Month: June 2006

Coming on the heels of the Haditha Massacre, this story just tore my heart out. It’s one of those stories that I was about to post in the News Bucket, but had too much to say about it and decided to post a diary instead.

Link

The 35 yr old pregnant woman was being rushed to the hospital by her brother; also in the car was their cousin, a 57 yr old woman. The road had been recently blocked by American troops, but apparently the word had not gotten out to outlying areas. As they rushed to hospital so Nabiha Nisaif Jassim could give birth, they inadvertantly drove on the forbidden road.

The Americans said that they fired warning shots to no avail before peppering the car with the bullets that killed both women, and Nabiha’a unborn baby. Now, I’ve never been in a car racing to the hospital with a pregnant woman, but I imaging that it could be a bit tense and chaotic. No wonder they didn’t notice the American troops.

More and more Iraqis are under the opinion that Americans don’t value Iraqi lives. It’s a refrain that I’ve read and heard over and over lately. This article goes on to give statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths and it isn’t pretty. The claims of retribution whenever an American life is lost are rampant.

“Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi told the BBC that the allegations have “created a feeling of great shock and sadness and I believe that if what is alleged is true — and I have no reason to believe it’s not — then I think something very drastic has to be done.”

“There must be a level of discipline imposed on the American troops and change of mentality which seems to think that Iraqi lives are expendable,” said Pachachi, a member of parliament.” link

In response to the Haditha massacre the US military is going to give mandatory ethics and cultural training to every troop serving in Iraq:

Link

This must mean that up until now, no cultural training has been received. Lack of cultural understanding is often blamed for the number of incidents involving civilians.

Will this training add more stress to an already stressed out fighting force? Kilo Company, the Marines responsible for Haditha, are on their third tour of duty in Iraq and obviously under tremendous stress. I suppose it’s better to have the training; better late than never.

The Silver Lining

One thing I see happening as a result of so much tragedy is discussion. I turned on CNN this morning to the middle of a deep discussion on battle stress and PTSD. It is healthy to carry on a national discussion of these horrible deaths and question not only why it is happening, but how we can help troubled soldiers after they come home. Perhaps it will lead to discussion on how the Bush admin is cutting money and services and increasing fees for veterans seeking help and treatment.

My heart was torn when I read the story of Nabiha Nisaif Jassim and her poor baby. That baby was about to come into the world and was cruelly slaughtered along with it’s mother. The expectant father, waiting anxiously at the hospital only to have her arrive bloody and dead, along with their unborn child. No wonder Iraqis believe that Americans don’t value any lives but their own.

There seems to have been very little comment about the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling  on Tuesday that struck down an agreement between the EU and the USA. This requires that up to 34 pieces of information about every passenger on flights headed to the USA must be given to the Department of Homeland Security at least 15 minutes before take-off.

European law requires that data can only be transmitted outside the EU in these circumstance if the security arrangements are up to the standards demanded by EU Data Protection legislation. Obviously under pressure from the USA to avoid disruption to trans-Altlantic air travel, the EU Commission and the Council of Ministers (from all the member countries) agreed to the arrangement. The European Parliament challenged their decision that the US data security was adequate. Now the ECJ has ruled that the agreement is invalid and must be renegotiated by the end of September. A full copy of the judgement is available on the Court site.
 
The ruling is perhaps ironic in a week when the Veterans Administration had to admit to losing a disc drive containing information that could be used for identity theft. That is partly what the EP’s concerns are all about. The information demanded includes the traveller’s name and address, credit card details and the details of any special dietary or other arrangements requested for the flight. Obviously a request for a halal meal would immediately identify the person as Muslim.

This data is given by US airlines without question. Failure to comply means fines of thousands of dollars for each passenger and possible loss of landing rights. After September 30, it will be illegal for European airlines to transmit the data unless the agreement is renewed in a legal fashion. This brings the possibility of huge disruptions from October. The ruling could also be extended to US airlines sending data collected in Europe. Without it, checks will have to be made at the immigration point, further extending the already lengthy lines.

The  BBC paper review gives an idea of how this has been received.

Austria’s Der Standard says the EU judges’ decision may have “serious consequences”.

“If the US maintains its current stance, then the consequences of the ruling could go as far as European airlines being banned from landing in the United States,” it says.

The Spanish daily El Pais also highlights the fact that airlines could face a fine of $6,000 per passenger or be prevented from landing at US airports.

Although the exchange of data in the fight against terrorism “is as much in the interest of Europe as it is for the US”, the paper argues that the central problem is one of confidentiality.

The EU has to ensure that the USA will protect this data and not use it for other ends, it says.

Taking a wider perspective, Geneva’s La Tribune voices alarm at what it sees as the US authorities’ increasing infringement of individual liberties under “the noble pretext of slaying the terrorist hydra”.

The paper accuses the EU and Switzerland of showing “institutional weakness and a lack of political courage” in failing to resist “US pressure and its compulsive spy mania”.

“What Washington singularly lacks,” the Swiss daily argues, is “an interlocutor who is politically powerful and democratically credible … who could remind it of all the liberal principles which justified the creation of the USA.”

I’m not at all convinced that this latest overture to Iran is a “diplomatic breakthrough.”  It sounds to me like the same sort of designed-to-fail negotiation tactics we’ve been employing all along.  

Like the Energizer Bunny, Condi Rice is still going, banging the same drum she thumped on to march us into the Iraq fiasco.

Her speech from yesterday, in which she offered Iran the same offer they can’t not refuse that she’s been offering through proxies all along, was a classic piece of Rovewellian prevarication.  

Under the fold: an offer Iran can’t not refuse…

She began, as propagandists often do, with a remarkably flawed if not downright false main assumption: “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons represents a direct threat to the entire international community…”

We don’t know for a fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and no one, including Rice, has any credible evidence that such is the case.  All of the Bush administration’s arguments that Iran desires nuclear bombs are based on “negative proof.”  Iran can’t prove they’re not pursuing them, therefore they must be.  This is the precise sort of solipsism that Rice and her political sugar daddies used to drive us into the Iraq train wreck.  

The International Atomic Energy Agency has found no proof that an Iranian nuclear weapons program exists.  Iran has long avowed that it has no intention of developing one, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to support that position publicly.  

We have no particular reason to take anything Ahmadinejad says at face value, but we have every reason to dismiss out of hand every syllable that comes from Condi Rice’s mouth.  

Not content to have floated her “fuzzy” main assumption once, Rice quickly repeated it.

“The Iranian government’s choices are clear. The negative choice is for the regime to maintain its current course, pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community and its international obligations.”

Again, is pursuing nuclear weapons really the Iranian government’s “current course,” or is it simply doing what it says it’s doing, pursuing a nuclear energy program?  If the latter is the case, how exactly is it defying the international community and its international obligations?

Predictably, Condi didn’t address those questions.

But she did jump to a third iteration of the fuzzy main assumption, expanding it in the process:

“In view of its previous violations of its commitments and the secret nuclear program it undertook, the Iranian regime must persuasively demonstrate that it has permanently abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.”

Serious questions exist as to whether Iran has violated any aspect of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  The supposed violations Iran has been accused of are described in the treaty itself as “confidence-building measures, which are voluntary, and non legally binding.”

One fairly good argument, offered by David Morrison in Italy’s Uruknet, says the the U.S., by demanding that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program, is in itself a major violation of the NPT, which states that:

Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

And as we discussed a moment ago, it doesn’t seem that Iran has done anything that doesn’t conform to the first two articles of the treaty.

And oh, by the way, how could Iran “abandon its quest for nuclear weapons” if it never had such a quest in the first place?  

Stick and Kick Diplomacy

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad insists on his country’s “inalienable right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the NPT, and he has good reason to.  Previous offers by Russia and the Big 3 European Union nations (England, France and Germany) to provide Iran with energy grade uranium were specious.  Having a nuclear energy program without being able to make your own energy grade uranium is like being allowed to grow your own food as long as you grow it on someone else’s property.  You’ll always be at the mercy of someone else to provide you with a basic survival and prosperity resource.  There’s little wonder that Ahmadinejad turned down the Russian and EU offers, and there’s little hope that he’ll accept this latest ruse from Rice.

He’d be foolish to.  Moreover, he’d be acting irresponsibly as the notional head of Iran’s state.

And yet that, once again, is the deal that Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State and former professor of political science at Stanford University, is offering him.  

The United States is willing to exert strong leadership to give diplomacy its very best chance to succeed.

Thus, to underscore our commitment to a diplomatic solution and to enhance the prospects for success, as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran’s representatives.

In other words, the U.S. will talk directly to Iran as soon as it promises to give up something it has a U.N. mandated “inalienable right” to keep, and has already said that it won’t give up.  

Ahmadinejad has gained significant domestic political capital in Iran with his stance on the uranium enrichment issue.  Does Rice honestly think he’ll back down on it now?  

Fred Kaplan at Slate thinks the key part of this overture is “as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities…”  “Suspends” versus “halt and dismantle” it’s program, Kaplan thinks, may be subtle shift in policy that convinces Iran to come to the table and hear what we have to say.  

Kaplan also thinks that even though we’re not offering bi-lateral talks, but are simply offering to join the multi-lateral process already underway at the UN, the Iranian delegate and the U.S. delegate will talk one on one eventually, even if it’s just over lunch or after hours.

Maybe something could come from that.  Unless, of course, the U.S. delegate is John Bolton, in which case we’ll know for sure the Bush administration isn’t at all serious about finding a diplomatic solution.  

#

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

You heard me right. O’Reilly admitted on air that he wanted to “whack” Jeremy Glick, the son of one of the people who was murdered on 9/11 because Jeremy Glick expressed views that didn’t agree with Bill’s determined effort to glorify President Bush and the Iraq War. Media Matters has all the sorry details:

During the May 28 edition of Fox News’ The Lineup, Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, informed guest host Megyn Kendall that his 2003 interview of Jeremy Glick — whose father was killed during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center — was the interview he “got most offended by.” O’Reilly said the interview was “just revolting,” and made him “so angry and appalled” that, “[i]f I could have whacked him, I would have.” Glick appeared on the show to discuss his signing of the “Not in Our Name” petition, a statement that “call[ed] on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration.”

This is the type of person FOX NEWS trumpets as its leading opinion maker: a man so twisted that even now, 3 years later, he is still inflaming the passions of his viewers with homicidal fantasies against a man whose only “crime” was to oppose Bush’s senseless war to Bill’s blustering face. O’Reilly should be removed from his position at Fox. Any responsible news organization would have fired him long ago for his ethical lapses, on air and off.

More from the Media Matters report is below the fold. Be sure to note the admission by O’Reilly that’s he’s a sociopath.

While now professing the desire to “whack[]” Glick, O’Reilly has previously claimed that it was Glick who was “out of control.” As Media Matters noted, O’Reilly claimed that “security actually had to take the guy [Glick] out of the building, he was that out of control.” Yet, during the interview, it was O’Reilly who repeatedly told Glick to “shut up”; and ended the interview by saying, “Cut his mic. I’m not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father.” According to Glick, as documented in the film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004), “The executive producer and the assistant encouraged me to leave the building because they were, quote, ‘concerned that if O’Reilly ran into me in the hallway, he would end up in jail.’ “

From the May 28 edition of Fox News’ The Lineup:

KENDALL: How about this: most offensive interview, the one that you got most offended by?

O’REILLY: Jeremy Glick. This guy comes in after the attack on 9-11. His father was killed in the World Trade Center, and he comes in. He signs an advertisement that says America is a terrorist nation. I get him in here, and then he says the “alleged attack” on the World Trade Center, implying the U.S. government had something to do with it. I was so angry and appalled, and the far left has made this guy into a hero, this Glick guy. And, it was just revolting. And if I could have whacked him, I would have. I got 29 people in my area in Long Island dead, and this guy is saying the U.S. government — implying, I should say — the U.S. government had something to do with this? It was just off the chart! I am glad I gave him what-for. I did give him what-for, you might remember that. I’m glad I did.

KENDALL: I do. That was one of the more watched interviews. What about — this last question: What about, you know, the one interview that stands out as sort of touching you — somebody who really got to you. You interview so many people, so many families of people who died in Iraq or 9-11. Is there anybody stand out like that?

O’REILLY: Well, first of all, I have no feelings, as everyone watching the Factor knows. I mean, just totally numb. I am a sociopath. Look —

KENDALL: You said that, not me.

Bill O’Reilly

FOX News

Jeremy Glick

Media Matters

By the way, would anyone be interesting in guest hosting the News Bucket next Friday? I’ll be in Vegas and Knoxville Progressive will be away too…

Yesterday, I received the first email from my dear friend Diva in Iraq in six months and first of all I have to say I am exceedingly thankful that she is still alive.  But there is more, finally she will be traveling to the US to attend school with a Fullbright Scholarship.
<center></center&gt

The school that has been selected for her will be the University of Kansas at Lawrence, a fact she is none to happy about as she preferred the North East Coast schools, but she had no choice in the matter.  In any case she is glad to have the chance to get out of there at least for a year and to study for her Masters.
She will be leaving around the 13th or 14th of July and will first go to Tucson, Ar. to attend 3 weeks of preparatory school before heading to Kansas.  I am hoping that Maneegee, will consider meeting up with her while she is there.  
It would be so lovely if she could fly to Ca. while in Arizona but that may be a little to much to hope for.
She reports to me that the situation there is horrible at best, with only 2 hours electricity per day and they are just sweltering, not to mention the whole other mess there.

Meanwhile I am just beside myself with joy at this good news and I ask the powers of the Universe to deliver her safely to the airport down that long dangerous road and then to the shores of the grand old USA.

Well I just had to share this good news with all of you who have followed this story for the past year.