[Peace] News notes 2006-01-08

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the January 8, 2006, meeting of AWARE, the
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; paragraphs followed
	by a bracketed source are substantially verbatim.)
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	"...I have heard from people on all parts of the political
	spectrum [that] we will never do away with war because it comes
	out of human nature. The most compelling counter to that claim is
	in history: We don't find people spontaneously rushing to make war
	on others. What we find, rather, is that governments must make the
	most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war.  They must
	entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out
	to young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is
	an opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those
	enticements don't work, governments must use coercion: They must
	conscript young people, force them into military service, threaten
	them with prison if they do not comply." [See #21 below]
	--Howard Zinn

[1] Newsweek, remarkably enough, published this week (at least in its
international edition) an interview with Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky says that
President Bush "is more or less a symbol, but I think the people around
him are the most dangerous administration in American history ... There
are two major threats that face the world, threats of the destruction of
the species ... One of them is nuclear war, and the other is environmental
catastrophe, and they are driving toward destruction in both domains.
They're compelling competitors to escalate their own offensive military
capacityRussia, China, now Iran. That means putting their offensive
nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert.  The Bush administration has
succeeded in making the United States one of the most feared and hated
countries in the world. The talent of these guys is unbelievable. They
have even succeeded at alienating Canada ... that takes genius ..."

[2] A U.S. helicopter crashed in Iraq, killing all 12 people on board, and
five Marines died in attacks in the west of the country on one of the
worst weekends for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion ... The
Blackhawk came down [possibly shot down] near the town of Tal Afar, and
the five Marines were killed in and around Falluja [by small-arms fire and
improvised bombs].
	In Baghdad, American soldiers raided the offices of an influential
Sunni Arab organization ... They entered the building by sliding down
ropes from helicopters, blew doors off their hinges, ransacked the office
and arrested six people ... in the offices of the influential Muslim
Clerics' Association ... Reuters Television footage showed spent shotgun
shells and explosive charges lying on the ground of the offices. In one
room, cupboards used to store the shoes of worshippers had what appeared
to be Christian crosses scrawled on them...
	Meanwhile the Kurdish Alliance, the country's second biggest
political bloc, said it had nominated President Jalal Talabani for a
second term in office, and political sources said he would almost
certainly get it. The country's main Shi'ite Islamist alliance, which
dominated last month's election, has made it clear it is more interested
in the prime ministership. No other party or coalition is likely to have
enough influence within the new government to thwart Talabani. [Reuters]

[3] Nearly 200 people were killed in two days earlier this week, including
11 U.S. troops ... Iraq's largest Shiite religious group rallied thousands
Friday against what it claimed was American backing for some Sunni Arab
politicians they say have supported insurgents ... In Baghdad's Sadr City
slum and in its northern Kazimiyah suburb, thousands of angry Shiites
rallied to condemn twin suicide attacks Thursday that killed at least 136
people, including the U.S. troops. The demonstration was organized after
Friday prayers by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
one of two religious parties that makes up the governing Alliance... The
Badr Brigade is SCIRI's military wing ... Militias around Iraq number in
the thousands. They include ... Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi
Army... Iraq's most prominent cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
called for cooperation [of Sunnis and Shiites]. "Sunnis and Shiites are
brothers under one sky," Sheik Ali Al-Fatlawi, an al-Sistani
representative, said in a sermon at the Imam Hussein shrine, in the Shiite
holy city of Karbala ... A Thursday suicide blast near the shrine killed
63 people and wounded 120. That day's other suicide attack took place in
Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and killed 58. [AP]

[4] The NYT reports that US officials are talking with Iraqi insurgents
[they say] to exploit a rift between the insurgents and "radical groups
like Al Qaeda." Alex Cockburn asks, "How long will it be before the US is
pumping arms and other supplies into the Sunni resistance as a
counter-weight to the Shia?"  Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's number two,
said in a video that hints of the American withdrawal amounted to a
"victory for Islam".

[5] The NYT [describes a secret] Pentagon report concluding that 80
percent of marines who died from upper-torso wounds in Iraq could have
been saved by larger body armor. The Marine Corps has known this since
last June, yet did not place an order for the armor until September. (The
report itself was held up for four months when the Corps failed to pay a
medical examiner $107,000 to examine the data.) The Army, for its part,
has not even placed its order yet. Based on this report and other studies,
the Times concludes that 300 of the 1,700 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq
could have been averted with the new armor, which has been available since
2003.  [Slate]

[6] The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1
trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought,
according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a
Harvard budget expert ... The unforeseen costs of the war have been blamed
on poor planning and vision by the architects of the invasion. In a frank
admission yesterday, Paul Bremer, the first US administrator of postwar
Iraq, said the Americans did not anticipate the uprising that has
persisted since flaring in 2004. "We really didn't see the insurgency
coming," he told NBC television. [MSNBC]

[7] The Justice Department will seek dismissal of lawsuits from more than
300 Guantanamo Bay detainees fighting the legality of their confinement,
using a new law that the Bush administration says sharply limits existing
challenges ... The measure, also part of the Defense Appropriations Act
that President Bush signed last week, was intended to [restrict] detainees
at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to appeal their detention status and
punishments to a federal appeals court in Washington. That avenue replaces
the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees in 2004 to fight the
legality of their detentions: the right to file habeas corpus lawsuits in
any federal court.  The new provision won broad support only after its
chief Democratic sponsor, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said it had been
altered so it would not apply to pending cases. [Obama votd for the
restriction, Durbin against it.] But on Tuesday, the Justice Department
notified judges at U.S. District Court in Washington that it will ask them
to dismiss 187 cases involving more than 300 people because the law
eliminates the jurisdiction of district courts to consider the legality of
detentions at the naval base ... Many of the 500 or so prisoners held at
Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan and have been detained for several
years without being charged.[AP]

[8] German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an interview published days before
her first visit to the United States, said Washington should close its
Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The Financial Times is reporting the US
government is planning the construction of a high-security prison in
Afghanistan to hold detainees.  The planned site for the jail is
Pol-e-Charki, a rundown prison near Kabul that dates back to the Soviet
era. The jail would be phased in as an alternative to the US military
prison at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba, where the US is currently holding more than
500 people. Another 500 prisoners are under US detention at military
facilities and secret locations across Afghanistan. [FT]

[9] US soldiers beat to death two prisoners in Afghanistan three years
ago. The army charged only one officer in the killings. Capt. C. M.
Beiring.  The Army has now announced that it will not prosecute him. Capt.
Bering said the matter "got blown out of proportion." [NYT]

[10] Three influential Republican Senators are condemning President Bush
for claiming he has the authority to ignore a new law banning the torture
of prisoners during interrogations. Bush signed the torture ban just last
month. But he also quietly issued what is known as a signing statement in
which he lays out his interpretation of the new law. In this document Bush
declared that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his
broader powers to protect national security. Legal experts say this means
Bush believes he can waive the anti-torture restrictions. This is not
sitting well with some Republican Senators, including John Warner, who
chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain and Lindsey
Graham... This marks the latest example of a growing divide between
Congress and the White House over the extent of the presidents power. This
question has factored into the debates on a number of key issues: the
presidents order for the National Security Agency to conduct domestic
spying operations without legally required warrants; the administrations
covert program of kidnapping wanted individuals overseas known as
extraordinary rendition;  the presidents policy of detaining U.S. citizens
without charges claiming they are enemy combatants; and the presidents
declaration that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to suspected members
of Al Qaeda. Last month President Bush defended bypassing the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance or FISA Court to directly order the NSA to
eavesdrop on phone and email conversations inside the country. [DN]

[11] A report by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan
policy-analysis arm of the Library of Congress ... focuses on two legal
questions [about the administration's spy program]: 1) Did Congress
implicitly authorize such a program when it passed a resolution in Sept.
2001 granting the president the use of "all necessary and appropriate
force" to combat those who attacked the U.S.? The CRS concludes that it is
unlikely a court would make such a broad interpretation. 2) Is the
president bound by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which
created a series of "intelligence courts" designed to authorize top-secret
surveillance warrants? The CRS concludes that he probably is, and backs
this up with quotes from lawmakers who drafted the bill.

[12] Bush pressed Congress on Saturday to cut nearly $40 billion in
spending and extend tax cuts ... With Vice President Cheney casting a
tie-breaking vote, [the] Senate last month approved a bill that would cut
spending on social welfare and other programs by $39.7 billion. But small,
last-minute changes pushed by Democrats mean the bill must go back to the
House of Representatives for another vote, delaying final approval until
late January or February ...  Democrats criticize Bush for seeking cuts in
spending on programs that help poorer Americans, while seeking to extend
tax cuts that they contend help mostly the rich.... The
Republican-controlled House voted last month to extend for two years 15
percent tax rates for capital gains and dividends and are set to expire in
2008.[Reuters]

[13] A LEADING British Army officer believes Prime Minister Tony Blair
should be impeached for his role in the war in Iraq, the Mail on Sunday
reported. General Sir Michael Rose, a former UN commander in Bosnia, was
quoted by the right-of-centre Mail on Sunday as saying: "I think the
politicians should be held to account ... my view is that Blair should be
impeached.  That would prevent the politicians treating quite so
carelessly the subject of taking a country into war."  A high-profile
resignation of a senior armed forces officer before the start of the March
2003 conflict may also have made the British Government think twice before
sending troops to the Gulf, he added.  "I would not have gone to war on
such flimsy grounds," he said. [theaustralian.news.com.au]

[14] Anti-war campaigners have established a peace camp on the outskirts
of Shannon Airport to protest at the continued use of the airport by US
troops and military planes. Campaigners say the camp has been established
to mark the third anniversary of the first peace camp there, and the start
of the US war in Iraq in January 2003... They are calling on the
Government to observe the obligations that accompany Ireland's neutrality,
and stop the practice of allowing US military planes, as well as civilian
planes carrying US troops to the Gulf, to stop at Shannon. Recent figures
show that 330,000 US troops passed through Shannon last year, over 900 a
day and more than double the number which passed through the airport in
2004. [RTE News Ireland]

[15] FBI fingerprint examiners resisted admitting their mistake in linking
an Oregon lawyer to the Madrid train bombing in 2004 in part because they
had learned of his conversion to Islam and that he had represented a
terrorism defendant, according to a report released today by the Justice
Department's inspector general.  The 20-page summary report by Inspector
General Glenn A. Fine also said that while Brandon Mayfield's fingerprint
was similar to one found on a bag of detonators in Madrid, FBI examiners
ignored important differences and violated some of their own procedures by
insisting for weeks that there was a definitive match. [WP]

[16] The New York Times is reporting Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the
American commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal,
will be stepping down by years end. One Army general told the Times
General Sanchezs departure is related to the Bush administrations
reluctance to nominate him for another position because of his link to Abu
Ghraib. The general said: "It's a question of simply not being able to get
by Senate confirmation," and that nominating General Sanchez for a new job
would "stir up too much political bad news in an election year." [DN]

[17] Most of the coverage of the West Virginia mine [deaths] quoted
International Coal Group CEO Bennett Hatfield, who was on the scene. But
its owner and "Non-Executive Chairman" is corporate takeover artist Wilbur
L. Ross, Jr., who has bought up bankrupt firms in a variety of industries
after they shed pension, health and/or other obligations to their workers.
And after purchase, safety at these companies has nose-dived, thanks to
the weakening or elimination of the unions, as well as nonenforcement of
safety laws and regulations by state and federal authorities. [MR]

[18] A Democratic congressman's remarks about the military are damaging to
troop morale and to the Army's efforts to rebound from a recruiting slump,
the nation's top general said Thursday. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a Pentagon news conference to comment
on remarks by Rep. John Murtha, D- Pa., a Marine Corps veteran who has
become a leading voice in Congress advocating an early withdrawal of U.S.
forces from Iraq ... In a statement released Thursday, Murtha said: "The
military had no problem recruiting directly after 9/11 because everyone
understood that we had been attacked. But now the military's ability to
attract recruits is being hampered by the prospect of prolonged, extended
and repeated deployments, inadequate equipment, shortened home stays, the
lack of any connection between Iraq and the brutal attacks of 9/11, and,
most importantly, the administration's constantly changing, undefined,
open-ended military mission in Iraq." Later Thursday, Murtha said he's
spoken with military leaders and "they're frustrated by their mission."
Speaking before a town hall meeting on Iraq in Arlington, Va., hosted by
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., Murtha said Pace called him to discuss the war.
"Peter Pace told me this last night: They know militarily they can't win
this," Murtha said. [AP]

[19] Indonesia's military admitted on Thursday that officers received
payments from a local subsidiary of the American mining giant
Freeport-McMoRan to guard its huge Grasberg copper and gold mine in Papua,
the western, Indonesian half of New Guinea island. The admission comes
after a report in the New York Times claimed that Freeport Indonesia paid
military and police officers, and several army units 11.7 million from
1998 to 2004... [Hindu]

[20] The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories (B'Tselem), reported that Israeli soldiers killed 197
[Palestinians] in 2005, raising the number of [Palestinians] killed since
the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada late September 2000 to 3386.
According to B'Tselem report, 992 Israelis were killed since the outbreak
of the Intifada...
    Israeli is still holding approximately 8600 Palestinian detainees in
dozens of prisons and detention facilities, among them 741 detainees
imprisoned under "administrative detention orders", without sentencing
them or allowing them to have legal representation.
    The Pale[stinian Ministry of Information reported that the number of
female detainees arrived to 140 detainees imprisoned in Al Ramlah, Telmond
detention facilities for women. This number includes 15 underage female
detainees imprisoned in Telmond, Ofer, Negev, Atzion and Majeddo detention
facilities. [imemc.org]

[21] In a possible message to would-be deserters in Iraq, the US marines
have charged a pensioner for not going to war in Vietnam 40 years ago.
Former marine private Jerry Texiero was found selling boats and classic
cars in Florida under a false name. He was identified as a result of a
fraud conviction in 1998, which he said was the result of wrongdoing by a
former partner. Seven years later marine investigators from an "AWOL
apprehension unit" compared his fingerprints with their records of
deserters. He was first arrested by Florida police in August and handed
over to the military on December 21. Mr Texiero, 65, is being held in Camp
Lejeune, a marine base in North Carolina. No date has been set for
preliminary hearings.  [Guardian]

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  C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
  ### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
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