AS IF DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES TURNING ON CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O AND CALLING HIM OUT WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, HIS LATEST ATTEMPT TO COPY HILLARY CLINTON HAS BACKFIRED IN HIS FACE.
HOMOPHOBE IN CHIEF BARRY O IS NOT BEING ALLOWED TO SKIRT THE ISSUE OF HIS HOMOPHOBIA.
DAYS AFTER HILLARY TAPES AN AFFIRMING MESSAGE TO GAY YOUTH, BARRY O ATTEMPTS TO COPY HER. AND WHILE SOME WHORES LIKE AMY GOODMAN FINGER THEMSELVES FURIOUSLY AND 'FORGET' TO MENTION ALL OF HIS RECENT 'PROBLEMS' WITH THE LGBT COMMUNITY OR THE FACT THAT HE'S YET AGAIN COPYING HILLARY CLINTON'S LEAD AFTER SHE'S APPLAUDED FOR IT.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Today Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) reports that former US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spoke last week to the National Council on US - Arab Relations and " that when the dust clears in the formation of a new government in Iraq that Baghdad would come to the United States to ask for an extension of the US military presence beyond the end of 2011. By that date, according to the accord signed in 2008 by the Bush administration, all US troops are to leave Iraq. But Crocker said that it is 'quite likely that the Iraqi government is going to ask for an extension of our deployed presence'." (He also expressed that Nouri would remaing prime minister. Why? The US government backed Nouri as the 'continuing' prime minister after Nouri promised he's allow the US military to remain in Iraq past 2011.) Today at the US State Dept, spokesperson Philip J. Crowley was asked about Crocker's remarks. He responded, "Well, we have a Status of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The Status of Forces Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are working towards complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces Agreement, which would include the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year. The nature of our partnership beyond next year will have to be negotiated. On the civilian side, we are committed to Iraq over the long term. We will have civilians there continuing to work with the government on a range of areas – economic development, rule of law, civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that Iraq desires to have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the United States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that would be something that I would expect a new government to consider. [. . .] Should Iraq wish to continue the kind of military partnership that we currently have with Iraq, we're open to have that discussion."
We are? Barack didn't end the war. (Even if some losers and whores 'moved on' from the Iraq War.) Crowley's the spokesperson for the US State Dept. And while the Cult of St. Barack humps their mattresses every night still believing rainbows shoot out of Barack's ass, the US State Dept just admitted that a continued military presence in Iraq is a something that they're "open" to discussing. End the war in Iraq? It's not looking that way.
Late Friday, WikiLeaks released 391,832 US military documents on the Iraq War. Tomorrow on The Diane Rehm Show (airs on most NPR stations and begins streaming live online at 10:00 a.m. EST), Diane will devote the first hour to a discussion on the WikiLeaks revelations (and her second hour will find her joined by Juan Williams to discuss his NPR career and firing). The Defense Dept response to the revelations was predictable. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) reports, "Pentagon officials are, as always, struggling to find a common ground between downplaying the crimes revealed in nearly 400,000 new classified documents released yesterday by WikiLeaks while insisting that their revelation is a grave affront." Saturday in London, WikiLeaks held a press conference and legendary Pentagon Papers whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg provided the perspective.
Daniel Ellsberg: The threat being made by the Pentagon, as we read over the last few days, of warning newsmen to stand away from this material, to refuse to receive it and, if they do receive it, to return it seems absurd on its face. We're not dealing with the 7,000 pieces of paper, top secret pieces of paper, that comprised the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon did make a demand to the New York Times that they return that pile of paper to the -- to the Pentagon. The Times refused until -- in fact, never did return it. And refused to stop the presses until a court order came down. But with cyber material, it's all over the world right now and in several papers right now, the demand seems absurd. I understand the reason for those words because they echo the words first used against me, the legal words of 18 USC 793, paragraphs D and E which for the first time used the so-called espionage act as if it were a kind of official secrets act that you have in Britain which simply criminalizes the release of any classified material to any unauthorized person. We don't have such a law. And the irony now is that President Obama in making these clear threats of applying this law to anybody who deals with this information including not only the journalists but the words apply to the people who read it and don't return it to the proper authorities actually. President Obama's threats are not entirely without credibility here because he has started as many prosecutions for leaks as all previous presidents put together. It's a small number. It's three. The last one is Bradley Manning. [C.I. note: The other two are Shamai Kedem Leibowitz of the FBI and Thomas Drake of the NSA.] That's small because we don't have an official secrets act. And prior to Bush and Obama, presidents took it for granted that any application of the espionage act was likely to be overthrown as unconstitutional in our First Amendment by the Supreme Court but we're now facing a different Supreme Court. And, after 9-11, Obama is making a new experiment on this issue which will really change the relationship of the press to sources very radically. As it is, any source, with or without this change in the law, who gave this kind of material -- 400,000 pages of documents, 800,000 pages of documents -- to WikiLeaks would have to know that they were facing a risk of being where Bradley Manning is right now, in prison, accused of these things. And we don't know, I don't know, who the source is. If the president should prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is Bradley Manning, we can give him his unreserved admiration from us and thanks for what he did. But whomever did it, in fact, acted very appropriately in the course of deadly, stalemated war and which has one characteristic, by the way, in Iraq which isn't going to come out clearly in these 400,000 pages or in the discussion. And that is that the origins of war were clearly in the form of lying to the publics of Britain and America in order to carry on a clearly illegal crime against the peace, a war of aggression. So all of these civilian casualties are killed in a war of aggression. We won't have to say also the non-civilian casualties reported here are in the role of fighting against foreign occupiers, invaders, by the standards of the world, the question is raised very much whether their death by the invader is not also to be counted among the murders?
You can view portions of the press conference at World Can't Wait and Press TV's YouTube channel. And you can stream it in full at CSpan. At the press conference, Public Interest Lawyers' Phil Shiner states the documents indicate that US and UK forces looked the other way on torture which is a violation of international law and that the two had "a very clear legal responsibility". UN Special Rappoteur called on Barack to launch an investigation into whether or not the Us was complicit in torture. Tara Kelly (Time magazine) reports on the press conference here. Aged sexist and one-time journalist Thomas E. Ricks (Foreign Policy) parrots his think-tank's line of nothing-to-see-here while explaining that, in a recent dining experiment, mayo did not make his favorite spread taste better. Before he was bought and paid for by the Defense Industry, he worked for the Washington Post. So did Ellen Knickmeyer. At The Daily Beast, journalist Ellen Knickmeyer explains that February 22, 2006, there was a slaugher in Baghdad ("We watched hundreds of black-clad religious militiamen, waving their AK 47s in the air and calling for revenge, in what would be the start to a campaign of sectarian killing and tortue") and that the corpses piled "over the next two days" with well over 1,000 processed and more waiting:
Here's the thing, though: According to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commanders, it never happened. These killings, these dead, did not exist. According to them, reporters like myself were lying.
"The country is not awash in sectarian violence," the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey said, on talk show after talk show, making the rounds to tell the American home-front not to worry. Civil war? "I don't see it happening, certainly anytime in the near term," he said, as he denied the surge in sectarian violence.
[. . .]
Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.
Nothing to see says Tom Ricks, Ellen Knickmeyer points out that journalists "were under attack" for reporting the truth. Apparently Thomas E. Ricks never encountered that problem. How very strange -- or how very telling. WikiLeaks release is filled with new information. Angus Stickler's "US Apache guns down surrendering insurgents" (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism) reports that on a February 22, 2007 assault when insurgents outside Baghdad attempted to surrender, a US helicopter crew radioed that attempt but was given orders to kill the insurgents because "Lawyer stated they cannot surrender to aircraft." That is a War Crime. Military officials giving the orders should be court-martialed and drummed out of the US military with no benefits. War Criminals don't get to be on the public dole for years and years to come. Not only should those officials making that call and giving that order be court-martialed, this incident is documented. All military brass who saw this report should be immediately court-martialed for their refusal to live up to the code of conduct they swear to uphold and to instead cover up for War Crimes. Stickler also reports:
President Barack Obama's government handed over thousands of detainees to the Iraqi authorities, despite knowing there were hundreds of reports of alleged torture in Iraqi government facilities.
Washington was warned by the United Nations and many human rights organisations that torture was widespread in Iraqi detention centres. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal the US's own troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and 2009.
Washington was warned by the United Nations and many human rights organisations that torture was widespread in Iraqi detention centres. But the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal the US's own troops informed their commanders of more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi Security forces between 2005 and 2009.
The Times of London notes, "Files seen by The Sunday Times also provide first-hand accounts of underground bunkers operated by insurgents that contained cattle prods, whips and even a chainsaw. The mutilated bodies of victims were regularly found dumped at the roadside or on wasteland. Accounts from detention centres operated by Iraqi police and the army tell of suspects being whipped with cables, chains, wires and pistols." The Telegraph of London publishes an overview they dub "key findings" while Debra Sweet (World Can't Wait) offers key themes:
Key themes in the Iraq War Logs show:
Abuse, rape, torture, murder of detainees: Hundreds of incidents of abuse and torture of prisoners by Iraqis security services, up to and including rape and murder. These are so egregious that the UN is calling for further investigation.
Civilians are dying in greatest numbers: Rumsfeld always said "we don't do numbers" on civilian deaths. Iraq War reveals that they kept some numbers. The US & allies killed civilians much more frequently than thos they identified in the Log as "insurgents." Still, we'll never know the total.
Hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints: Robert Fisk says, "Out of the 832 deaths recorded at checkpoints in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Jounalism suggests 681 were civilians. Fifty families were shot at and 30 children killed. Only 120 insurgents were killed in checkpoints incidents."
Private contractors non-uniformed, unsupervised, wreak havoc: Blackwater (now Xe) and the thousands of civilian "security" operatives got away with murder, over and over again. And there are even more contractors in Afghanistan now than the larger troop force Obama sent in.
Along with turning prisoners over when you know the group you're handing to them practice torture (which would be a violation of international law), Raphael G. Satter and Paisley Dodds (AP) report that the documents reveal that US interrogators would be questioning Iraqis with fresh wounds -- which would mean they were emerging from torture, which would mean the US was deliberately sending some to be tortured to 'soften' them up -- which is also illegal under the treaties and conventions the United States signed off on. Both of these issues, the reporters point out, happen despite Barack's claim that the US will "eschew torture".
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"WikiLeaks release leads to calls for an inquiry"
"Iraqi Court tries to nudge out the stalemate"
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Barack Wins The Terrible
"And the war drags on . . ."
"Kat's Korner: Cher and the too far gone 70s"
"Daniel Ellsberg on Barack's "threats""
"W.I.W. Atika Shubert, 2000 - 2010"
- Truest statement of the week
- Truest statement of the week II
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: WikiLeaks' document release
- TV: The WikiLeaks reports
- Roundtable
- NPR: Establishment radio (Ava and C.I.)
- Politics: Who will they attack next?
- Atika Shubert on AssMatch
- John Anthony La Pietra
- Highlights
"THIS JUST IN! NO TIME FOR WORK!"
"It beats working"
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