[Peace] News notes for AWARE meeting 2007-04-22

[C. G. Estabrook]

[1] THE NYT TODAY describes the beating and torture of Iraqi insurgent 
suspects in Baghdad -- which it says "appears to be widespread" -- but 
ascribes it to the Americans' "Iraqi counterparts."  The paper says that 
the problem for the Americans is whether or not to act on the ill-gotten 
information.  Right.

[2] THE WP TODAY brings us the fast-breaking news that the surge 
strategy is "inconclusive" but that suicide bombings nationwide rose 30 
percent in the first six weeks of the surge.  Most of the article's 
evidence of progress is anecdotal, however, stemming from observations 
made by Gen. David H. Petraeus as he flies over Baghdad in a helicopter 
and comments on the city from a great height. Petraeus says suicide 
bombings are going to be inevitable for the foreseeable future.  In 
Diyala province, the country's third most deadly region (after Baghdad 
and Anbar), insurgents have begun displaying "a frightening level of 
tactical sophistication."

[3] THE US MILITARY IS ADMITTING that the Marine Corps engaged in 
"willful negligence" in failing to investigate an attack by marines in 
2005 that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, including women and children, in the 
town of Haditha -- in short, a cover-up.  A year later, a platoon of 
combat veterans marines in the elite new Marine Corps Special Operations 
forces killed at least 10 civilians in Afghanistan in a way that the NYT 
says "bore some striking similarities to the Haditha killings." 
Although it's not reported, these tactics seem like the My Lai massacre 
in Vietnam -- not an isolated atrocity but the way the war is fought.

[4] CONGRESS IS PREPARING to send to the president a huge appropriation 
bill for the war, and everyone is expecting the president to veto it 
because it will contain some mild suggestions for troop reduction.  I 
think he may sign it, perhaps with a signing statement that negates 
those suggestions, and pocket the money.  If not, Democrats from Sen. 
Obama to Rep. Murtha seem ready to send him a bill without those 
suggestions, perhaps for a shorter time period.  The war will go on.

[5] ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALES (delightfully nicknamed Abu Gonzo) 
told a Senate committee that he "didn't recall" 71 times on Thursday, in 
testimony on the fired federal prosecutors.  Some see the massive amount 
of attention to this relatively trivial matter to be a displacement 
occasioned by the Democrats failure to do what they were elected to do 
in regard to administration policy -- end the war.

[6] THE GROUP CODE PINK occupied Sen. McCain's office to sing him their 
own version of the Beach Boys' song, "Barbara Ann," which he parodied 
with the message, "Bomb Iran".  What do you think the US media would be 
saying if the president of Iran, say, had sung a song with the lyric 
"Bomb Israel."  (Of course we know some people who'd be happy if 
Ahmadinejad did that: see next item.)

[7] ONCE AGAIN SUCCESSFULLY STAVING OFF THE THREAT OF PEACE, in which it 
would have to give up some of its occupied territory, Israel killed nine 
Palestinians over the weekend -- including a child and four victims 
extra-judicially executed -- and in response the Islamic militant group 
Hamas called Sunday for new attacks on Israel.  Meanwhile Israeli jet 
fighters buzzed Hezbollah's new bases in southern Lebanon and the 
western flank of the Bekaa valley on Sunday, drawing anti-aircraft fire. 
  And UK Physicians are calling for a boycott of Israeli Medical 
Association, because the IDF has systematically flouted the fourth 
Geneva convention guaranteeing a civilian population unfettered access 
to medical services and immunity for medical staff.

[8] NIGERIA, an important part of the US world-wide oil empire, began a 
presidential election in fraud and chaos.  In France the presidential 
election will pit the Center-right Nicolas Sarkozy against Socialist 
Segolene Royal in a run-off on 6 May.  Both are seen as "authoritarian 
and conservative," in the words of the BBC.

[9] INEQUALITY IN AMERICA has now attained levels not seen since the eve 
of the Great Depression.  (The trough was 1968.) In Mississippi during 
2005, 17 out of every 1,000 children born to black parents died, up from 
14.2 per 1,000 the year before. Meanwhile, white Mississippians lost 
just 6.6 kids per 1,000 in 2005, up from 6.1 the previous year. The NYT, 
which reports the reversal, blames it on "a combination of obesity, 
poverty, cuts to social programs and, tacitly, a cultural indifference 
to proper neo-natal care."

[10] A NEW YORK TIMES/CBS NEWS POLL shows that younger people are more 
supportive of the war and the president than any other age group. 
Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United 
States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 
45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in 
sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older: Twenty eight 
percent of that age group said the United States did the right thing, 
while 67 percent     said that the United States should have stayed out. 
  Of course this is a pattern that is identical to what we saw in Korea 
and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what the 
president is doing.
	It's worth remembering, too -- in opposition to the myth of "college 
radicals" against the Vietnam war -- that in the 1960s support for the 
US government's war against Vietnam was directly (not inversely) 
proportional to years of formal education.  I.e., American education was 
doing its job: the more of it you had, the more likely you were to 
support what Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon were doing to SE Asia.  Mutatis 
mutandis, that's probably even more so today.

[11] THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER surveyed the levels of knowledgeability of 
national affairs and found that those who scored the highest were 
regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. 
They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot 
Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS trailed, and (gasp!) bringing up 
the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Told that Shia was one group 
of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name 
"Sunni" as the other key group. Almost half know that Rep. Nancy Pelosi 
is Speaker of the House and 2 in 3 know that Condi Rice is secretary of 
state. But just 29% can identify Scooter Libby, 21% know Robert Gates 
and 15% can name Sen. Harry Reid. But nearly 9 in 10 knew about 
President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq.

[12] THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN last week threatened Sudan with 
sanctions and other punitive measures unless it agreed to accept a UN 
peacekeeping force in Darfur.  In spite of the facts that the "Save 
Darfur "rallies in the US and Europe have been largely promoted by the 
Israeli lobby, that the US has just formed a new Africa command covering 
the region, suborned neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic, 
and employed Ethiopia to overthrow the popular government of Somalia 
(where fighting intensified this week) -- Sudan and Darfur are rarely 
discussed in the US media with any reference to overall American policy 
in the region.

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