brief"
"Get some proof or stop the witch hunt."
"Senator Roland Burris"
"Steve Chapman weighs in on the witch hunt"
"World Can't Wait"
"THIS JUST IN! BETRAYAL!"
"What betrayal looks like"
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
What betrayal looks like
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
KIM GANDY, ELLIE SMEAL AND SO MANY OTHERS ARE FINDING OUT BARACK IS WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE.
DURING THE CAMPAIGN, BARACK PROMISED HE WOULD APPOINT ONLY PRO-CHOICE JUDGES THAT HE WOULD ENSURE "A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE UNDER ROE VVS. WADE A PRIORITY AS A PRESIDENT."
YET TODAY THE WHITE HOUSE INSISTED THERE WAS NO "LITMUS TEST" FOR THE SUPREME COURT AND THAT HE DIDN'T ASK HIS NOMINEE, JUDGE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, WHERE SHE STOOD ON ABORTION.
SAY IT WITH US, KIM, "SHOW ME WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE!"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War which announces:
Winter Soldier Southwest was a great success. There were more than half a dozen camera crews shooting it for purposes ranging from independent media to anti-war documentaries. The panelists were quite moving and the audience was extremely supportive and full of positive energy. We want to thank everyone that helped put the event together, including all the panelists from VVAW, VFP, MFSO and Gold Star Families. Most profoundly moving was the testimony of the Gold Star Families panel. Quite a number of panelists testimonies have found their way onto the internet already, below is a short list of a few links to what's out there
Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier Investigation in the DC area in March of 2008. That was broadcast at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday with Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz anchoring Pacifica's live coverage. (It was also broadcast at the IVAW site.) This was a West Coast Winter Soldier and the videos are here, here, here, here and here. We'll note one today.
Ryan Endicott: I knew my time had come as I laughed, I ran. This was everything I had hoped for, my chance to kill. I didn't care how or who but someone was going to die today. [. . .] From that moment forward, our efforts became much more intense. We began getting "intelligence" -- quote unquote -- of suspected terrorists safe houses, weapons caches. We would gear up, blare our death metal and pump each other up comparing body counts, telling each other, "It's only a matter of time before we get another." We knew every way to walk right around the line of engagement. The rules of engagement? What a joke. To us grunts, rules of engagement were not rules at all but merely words on a piece of paper, somewhere printed, for the sole purpose of protecting officers if we grunts actually got caught.
Try to imagine yourself tonight as you sleep warm in your bed with your wife, your children in the next room. Two a.m. and your door is kicked in and men are screaming. As they kick open your bedroom door, they're screaming a language you don't understand. They're pointing machine guns at your face as they drag you by your hair from your bed, slamming your face down to the ground, putting their boots on the back of your neck and smashing your face further into the concrete floor. Your struggle to protect your family and your home is futile as you are blindfolded and handcuffed so tight you lose feeling in your hands within minutes. All you know is you can hear your screaming wife and children crying for help and you are too useless to protect them. You were not on a list of suspected terrorists. You were not on a list of known terrorists. In fact, you completely supported the US coming into your country and promising freedom, prosperity. You were simply a man in a house on a street that my platoon decided to search. When your blindfold is finally released, the men left your home, it's destroyed. Your wife and children are huddled in a corner defenseless and crying. Every drawer in your home is thrown. The contents broken, soiled. Your bed has been urinated on. Your wife's panties are glued to the wall. Maybe a family heirloom is missing or other objects stolen. The floor is wet with fresh chewing tobacco spit. And you vainly try to tell your family it will be okay and never happen again but, in your heart you know all the while, your chances are it probably will.
As time continued to pass, my ego grew stronger and my hate boiled within my veins. A scene like this was nothing more than a Tuesday to me. I laughed as I heard a story. One of the platoons had strapped dead bodies to the hoods of their Humvees and drove around the city for hours blasting death metal music as they terrorized the population. Just another Tuesday to me.
Back on post, there was a time when somehow, some way, an Iraqi had managed to get himself lost and ended up knocking on the door to my post which happened to be next to our sleeping area. As I answered the door and I saw the Iraqi standing there, I accepted my fate and I jumped on top of him. I accepted he was a suicide bomber and I had seen my last day as I began to punch him. Brutally I sat on top of him punching him as hard as I could. After a moment I got him under control and handcuffed him. He was simply a man who had just gotten lost. I was punished harshly not for my actions, not for harming an unarmed civilian, but for not killing him. I was told he should have been killed for being there and I would have been protected. I was forced to burn feces, stand hours at an additional post and physically punished. I was ostracized and called a "wuss" and a "girl" for not killing him. I had lost all the respect that I had gained and that I had killed for to earn. I was forced to stand six hours at post at a time directly behind an air conditioning unit with all the heat blasting out of the back side onto my face in the middle of the summer in one of the hottest places on the earth. I stood that post 12 hours a day, four days a week for over a month.
The man that arose from that month was someone I hoped to never meet again. The last bit of humanity and morality I had left was gone. I laughed as marines told me they'd just shot this guy in the head and saw his head explode. Just another Tuesday to me.
One Tuesday they brought a car that had just been shot up. The driver's fully intact brain was sitting in the back seat. And, to the looks of it, the passenger's brains were all over the car. I walked over to the body bag with the passenger in it -- the bag was still twitching. And we could hear his body still attempting to breathe. Even though his brains were clearly all over the car. We laughed as we stomped him. Just another Tuesday to me.
These are just some of the Tuesdays that fill a seven day calendar.
I was given a medium machine gun and unlimited ammo and told to spend a couple of hours per post down at a post that was usually unmanned. It had extended view and less observers that could see what I was doing while I was down there. It was expressed to me that I was now a shooter and was being placed down there to shoot. "Don't worry. We have your back. Make sure your combat reports are rock solid and we'll take care of you. You saw two guys with weapons and one ran off." Rules of engagement may change like the tides of the ocean or the winds of a hurricane but people don't come back from the dead. Sometimes, from one hour to the next, the rules of engagement would change. At ten a.m. someone with a shovel on a certain street would be killed and at ten-thirty he shouldn't be killed. You can change the rule but you can't bring that person back to life. And when you can't bring him back to life, you tell me that I just murdered him.
After returning from the war, I began drinking, not caring. I had an attitude that ruled my life where I didn't care if I lived, if I died, where I went or what I did. As the mental brainwashing and numbing that the Marine Corps had given me dissipated, the only way to substitute that numbing was through alcohol. I started to think back to the people I shot and the lives that I ruined through my hatred and violence and sometimes it was just too much for me to handle. This war has not only taken the lives of countless Iraqis -- men, women and children, but it has destroyed how many? Who knows? Countless American lives have been destroyed. American veterans. People who joined to serve their country and be American heroes. Many vets feel there's just no one out there who can help them and end up on the street homeless with nothing or sometimes worse. Veterans are attempting and committing suicide at an unprecedented rate. That's for a reason. What's worse? To die for no reason or to live a life of violence and destruction, internal structure and hatred every single day for no reason? To live every day knowing that everything that was instilled in me from the moment I was born as a free American boy, all the morals and everything that was taught to me, I gave away -- at the moment I pulled the trigger for acceptance, the moment that I beat another human being half to death simply to feel like the heroes that I held with such regard.
I know today that I cannot mend the things that I have broken. Or fix the lives that I have destroyed. But maybe with my testimony today, I can help one person, they might help two people who can eventually help four. And they'd be all of us together, standing united in preventing these atrocities from ever happening again.
Let's not pretend that Ryan Endicott or anyone like him is getting the help from the government they really need. The administration and the Congress is tossing out the bare minimum and wanting pats on the back and applause for that. Meanwhile, more Ryans and Ritas are created every day because the illegal war has not ended -- even if the interest in it faded. . AP reports "an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think tanks" yesterday was where US Army General George Casey Jr. declared US troops might remain on the ground in Iraq for over a decade more: "Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction. They fundamentally will change how the Army works." Michael Winter (USA Today) notes the remarks here. Casey's remarks are not unique or out of the norm. Repeatedly remarks like his have been made and repeatedly they have been ignored. We're dropping back to yesterday's snapshot:Military spokespeople weren't the only ones making statements Sunday. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also made statements publicly. The New York Times ignored it naturally. Noting it here led to five e-mails from CENTCOM trying to insist what it did and didn't mean. Sorry folks, I believe Mike Mullen is conversant in English. Sunday Adm Mike Mullen appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (link has video option and the transcript is here).STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to Iraq then. U.S. combat forces are scheduled to complete their pullout from Iraqi cities by June 30th. But in recent weeks, we've seen an uptick again in the violence. Does that rise in violence mean that the deadline for pulling American forces out of the cities might not be met? MULLEN: Oh, I think we're still very much on a track in terms of pulling the forces out of the cities, which is the end of next month. We're on track to decrease the number of troops down to 35,000 to 50,000 in August of 2010. We've had an uptick in violence, but the overall violence levels are at the 2003 levels. It's still fragile. There's an awful lot of political positioning and political debate that's going on right now, and I think that in great part becomes the essence of how Iraq moves forward. I'm actually positive about what the Iraqi security forces have done, their army and their police in terms of providing for their own security. They've improved dramatically. So the path, I think, is still the right path. These ticks, upticks in violence are going to occur. We said that going in, even into -- as we talked about coming down in force. So we just have to, we have to constantly keep an eye on that. Al Qaida is still active. They're not gone. They're very much... STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Qaida in Iraq. MULLEN: Al Qaida in Iraq is very much diminished, but they still have potential to create these kinds of incidents. STEPHANOPOULOS: And the president has said that his overall goal is to have all forces out of Iraq by 2011. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Under the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. (END VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANOPOULOS: That is pretty unequivocal. Yet I was reading the proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute. They had an interview with Tom Ricks, the U.S. military historian, where he says he worries that the president is being wildly over- optimistic. He says we may be only halfway through the war. And he talks about a conversation he had with the commanding general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, who told him he'd like to see 35,000 troops in Iraq in 2015. Is that what you expect, as well? MULLEN: Well, certainly the direction from the president and the status of forces agreement that we have with Iraq right now is that we will have all troops out of there by the end of 2011. And that's what we're planning on right now. STEPHANOPOULOS: But can Iraq be safe with all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2007 (sic)? MULLEN: Well, we're on a good path now. And we'll have to see. I mean, the next 12 to 18 months are really critical there in that regard, and I think that answering that question will be much clearer given that timeframe. The other thing is, we have -- this is a long-term relationship we want with Iraq, and Iraq has stated they want with the United States. And part of that is the possibility that forces could remain there longer. But that's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government to initiate discussions along those lines, and that hasn't happened yet. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government. It's up to the president, of course, as well. But from a military perspective, General Odierno says that he would like to see 35,000 troops in 2015. Is that what you all believe is necessary to secure Iraq from a military perspective? MULLEN: There's no definitive number right now beyond the end of 2011. STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's not zero? MULLEN: Well, I mean, when I'm engaged in other countries around the world, I have very small footprints of military personnel in that engagement. You know, and I would hope long-term, that we would have a great military-to-military relationship with Iraq. STEPHANOPOULOS: That could include U.S. troops there? MULLEN: Well, I mean, we've got small numbers of troops throughout the world that conduct training activities, exercises, and those kinds of things. So long-term in Iraq, I would look to be able to do something like that. "It's not zero," George asked. Basic question. Mullen is a 63-year-old man who's spoken English for at least 61 -- if not 62 -- of those years. Yes, CENTCOM, they speak English in Sherman Oaks. Edward DeMarco (Bloomberg News) caught it, "On Iraq, Mullen said he would like to have some U.S. forces available there for training and exercises with the Iraqi military beyond 2011, when all U.S. forces are set to leave. He didn't specify how many U.S. military personnel would be needed." And though I have to hold my nose to note, Manu Raju (Hedda Hopper Lives!) observed Mullen "left open the option of keeping residual forces there after that deadline passes." Holding my nose for that source (not the reporter, the outlet) but we gave credit where it was due. By the way, Whores For Centcom who lied about what was stated included Janet Adamy (Wall St. Journal), AFP and many, many more. Decide on your own whether it's worse to do as the New York Times did and ignore it or to 'report' on it and deliberately lie.Mullen was not the first person before Casey. There have been many others and Gen Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, has repeatedly made similar statements.
[. . .]
Today Amy Goodman donned her White hood. In the old days of what she calls "the People's Republic of Brooklyn," her ass would have been kicked several times over for the little stunt she pulled with regards to Senator Roland Burris.
What does the wiretap say? I don't know. Nor does Goodman. There is a transcript that's been made availabe to the press. (Click here for the Chicago Tribune.) Roland Burris, according to the transcript, did not buy his Senate seat. Then-Governor Rod Blagojevich's brother Rob called him for a donation. Senator Burris does offer a check towards the governor's re-election campaign. Not a big one. Obviously.
Had there been a check, none was nailed down during the call, it would have been a small one. That's clear to anyone reading the transcript. (Apparently Goody was too busy fingering herself and gasping, "I love bi-racial Barack! I hate Black men!" over and over and didn't have time to read the transcript.) Burris states that business is "terrible" and that "we might lose Burris and Lebed because we've been trying to get contracts. We don't have any clients renweing for 09." He then adds, "We have no clients renewing for 09. Fred is dying on the vine because, I, you know, a lot of our clients have run out." Read the transcripts. Burris isn't playing high roller. He's talking about losing his business.
He had no money to buy the seat with. In the transcript, he offers no big payout. The press has repeatedly gone after him. Goody left out that Burris didn't object to the transcript being released. Why would he? It backs up what is on the record. (Goody pretends no affidavits were ever filed.) What you have is a lynching.
FIND THE CRIME. Read that damn transcript and find the damn crime. There is none. Goody and all the rest need to explain what the crime is or leave the man alone. This has gone on long enough and it's past time that anyone who is opposed to racism started calling it out. Every few months they claim they have something and every few months they're forced to back down because they have NOTHING.
This is the United States of America in the year 2009 and it's damn embarrassing the lengths some will go to in order to railroad the only sitting Black senator. Every few weeks Amy Goodman and these other racists show up insisting "PROOF!" and there's never any proof -- except of their hatred towards Black people. It's getting old and it's getting ugly.
As for Patrick Fitzgerald -- the 'prosecutor' who couldn't draw a link between Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney -- Libby's boss. Maybe it's time to stop chasing headlines and do the actual job? If he's got a case against Burris, he would have charged Burris. All this time later, he still hasn't. (Goody left that out as well.) Burris has NEVER been charged with a crime despite all this gossip and drama. There is still NO proof of a crime.
And here's another reality Fitzgerald better start thinking about: The jury. If Blagojevich was trying to sell the Senate seat, IF, it appears Fitzgerald's desire for headlines and press may have ruined the case because Burris couldn't buy it. Burris didn't have the money. And after Fitgerald harmed his own case by going public too soon, Blagojevich may have chosen to appoint Burris just because it was obvious Burris didn't have the money to buy the seat (which would look good for defendant Blagojevich if he feared standing before a jury).
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Were you invited?"
"US State Dept needs to observe Terry Barnich's passing real damn quick"
"No choices"
"Sibel Edmonds, Isaiah, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor"
"e-mails"
"Ruth's off in Japan"
"The Revisionary Kevin Zeese"
"Terry Barnich died in Iraq"
"Marjorie Cohn needs to be thrown in jail!"
"Isaiah, Larry Jones"
"Tired Tuesday"
"Barry O! needs a little more attention"
"THIS JUST IN! HE MUST HAVE HIS PAPARAZI!"
KIM GANDY, ELLIE SMEAL AND SO MANY OTHERS ARE FINDING OUT BARACK IS WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE.
DURING THE CAMPAIGN, BARACK PROMISED HE WOULD APPOINT ONLY PRO-CHOICE JUDGES THAT HE WOULD ENSURE "A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE UNDER ROE VVS. WADE A PRIORITY AS A PRESIDENT."
YET TODAY THE WHITE HOUSE INSISTED THERE WAS NO "LITMUS TEST" FOR THE SUPREME COURT AND THAT HE DIDN'T ASK HIS NOMINEE, JUDGE SONIA SOTOMAYOR, WHERE SHE STOOD ON ABORTION.
SAY IT WITH US, KIM, "SHOW ME WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS WHAT BETRAYAL LOOKS LIKE!"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War which announces:
Winter Soldier Southwest was a great success. There were more than half a dozen camera crews shooting it for purposes ranging from independent media to anti-war documentaries. The panelists were quite moving and the audience was extremely supportive and full of positive energy. We want to thank everyone that helped put the event together, including all the panelists from VVAW, VFP, MFSO and Gold Star Families. Most profoundly moving was the testimony of the Gold Star Families panel. Quite a number of panelists testimonies have found their way onto the internet already, below is a short list of a few links to what's out there
Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier Investigation in the DC area in March of 2008. That was broadcast at War Comes Home, at KPFK, at the Pacifica Radio homepage and at KPFA, here for Friday, here for Saturday, here for Sunday with Aimee Allison (co-host of the station's The Morning Show and co-author with David Solnit of Army Of None) and Aaron Glantz anchoring Pacifica's live coverage. (It was also broadcast at the IVAW site.) This was a West Coast Winter Soldier and the videos are here, here, here, here and here. We'll note one today.
Ryan Endicott: I knew my time had come as I laughed, I ran. This was everything I had hoped for, my chance to kill. I didn't care how or who but someone was going to die today. [. . .] From that moment forward, our efforts became much more intense. We began getting "intelligence" -- quote unquote -- of suspected terrorists safe houses, weapons caches. We would gear up, blare our death metal and pump each other up comparing body counts, telling each other, "It's only a matter of time before we get another." We knew every way to walk right around the line of engagement. The rules of engagement? What a joke. To us grunts, rules of engagement were not rules at all but merely words on a piece of paper, somewhere printed, for the sole purpose of protecting officers if we grunts actually got caught.
Try to imagine yourself tonight as you sleep warm in your bed with your wife, your children in the next room. Two a.m. and your door is kicked in and men are screaming. As they kick open your bedroom door, they're screaming a language you don't understand. They're pointing machine guns at your face as they drag you by your hair from your bed, slamming your face down to the ground, putting their boots on the back of your neck and smashing your face further into the concrete floor. Your struggle to protect your family and your home is futile as you are blindfolded and handcuffed so tight you lose feeling in your hands within minutes. All you know is you can hear your screaming wife and children crying for help and you are too useless to protect them. You were not on a list of suspected terrorists. You were not on a list of known terrorists. In fact, you completely supported the US coming into your country and promising freedom, prosperity. You were simply a man in a house on a street that my platoon decided to search. When your blindfold is finally released, the men left your home, it's destroyed. Your wife and children are huddled in a corner defenseless and crying. Every drawer in your home is thrown. The contents broken, soiled. Your bed has been urinated on. Your wife's panties are glued to the wall. Maybe a family heirloom is missing or other objects stolen. The floor is wet with fresh chewing tobacco spit. And you vainly try to tell your family it will be okay and never happen again but, in your heart you know all the while, your chances are it probably will.
As time continued to pass, my ego grew stronger and my hate boiled within my veins. A scene like this was nothing more than a Tuesday to me. I laughed as I heard a story. One of the platoons had strapped dead bodies to the hoods of their Humvees and drove around the city for hours blasting death metal music as they terrorized the population. Just another Tuesday to me.
Back on post, there was a time when somehow, some way, an Iraqi had managed to get himself lost and ended up knocking on the door to my post which happened to be next to our sleeping area. As I answered the door and I saw the Iraqi standing there, I accepted my fate and I jumped on top of him. I accepted he was a suicide bomber and I had seen my last day as I began to punch him. Brutally I sat on top of him punching him as hard as I could. After a moment I got him under control and handcuffed him. He was simply a man who had just gotten lost. I was punished harshly not for my actions, not for harming an unarmed civilian, but for not killing him. I was told he should have been killed for being there and I would have been protected. I was forced to burn feces, stand hours at an additional post and physically punished. I was ostracized and called a "wuss" and a "girl" for not killing him. I had lost all the respect that I had gained and that I had killed for to earn. I was forced to stand six hours at post at a time directly behind an air conditioning unit with all the heat blasting out of the back side onto my face in the middle of the summer in one of the hottest places on the earth. I stood that post 12 hours a day, four days a week for over a month.
The man that arose from that month was someone I hoped to never meet again. The last bit of humanity and morality I had left was gone. I laughed as marines told me they'd just shot this guy in the head and saw his head explode. Just another Tuesday to me.
One Tuesday they brought a car that had just been shot up. The driver's fully intact brain was sitting in the back seat. And, to the looks of it, the passenger's brains were all over the car. I walked over to the body bag with the passenger in it -- the bag was still twitching. And we could hear his body still attempting to breathe. Even though his brains were clearly all over the car. We laughed as we stomped him. Just another Tuesday to me.
These are just some of the Tuesdays that fill a seven day calendar.
I was given a medium machine gun and unlimited ammo and told to spend a couple of hours per post down at a post that was usually unmanned. It had extended view and less observers that could see what I was doing while I was down there. It was expressed to me that I was now a shooter and was being placed down there to shoot. "Don't worry. We have your back. Make sure your combat reports are rock solid and we'll take care of you. You saw two guys with weapons and one ran off." Rules of engagement may change like the tides of the ocean or the winds of a hurricane but people don't come back from the dead. Sometimes, from one hour to the next, the rules of engagement would change. At ten a.m. someone with a shovel on a certain street would be killed and at ten-thirty he shouldn't be killed. You can change the rule but you can't bring that person back to life. And when you can't bring him back to life, you tell me that I just murdered him.
After returning from the war, I began drinking, not caring. I had an attitude that ruled my life where I didn't care if I lived, if I died, where I went or what I did. As the mental brainwashing and numbing that the Marine Corps had given me dissipated, the only way to substitute that numbing was through alcohol. I started to think back to the people I shot and the lives that I ruined through my hatred and violence and sometimes it was just too much for me to handle. This war has not only taken the lives of countless Iraqis -- men, women and children, but it has destroyed how many? Who knows? Countless American lives have been destroyed. American veterans. People who joined to serve their country and be American heroes. Many vets feel there's just no one out there who can help them and end up on the street homeless with nothing or sometimes worse. Veterans are attempting and committing suicide at an unprecedented rate. That's for a reason. What's worse? To die for no reason or to live a life of violence and destruction, internal structure and hatred every single day for no reason? To live every day knowing that everything that was instilled in me from the moment I was born as a free American boy, all the morals and everything that was taught to me, I gave away -- at the moment I pulled the trigger for acceptance, the moment that I beat another human being half to death simply to feel like the heroes that I held with such regard.
I know today that I cannot mend the things that I have broken. Or fix the lives that I have destroyed. But maybe with my testimony today, I can help one person, they might help two people who can eventually help four. And they'd be all of us together, standing united in preventing these atrocities from ever happening again.
Let's not pretend that Ryan Endicott or anyone like him is getting the help from the government they really need. The administration and the Congress is tossing out the bare minimum and wanting pats on the back and applause for that. Meanwhile, more Ryans and Ritas are created every day because the illegal war has not ended -- even if the interest in it faded. . AP reports "an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think tanks" yesterday was where US Army General George Casey Jr. declared US troops might remain on the ground in Iraq for over a decade more: "Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction. They fundamentally will change how the Army works." Michael Winter (USA Today) notes the remarks here. Casey's remarks are not unique or out of the norm. Repeatedly remarks like his have been made and repeatedly they have been ignored. We're dropping back to yesterday's snapshot:Military spokespeople weren't the only ones making statements Sunday. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also made statements publicly. The New York Times ignored it naturally. Noting it here led to five e-mails from CENTCOM trying to insist what it did and didn't mean. Sorry folks, I believe Mike Mullen is conversant in English. Sunday Adm Mike Mullen appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (link has video option and the transcript is here).STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to Iraq then. U.S. combat forces are scheduled to complete their pullout from Iraqi cities by June 30th. But in recent weeks, we've seen an uptick again in the violence. Does that rise in violence mean that the deadline for pulling American forces out of the cities might not be met? MULLEN: Oh, I think we're still very much on a track in terms of pulling the forces out of the cities, which is the end of next month. We're on track to decrease the number of troops down to 35,000 to 50,000 in August of 2010. We've had an uptick in violence, but the overall violence levels are at the 2003 levels. It's still fragile. There's an awful lot of political positioning and political debate that's going on right now, and I think that in great part becomes the essence of how Iraq moves forward. I'm actually positive about what the Iraqi security forces have done, their army and their police in terms of providing for their own security. They've improved dramatically. So the path, I think, is still the right path. These ticks, upticks in violence are going to occur. We said that going in, even into -- as we talked about coming down in force. So we just have to, we have to constantly keep an eye on that. Al Qaida is still active. They're not gone. They're very much... STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Qaida in Iraq. MULLEN: Al Qaida in Iraq is very much diminished, but they still have potential to create these kinds of incidents. STEPHANOPOULOS: And the president has said that his overall goal is to have all forces out of Iraq by 2011. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Under the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. (END VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANOPOULOS: That is pretty unequivocal. Yet I was reading the proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute. They had an interview with Tom Ricks, the U.S. military historian, where he says he worries that the president is being wildly over- optimistic. He says we may be only halfway through the war. And he talks about a conversation he had with the commanding general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, who told him he'd like to see 35,000 troops in Iraq in 2015. Is that what you expect, as well? MULLEN: Well, certainly the direction from the president and the status of forces agreement that we have with Iraq right now is that we will have all troops out of there by the end of 2011. And that's what we're planning on right now. STEPHANOPOULOS: But can Iraq be safe with all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2007 (sic)? MULLEN: Well, we're on a good path now. And we'll have to see. I mean, the next 12 to 18 months are really critical there in that regard, and I think that answering that question will be much clearer given that timeframe. The other thing is, we have -- this is a long-term relationship we want with Iraq, and Iraq has stated they want with the United States. And part of that is the possibility that forces could remain there longer. But that's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government to initiate discussions along those lines, and that hasn't happened yet. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government. It's up to the president, of course, as well. But from a military perspective, General Odierno says that he would like to see 35,000 troops in 2015. Is that what you all believe is necessary to secure Iraq from a military perspective? MULLEN: There's no definitive number right now beyond the end of 2011. STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's not zero? MULLEN: Well, I mean, when I'm engaged in other countries around the world, I have very small footprints of military personnel in that engagement. You know, and I would hope long-term, that we would have a great military-to-military relationship with Iraq. STEPHANOPOULOS: That could include U.S. troops there? MULLEN: Well, I mean, we've got small numbers of troops throughout the world that conduct training activities, exercises, and those kinds of things. So long-term in Iraq, I would look to be able to do something like that. "It's not zero," George asked. Basic question. Mullen is a 63-year-old man who's spoken English for at least 61 -- if not 62 -- of those years. Yes, CENTCOM, they speak English in Sherman Oaks. Edward DeMarco (Bloomberg News) caught it, "On Iraq, Mullen said he would like to have some U.S. forces available there for training and exercises with the Iraqi military beyond 2011, when all U.S. forces are set to leave. He didn't specify how many U.S. military personnel would be needed." And though I have to hold my nose to note, Manu Raju (Hedda Hopper Lives!) observed Mullen "left open the option of keeping residual forces there after that deadline passes." Holding my nose for that source (not the reporter, the outlet) but we gave credit where it was due. By the way, Whores For Centcom who lied about what was stated included Janet Adamy (Wall St. Journal), AFP and many, many more. Decide on your own whether it's worse to do as the New York Times did and ignore it or to 'report' on it and deliberately lie.Mullen was not the first person before Casey. There have been many others and Gen Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, has repeatedly made similar statements.
[. . .]
Today Amy Goodman donned her White hood. In the old days of what she calls "the People's Republic of Brooklyn," her ass would have been kicked several times over for the little stunt she pulled with regards to Senator Roland Burris.
What does the wiretap say? I don't know. Nor does Goodman. There is a transcript that's been made availabe to the press. (Click here for the Chicago Tribune.) Roland Burris, according to the transcript, did not buy his Senate seat. Then-Governor Rod Blagojevich's brother Rob called him for a donation. Senator Burris does offer a check towards the governor's re-election campaign. Not a big one. Obviously.
Had there been a check, none was nailed down during the call, it would have been a small one. That's clear to anyone reading the transcript. (Apparently Goody was too busy fingering herself and gasping, "I love bi-racial Barack! I hate Black men!" over and over and didn't have time to read the transcript.) Burris states that business is "terrible" and that "we might lose Burris and Lebed because we've been trying to get contracts. We don't have any clients renweing for 09." He then adds, "We have no clients renewing for 09. Fred is dying on the vine because, I, you know, a lot of our clients have run out." Read the transcripts. Burris isn't playing high roller. He's talking about losing his business.
He had no money to buy the seat with. In the transcript, he offers no big payout. The press has repeatedly gone after him. Goody left out that Burris didn't object to the transcript being released. Why would he? It backs up what is on the record. (Goody pretends no affidavits were ever filed.) What you have is a lynching.
FIND THE CRIME. Read that damn transcript and find the damn crime. There is none. Goody and all the rest need to explain what the crime is or leave the man alone. This has gone on long enough and it's past time that anyone who is opposed to racism started calling it out. Every few months they claim they have something and every few months they're forced to back down because they have NOTHING.
This is the United States of America in the year 2009 and it's damn embarrassing the lengths some will go to in order to railroad the only sitting Black senator. Every few weeks Amy Goodman and these other racists show up insisting "PROOF!" and there's never any proof -- except of their hatred towards Black people. It's getting old and it's getting ugly.
As for Patrick Fitzgerald -- the 'prosecutor' who couldn't draw a link between Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney -- Libby's boss. Maybe it's time to stop chasing headlines and do the actual job? If he's got a case against Burris, he would have charged Burris. All this time later, he still hasn't. (Goody left that out as well.) Burris has NEVER been charged with a crime despite all this gossip and drama. There is still NO proof of a crime.
And here's another reality Fitzgerald better start thinking about: The jury. If Blagojevich was trying to sell the Senate seat, IF, it appears Fitzgerald's desire for headlines and press may have ruined the case because Burris couldn't buy it. Burris didn't have the money. And after Fitgerald harmed his own case by going public too soon, Blagojevich may have chosen to appoint Burris just because it was obvious Burris didn't have the money to buy the seat (which would look good for defendant Blagojevich if he feared standing before a jury).
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Were you invited?"
"US State Dept needs to observe Terry Barnich's passing real damn quick"
"No choices"
"Sibel Edmonds, Isaiah, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor"
"e-mails"
"Ruth's off in Japan"
"The Revisionary Kevin Zeese"
"Terry Barnich died in Iraq"
"Marjorie Cohn needs to be thrown in jail!"
"Isaiah, Larry Jones"
"Tired Tuesday"
"Barry O! needs a little more attention"
"THIS JUST IN! HE MUST HAVE HIS PAPARAZI!"
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Barry O! needs a little more attention
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
BARRY O! FLEES THE COUNTRY AGAIN JUNE 3RD WHEN HE JETS OFF TO SAUDI ARABIA.
WHO KNEW ALL OF THE U.S. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS HAD BEEN SOLVED?
APPARENTLY THEY HAVE AND ALL THE NON-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS AS WELL THEREBY ALLOWING BARRY O TO CONTINUE HIS GOODWILL MISSIONS AND TOPLESS BEACH SUNBATHING.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
On Saturday the 4300 mark was passed. The US military announced: "CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- A Multi-National Corps - Iraq Soldier died in a non-combat related incident in Baghdad Province, May 22. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The incident is under investigation." With that death, the number of US service members killed in the illegal war reached 4300. Already the mark -- which really wasn't noted by the press -- has been passed. The US military announced today: "BAGHDAD -- Three people were killed and two were wounded May 25, when an improvised explosive device detonated during a visit of construction sites near Fallujah. The IED struck a vehicle traveling as part of a convoy that included Coalition Forces and U.S. Government civilians and contractors. The two wounded personnel were medically evacuated to a hospital for treatment. The names of the deceased and injured are being withheld pending next of kin notification." Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) reports one of the dead is a US service member bringing the number killed in the Iraq War to 4301 and bringing the number killed in the month of May thus far to 19. That's the same number killed in April. Unless you're the Mainstream Media which damn well better not try to pull "It's the same number" if 19 sticks and they're doing their end of the month reports. They didn't say 19. One of the 19 who died in April was a service member who left Iraq for medical treatment and continued to receive that treatment (hospitalized the entire time) only to die. The media didn't count him. They didn't give a damn. Sgt Christopher D. Loza died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center April 10th. They acted as if he didn't exist and ran with 18 deaths. So they can't turn around now and claim, should it not go higher than 19, "It's the same number as last month." Not after they all but spat on Christopher D. Loza.
One person killed in yesterday's bombing has already been identified. Erika Slife (Chicago Tribune) reports that 56-year-old Terry Barnich was killed in a roadside bombing yesterday and that he "was serving as deputy director for the Iraq Transition Assistance Office for the State Department". Cara Siever reported on Barnich's work in Iraq in January 2008: "Terry has been in Baghdad since mid-January 2007 and lives in a 150-foot trailer in the Green Zone, a heavily guarded area of closed-off streets in central Baghdad where U.S. authorities live and work. Terry travels frequently through the Red Zone -- less safe areas of the city where the risk of a roadside bomb or kidnapping always is present. However, he says traveling with the State Department security makes him feel very safe. While attacks in the Green Zone have subsided since he arrived, Terry had one close call; he missed being hit by two rockets by 44 paces and about eight seconds." Barnich was in the 1971 graduating class from Washington High School in Chicago. He was legal counsel to Illinois Govenor James R. Thompson during the time when Gary Dotson was in the news (Cathy Webb falsely accused him of rape and Dotson was imprisoned for six years before Webb got honest and also tried to cash in with her book Forgive Me). Thomas F. Roser (Chicago Daily Observer) remembers Barnich here which also includes comments from others who remember him including David Karmol who worked with Barnich in Baghdad. Carol Wilson knew Barnich from when "he was still the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission" and she explains, "I didn't realize Terry had spent the last two-and-a-half years in Iraq, not as an independent contractor, getting rich during wartime, but as a government employee, trying to help rebuild critical infrastructure that will enable Iraq to be economically stronger and more secure. But it doesn't surprise me now to learn what he was doing and to hear that, despite repeated plans to return to the U.S. for good, Barnich kept going back." The Illinois Commerce Commission issued the following statement today:The Illinois Commerce Commission extends its deepest sympathy to the family, friends and colleagues of former ICC Chairman Terry Barnich, who died Monday, May 25 in Iraq, where he was working as a deputy director for the U.S. State Department's Iraq Transition Assistance office. A native of Chicago, he served as chairman of the ICC from 1989 to 1992. Funeral arrangments are pending.
CBS and AP note his "sister, Rochelle Barnich, described her brother as a person with a great sense of humor who had great pride in his country and had been interested in politics since they were children." In 1993, he and Craig Clausen co-founded NPRG. Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) quotes from US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill's written statement: "We and all who are working for a brighter future for Iraq condemn this terrible attack in the strongest possible terms. We remain committed as ever to helping Iraqis achieve the peace, stability and prosperity that will make such acts of terror a thing of the past."
US civilians died over the weekend as well with a corpse discovered Friday in the Green Zone which Ernesto Londono and Steve Fainaru (Washington Post) identified as Jim Kitterman who had been "president of Janus Construction" and they note, "Another American working for a contractor was killed Friday in a suspected rocket attack near the U.S. Embassy, U.S. officials said. It appeared to be the first fatal rocket attack in the Green Zone in more than a year." Iraqi civilians died over the weekend also. Sunday's violence contained a juxtaposition Rod Nordland (New York Times) caught, "On the same day that military spokesmen gave a rare briefing in Baghdad to announce a continued rop in overall violence, insurgents killed at least 22 people in eight attacks in Mosul and Falluja on Sunday, using roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, suicide bombers and execution-style killings, police officials said."
Military spokespeople weren't the only ones making statements Sunday. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also made statements publicy. The New York Times ignored it naturally. Noting it here led to five e-mails from CENTCOM trying to insist what it did and didn't mean. Sorry folks, I believe Mike Mullen is conversant in English. Sunday Adm Mike Mullens appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (link has video option and the transcript is here).STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to Iraq then. U.S. combat forces are scheduled to complete their pullout from Iraqi cities by June 30th. But in recent weeks, we've seen an uptick again in the violence. Does that rise in violence mean that the deadline for pulling American forces out of the cities might not be met? MULLEN: Oh, I think we're still very much on a track in terms of pulling the forces out of the cities, which is the end of next month. We're on track to decrease the number of troops down to 35,000 to 50,000 in August of 2010. We've had an uptick in violence, but the overall violence levels are at the 2003 levels. It's still fragile. There's an awful lot of political positioning and political debate that's going on right now, and I think that in great part becomes the essence of how Iraq moves forward. I'm actually positive about what the Iraqi security forces have done, their army and their police in terms of providing for their own security. They've improved dramatically. So the path, I think, is still the right path. These ticks, upticks in violence are going to occur. We said that going in, even into -- as we talked about coming down in force. So we just have to, we have to constantly keep an eye on that. Al Qaida is still active. They're not gone. They're very much... STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Qaida in Iraq. MULLEN: Al Qaida in Iraq is very much diminished, but they still have potential to create these kinds of incidents. STEPHANOPOULOS: And the president has said that his overall goal is to have all forces out of Iraq by 2011. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Under the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. (END VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANOPOULOS: That is pretty unequivocal. Yet I was reading the proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute. They had an interview with Tom Ricks, the U.S. military historian, where he says he worries that the president is being wildly over- optimistic. He says we may be only halfway through the war. And he talks about a conversation he had with the commanding general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, who told him he'd like to see 35,000 troops in Iraq in 2015. Is that what you expect, as well? MULLEN: Well, certainly the direction from the president and the status of forces agreement that we have with Iraq right now is that we will have all troops out of there by the end of 2011. And that's what we're planning on right now. STEPHANOPOULOS: But can Iraq be safe with all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2007 (sic)? MULLEN: Well, we're on a good path now. And we'll have to see. I mean, the next 12 to 18 months are really critical there in that regard, and I think that answering that question will be much clearer given that timeframe. The other thing is, we have -- this is a long-term relationship we want with Iraq, and Iraq has stated they want with the United States. And part of that is the possibility that forces could remain there longer. But that's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government to initiate discussions along those lines, and that hasn't happened yet. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government. It's up to the president, of course, as well. But from a military perspective, General Odierno says that he would like to see 35,000 troops in 2015. Is that what you all believe is necessary to secure Iraq from a military perspective? MULLEN: There's no definitive number right now beyond the end of 2011. STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's not zero? MULLEN: Well, I mean, when I'm engaged in other countries around the world, I have very small footprints of military personnel in that engagement. You know, and I would hope long-term, that we would have a great military-to-military relationship with Iraq. STEPHANOPOULOS: That could include U.S. troops there? MULLEN: Well, I mean, we've got small numbers of troops throughout the world that conduct training activities, exercises, and those kinds of things. So long-term in Iraq, I would look to be able to do something like that. "It's not zero," George asked. Basic question. Mullen is a 63-year-old man who's spoken English for at least 61 -- if not 62 -- of those years. Yes, CENTCOM, they speak English in Sherman Oaks. Edward DeMarco (Bloomberg News) caught it, "On Iraq, Mullen said he would like to have some U.S. forces available there for training and exercises with the Iraqi military beyond 2011, when all U.S. forces are set to leave. He didn't specify how many U.S. military personnel would be needed." And though I have to hold my nose to note, Manu Raju (Hedda Hopper Lives!) observed Mullen "left open the option of keeping residual forces there after that deadline passes." Holding my nose for that source (not the reporter, the outlet) but we gave credit where it was due. By the way, Whores For Centcom who lied about what was stated included Janet Adamy (Wall St. Journal), AFP and many, many more. Decide on your own whether it's worse to do as the New York Times did and ignore it or to 'report' on it and deliberately lie.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Future of the Court"
"al-Sudani out of office"
"More US civilians die in Iraq"
"Kat's Korner: Tori Amos, the friend you fear for"
"Vietnam and Iraq"
"CENTCOM's in a tizzy"
"Kat's Korner: David Saw, Why Didn't You Hear?"
"And the war drags on . . ."
"The 4300 mark""Anger over Green's sentence"
"I Hate The War"
"Memorial Day"
Truest statement of the week
A note to our readers
Editorial: Destructive and Deadly
TV: The weird week that was
Little Matthew Rothschild steps out of the closet
Roundtable
The Nation attacks history again
Jim's World
The Iraq War Crimes coverage (or lack of)
The digital divide
The People Need To Sue AP
Truth Talker of the Month
Box Office Poison
Rights Lawyers File Motion for Activists Indicted ...
Highlights
"THIS JUST IN! BARRY'S GOT A SECRET!"
"Barack's lover on the down low"
BARRY O! FLEES THE COUNTRY AGAIN JUNE 3RD WHEN HE JETS OFF TO SAUDI ARABIA.
WHO KNEW ALL OF THE U.S. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS HAD BEEN SOLVED?
APPARENTLY THEY HAVE AND ALL THE NON-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS AS WELL THEREBY ALLOWING BARRY O TO CONTINUE HIS GOODWILL MISSIONS AND TOPLESS BEACH SUNBATHING.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
On Saturday the 4300 mark was passed. The US military announced: "CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- A Multi-National Corps - Iraq Soldier died in a non-combat related incident in Baghdad Province, May 22. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The incident is under investigation." With that death, the number of US service members killed in the illegal war reached 4300. Already the mark -- which really wasn't noted by the press -- has been passed. The US military announced today: "BAGHDAD -- Three people were killed and two were wounded May 25, when an improvised explosive device detonated during a visit of construction sites near Fallujah. The IED struck a vehicle traveling as part of a convoy that included Coalition Forces and U.S. Government civilians and contractors. The two wounded personnel were medically evacuated to a hospital for treatment. The names of the deceased and injured are being withheld pending next of kin notification." Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) reports one of the dead is a US service member bringing the number killed in the Iraq War to 4301 and bringing the number killed in the month of May thus far to 19. That's the same number killed in April. Unless you're the Mainstream Media which damn well better not try to pull "It's the same number" if 19 sticks and they're doing their end of the month reports. They didn't say 19. One of the 19 who died in April was a service member who left Iraq for medical treatment and continued to receive that treatment (hospitalized the entire time) only to die. The media didn't count him. They didn't give a damn. Sgt Christopher D. Loza died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center April 10th. They acted as if he didn't exist and ran with 18 deaths. So they can't turn around now and claim, should it not go higher than 19, "It's the same number as last month." Not after they all but spat on Christopher D. Loza.
One person killed in yesterday's bombing has already been identified. Erika Slife (Chicago Tribune) reports that 56-year-old Terry Barnich was killed in a roadside bombing yesterday and that he "was serving as deputy director for the Iraq Transition Assistance Office for the State Department". Cara Siever reported on Barnich's work in Iraq in January 2008: "Terry has been in Baghdad since mid-January 2007 and lives in a 150-foot trailer in the Green Zone, a heavily guarded area of closed-off streets in central Baghdad where U.S. authorities live and work. Terry travels frequently through the Red Zone -- less safe areas of the city where the risk of a roadside bomb or kidnapping always is present. However, he says traveling with the State Department security makes him feel very safe. While attacks in the Green Zone have subsided since he arrived, Terry had one close call; he missed being hit by two rockets by 44 paces and about eight seconds." Barnich was in the 1971 graduating class from Washington High School in Chicago. He was legal counsel to Illinois Govenor James R. Thompson during the time when Gary Dotson was in the news (Cathy Webb falsely accused him of rape and Dotson was imprisoned for six years before Webb got honest and also tried to cash in with her book Forgive Me). Thomas F. Roser (Chicago Daily Observer) remembers Barnich here which also includes comments from others who remember him including David Karmol who worked with Barnich in Baghdad. Carol Wilson knew Barnich from when "he was still the chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission" and she explains, "I didn't realize Terry had spent the last two-and-a-half years in Iraq, not as an independent contractor, getting rich during wartime, but as a government employee, trying to help rebuild critical infrastructure that will enable Iraq to be economically stronger and more secure. But it doesn't surprise me now to learn what he was doing and to hear that, despite repeated plans to return to the U.S. for good, Barnich kept going back." The Illinois Commerce Commission issued the following statement today:The Illinois Commerce Commission extends its deepest sympathy to the family, friends and colleagues of former ICC Chairman Terry Barnich, who died Monday, May 25 in Iraq, where he was working as a deputy director for the U.S. State Department's Iraq Transition Assistance office. A native of Chicago, he served as chairman of the ICC from 1989 to 1992. Funeral arrangments are pending.
CBS and AP note his "sister, Rochelle Barnich, described her brother as a person with a great sense of humor who had great pride in his country and had been interested in politics since they were children." In 1993, he and Craig Clausen co-founded NPRG. Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) quotes from US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill's written statement: "We and all who are working for a brighter future for Iraq condemn this terrible attack in the strongest possible terms. We remain committed as ever to helping Iraqis achieve the peace, stability and prosperity that will make such acts of terror a thing of the past."
US civilians died over the weekend as well with a corpse discovered Friday in the Green Zone which Ernesto Londono and Steve Fainaru (Washington Post) identified as Jim Kitterman who had been "president of Janus Construction" and they note, "Another American working for a contractor was killed Friday in a suspected rocket attack near the U.S. Embassy, U.S. officials said. It appeared to be the first fatal rocket attack in the Green Zone in more than a year." Iraqi civilians died over the weekend also. Sunday's violence contained a juxtaposition Rod Nordland (New York Times) caught, "On the same day that military spokesmen gave a rare briefing in Baghdad to announce a continued rop in overall violence, insurgents killed at least 22 people in eight attacks in Mosul and Falluja on Sunday, using roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, suicide bombers and execution-style killings, police officials said."
Military spokespeople weren't the only ones making statements Sunday. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also made statements publicy. The New York Times ignored it naturally. Noting it here led to five e-mails from CENTCOM trying to insist what it did and didn't mean. Sorry folks, I believe Mike Mullen is conversant in English. Sunday Adm Mike Mullens appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (link has video option and the transcript is here).STEPHANOPOULOS: OK. Let me move to Iraq then. U.S. combat forces are scheduled to complete their pullout from Iraqi cities by June 30th. But in recent weeks, we've seen an uptick again in the violence. Does that rise in violence mean that the deadline for pulling American forces out of the cities might not be met? MULLEN: Oh, I think we're still very much on a track in terms of pulling the forces out of the cities, which is the end of next month. We're on track to decrease the number of troops down to 35,000 to 50,000 in August of 2010. We've had an uptick in violence, but the overall violence levels are at the 2003 levels. It's still fragile. There's an awful lot of political positioning and political debate that's going on right now, and I think that in great part becomes the essence of how Iraq moves forward. I'm actually positive about what the Iraqi security forces have done, their army and their police in terms of providing for their own security. They've improved dramatically. So the path, I think, is still the right path. These ticks, upticks in violence are going to occur. We said that going in, even into -- as we talked about coming down in force. So we just have to, we have to constantly keep an eye on that. Al Qaida is still active. They're not gone. They're very much... STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Qaida in Iraq. MULLEN: Al Qaida in Iraq is very much diminished, but they still have potential to create these kinds of incidents. STEPHANOPOULOS: And the president has said that his overall goal is to have all forces out of Iraq by 2011. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Under the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. (END VIDEO CLIP) STEPHANOPOULOS: That is pretty unequivocal. Yet I was reading the proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute. They had an interview with Tom Ricks, the U.S. military historian, where he says he worries that the president is being wildly over- optimistic. He says we may be only halfway through the war. And he talks about a conversation he had with the commanding general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, who told him he'd like to see 35,000 troops in Iraq in 2015. Is that what you expect, as well? MULLEN: Well, certainly the direction from the president and the status of forces agreement that we have with Iraq right now is that we will have all troops out of there by the end of 2011. And that's what we're planning on right now. STEPHANOPOULOS: But can Iraq be safe with all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2007 (sic)? MULLEN: Well, we're on a good path now. And we'll have to see. I mean, the next 12 to 18 months are really critical there in that regard, and I think that answering that question will be much clearer given that timeframe. The other thing is, we have -- this is a long-term relationship we want with Iraq, and Iraq has stated they want with the United States. And part of that is the possibility that forces could remain there longer. But that's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government to initiate discussions along those lines, and that hasn't happened yet. STEPHANOPOULOS: It's up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government. It's up to the president, of course, as well. But from a military perspective, General Odierno says that he would like to see 35,000 troops in 2015. Is that what you all believe is necessary to secure Iraq from a military perspective? MULLEN: There's no definitive number right now beyond the end of 2011. STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's not zero? MULLEN: Well, I mean, when I'm engaged in other countries around the world, I have very small footprints of military personnel in that engagement. You know, and I would hope long-term, that we would have a great military-to-military relationship with Iraq. STEPHANOPOULOS: That could include U.S. troops there? MULLEN: Well, I mean, we've got small numbers of troops throughout the world that conduct training activities, exercises, and those kinds of things. So long-term in Iraq, I would look to be able to do something like that. "It's not zero," George asked. Basic question. Mullen is a 63-year-old man who's spoken English for at least 61 -- if not 62 -- of those years. Yes, CENTCOM, they speak English in Sherman Oaks. Edward DeMarco (Bloomberg News) caught it, "On Iraq, Mullen said he would like to have some U.S. forces available there for training and exercises with the Iraqi military beyond 2011, when all U.S. forces are set to leave. He didn't specify how many U.S. military personnel would be needed." And though I have to hold my nose to note, Manu Raju (Hedda Hopper Lives!) observed Mullen "left open the option of keeping residual forces there after that deadline passes." Holding my nose for that source (not the reporter, the outlet) but we gave credit where it was due. By the way, Whores For Centcom who lied about what was stated included Janet Adamy (Wall St. Journal), AFP and many, many more. Decide on your own whether it's worse to do as the New York Times did and ignore it or to 'report' on it and deliberately lie.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Future of the Court"
"al-Sudani out of office"
"More US civilians die in Iraq"
"Kat's Korner: Tori Amos, the friend you fear for"
"Vietnam and Iraq"
"CENTCOM's in a tizzy"
"Kat's Korner: David Saw, Why Didn't You Hear?"
"And the war drags on . . ."
"The 4300 mark""Anger over Green's sentence"
"I Hate The War"
"Memorial Day"
Truest statement of the week
A note to our readers
Editorial: Destructive and Deadly
TV: The weird week that was
Little Matthew Rothschild steps out of the closet
Roundtable
The Nation attacks history again
Jim's World
The Iraq War Crimes coverage (or lack of)
The digital divide
The People Need To Sue AP
Truth Talker of the Month
Box Office Poison
Rights Lawyers File Motion for Activists Indicted ...
Highlights
"THIS JUST IN! BARRY'S GOT A SECRET!"
"Barack's lover on the down low"
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