Showing posts with label Iraq War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq War. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Then again, maybe not


Yes, seeing is believing. Or is it?

We live in an age when making people believe what you want them to believe is easier than ever. You can even provide them with "proof" that what plainly isn't, in fact, is. Ergo, half the crap you see on Facebook -- or InfoWars.com.

Remember that when our betters in Washington decide, at their leisure, that now is the time to blow the bejeezus (bemohammed?) out of the mullahs in Iran or the Assad dictatorship in Syria in the name of Truth, Justice, the American Way and the War on Terror.

Remember Iraq. And remember that your friendly, neighborhood federal government has a lot more money and resources than a college-age filmmaker in Rochester, N.Y.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Nostra culpa, nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa


Well, I think Pat Buchanan certainly summed up the Iraq War pretty thoroughly on the 10th anniversary of its start:
So, how now does the ledger read, 10 years on? What is history’s present verdict on what history has come to call Bush’s war?

Of the three goals of the war, none was achieved. No weapon of mass destruction was found. While Saddam and his sons paid for their sins, they had had nothing at all to do with 9/11. Nothing. That had all been mendacious propaganda.

Where there had been no al-Qaida in Iraq while Saddam ruled, al-Qaida is crawling all over Iraq now. Where Iraq had been an Arab Sunni bulwark confronting Iran in 2003, a decade later, Iraq is tilting away from the Sunni camp toward the Shia crescent of Iran and Hezbollah.

What was the cost in blood and treasure of our Mesopotamian misadventure? Four thousand five hundred U.S. dead, 35,000 wounded and this summary of war costs from Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

“The decade-long [Iraq] effort cost $1.7 trillion, according to a study … by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Fighting over the past 10 years has killed 134,000 Iraqi civilians … . Meanwhile, the nearly $500 billion in unpaid benefits to U.S. veterans of the Iraq war could balloon to $6 trillion” over the next 40 years.

Iraq made a major contribution to the bankrupting of America.

As for those 134,000 Iraqi civilian dead, that translates into 500,000 Iraqi widows and orphans. What must they think of us?

According to the latest Gallup poll, by 2-to-1, Iraqis believe they are more secure — now that the Americans are gone from their country.

Left behind, however, is our once-sterling reputation. Never before has America been held in lower esteem by the Arab peoples or the Islamic world. As for the reputation of the U.S. military, how many years will it be before our armed forces are no longer automatically associated with such terms as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, renditions and waterboarding?

As for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities of Iraq who looked to America, they have been ravaged and abandoned, with many having fled their ancient homes forever.

We are not known as a reflective people. But a question has to weigh upon us. If Saddam had no WMD, had no role in 9/11, did not attack us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us, was our unprovoked attack on that country a truly just and moral war?
THERE'S NOT really anything to add to this, is there? Except that a lot of us -- me included -- should have learned our lesson after Vietnam. But no . . . we f***ed up. We trusted our government.

The degree of the catastrophe we set in motion a decade ago wasn't exactly the sort of "shock and awe" we were counting on, now, was it? May God forgive us, because He's the only one who probably has it in Him.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Because there are no 'enhanced recounts'. . . .

The Honorable Whack Job from Florida has ways of dealing with sticky wickets such as this.

Unfortunately for him, however,  it would have been impractical for congressman Allen West to shove the State of Florida's head into a weapon-clearing barrel and fire his sidearm into the sand next to it until it gave him the result he desired.

So, according to this story from ABC News, the other guy has at long last won:
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Tea Party Republican who rode the wave of anti-spending fever to Congress in 2010, has conceded to Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, who will take his seat as the youngest member of the 113th Congress in January.

The Associated Press today called the race for Murphy. West conceded in a statement, while saying “there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results.

“For two weeks since Election Day, we have been working to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly,” West said. “While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election.”

The race was decided by fewer than 2,000 votes, with Murphy topping West 166,233 to 164,316, according to the latest tally from the AP. The state of Florida must still certify the result.

“While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change,” West continued. “I want to congratulate my opponent, Patrick Murphy, as the new congressman from the 18th Congressional District. I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own.”

Murphy maintained a considerable lead while provisional and absentee ballots were counted, but West forged ahead with legal challenges.

“I appreciate Congressman West’s gracious concession today,” Murphy said today in a statement. “To those who supported my opponent, my door is open and I want to hear your voice.  I campaigned on a message of reaching across the aisle to get things done for the people of the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches, and that is as important in this district as it is in Washington.  I am excited and honored to get to work.”
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE for the soon-to-be-former congressman, he'll have a lot more free time to engage in non-negotiable sex acts with his very own personal "porn star," otherwise known as Mrs. West.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to. . . .

Monday, November 14, 2011

Flush with 'victory' in Iraq


I said, war, huh
Good God, y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing. . . .
-- Edwin Starr,
1970

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote War for Motown in 1969, and it became a No. 1 smash in 1970 for the label's Edwin Starr.

Commercial and artistic success, however, is not the guarantor of absolute truth.

And as the United States' recent experience tells us, sometimes war is good for something. Sometimes you get a stainless-steel sh*tter out of the deal.

There's a certain logic to that, and in this Reuters report from the soon-to-be abandoned Camp Irony Victory Base.

The U.S. military is vacating Saddam Hussein's ornate palaces at its war headquarters in Baghdad and will turn the property over to Iraq next month, but Saddam's prison toilet is leaving with the Americans.

The stainless steel commode and a reinforced steel door have been removed from the cell where the dictator spent two years before his 2006 execution and is destined for a military police museum in the United States.

"We're not taking anything that the Iraqis had. We are only taking stuff that we put in, we utilized, and when we didn't need it any more, we took it home," Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brooks, a U.S. military historian, said on a tour of the site on Monday.

The villa where American troops built a maximum-security jail for Saddam and his henchman Chemical Ali sits on a U.S. complex near Baghdad's airport known as Victory Base, which is scheduled to be handed over to Iraq's government in December as U.S. forces withdraw completely by year's end.

Surrounded by 42 km (27 miles) of blast walls and razor wire, Victory, the largest of the 505 bases the U.S. military once operated in Iraq, housed over 40,000 soldiers and up to 25,000 workers. Only 4,000 troops remain there.

I KEEP wondering how to sum this all up -- "this" being America's whole disaster of a new millennium. How can we distill, say, the Iraq experience into something concise enough to fit on a T-shirt?

I think I got something:

We came to Iraq,
got 4,483 troops killed
and 33,183 wounded,
spent a trillion bucks . . .
and all we got was this lousy toilet
THAT'S what I call a legacy.

Did I mention that, as it turns out, the MP museum at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., doesn't even want the crapper? Gee, I guess Whitfield and Strong were right after all. My apologies to them.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The last refuge of scoundrels

"After reading Krugman's repugnant piece on 9/11, I cancelled my subscription to the New York Times this AM."

That's the reaction on Twitter today from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to "The Years of Shame" blog post published Sunday by New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman.

-- NPR's The Two-Way blog


Donald Rumsfeld is such a wuss. Among other things.

There are hundreds of millions of us who weren't so petulant as to renounce our U.S. citizenship over his repugnant performance as defense secretary. Even after Abu Ghraib.

If Rick Perry is elected the next president, however, all bets are off. I hear Montreal is lovely this time of year.

And, for what it's worth, Paul Krugman was a lot more right than wrong.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

We're all Sunnis and Shiites now

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Ilario Pantano
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorRally to Restore Sanity

The basics of the would-be congressman's resumé were clear enough.

Former Goldman-Sachs guy joins the Marines after 9/11, eventually ends up in Iraq as a second lieutenant.

His men stop a car seen leaving a house they were searching. Found some garden-variety weapons in the house, find nothing in the car or on the driver and passenger.

Marines search the car again, search the occupants again. Still nothing.

The would-be congressman smashes up the car. He sends the rest of his men off, has the unarmed Iraqi civilians search their own vehicle again. For some reason, he empties two clips of M-16 ammo into their backs at close range. They slump into the car.

The one which contained no weapons.

Afterward, the lieutenant slashes the tires on a car full of Iraqi house painters. After that, he places a handmade sign on the car with the two bodies inside: "No better friend, no worse enemy."


MONTHS LATER, the Marines investigate. Prosecutors charge him with murder, which could have meant the death penalty. A hearing determines there's not enough evidence to court-martial him.

The presiding officer, however, recommended a non-judicial punishment for "extremely poor judgment." He said the lieutenant, by desecrating the Iraqis' corpses with the sign, had disgraced the Marine Corps.

Then he sheds his uniform, finds Jesus, paints himself as a red-white-and-blue hero of the Iraq War, writes a book to that effect . . . then puts himself forth as a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina.

And that, friends, is how Ilario Pantano became a Tea Party darling and got 46 percent of the vote against a conservative, pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare.

That's how he went from staring a murder rap and the death penalty in the face . . . to almost getting elected to Congress. With the backing of a whole, big bunch of Republicans, including Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.

That such a character as Pantano has gotten so far in politics is no testimony to the civic heath of North Carolina. You have to wonder what the hell is wrong with those people, frankly.

In Pantano's native New York, however, old friends and acquaintances wonder what's become of the man they once knew. These deep misgivings about the would-be congressman reverberate through the pages of New York magazine:

But to some of his old New York friends, the new Pantano is not the one they thought they knew. “Is this obviously a new and different phase in Ilario’s life? Yes. Has he made major changes in his life? Yes. Is this the guy I’ve known before? No,” said Noah Shachtman, a contributing editor to Wired magazine and a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution. He met Pantano at Horace Mann. “As a politico turned musician turned reporter,” Schactman added, ”I don’t begrudge anyone the right to reinvent themselves.”

Though Pantano moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, Schactman, like other New York friends who’ve kept in touch, believed Pantano a New Yorker through and through. His mother was a New York literary agent, though she now raises horses in North Carolina; his wife was a Jewish New Yorker and onetime model who posed for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Pantano never did drugs, but he loved to dance and loved the hot nightclubs of the nineties. “He went to Mars, the Palladium, Disco 2000. “He couldn’t have gone there and possibly have had any issue with gay people,” said Alex Roy, who runs Europe by Car, a family business, and who held a fund-raiser for Pantano when he was accused of murder. “He’s changed a lot. I am pretty surprised to hear that he’s against gay marriage, considering that we have gay friends in common. He’s 180 degrees away from the person I grew up with. Maybe it’s a function of where he lives, or having served in the military. If you’re running for office it sure pays to agree with people in your district.”

Vlad Edelman, who was Pantano’s partner in a digital media business for half a dozen years, called Pantano after his New York speech against the proposed mosque. “What’s going on with your politics? I don’t recognize them,” Edelman asked. Shachtman also worried about Pantano’s fearmongering — the candidate fears a Chinese attack via Cuba, as he told Schachtman in an interview for Wired.

THERE YOU GO. Being against gay marriage is a big, big concern. Alleged war crimes? Not so much.

Likewise, giving a speech against the "Ground Zero mosque" is some kind of major faux pas, but gunning down actual Iraqi Muslims in cold blood . . . not so much.

"What's going on with your politics?" As if there were no red flags in 2004, in some God-forsaken corner of Iraq?

Screw it. You want to know what America stands for today? Nothing. Not a damn thing apart from self-righteousness, nada apart from talking a good -- albeit hypocritical -- game. That's who we are, what we're all about.

Left or right, Bohemian or Bubba, there's only one unforgivable sin in contemporary American society today -- being politically incorrect. I guess what they say is true . . . you are what you invade.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Even a cracked pot can cook your goose









Every country has its national mythology.

The national myth is how a people explains itself. It's how a people comes to understand itself as a whole -- what it believes, who it is, what is expected of it -- and that collective "authorized" biography, that national portrait shot in the most flattering light, is more about what a people wishes to believe about itself than what actually is the truth.

The United States' national mythology perhaps is one of the world's most all-pervasive, potent and uncritically accepted by its people. We Americans are always John Wayne in our national biopic, except when we prefer to be Jimmy Stewart or, on occasion, Cary Grant or James Dean.

Never are we Lee Marvin, villain of
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and many other films.

And being that the first casualty of war is the truth, our national mythology states Americans always go to war because there's no other recourse, then always conduct themselves as Audie Murphy -- never William Calley.

That's why a Fox News "opinion contributor," former State Department senior adviser Christian Whiton, thinks the United States ought to "explore opportunities for the president to designate WikiLeaks and its officers as enemy combatants, paving the way for non-judicial actions against them."

Whiton wants us to attack Europe looking for where Julian Assange, founder and chief of WikiLeaks, is hiding out? Or perhaps he just wants us to send the CIA to assassinate him and his inner circle.

Funny how the release of the classified truth that belies the national myth causes some to just drop all the pretense, allowing our dark side to show its true face.


BY PROVIDING
this service to Americans -- in addition to showing us what our government, and military, was (and wasn't) doing in our name in the Iraq War, acts for which we all ultimately are responsible -- Assange becomes something of a problematic prophet. Perhaps even a mad prophet.

Frankly, the man seems rather insufferable. He was reckless in his handling of the previous "document dump" concerning the Afghan War, and imperiousness coupled with an apparent messiah complex seems to be driving some of the WikiLeaks staff away.

Still, without such a seriously flawed messenger, would we know anything about this, for example? From The New York Times:
The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.

The archive contains reports on at least four cases of lethal shooting
s from helicopters. In the bloodiest, on July 16, 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed, about half of them civilians. However, the tally was called in by two different people, and it is possible that the deaths were counted twice.

In another case, in February 2007, an Apache helicopter shot and killed two Iraqi men believed to have been firing mortars, even though they made surrendering motions, because, according to a military lawyer cited in the report, “they cannot surrender to aircraft, and are still valid targets.”

The shooting was unusual. In at least three other instances reported in the archive, Iraqis surrendered to helicopter crews without being shot. The Pentagon did not respond to questions from The Times about the rules of engagement for the helicopter strike.

The pace of civilian deaths served as a kind of pulse, whose steady beat told of the success, or failure, of America’s war effort. Americans on both sides of the war debate argued bitterly over facts that grew hazier as the war deepened.

The archive does not put that argument to rest by giving a precise count. As a 2008 report to Congress on the topic makes clear, the figures serve as “guideposts,’ not hard totals. But it does seem to suggest numbers tha
t are roughly in line with those compiled by several sources, including Iraq Body Count, an organization that tracked civilian deaths using press reports, a method the Bush administration repeatedly derided as unreliable and producing inflated numbers. In all, the five-year archive lists more than 100,000 dead from 2004 to 2009, though some deaths are reported more than once, and some reports have inconsistent casualty figures. A 2008 Congressional report warned that record keeping in the war had been so problematic that such statistics should be looked at only as “guideposts.”

In a statement on Friday, Iraq Body Count, which did a preliminary analysis of the archive, estimated that it listed 15,000 deaths that had not been previously disclosed anywhere.

The archive tells thousands of individual stories of loss whose consequences are still being felt in Iraqi families today.

Misunderstandings at checkpoints were often lethal. At one Marine checkpoint, sunlight glinting off a windshield of a car that did not slow down led to the shooting death of a mother and the wounding of three of her daughters and her husband. Hand signals flashed to stop vehicles were often not understood, and soldiers and Marines, who without interpreters were unable to speak to the survivors, were left to wonder why.

According to one particularly painful entry from 2006, an Iraqi wearing a tracksuit was killed by an American sniper who later discovered that the victim was the platoon’s interpreter.
IT'S A SAD THING that Assange -- a self-appointed messiah "too busy ending two wars" to answer legitimate inquiries from a reporter -- was the one to give lie to American lies and, yet again, shatter the myth of American moral exceptionalism when it most needed shattering, for truth's sake. From the Guardian in London:
A prisoner was kneeling on the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed, when an Iraqi soldier walked over to him and kicked him in the neck. A US marine sergeant was watching and reported the incident, which was duly recorded and judged to be valid. The outcome: "No investigation required."

That was a relatively minor assault. Another of the leaked Iraqi war logs records the case of a man who was arrested by police on suspicion of preparing a suicide bomb. In the station, an officer shot him in the leg and then, the log continues, this detainee "suffered abuse which amounted to cracked ribs, multiple lacerations and welts and bruises from being whipped with a large rod and hose across his back". This was all recorded and judged to amount to "reasonable suspicion of abuse". The outcome: "No further investigation."

Other logs record not merely assaults but systematic torture. A man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists. The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required.

This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a "fragmentary order" which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, "only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ".

Frago 242 appears to have been issued as part of the wider political effort to pass the management of security from the coalition to Iraqi hands. In effect, it means that the regime has been forced to change its political constitution but allowed to retain its use of torture.

The systematic viciousness of the old dictatorship when Saddam Hussein's security agencies enforced order without any regard for law continues, reinforced by the chaotic savagery of the new criminal, political and sectarian groups which have emerged since the invasion in 2003 and which have infiltrated some police and army units, using Iraq's detention cells for their private vendettas.

Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim – bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated – who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer's whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water – and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.
THE CRITICS, on the right and in the government, are right: Julian Assange seems to be a cracked pot. And a fairly reckless one at that.

That's bad. It's bad that this is the guy upon whose judgment rests the lives of countless people.

It's worse -- immeasurably worse -- that our cracked system, our cracked military and our cracked national mythology combined to leave the likes of Assange as the go-to guy for the truth.

We won't believe Assange, or the documents he procured. We won't even believe Jimmy Stewart.

You see, even after Stewart tries to tell a reporter the truth about who really shot Liberty Valence at the end of the movie, the newspaper's editor won't print the story. He takes a look at the writer's notes, sees the God's honest truth in them . . . and burns them.


"This is the West, sir," he tells the reporter. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Saddamification of Amerika


The tea party has outdone itself.


In a universe where Nancy Pelosi is the Antichrist in heels, in a political construct where President Obama is a communist Islamic Nazi witch doctor from Kenya who's going to take over health care and force doctors to pull out your fingernails one by one until you retroactively abort your firstborn son and offer his remains to Ted Kennedy . . . it is in this strange, strange world that North Carolinians just might elect to the U.S. House -- with GOP and tea-party blessing
(and cash) -- one Ilario Pantano.

Ilario Pantano, who used to be a Goldman Sachs energy trader, ended up rejoining the Marines after 9/11, then went on to pump some 60 rounds from an M-16 into the backs of two unarmed Iraqi detainees.

Ilario Pantano, whom the Marines charged with murder months later but didn't have enough evidence to court martial.

Ilario Pantano, the subject nevertheless of a Marine leadership-manual scenario aimed at teaching unit leaders how
not to act on the battlefield, whose actions were described by a lance corporal who reported him as "war crimes."

ILARIO PANTANO, whose actions at Mahmudiyah, Iraq, prompted the following discussion questions at the end of "his" leadership-manual chapter:
* How should the Marine Corps investigate and adjudicate incidents such as those that occurred at Mahumadiyah may have occurred?

* Does the Marine Corps have an equal obligation to protect the reputation of a
Marine accused of a crime or dishonorable behavior, someone possessing the
presumption of innocence, and the reputations of those who have honorably
brought forward questions about that Marine’s behavior?

* Can an action be lawful but dishonorable?

* What do we use as measures of honorable behavior and conduct if the Uniform Code of Military Justice is inadequate or unsuited to the task?
THAT'S a hell of a resumé, Hoss.

And it doesn't matter to anyone.
Most notably, the candidate himself.

One might assume that someone who'd gunned down a couple of unarmed prisoners at almost point-blank range might be circumspect about his wartime actions. Especially actions that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.

One might think that someone in such a position --
who had been branded by more than one of his own Marines as a war criminal -- might come back home haunted and penitent, and aware that he dodged some bullets that two Iraqi men couldn't.

You know what they say about what happens when you assume.

NO . . . if an alleged war criminal has the nerve to run for Congress, an alleged war criminal has the nerve to have a fund-raiser Sunday at a gun range. And offer campaign-donation refunds to anyone who can outshoot him, reports The StarNews in Wilmington, N.C.:

Republican congressional candidate Ilario Pantano will hold a pistol match Sunday afternoon at the Ant Hill Range in Brunswick County to raise money for his campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton.

For $25, “any patriot” who thinks he can outshoot Pantano is invited to show off his marksmanship in a timed target-shooting challenge, according to ads for the event.

Shoot fast and straight enough to beat the former Marine and trained sniper and get your money back.

“Pantano needs your help to fix Washington, so come on out to this fundraiser social for an afternoon of fun, food and guns!” according to an advertisement for the event.

Pantano is advertising the event as a way to protect the Second Amendment and “clear all the anti-gun liberals out of Congress.”

Registration starts at 11 a.m., with the shooting starting shortly after noon. Shooters can sign up at the event and must bring their own gun and ammunition.

ADVENTURESOME "patriots" had better bring their "A" game. The Marines' account (go to Page 49) of Pantano's Iraq adventures indicate he's absolutely deadly at 5 feet:
At this point, the occupants of the white sedan were described as cooperative; no weapons had been found on either their persons or in the vehicle. The women at the target house corroborated their story. The only finds worth mentioning were the coffee cans of nuts and bolts found in the trunk of the car.

The platoon commander directed the corpsman to take charge of the detainees.
The corpsman moved them to the rear of the vehicle, separated them and placed them on their stomachs. He stood security on the detainees while the platoon commander and radio operator went to the target house. It could not be determined whether the platoon commander was informed that the residents had confirmed the two detainees’ story. It was determined, however, that the residents had not been held hostage in their homes by insurgents.

The platoon commander and radio operator returned from the house. Upon his
return, the platoon commander directed the radio operator to get the Iraqis up from the ground and remove the flex cuffs; the radio operator did so using his medical shears. The platoon commander then told the corpsman he wanted the detainees to search the vehicle a second time. The corpsman moved the detainees to the left or west side of the vehicle, placing the older of the two Iraqis in the driver’s door and the younger in the passenger door. The Iraqis had to be told several times to stop talking.

The platoon commander directed the radio operator and corpsman to take up
security positions, leaving him alone with the two Iraqis. The corpsman testified that he heard the platoon commander say “stop” in Arabic and then again in English. He then heard shots being fired. The platoon commander fired two thirty round M-16 magazines into the two Iraqis using burst fire. The corpsman has testified that the platoon commander fired from a distance of four to five feet.

The corpsman turned during the firing and observed the platoon commander’s rounds striking the Iraqis in their backs. He saw the Iraqis slump into the vehicle. The radio operator immediately faced about and saw the platoon commander firing into the vehicle. After the platoon commander ceased firing, the corpsman checked the Iraqis’ vital signs and informed the platoon commander that they were dead.

Prior to this firing, the only other shots that had been fired were the warning shots to stop the white sedan. The corpsman testified that throughout this entire action, the platoon had not received any fire. Elements of 3rd Platoon were established to the east, west, and north of the scene of the incident and others were at the target house.

The corpsman went to the rear of the vehicle. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to
the radio operator, “the blood is not on your hands, it’s on the lieutenant’s.”

The corpsman testified that after shooting the two Iraqis, the platoon commander used his K-bar and rifle to break windows and lights of the white sedan and to flatten its tires.

The radio operator also testified that the platoon commander did this, although he testified that it happened before the shootings.

The platoon commander later said that “I didn’t wait to see if there was a grenade. I didn’t wait to see if there was a knife. And unfortunately, there are a lot of dead soldiers and Marines who have waited too long. And my men weren’t going to be one of those dead soldiers or Marines and neither was I.”

The Intel Bn Marine testified that he heard the shots and went back towards the location of the white sedan. During this time, a second vehicle approached the scene from the north. The platoon commander ordered that vehicle, a brown sedan with several Iraqi laborers, to stop just north of the white sedan.

The Intel Bn Marine and the interpreter jogged north past the white sedan to assist the platoon commander with the Iraqis in the brown sedan. The interpreter described the scene at the white sedan. “They looked like they were on their knees. They were shot in their backs. One was in the front of the vehicle, the other one was in the back of the vehicle, facing the vehicle.”

He later described the scene as “weird.” “The rounds, sir -- there were too many rounds shot into those detainees, sir.”

The interpreter testified that upon arriving at the brown sedan, he observed the
platoon commander using his knife to flatten the tires of the vehicle. The platoon
commander ordered Marines to move the new detainees to the north of their vehicle. (There were five or six Iraqi house painters in the vehicle. Painting equipment was found in their car and in the house where they had been working.) They were probably twenty feet from the two dead Iraqis. Here, the Intel Bn Marine and his interpreter questioned them. The interpreter testified that the platoon commander had him tell the painters that “if any of them want to join the insurgency that same thing was going to happen to them as those bodies” and then they were released. They drove away on flattened tires.

By this point, the platoon commander had placed a sign on the first vehicle, on
the left side, the same side as the deceased Iraqis. It read “No better friend, no worse enemy.” The first vehicle was not searched again. No effort was made to recover the remains of the dead Iraqis.


PERHAPS THAT ought to be Pantano's campaign slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy." Wink.

Lots of politicians will stab you in the back. The would-be congressman from North Carolina might be the first, though, to empty two clips into it.

How ironic that Ilario Pantano went off to war to --
What was the official reason at the time? -- "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." That was from President George W. Bush's televised address to the nation at the beginning of hostilities.
"To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed.

"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honourable and decent spirit of the American military.

"In this conflict America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality."

AS IT turns out, Saddam wasn't alone in that regard.

As it turns out, at least one Marine -- it was alleged -- decided he would employ some Saddam-style deterrence for anyone considering messing with Uncle Sam. What happened in Mahmudiyah was literally, it would seem, out of the Saddam Hussein Handbook for Keeping Troublemakers in Line. This pasaage from Saddam's obit in
The Sunday Times, for example:

The society he grew up in was violent and well armed. Some accounts say Saddam was given his first firearm at the age of eight. Another has him, at the age of ten, threatening to kill a school teacher who wanted to expel him. But, much more than violence, tribal loyalty was the overwhelming characteristic of the society into which he was born. He was to rise to power not by becoming prominent in politics or the military, but by harnessing the ties of kinship. One of the rebel officers who led the 1963 Baathist coup was Ahmed al-Hassan al Bakr, a relative of Saddam's. Bakr became prime minister and it was under his leadership that Saddam's stealthy seizure of power began, beginning with the building of security and intelligence networks answerable - and loyal - not to the state but to Saddam in person. For five years after 1963, Saddam Hussein lived on the fringes of the new political establishment, frequently falling out of favour and ending up in jail. The breakthrough in his political fortunes came in 1968 when a second coup brought the Tikriti clan to power. Bakr became head of state with Saddam as vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council. he systematic violence and intimidation that was to keep Saddam in power began. Possible opponents were assassinated.

The Kurdish political leader Mahmoud Osman got to know him well during this period. "He told us, 'You have to kill some people, even if they are innocent, in order to frighten others'."

In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein, as Vice President, became head of Iraq's nuclear energy programme. In 1975 he made one of his rare trips abroad - to Paris - to visit the plant that was to supply Iraq with its first nuclear power station. He was welcomed in person by the then French prime minister, Jacques Chirac. Iraq and France signed an agreement which bound Baghdad to the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; the plant would be for the production of energy only, strictly non-military.

In 1979, Bakr, in poor health, announced his intention to step down and hand power to Saddam. Some members of the RCC objected and demanded a vote. They did not live long. Saddam accused his fellow Ba'athists of conspiring against him, and of plotting with foreign powers. A meeting of the RCC was filmed in which Saddam is shown denouncing the alleged conspirators and being persuaded by terrified acolytes not to be lenient. Between a quarter and half the members of the ruling body were executed. It was at this time, too, that another distinctive feature of the Saddam regime emerged - a willingness to punish not only direct opponents and potential opponents, but members of their families as well.

"NO BETTER friend, no worse enemy."

And now, a tangible symbol of the putridity oozing from an infection America picked up during an unnecessary war is on the cusp of election to Congress. Our Congress. The United States Congress . . .
as opposed to its Iraqi counterpart.

Or the old Communist central committee of Soviet times.

Not so many, according to a
Salon piece, have a problem with this:
But one of the remarkable things about the campaign in North Carolina this year is that the murder charges are not only not an issue, but have barely even been talked about.

David McLennan, a political scientist at North Carolina's Peace College, told Salon that the issue could backfire for McIntyre, the Democratic incumbent, particularly in a district with a large ex-military population.

"There are some people in the district who consider Pantano to be a hero. For McIntyre to raise that issue is just way too delicate," McLennan says.

Some of the only criticism of Pantano's past has ironically come from the man he beat in the GOP primary, fellow Iraq war vet Will Breazeale. He told the Daily Beast after his primary loss that he considers Pantano "dangerous," adding: "I’ve taken prisoners in Iraq and there’s no excuse for what he did."

Asked by Salon if he is surprised that his critics have largely ignored the Iraq incident, Pantano was defiant. "If they want to question my war effort -- if they think that's prudent, they can go ahead ... I've served my country proudly in two wars."

IT WILL be America's great shame if he serves one second in Congress.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

1973 down, 1968 to go

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


It's over. Or is it?

At least when I was a kid, we only had one of these damn things to worry about at a time. As NBC's Richard Engel said about the Iraqis, my celebration also will be restrained.

We now return you to our quagmire in Afghanistan and political strife at home.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

And it's 1, 2, 3 . . . what are we fighting for?


Pretty much everyone agrees that Afghanistan, and the American war effort there, is a bloody mess.

What you don't get from most of the popular media, though, is a sense of exactly how horrible a mess it is. How very like the American war effort Vietnam it is. Of how fool's errands such as Afghanistan -- and Iraq -- are putting us on a path to permanent war.

Andrew Bacevich of Boston University has been thinking about all this, and if anyone in this country has the standing to offer some strong opinions on such things, it's the professor of international relations and history. First, he's a retired Army colonel and Vietnam veteran. Second, "all this" has cost him his son.


LAST WEEK, Bacevich discussed "all this" on Bill Moyers Journal:
BILL MOYERS: General McChrystal himself has said that we've shot - and this is his words not mine—an amazing number of people over there who did not seem to be a threat to his troops.

ANDREW BACEVICH
: I think that is—that's clearly the case. When McChrystal was put in command last year, and devised his counterinsurgency strategy, the essential core principle of that strategy is that we will protect the population. We will protect the people. And the contradiction is that ever since President Obama gave McChrystal the go-ahead to implement that strategy, we have nonetheless continued to have this series of incidents in which we're not only not protecting the population. But indeed we're killing non-combatants.

BILL MOYERS
: Given what's happening in the killing of these innocent people, is the very term, "military victory in Afghanistan," an oxymoron?

ANDREW BACEVICH
: Oh, this is—yes. And I think one of the most interesting and indeed perplexing things that's happened in the past three, four years is that in many respects, the officer corps itself has given up on the idea of military victory. We could find any number of quotations from General Petraeus, the central command commander, and General McChrystal, the immediate commander in Afghanistan, in which they say that there is no military solution in Afghanistan, that we will not win a military victory, that the only solution to be gained, if there is one, is through bringing to success this project of armed nation-building.

And the reason that's interesting, at least to a military historian of my generation, of the Vietnam generation, is that after Vietnam, this humiliation that we had experienced, the collective purpose of the officer corps, in a sense, was to demonstrate that war worked. To demonstrate that war could be purposeful.

That out of that collision, on the battlefield, would come decision, would come victory. And that soldiers could claim purposefulness for their profession by saying to both the political leadership and to the American people, "This is what we can do. We can, in certain situations, solve very difficult problems by giving you military victory."

Well, here in the year 2010, nobody in the officer corps believes in military victory. And in that sense, the officer corps has, I think, unwittingly really forfeited its claim to providing a unique and important service to American society. I mean, why, if indeed the purpose of the exercise in Afghanistan is to, I mean, to put it crudely, drag this country into the modern world, why put a four-star general in charge of that? Why not—why not put a successful mayor of a big city? Why not put a legion of social reformers? Because the war in Afghanistan is not a war as the American military traditionally conceives of war.

BILL MOYERS
: Well, President Obama was in Afghanistan not too long ago, as you know. And he attempted to state the purpose of our war there to our troops.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
: Our broad mission is clear. We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear. We're going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We're going to reverse the Taliban's momentum. We're going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people.

BILL MOYERS
: That sounds to me like a traditional, classical military assignment, to find the enemy and defeat him.

ANDREW BACEVICH
: Well, but there's also then the reference to sort of building the capacity of the Afghan government. And that's where, of course, the president, he'd just come from this meeting with President Karzai. Basically, as we understand from press reports, the president sort of administered a tongue-lashing to Karzai to tell him to get his act together. Which then was followed by Karzai issuing his own tongue-lashing, calling into question whether or not he actually was committed to supporting the United States in its efforts in Afghanistan. And again, this kind of does bring us back, in a way, to Vietnam, where we found ourselves harnessed to allies, partners that turned out to be either incompetent or corrupt. Or simply did not share our understanding of what needed to be done for that country.

BILL MOYERS
: What does it say to you as a soldier that our political leaders, time and again, send men and women to fight for, on behalf of corrupt guys like Karzai?

ANDREW BACEVICH
: Well, we don't learn from history. And there is this persistent, and I think almost inexplicable belief that the use of military force in some godforsaken country on the far side of the planet will not only yield some kind of purposeful result, but by extension, will produce significant benefits for the United States. I mean, one of the obvious things about the Afghanistan war that is so striking and yet so frequently overlooked is that we're now in the ninth year of this war.

It is the longest war in American history. And it is a war for which there is no end in sight. And to my mind, it is a war that is utterly devoid of strategic purpose. And the fact that that gets so little attention from our political leaders, from the press or from our fellow citizens, I think is simply appalling, especially when you consider the amount of money we're spending over there and the lives that are being lost whether American or Afghan.

BILL MOYERS
: But President Obama says, our purpose is to prevent the Taliban from creating another rogue state from which the jihadists can attack the United States, as happened on 9/11. Isn't that a strategic purpose?

ANDREW BACEVICH
: I mean, if we could wave a magic wand tomorrow and achieve in Afghanistan all the purposes that General McChrystal would like us to achieve, would the Jihadist threat be substantially reduced as a consequence? And does anybody think that somehow, Jihadism is centered or headquartered in Afghanistan? When you think about it for three seconds, you say, "Well, of course, it's not. It is a transnational movement."

BILL MOYERS
: They can come from Yemen. They can come from—

ANDREW BACEVICH
: They can come from Brooklyn. So the notion that somehow, because the 9/11 attacks were concocted in this place, as indeed they were, the notion that therefore, the transformation of Afghanistan will provide some guarantee that there won't be another 9/11 is patently absurd. Quite frankly, the notion that we can prevent another 9/11 by invading and occupying and transforming countries is absurd.
THE AMERICAN EMPIRE cannot go on forever. And like they say, if something can't go on forever . . . it won't.

Empires being what they are -- not to mention empires' habit of coming to think they are exceptions to history's rules -- ensure that the end of this particular one will be about as ugly as all its predecessors'.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

It's Muslims, guns and morons
. . . and the s*** has hit the fan


Sigh.

It didn't take long after the Fort Hood massacre for the usual suspects to say exactly what you'd expect.

IN FACT, I was so sure of that, just a little while ago I Googled "Barack Hussein Obama," "Fort Hood" and "Muslim." And in the combox of an item on Lucianne.com . . . the mother lode:
Reply 15 - Posted by: ann_n_GA, 11/5/2009 6:21:55 PM (No. 6002989)
How in the world could someone like this horrible Muslim terrorist(s), become a Major in the US Army? Don't we make sure people like this are not able to gun down the men and women in our armed forces?

Now I'm hearing he's a mental health professional and/or a doctor. Well, it makes no difference to the Muslims, as long as they can sneak them in.

And I'm sure Zippy and his Reverend Wright are gleeful, right now.

I would have never believed that in my lifetime, I would see a man get elected President who outwardly exhibits hatred for his country. And I feel very sorry for our military, who has to call this man their CIC. It's disgusting.

This all makes me nauseated...

Reply 18 - Posted by: 10ftOverhead, 11/5/2009 6:24:19 PM (No. 6002995)
Will Obama and Michelle do a little fist bump when he gets home?

Reply 19 - Posted by: planetgeo, 11/5/2009 6:24:27 PM (No. 6002996)
#14,
"Any one in the military with a muslim background should be scrutinized very carefully."

Wrong. Any one in the military, or any sensitive government position, should be removed from their position and placed under watch by our intelligence agencies. This is now at least the 3rd incident of Muslims either planning or executing an attack on our military facilities in the United States. How many more will our leaders tolerate before they stop the nonsense about "a tragic event" and planned, pre-meditated jihadist action?

How many more?!

Reply 20 - Posted by: planetgeo, 11/5/2009 6:27:44 PM (No. 6003007)
I'm so angry I couldn't even see straight enough to add the obvious..."with a Muslim background". I'm sure my fellow LDotters know the feeling.

Reply 21 - Posted by: bean, 11/5/2009 6:29:43 PM (No. 6003011)
EVERY news channel is AVOIDNG the obvious-this was a terrorist attack. Is the White House threatening them to keep quiet?

Reply 23 - Posted by: vrb8m, 11/5/2009 6:37:27 PM (No. 6003031)
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America, from the book "The Audacity of Hope".

Reply 24 - Posted by: Israel Putnam, 11/5/2009 6:39:30 PM (No. 6003034)
Get angry...get ready.

Reply 26 - Posted by: loosietoot, 11/5/2009 6:40:17 PM (No. 6003038)
Sorry folks! I hold this so-called and probably illegal President directly responsible for all deaths of all soldiers with his dithering on Afganistan increases, and his praising of HIS MUSLIM BROTHERS.

I thought he sounded so PHONEY IN HIS APPEARANCE ON FOX!!!! My God, our country is in serious peril with this Muslim President!!!!!!!!!!

Reply 31 - Posted by: RedWhite&Blue2, 11/5/2009 7:00:28 PM (No. 6003096)
One wonders how a crazy Muslim could become an American army Major?

The same one wonders how in blazes a guy named Hussein, raised by commies, could become CIC of the USA? A very skinny, purple-lipped, whistling ignoramus!

What the hell is wrong with us? 40% conservative in America and yet we let the commies, the muzzies, the lefties,the public schools, the DNC, the sandal-wearing commie creep professors, the LSM, and Hollyweird DICTATE our very own policies to us!

I am MAD as HELL and if I wasnt 60 I think I'd re-up and pick up a gun again like I did in '67! It's been a civil war here for some years, hasnt it? Isnt it most evident today?

God have mercy on their souls....
I THINK that's enough. You get the picture.

And I think it's pretty apparent by now where "Liberal Fascists" author Jonah Goldberg gets his reactionary nature . . . Lucianne.com is run by his mother, Lucianne Goldberg.

Right now -- and it's now 7:44 p.m. Central time as I type -- we know damned little about what happened in Texas. We know the alleged shooter, an Army psychiatrist with the rank of major, was a Muslim.

We know he's dead, having been shot by police.

We know he may have been “pretty upset” about his pending deployment to the war zone, at least according to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

We know Fort Hood's commander, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, said there were eyewitness accounts of a second shooter, and that a person of interest is being questioned.

We know the dead suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, may have posted Internet items justifying suicide bombings. Likewise, we know federal authorities have yet to confirm Hasan was the author.

And we know that, ironically, Hasan was a graduate of Virginia Tech.

THAT'S ALL we know, and we don't know no more. Then again, since when has not knowing much been a deterrent to the Tea Party set when the subject matter is extreme rhetoric and rash action.

Keep your powder dry, people. There will be lots to think about -- and to decide what to do about -- when we have a few answers in hand.

Until then, "patriot" morons and their Internet enablers are just making a bad situation a lot worse.


UPDATE: And sometimes what we "know" just ain't so . . . which just goes to prove my point.

The alleged gunman isn't dead. Wounded, yes, but not dead:

An Army psychiatrist opened fire Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 people and wounding 31 others, military officials said.

The gunman was wounded multiple times at the scene but was captured alive and was in stable condition, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, commanding general of the Army’s III Corps, said at a press conference late Thursday.