Top 10 reasons Oprah's quitting

Oprah's quitting her daytime talk show (Sept 2011).

Why?

She'll give her answers live on TV tomorrow. (On her show.)

In the meantime, here are ten possible reasons.

1) Gayle told her, "It's the show or it's me!"

2) Barack told her there was an opening for a White House press secretary ("and don't say anything to Robert Gibbs!").

3) Working was interfering with her ability to touch herself freely.

4) Working was interfering with her ability to touch others. Now she grope freely.

5) Even she's sick of Oprah.

6) She and Steadman finally set a date.

7) Those Ford Explorers she gave away are about to be recalled.

8) Tina Turner hinted that she could be a backup dancer on the next tour.

9) She had nothing left to talk about.

10) She finally made enough money to live on.

Illustration is Isaiah's comic. This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Thursday, November 19, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the 'intended' elections remain up in the air, the US State Dept ignores warnings on refugees, another Iraqi is sentenced to execution, and more.

Starting with the 'intended' January elections in Iraq which are in question as a result of the veto by Iraq's Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi. Waleed Ibrahim, Suadad al-Salhy, Aseel Kami and Deepa Babington (Reuters) reports that the MPs are stating presently they intend to ignore his objection and just revote on the same draft law -- while exploring whether or not he has the 'power' to veto. This will reportedly take place on Saturday. Abu Dhabi's the National condems al-Hashemi's action in an editorial, "Mr al Hashemi has claimed that his veto was in defence of the constitution, but that is seriously in doubt. Even his right to a veto is dubious as the constitutional provisions regulating the presidency council state that all its decisions must be unanimous. This was not the case here. If anything, it appeared to be motivated by blind sectarian interest, which is all the more shameful considering the effort it took to overcome those same interests and pass the law in the first place." But the paper's Phil Sands and Nizar Latif report that Iraqi exiles are ecstatic over al Hashemi's move and quotes Jalil Abu Arshad stating (from Syria), "I fully support the need to give more seats to exiles. The .parliament agreed to have one MP representing each 100,000 Iraqis and nobody can believe that the seven or so seats that would be chose by refugees is enough. There are millions of Iraqis with no choice but to live outside the country and they have the right to a say in choosing the next government. This is a matter of democratic principles, it has nothing to do with Sunni, Shia or Kurd."

On Democracy Now! today pampered Raed Jarrar joined Amy Goodman for a segment of non-stop spinning. Baby Raed treated Iraqi refugees as an afterthought, a footnote. But then Baby Raed's never wanted for a damn thing his entire life. And the spoiled candy ass sure does spin so very well. Here's Raed revealing that his tiny, limp brain doesn't allow him to read:

Now, unfortunately, the Obama administration -- in the beginning, it was good in being vocal and clear about the withdrawal being time-based, not conditions-based, which is the main difference between the Obama plan and the Bush plan. Bush talked for six years about how the US will leave when conditions permit. But Obama talked about a timetable for withdrawal that is not conditions-based, and that's why his plan had a lot of support in the US and Iraq.
Poor, stupid Raed, apparently play-acting tires him out. Reality, Barack always talked conditions based. Raed was too busy self-stroking to posters of Barry O to deal with reality but those of us who aren't WHORES knew reality some time ago. Let's drop back to the January 15th snapshot -- before Barack was even sworn in:

Today Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker (New York Times) report on the US military commanders contingency plan for Iraq. Last month Bumiller and Shanker reported on the military commanders presenting a partial drawdown of US troops in Iraq on a slower scale than Barack's 'pledge' of 16 month withdrawal (of "combat" troops only). No objections were raised over the timeframe by the president-elect but, in case objections are registered in the immediate future, they've come up with an alternate plan they could implement. This calls for a high of 8,000 a month (more likely four to six thousand) to be pulled. Using the high figure, 48,000 US service members could be out of Iraq (with at least 30,000 of that number redeployed to Afghanistan) in six months. That would still leave close to 100,000 US troops in Iraq. And there is no full withdrawal planned by Barack. That is why he refused to promise that, if elected, all US troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his first term (2012). Of course, Barack also rushed to assure the Times (2007) that he would easily halt any drawdown and rush more troops back into Iraq (and no words to declare this a temporary measure) when he sat down with Michael Gordon and Jeff Zeleny (see this Iraq snapshot and Third's article and the actual transcript of the interview -- a transcript Tom Hayden should have read before humiliating himself in public, then again Tom-Tom seems to enjoy public humiliation). So the article tells you that the military's preparing for all possibilities . . . except the possibility the American people want (and some foolishly believe Barack ever promised) full withdrawal of Iraq. That is not an option the military even considers.
"In the beginning," Raed? Before Baby Jarar Jarar grabs his crayola to do another one of those laughable e-mails, let's note that the "this Iraq snapshot" links back to November 2, 2007. Yes, before Barack was even the Democratic Party nominee, he was explaining any subtracting of troops (not a full withdrawal -- he never promised that outside of campaign slogans) would be conditions based. From the November 2, 2007 snapshot:

So let's be clear that the 'anti-war' Obama told the paper he would send troops back into Iraq. Furthermore, when asked if he would be willing to do that unilaterally, he attempts to beg off with, "We're talking too speculatively right now for me to answer." But this is his heavily pimped September (non)plan, dusted off again, with a shiny new binder. The story is that Barack Obama will NOT bring all US troops home. Even if the illegal war ended, Obama would still keep troops stationed in Iraq (although he'd really, really love it US forces could be stationed in Kuwait exclusively), he would still use them to train (the police0 and still use them to protect the US fortress/embassy and still use them to conduct counter-terrorism actions.

Facts is hard for Baby Raed. Someone change his diaper, he's looking cranky.

Raed does what Amy loves her guests to do: Channel spirits from the Land of Fantasy. Having no facts, Raed starts offering fantasies of why the vice president vetoed the election law. Naturally, since Raed wants the election law, the vice president must be evil and full of malice to do something Raed doesn't approve of. Amy laps that s**t up because, after all, this is the Crazy who, in Decmeber 2003, was broadcasting across the air waves -- with fellow lunatic John Nichols -- that Hillary would take over the 2004 DNC convention in an attempt to grab that year's presidential nomination. It takes a lot of crazy to live in Amy Goodman's world and Raed's crazy enough to qualify as a next-door neighbor.

Raed's real tight with CODESTINK -- which we all know isn't a peace group (by their actions, they revealed themselves) -- so he spins for Barry and states that the US military withdrew from all Iraqi cities at the end of June. The bases? Raed doesn't want to think about them, that would require work and the only work most could picture him doing is deciding which photo of Barry to place on his pillow while he humps the bed to climax each night. Hey, anyone remember when Raed was 'informing' that the 'surge' was really going to be used to attack Shi'ite militias? Oh, that fact-free, wacky child. Kisses, Raed, kisses.

Also making an ass out of himself is Baha al-Araji who has given multiple statements to the press today (they may or may not print them tomorrow). The Shi'ite who serves on Iraq's Constitutional Court states/rules (depending upon which outlet he's speaking to) that Tariq al-Hashmi doesn't have the power to veto the election law. Now that would toss the issue up in the air and require examination but chatty al-Araji goes on to weaken his own case by blathering on about how his own (al-Araji) deciding was based on what al-Hashmi objected to. That would undercut al-Araji's alleged conclusion. Either the presidential council has the power to veto or they don't -- it doesn't matter what their reasoning is. They possess the power or they don't. At every other point, the council's possessed this power. Most outlets will probably ignore the ravings of al-Araji because the Parliament's taking up the issue on Saturday. Today at the Pentagon, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke on the subject of the veto and where things stand currently, "And we hope that the concerns that have been expressed can be resolved quickly and a -- and new legislation passed to that the election can take place within the constitutional framework, meaning before the end of January."

Al Jazeera interviewed (link is video) Tariq al-Hashemi.

Tariq al-Hashemi: What I have done in fact is based on my Constitutional obligation. When I discovered there was a major loophole, it's our duty -- according to the Constitution -- to try to make some sort of remedy on a legal basis and that is what I have done today.

Kamahl Santamaria: Okay, so you've done it according to the Constitution. You've done what you say is legal. My question to you though is the repercussions of this. If this election can't happen as it is supposed to happen by January the 31st, then what happens? It is a huge opportunity lost for Iraq.
Well I don't think that this sort of amendment is going to defer the timetable of the commission. I made a thorough discussion with the commission staff the day before yesterday. I very much assured that all logistic had been already covered, action had been taken, so just to make this amendment is going to take one or two days, is not going to make any major shift to the timetable that has been agreed upon.

Kamahl Santamaria: But what's interesting is I spoke to a member of the electoral commission only an hour ago. He said everything's off, they're not pressing on with anything, of course it's been thrown into doubt.

Tariq al-Hashemi: I'm not -- I'm not agree. I think this announcement is not based on any -- on any acceptable ground because, as I told you in fact, I-I-I had a lengthy discussion the day before yesterday. I checked everything and the chairman of the commission told me specifically that all action being taken, all what we need in fact to press the button on the form which will be according to number of seats and this could be sorted out within hours.
Kamahl Santamaria: Why is five-percent, the sticking point of five-percent for Iraqis in exile, Iraqis abroad, why is five-percent not enough?

Tariq al-Hashemi: Well five-percent, in fact, if you just -- if you just reflect it to a number of seats -- we are talking a number not exceeding, in no way, seven seats. Seven seats according to Article 49 of the Constitution doesn't mean anything. According to the text of this article, we have to ensure that each 100,000 Iraqis, whether they are living inside or out -- or outside Iraq, they should be entertained by one seat. So seven seats doesn't entertain the least figure which ministry of migration has maintained time being. The number of Iraqis outside of-of Iraq which has been recorded as per Ministry of Migration is one-million-five hundred. If you're talking NGOs, international human rights, this figure could reach to 4.5 million. So if we are allocating only seven seats, this means that we are entertaining 700,000 Iraqis and ignored 800,000.

If you paid attention, not only did Amy Goodman not book anyone to present the side above, it was never addressed. Just nutty conspiracy theories from Raed. Amy calls it "public affairs" -- no one knowledgable would use that term.

Monday's snapshot noted the assassinations of the Sahwa members in Sadan village and that the assassins were said to be wearing Iraqi forces uniforms. Aswat al-Iraq reports Tariq al-Hashemi declared at a Wednesday news conference, "What happened in Abu-Ghraib two days ago is that groups in army uniform arrested 17 people from their houses, then killed them with cold blood in a nearby ceremony." Staying with the topic of Sahwa, we're dropping back to the March 30th snapshot:

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) explained Saturday, "16 people were injured (seven Sahwa members, four Iraqi soldiers and four civilians) after clashes broke out between the Iraqi army and Sahwa members in Fadhil neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 2 p.m. The clashes broke out during an operation of the Iraqi army to arrest the leader of Fadhil Sahwa and one of his deputies. Five Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped in the incident." McClatchy's Leila Fadel added Adel Mashhadani was the arrest target and that the arrest of him (as well as an assistant) "heightened fears among Sunnis that the Iraqi government plans to divide and disband the movements now that its taken control of all but a few thousands of the 94,000 members across the country."

Adel Mashhadani is in today's news cycle. The Telegraph of London reports that he has been "condemned to death" for an alleged kidnapping and murder. John Leland (New York Times) adds that he has his defenders and detractors and that rumors swirl including: "Many Fadhil residents said that Mr. Mashhadani was not in police custody but was in Turkey, and that the courts announced the sentence to incite Sunni violence and justify a government crackdown. Some said the plan was led by Iranians in the government." Larry Johnson (Seattle PostGlobal) reports, "Iraq is planning to excute up to 126 women by the end of the year. At least 9 may be hanged with the next two weeks. Human rights goupt say the only crime committed by many of these women was to serve in the government of Saddan Hussein. Others, according to human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were convicted of common crimes based on confessions that were the result of torture." Last September, Amnesty International released a report [PDF format warning] entitled "A Thousand People Face The Death Penalty In Iraq" which noted that the country "now has one of the highest rates of executed in the world" and:

Defendants commonly complain that "confessions" were extracted from them under torture during pre-trial interrogation, often when they were held incommunicado in police stations or detention facilities controlled by the Ministry of Interiror. These "confessions" are then often used as evidence against them at their trials, and are accepted by the courts without taking any or adequate steps to investigate defendants' allegations of torture. Defendants also complain that they are not able to choose their own defence lawyers; those tried before the CCCI [Central Criminal Court of Iraq] on capital charges have defence lawyers appointed by the court if they are unable to pay for defence counsel, but the quality of such representation is low. Some lawyers refuse to represent defendants accused of "terrorism", mostly Sunni Muslims, fearing reprisals by armed milita groups linked to Shi'a political parties represented in the Iraqi Council of Representatives (parliament).

Back in November of 2006, Brian Bennett (Time magazine) reported on the "glitches and logistical snafus" in the executions including a man hanged September 6th -- the rope broke and he fell fifteen feet and declared "Allah saved me! Allah saved me!" while a debate took place among officials for forty minutes over whether it was divine intervention or not. In October of 2008, Robert Fisk (Independent of London) reported on the executions and quoted an unnamed British official who explained a hanging recently observed, "They made him stand on the bench, put the rope round his neck and pushed him off. But he jumped on to the floor. He could stand up. So they shortened the length of the rope and got him back on teh bench and pushed him off again. It didn't work. They started digging into the floor beneath the bench so that the guy would drop far enough to snap his neck. They dug up the tiles and the cement underneath. But that didn't work. He could still stand up when they pushed him off the bench. So they just took him to a corner of the cell and shot him in the head."

"The reports already out," declared Michael H. Posner this afternoon to US House Rep Jim Costa. "Those designations will happen in the next few months. The human rights -- the broader human rights report is just a factual summary." Posner, the Assistant Secretary for Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the US State Dept, was appearing before the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. The report he was refering to was the State Dept's International Religious Freedom Report which was released October 26, 2009.

On Iraq, the State Dept's publication notes:

At the end of the reporting period, national identity cards continued to note the holder's religion, which has been used as a basis for discrimination; however, passports did not note religion.
Law No. 105 of 1970 prohibits the Baha'i Faith, and a 2001 resolution prohibits the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Although provisions on freedom of religion in the new Constitution may supersede these laws, no court challenges have been brought to have them invalidated, and no legislation has been proposed to repeal them.
In April 2007 the Ministry of Interior's Nationality and Passport Section canceled Regulation 358 of 1975, which prohibited the issuance of a nationality identity card to those claiming the Bahai' Faith. In May 2007 a small number of Baha'is were issued identity cards. The Nationality and Passport Section's legal advisor stopped issuance of the cards thereafter, claiming Baha'is had been registered as Muslims since 1975 and citing a government regulation preventing the conversion of "Muslims" to another faith. Without this official citizenship card, Baha'is experience difficulty registering their children for school and applying for passports. Despite the cancellation of the regulation, Baha'is whose identy records were changed to "Muslim" after Regulation 358 was instituted in 1975 still could not change their identity cards to indicate their Baha'i faith, and their children were not recognized as Baha'is.
A March 2006 citizenship law specifically precludes Jews from regaining citizenship if it is ever withdrawn.
[. . .]
There were allegations that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) engaged in discriminatory behavior against religious minorities. Christians and Yezidis living north of Mosul claimed that the KRG confiscated their property without compensation and that it began building settlements on their land. Assyrian Christians alleged that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-dominated judiciary in Ninewa routinely discriminated against non-Muslims and failed to enforce judgments in their favor. There were reports that Yezidis faced restrictions when entering the KRG and had to obtain KRG approval to find jobs in areas within Ninewa Province administred by the KRG or under the security protection of the Peshmerga.
There were also allegations that the KRG exhibited favoritism toward the Christian religious establishment, and it was alleged that on February 17, 2008, KRG authorities arrested and held incommunicado for four days an Assyrian blogger, Johnny Khoshaba Al-Rikany, based on articles he had posted attacking corruption in the church.
Yezidi and Shabak political leaders alleged that Kurdish Peshmerge forces regularly committed abuses against and harassed their communities in Ninewa Province. Districts that are within the security control of the Peshmerga include Sinjar, Sheikhan, Ba'asheq (sub-district of Mosul), and Bartalla (sub-district of Hamdaniya). Minority leaders alleged that Kurdish forces were intimidating minority communities to identify themselves as Kurds and support their inclusion in the KRG. Yezidi political representatives also reported that because of their religious affiliation, they were not allowed to pass through security checkpoints in areas controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga as they traveled from Baghdad to their communities in northern Iraq.
The KRG denied allegations that it was behind violent incidents directed at Christians and other minorities. Moreover, despite such allegations, many non-Muslims reside in northern Iraq and the KRG area, and there were reports that some sought refuge there from other parts of the country where pressures to conform publicly to narrow interpretations of Islamic tenets were greater. In February 2009, the IOM estimated that there were 19,100 internally displaced families in the Ninewa Plain and that 43,595 internally displaced families were located in the Kurdistan region.

In reply to a question from US House Rep Bob Inglis today, Posner said there were three things the US government could do to support religious communities being targeted around the world:

1) Be very viligant when religious communities are targeted and in trouble.

2) The US government can help amplify their voices.

3) The US government can provide direct, material, financial support.

With regards to the US government speaking out against targeting of religious communities, Posner declared that "governments take notice of that" and that "it is always valuable for us to speak out."

Religious minorities are among Iraq's refugee population. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of Iraq led to millions of refugees -- some internal, some external. Julien Barnes-Dacey (Christian Science Monitor) reports that "up to 2 million" of the external refugees "remain stranged in neighboring countries" while the United Nations faces shortfalls in funding. As Barnes-Dacey reports, that has not prevented Iraqi refugees from continuing to leave Iraq. One example of that is Abu Ali who entered Syria in August and states, "I had to leave: they say there's security, but on the ground it's a different story. They still kill you because of your ID papers." As a backdrop to the crisis, the US State Dept's Eric Schwartz wrapped up a multi-day bad will tour today. Over the weekend, Schwartz made the usual ass of himself including when AP interviewed him and, despite the fact that various humanitarian organizations have issued studies this year pointing out how little the Baghdad government or 'government' has done for refugees, he declared 'strides have been made'. And the 'answer' is for Iraqi refugees to return to Iraq -- despite the fact that the Red Cross and the United Nations both have stated that that Iraq is not 'safe' enough for refugees to begin returning nor is that country able to handle a mass return. Wednesday he was in Syria which estimates they currently house 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. Khaled Yacoub Oweis (Reuters) reports that Schwartz declared the influx of Iraqi refugees to the US this current fiscal year would be "substantial." And Schwartz declares it will be "at least 17,000." That's substantial? By whose measurement? Or have we forgotten Schwartz promised 20,000 would be settled in FY '09 -- a little over 18,000 were re-settled in the US for that fiscal year. So 'substantial' is now even less than his predications for the last fiscal year? Phil Sands (The National) reports:

Abdul Rahman Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, criticised the international community and the Iraqi government, saying both were failing in their duty to care for displaced Iraqis. And he cautioned there were dangerous implications in four million people continuing to live as refugees, many of them struggling to cope with increasing levels of poverty.
"Perhaps the world is underestimating the significance of the Iraqi refugees issue," he said. "It is not a short-term matter. We are talking about medium- and long-term impacts. It has already been six years or more for some refugees and they need greater support. "The international community should not allow its attention to drift easily away from the refugees. This issue is a bomb that can still explode at any time."

It would certainly seem that Eric Schwartz is underestimating the significance. But the State Dept has always done that with Iraq -- especially with regards to Iraq's LGBT community and the continued assault on the community. Tuesday, Kelvin Lynch (Dallas Examiner) was reporting that Iraqi LGBT was estimating the number of LGBT men and women murdered in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 720 and Lynch observes, "But the big question continues to be, why hasn't the U.S. government done anything to help?" Taylor Luck (Jordan Times) reports on the Sabian Mandaeans who left Iraq due to the violence and are currently in Jordan:

Fatwas were issued declaring Mandaens kuffar, or infidels. Mandaens, known for their gold and jewellery craftsmanship, became frequent targets of kidnappings, with ransoms set as high as $100,000.
Since the US-led invasion, the Mandaean Human Rights Group has recorded around 180 killings, 275 kidnappings and 298 assualts and forced conversions within Iraq.

As Jake Armstrong (Pasadena Weekly) notes, it's day 2420 of the Iraq War. And as the war continues, so does the violence.

Bombings?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad sticky bombing which injured one "governmental employee". Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports a Mosul roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 3 police officers (five more injured).

Shootings?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Mohammed Aziz Al Shamari was injured in a Baghdad assassination attempt on his life (he is "an advisor for the Iraqi government"). Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports 1 man shot dead in Mosul with another left wounded.

Please note, Reuters has filed no story on violence today. That is why you do not use ICCC for an Iraqi body count -- ICCC only goes by Reuters, 'their' count is a tally of Reuters.

Meanwhile in the United States, Gidget Funetes (Navy Times) reports that Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, "rejected a clemency request from a Marine infantry squad leader convicted of killing an Iraqi man in 2006, a case that drew two jury convictions and five guilty please from seven other members of his squad." This is the case where US service members ("the Penleton 8") plotted to kill an Iraqi and went to his home April 26, 2006 only to find him not at home and instead grabbed another Iraqi whom they bound, dragged and shot dead. Jeanette Steele (San Diego Union-Tribune) reports Mabus was asked to review the case in terms of Lawrence Hutchins conviction and eleven year sentence and that Mabus denied Hutchins clemency and "also ordered that four of the other seven defendants in the case be discharged from the military." Mark Nero (LA Examiner) identifies the four, "Marine Lance Cpls. Tyler Jackson, Jerry Shumate and John Jodka III, and Navy Corpsman Melson Bacos were the servicemembers ordered removed. They had been originally been allowed to stay on active duty after serving short jail terms for lesser offenses."

Finally, NOW on PBS debuts its latest episode Friday on most PBS stations and this one examines:

The Pentagon estimates that as many as one in five American soldiers arecoming home from war zones with traumatic brain injuries, many of whichrequire round-the-clock attention. But lost in the reports of thesereturning soldiers are the stories of family members who often sacrificeeverything to care for them. On Friday, November 20 at 8:30 pm (checklocal listings), NOW reveals how little has been done to help thesefamily caregivers, and reports on dedicated efforts to support them.



iraq
reuterswaleed ibrahimsuadad al-salhyaseel kamideepa babington
laith hammoudimcclatchy newspapers
leila fadel
the new york timesjohn leland
the seattle postglobelarry johnson
kelvin lynchthe telegraph of london
time magazinebrian bennettthe independent of londonrobert fisk
gidget fuentesjeanette steelesan diego union-tribunemark nero
pbsnow on pbs

Arnold visits Iraq

Arnold Schwarzenegger is above visiting Iraq this week. He's the governor of California and, not to spit on governors, but a lot of them visit Iraq -- there were three others I know of who visited in the last six weeks. But Arnold's something else.

Celebrity?

That's too mild.

He is a movie star.

I don't care for his politics and never have.

But I've seen his movies.

I saw Eraser, of course. Of course because it co-starred Vanessa Williams. I liked that movie a lot, actually. I cared for True Lies much less (but the good parts were Jamie Lee Curtis' scenes). I loved the original Terminator and didn't think there would ever be a better one. I resisted seeing T2 forever but ended up seeing it and loving it even more.

Because I like Emma Thompson and Danny DeVito, I saw Junior. Because I liked Danny DeVito I saw Twins. Because I helped out one summer at my church's Bible study week -- when kids are basically day cared between two lessons a day. And? I saw Kindergarten Cop as a result. One of the films the church had. The kids loved it.

If you gave me a list of all of his films, I bet I've seen over two-thirds of them.

My point? He's a movie star.

He's the real thing. He may never make another movie again but he's a movie star.

And everyone who was excited to meet him in Iraq had one of his movies going through their heads.

His visit meant something to a lot of service members, I'm sure.



Of the 4363 US service members who have died in Iraq since the start of the illegal Iraq War, at least 464 were from California. That's a little over 10%. So whomever the governor of California was, he or she should have felt the need to visit.

But I'll repeat, I'm sure it meant a great deal to a lot of the troops that the governor was the Terminator, et al.

Don't say I never did a nice post on a Republican.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, November 18, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the Army's suicide rate for 2009 is already higher than last year, the US Senate explores veterans employment, the Iraq election law has met a veto, Anderson Cooper 360 began their 4-part series on the murder of 4 Iraqis last night, and more.

"These are difficult times for many Americans," declared US Senator Daniel Akaka today, "with an unemployment number higher than it has been for 20 years. When the number of those who have given up looking for work because they believe none is available is combined with those who are only able to find part-time employment, the extent of our challenge is staggering. For our nation's veterans, especially those who have recently separated from active duty, the search for a job can be particularly difficult. Skills honed on the battlefield are not easily translated to a resume for the civilian job market. Add to that the need for a readjustment to civilian life and the problem is compounded."

Akaka was chairing the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee's hearing entitled Easing The Burdens Through Employment. To underscore the problems with employment, Senator Patty Murray explained that the citizen-soldiers of the 81st Brigade Combat Team of the Washington Army National Guard "just returned this summer after serving their country honorably in Iraq," that there were approximately 2300 in the brigade "about 1/2 of them tried to get direct job placement or job training" but "only 20% have been able to get a job so far."

The first panel was the Assistant Secretary for Veterans Employment and Training from the US Dept of Labor, Raymond Jefferson who noted that this was his 100th day on the job in his current position andh touted the Dept of Labor's Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) in his opening remarks. He also noted that the veterans population included under-served populations such as (from prepared remarks, except for a nod to Senator Jon Tester, more or less the same as what he stated to the committee) "Native American Veterans, especially those on tribal lands, are one such population. [Labor] Secretary [Hilda] Solis hosted a Summit of Tribal Leaders at the Department of Labor earlier this month that VETS participated in. We discussed the challenges facing Native American Veterans and potential solutions. This event began the process of better serving this community. VETS will also be participating in a number of major Native American outreach events in 2010. Furthermore, we are conducting a study on the employment needs of Native American Veterans living on tribal lands to identify best practices for serving this population." Another population he noted was "wounded, ill or injured" veterans which the VETS program is mainly addressing via REALifelines and America's Heroes At Work. We'll note one exchange from this panel for two reason. (A) I don't think we've noted Senator Mark Begich in any hearing before. (B) Because the exchange resulted in some laughter.

Senator Mark Begich: Let me, if I can add, expand a little bit on, Senator Tester commentary. Being from Alaska, you know we also have a very strong rural component of our state but also of Indian country can you -- I was listening carefully to what you were describing to Senator Tester. What it sounds like, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I -- and I want this to be viewed as positive -- that there has not been an aggressive approach in reaching out to rural communities, especially American Indian country. Is that a fair statement?

Raymond Jefferson: Senator, when I took office 100 years ago, and I've assessed it -- [Laughs] 100 days ago,

Senator Mark Begich: 100 days ago.

Senator Jon Tester: I like the way he looks for 100 years.

Raymond Jefferson: It's been a lot of midnights.

Senator Mark Begich: It feels like 100 years, I know.

Raymond Jefferson: But, senator, I'm just not satisified.

Senator Mark Begich: Okay.

Raymond Jefferson: I realize that with the resources we have, we have to work. Working harder isn't going to cut it, I think we have to work more innovatively. And there's two key components. The first is the dialogue we're having with the Native American veterans and the tribal leaders and also, as Senator Tester alluded to, broadening that to the representatives of the rural community to find out from them what will best serve them. And then what I'm looking at is parternships, partnerships with other agencies and specifically non-profits and some of these new veteran volunteer initiatives can be helpful there.

Panel two was composed of America Works's Peter Wikul (US Navy Capt, retired), Vietnam veteran Dexter Daniel (with Marriott), National Organization On Disability's Helen Tymes, Iraq War veteran Joshua Lawton-Belous (with Oracle) and Lutz Ziob (Microsoft). We'll provide a sample exchange from the second panel.

Chair Daniel Akaka: It seems that one of the themes running through all of your testimonies this morning is mentoring, coaching and hands-on approach to providing assistance. Let me ask each of you to rate this aspect of any program that might be developed in terms of its value and as a factor for success.

Helen Tymes: I'll make a statement on that.

Chair Daniel Akaka: Ms. Thymes.

Helen Tymes: Yes, sir. As far as the effectiveness of our program, it is right now 90% as far as the veterans that we serve and the opportunities that we have assisted to get. We -- we give individualized services to veterans. As far as the transition from being in the military has been stated later and to the civilian sector, many of those skill sets, the individual, the veteran, is not aware of what they are. Because of our education and history and knowledge of the military, we are able to get those skill sets out and come up with resumes that are working resumes, not just a show resume, but something that actually has substance to make that veteran competent for employment and to also help with any other application process there is for education. Our veterans today are facing a lot of mental problems -- PTSD, TBI, a combination of both. This makes the veterans upset, they get angry, have a very low temper tolerance and, because of our services -- because of our personalized services, we're able to assist the veteran with what needs to get accomplished.

Dexter Daniel: I concur with --

Chair Daniel Akaka: Mr. Daniels.

Dexter Daniel: -- Miss Helen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. What I personally experienced was I was so ashamed when I came home, I just couldn't, you know, really face the reality of wanting to talk to people about my problems and I just didn't reach out. And, you know, the shame that I felt caused me to react in a lot of the ways that I did. Again, I always thank God for MAC VETS (Maryland Center for Veteran's Education and Training 1-410-642-1693) because they reached out in a way that no one else ever had. You know, I was literally in prison and they had a represenative that came around, I was in the cell and, at that time, I knew I was facing a lot. Then an individual came around and found out first and foremost, he's a veteran, number two, this is an availability of a program that we have. Longterm, two year availability to be able to do it, that to me is personalized. Once I got there, the counselors welcomed me with open arms and I still had a lot on my plate at that time. I still had obligations and commitments to the division of parole and probation to come out. They went the extra mile to even talk to my probation agent and the judge, to solidify this one final -- and that's how I felt, one final -- opportunity that I'd have in this life to do good. They gave me my shot and, you know, we've just had a wonderful partnership ever since then. That's the effect that it's had on me.
Chair Daniel Akaka: Mr. Belous?

Joshua Lawton-Belous: Mr. Chairman, as a representative of Oracle corporation, we've found that there are many reasons we don't actually need to ask for money from the federal government to run our wounded warrior program. Mainly because each wounded warrior we take in is a value added proposition for Oracle corporation. They add something to it. And it's a dual mentorship. It's a two-way street on the mentorship role. One is that those who are in the industry need to mentor wounded warriors, soldiers, marines, veterans coming out of the military to explain to them the career path. It's a completely different world when you go inside and understanding it will take some time. There's always that uptick no matter what job you go to where there's a learning curve. But secondly, it behooves veterans to mentor those who are mentoring them to show them 'This is exactly what I learned in the military, this is what I'm capable of doing.' Because, as we find now, only 1/2 of 1% of the population is actually serving in the wars that we are fighting today which means that over time -- and it has already occured where those who are hiring do not understand the valued added proposition that service members can bring to an organization. That, I believe, is the greatest effect of the mentorship program. That way programs that we have today to help veterans transition out of the military will be more successful when the vast majority of senior to mid-level managers are no longer military veterans.

Chair Daniel Akaka: Captain?

Peter Wikul: Chairman Akaka when America Works is racked and stacked against organizations that do similar types of work in the New York area, we consistently rank number one in terms of getting people jobs. People come in the door, we give them mentoring, we give them mentoring. We give them interview skills so that when we get them an interview, they give the right answers to the right questions so they can get them the jobs. We don't get them the jobs, we get them the interviews. They have to get the job and we coach them in that process. If you're a veteran and you need a suit, we get 'em a suit. There's a program to get them a suit. And I have to tell you just recently with in the last two weeks, I went to two veterans homeless shelters in New York City to give a motivational speech and some of these guys are really whipped down and they're broken. And you start talking to them and I try to motivate them and I try to tell them, "Look when we help you get a job, you will get back your self-respect and dignity and-and it will put you on the road to getting an even better job." And so we go there, we go right into the shelters, we talk to them, we give them a speech, and around town, we have a card and it says: "Do you need a job? America Works. If you're a New York City resident and are having difficulty finding a job, call this number and go here. No fee." And we are right in the trenches, we get these people, we bring them in the door . What's amazing is when I first hooked up with this company, which I really find amazing, is you walk in the door at the beginning of the day and it's loaded with people. It's just, you have to fight your way in to get to the offices. And I came back, we went on some sales calls, and I came back about five hours later and I said, "Where are all the people?" And they said, "Out on interviews getting jobs." And so this is what this company does. Against similar companies, we're ranked number one. We get people jobs. We're right on the streets. We're in the trenches. We go to homeless veterans shelters, we talk to the people, we mentor them, we bring them out of their shells, we give them the interview skills and a suit if necessary and we help them restore their dignity and their self-respect so that they can become whole and good American citizens.

Lutz Ziob: To answer your question, Chairman Akka, I believe internships are very important. Occupational success is typically the combination of subject matter expertise. You have to be a good nurse, system manager, but also know how to navigate the world of work, the changing world of work. It's your - your - what you know about your job. The mentorship people that are in the trenches can provide that guidance. The difficulty is they have a day job as well so we need to free up their time and find the opportunity to connect them -- mentor and mentee -- in an effective way.


This was more of a fact finding hearing and Senators Tester and Begich set up time next month with Raymond Jefferson to address concerns for rural veterans and Senator Murray sounded out Lutz Ziob specifically on potential legislation (a bill) she's attempting to draft and plans to bring to the Senate floor next year.

This morning Anthony Shadid (Washington Post) reported that Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraq's Sunni vice president (they have two vice presidents, one Shia -- Adel Abdul Mehdi, one Sunni) vetoed the election law: "The veto by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi was the latest wrinkle in growing criticism over the law by the country's biggest minorities, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Both groups are effectively demanding the allocation of more seats to their blocs in the next parliament, which is almost assured of having a Shiite Muslim majority." In yesterday's snapshot, we noted that the food rations cards being used for the registry was a joke and included a number of reasons why. All Shadid can do is tell you that the food rations cards are overseen by the Trade Ministry. The name we used yesterday -- the one Shadid fails to attach to this story -- is Abdel Falah al-Sudani -- a Nouri appointee, to Minister of Trade, a member of Nouri's own political party and someone who was forced to resign in May of this year over corruption issues. It is not a minor issue when your voter roll was overseen by a minister who has had to resign in disgrace. In real time, Bloomberg News noted that al-Sudani "acknowledged cases of corruption and said the system needed to be revised" in May of this year and that "Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity earlier this month charged nine trade ministry officials with financial and administrative corruption related to the country's food import program." "Financial and administrative corruption related to" what is now being hailed as a legitimate voter roll. CNN added this morning that Tariq al-Hashimi "refused to sing the law without an amendment that would increase the number of seats allocated to refugees, many of whom are Sunnis, from five percent to 15 percent. The Constitution stipulates that every 100,000 Iraqis should have one representative in the country's parliament but al-Hashemi said that refugee numbers are not included in how seats have been calculated." Martin Chulov (Guardian) observes, "However, Hashimi's move has set the scene for a showdown between MPs and the Sunni minority, which increasingly feared it was likely to lose even more political ground. The last election, almost five years ago, was boycotted en masse by Sunnis." Liz Sly and Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) provide this context: "Iraq's constitution stipulates that elections must be held by the end of January, and failure to meet that deadline could plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. The vote was originally slated for Jan. 16, but the commission had already said that would be impossible. Hussaini estimated that the latest date on which it can feasibly be held is Jan. 21. It will be impossible to hold the election in the last 10 days of January, Hussaini said, because of the Shiite Ashura holiday, when millions of pilgrims converge on foot on the holy city of Karbala from all over the country and the world. The roads will be clogged, and many Shiites will be away from their home constituencies and unable to vote." Anne Barker (Australia's ABC) reminds that the current Parliament is set to expire by the end of January. So where are things right now? Anthony Shadid and Daniel Dombey (at the Financial Times of London) flip through the memory books to pull this now-forgotten reality back out, "The election deal was only reached after sustained lobbying by Joe Biden, US vice-president, and had been portrayed by the Obama administration as a rare piece of good news from the Middle East and 'critically important' for Iraq's prospects". On today's All Things Considered (NPR), Corey Flintoff examined the latest news.

Corey Flintoff: When President Obama hailed the passage of the law on November 8th, he cited the link between elections and the US withdrawal.

US President Barack Obama (November 8th): This agreement advances the political process that can bring lasting peace and unity to Iraq and allow for the orderly and responsible transition of American combat troops out of Iraq by next September.

Corey Flintoff: US officials have said that if the security situation in Iraq is stable they can begin withdrawing troops 60 days after the election. Iraq's Constitution calls for a new Parliament to be elected by the end of January when the current government's mandate expires.
Flintoff notes that Constitutional crisis could take place but that some MPs state that the Parliament has the authority to extend the term by one month. At the US State Dept today, in the daily press briefing, spokesperson Ian Kelly declared:

We're disappointed at these developments related to the elections law. We urge the Iraqi leaders and Parliament to take quick action to resolve any of the outstanding concerns that have been expressed. And this is so elections can go forward. And these elections, of course are mandated by the Iraqi Constitution. We believe that it's the responsibility of all Iraqi partiest to ensure that the Iraqi people are able to exercsie their democratic right to vote and this election law represent the best way forward for the Iraqi government to be able to consolidate the democratic and political achievements.

The proper response to Kelly's statement was: "Oh, explain that law to us." Naturally, no one embarrassed Kelly with a difficult question -- one his laughable remarks begged for.
Ahmed Rasheed and Deepa Babington (Reuters) quote the Independent High Electoral Commission's chief commissioner Hamdiya al-Hussaini stating, "As a result of the veto, we have decided to stop all our activities and work as we await a final law with a presidential decree that determines the exact date of the election." BBC News quotes Tariq al-Hashemi stating, "I sent a letter to parliament asking for the law to be amended. Parliament said I could veto the contested first article, which is what I have done today. The proposed amendment affords justice to all Iraqis abroad, in all countries, and not just those residing in, or forcefully displaced to, neighbouring countries. Furthermore, the amendment would consecrate the concept of political pluralism and would preclude the monopolisation of the political scene by the strong electoral lists that win the elections." Rod Nordland (New York Times) adds, "Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general of U.S. forces, said he Wednesday was still hopeful elections would be held on time, but he added that the military could adapt if there were a delay." Ben Lando (Wall St. Journal) explains, "The election law now appears headed back to parliament, which only approved it after months of sectarian squabbling and heavy U.S. lobbying. The key sticking point in the final weeks of debate was how to carry out the vote in the contested Kirkuk province, claimed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen." Li Xianzhi (Xinhua) notes noted gum flapper Nouri al-Maliki whined today that "the veto is a serious threat to the political process." Richard Spencer (Telegraph of London) quotes Nouri whining, "The high national interests were not taken into consideration."

Violence continued today . . .

Bombings?

Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad sticky bombing which wounded "a governmental employee". Reuters notes a Garma roadside bombing which left two police officers wounded and, dropping back to last night, a Falluja bicycle bombing which injured one police officer.

Shootings?

Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad assassination attempt on Mohammed Aziz Al Shamari ("advisor for the Iraqi government") which left him wounded. Reuters notes a Baquba home invasion which claime dthe life of a Sahwa "leader and his cousin".

Turning to the US, Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy's Kansas City Star) reports, "Suicides in teh Army are expected to reach a new high this year, with 140 suspected cases among active-duty soldiers so far, Army officials said Tuesday. This will be the fifth year in a row that grim stastic rose despite an aggressive military campaign to tackle the mental health stigman in the Army." Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) also reports on Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli's press conference: "Substance abuse, which can be related to mental health problems and suicide, is on the rise in the Army, Chiarelli said, and he added that the force is short about 300 substance abuse counselors." Luis Martinez (ABC News) offers a video report here.

Last night Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN) began the first part in Abbie Boudreau's four-part investigative series on the killing by US forces of four Iraqis. Click here for transcript, here for video. "It's the story," explained Anderson, "about three decorated Army sergeants who killed four Iraqis execution-style on the battlefield. They were convicted of premeditated murder. And they're all serving long sentences at Fort Leavenworth. But, as you're going to see tonight, in war, nothing is cut and dry." Here's an excerpt and note that Joshua Hartson was not charged or tried for any actions related to the murders.

Abbie Boudreau: The Army has a strict policy on detainees. At the time, the rules called for soldiers to drop off detainees at the detainee housing area, of the DHA. Bu tthat didn't happen.

Joshua Hartson: My 1st Sgt comes up to me and pulls me away from everybody. Then he asks me, if -- if we take them to the detainee facility, the DHA, that they're goign to be right back on the streets doing the same thing in a matter of weeks. He asked if I had a problem if we take care of them. And I told him "no."

Abbie Boudreau: And what do you think he meant by that?

Joshua Hartson: To kill them.

Abbie Boudreau: How could you be okay with that?

Joshua Hartson: They were bad guys. If we would have let them go or take them in, we risked the chance of them getting out and killing us, killing other people.

Abbie Boudreau: So, in a convoy of three vehicles, 13 soldiers holding 4 Iraqi detainees headed down this dusty road leading to the canal. 1st Sgt John Hatley was in charge. At the end of this canal, the soldiers lined up the men in their custody. The three leaders, Sgts Hatley, [Joseph] Mayo and [Michael] Leahy, put their .9-millimeter pistols at the back of the detainees' heads, shot and killed them. They left their bodies in the canal. A year later, divers could not find the bodies. For nine months, the soldiers kept the murders a secret. But, in time, the truth came out. Earlier this year, 1st Sgt Hatley, Sgt 1st Class Mayo and Sgt Leahy would be convicted of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. All three are in prison at Fort Leavenworth.

The four-part series continues through Friday night. Anderson Cooper 360 airs on CNN at 10:00 pm EST and tonight's report includes an interview with Jamie Leahy who is married to Sgt Michael Leahy.

In non Iraq news, Ben Smith (Politico) tackles an issue today which I've avoided because (a) it belongs at Third and (b) the 'outside' help Newsweek has so often relied on. Ben Smith notes that women's groups seem dumbfounded on Palin's assertion that Newsweek has treated her in a sexist manner. The idiot Marie Wilson of the laughable White House Project (let's see, they couldn't save a TV show and they let women go down in flames in 2008 -- maybe they should just pack it in) says of the Newsweek cover, "It's much more complicated than sexism." What a piece of trash. She continues that, "What the [Republican] Party was selling, and people were buying -- and what the candidate colluded [in] -- is what shows up in that Newsweek picture. She winked at people, right?" Marie's never winked at people. With her lopsided and semi-disfigured face, a wink would be incredibly frightening.

Marie wants to blame a woman for sexist treatment. In Marie's world, any woman who doesn't follow Marie's rules gets what they deserve. No, it's not feminism. But Marie's not a feminist. Just another unattractive woman who couldn't cut it in the real world and tried to build herself a niche. Terri O'Neill has just made her first IGNORANT move as the head of NOW and she damn well better be aware that after Kim Gandy's misleadership of NOW, we're not in the mood. She better get her s**t together and get it together real damn quick. Her job is not to be a Barack cheerleader, her job is to defend women. She states of the Newsweek cover that it "didn't strike me as horribly offensive" but also claims it is part of a the "basically sexist" world we live in. Terri, what you're willing to live with, other women aren't. And you are no longer an individual, you are the president of NOW so start acting like it.

The photo is offensive since Newsweek previously allowed the wives of employees to screen Barack's cover shot. Or have we all forgotten that? Trophy wives, even smelly ones, don't feel the need to defend women, however, which is how the Newsweek cover began. The cover plays on "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" which Terri O'Neill tries to pass off as a "proto-feminist anthem." Terri needs to get out more. Many a (male) lounge singer has performed that song for decades now and it's about as feminist as Paul Anka's "You're Having My Baby." The cover tag line was snide, the photo choice was snide. That's before you open the magazine. Newsweek's not supposed to be doing opinion journalism in what they present as news (they have columnists who write columns). The cover exists to ridicule and mock Palin and to mock all women. It's no different than when Vanity Fair decided to run a cheesecake photo of Sherry Lansing (a photo from several decades prior). What did that have to do with her job of running a studio (Paramount)? Not a damn thing but teh-hee, look at her body. It was sexism. It's sexism for Newsweek to run the photo of Palin. There's nothing wrong with the photo for Runner's World -- which is the publication Palin posed for. Newsweek ran it to ridicule her and to mock her. And any woman who can't grasp that isn't a feminist.

Flip through the magazine where they will find a 'doll' of Sarah Palin dressed as though she is Britney Spears filming the ". . . Baby One More Time" video. You'll find 'noted' woman hater Christopher Hitchens has contributed an article on Palin. You'll find a sexualized photo -- the same sort that the New York Times used against Hillary's campaign in 2008 -- of Palin speaking in public that strips away her identity and her view to render her a sex object. It's disgusting and Newsweek did it intentionally. I'd thought that could wait until Sunday. Marie's usual idiocy wasn't surprising but Terri's non-response is highly distressing.

Women's groups are not supposed to be in service of the Democrat Party, they're supposed to exist to fight for women's rights. Ben Smith has another report which will seem familiar to you -- maybe you'll grasp Maxy Blumenthal and Thomas Frank just 'wrote' columns with all the same talking points? Despite the lies, the crowds are turning out for Palin. As Cedric and Wally pointed out last night, polls are showing Palins' more popular than Barack. No woman has to silence her disagreement with Sarah Palin's politics (if she has them -- I do) but she has no business tearing Palin apart and ignoring that the attacks on Palin are attacks on all women. Palin's being attacked in such a scorched earth manner that it damn well effects all women. I honestly don't know why so many women are willing to whore themselves out. Sarah Palin's not yet said there were 57 states in the United States so these cries of her being an "idiot" seem little more than yet another attempt to attack a woman in order to protect Barack -- Barack who, for the record, declared that he had visited that many states. Barack makes idiotic remarks like that and the press (and Saturday Night Live) all play "Lovely robes, Emperor!" Palin does it and she's ripped apart. When Max Blumenthal's father was (wrongly) accused of beating his wife, we were offended (on the left). These days, Sidney's son is one of the people hurling lies non-stop at Sarah Palin. It's ugly and it needs to stop and women damn well need to call it out. Too many of us were silent when it was Hillary, were silent when it became Sarah, were silent when Cynthia McKinney was rendered invisible. It's no longer acceptable to dismiss it as, "That's her problem." If your a woman, it is your problem, it is our problem and we better start calling it out and stop contributing to it.


iraq
the washington postanthony shadidthe new york timesrod nordlandcnn
nprall things consideredreutersahmed rasheeddeepa babingtonmartin chulov
the guardian
the los angeles timesliz sly
raheem salman
mcclatchy newspapersmohammed al dulaimy
the wall street journal
ann scott tyson abc newsluis martinez
cnnanderson cooper 360abbie boudreau

Katha Pollitt, alleged feminist

We used the above screenshot for "The Nation endorses and amplifies sexism" at Third. As the article explains, "A funny thing happened as we read Katha Pollitt's latest nonsense . . ."

The funny thing was that photo, that ad.

No one's a prude in this community and we're not offended by nudity, let alone scanitly clad.

What does offend us is attempting to make money for your product by using a woman to 'sex it up'. I'm really sorry that US Canteen is such a crappy product that it can't speak for itself, but I'll be damned if The Nation, Katha Pollitt and US Canteen are going to use sex to sell their wares and not get called out.

As we note in the article, if you visit their site, you will see a man. He does not stick his ass out for the camera. His butt is not photographed. Nor does he do this weird back bend to stick his chest out the way the woman above does in another photo.

US Canteen wants you to know that a man just is but a woman better work it.

That's sexism.

No one should buy their lousy canteens. They'll probably fall apart immediately. If the product had any real value, they wouldn't need to use women's bodies to sell it.

And it's amazing how faux feminist Katha Pollitt never bothered to object that they were running that ad on her allegedly feminist article.

It's disgusting but, then again, so is she.


This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, October 17, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the 'intended' elections get more iffy, the US Justice Dept files charges against a contractor, CNN begins airing a four-part investigation into US abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and more.

Starting with the 'intended' elections in January. There was already objection to the law [yesterday's snapshot: " Waleed Ibrahim, Michael Christie and Micheal Roddy (Reuters) reports Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, has stated the law needs to be changed to allow external Iraqi refugees to participate and to be represented. If the law is not changed (by Tuesday afternoon), he states he will veto it. (The Presidency Council is made up of Iraq's President and two vice presidents. After Parliament passes a law, it goes to the council which decides whether to implement it or not.)"]. Today that's even more the case. RTT News reports that the KRG has "decided . . . to boycott the country's January national elections, protesting disparity in allocation fo parliamentary seats for the provinces." Jomana Karadsheh and Yousif Bassil (CNN) report that this is a threat at present, but one which is "casting further shadows over a vote" and note that the issue has to do with the perecentage of seats in the Parliament allocated currently for Kurds. Tariq al-Hashimi is also concerned with the allocation and the two reporters note, "He said the country's constitution stipulates that there should be one seat in the parliamentary Council of Representatives for every 100,000 Iraqis, but, he said, this does not take refugees -- or minorities including Christians into account." Equally true is that this 'development' is neither new nor unrelated.

Have we all forgotten November 2004? The lead up to the 2005 vote? What were some of the last minute objections? In that case, they were resolved in time for the vote. That may or may not be the case here. But this issue of the number of seats and representation popped up in 2004. That was when exiles, refugees and other groupings (such as "expatriates") suddenly became an issue and the US and the United Nations had to change their positions. The UN and the US had stated that no one not in Iraq would be voting. They had to change their stance (begrudingly) and the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq set up polling places in Jordan, Syria, Turkey, the UK, the US, etc. Whty did that take place then?

The easiest reason is that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for it to. The reality was that, at that time, the bulk of Iraqis outside of Iraq were considered to be Shi'ites so it was thought that allowing voting to take place outside of Iraq's borders would benefit Shi'ites. (al-Sistani is a Shi'ite.) Little has ever been done, since the vote, on the press' part to determine whether that hypothesis was accurate or not.

After Shi'ites, the group then expected to benefit the most was the Kurds. So today's issues are not really all that 'new' but traceable back to 2004. The real changes are (a) that the persecuted who became refugees since 2004 have been Sunnis and (b) the number of seats. (Thank you to three Western correspondents in Iraq for walking me through the seats issue over the phone.) To dilute non-Shi'ite populations, the Shi'ite dominated Parliament is attempting to expand the number of seats in Parliament from 275 to 323. The press hasn't really gone into that and you have to wonder why not until you grasp that the US Embassy is air brushing in their statements to the press. The additional seats will go across Iraq; however, the Shi'ite majority provinces are the ones getting the most seats. That flies in the face of all logic and there's no way that anyone studing just the internal migration within Iraq -- forget the external -- would buy the percentage growth that the 'government' in Baghdad is attempting to claim. For example, northern Iraq is where a large number of Iraq's internal refugees have fled. And yet this northern region, the Kurdistan Regional Government, is seeing only 3 additional seats (3 out of the 48 that would be added)? That makes no sense at all to anyone who's followed the migration patterns within Iraq.


The allocation of the new seats becomes even more problematic when reviewing the press release the Kurdistan Regional Government issued today:

Dr Fuad Hussein, the Kurdistan Region Presidency's Chief of Staff, said that President Masoud Barzani has been closely following the mechanism recently put in place to allocate parliamentary seats to each Iraqi governorate for elections. He said that President Barzani believes that it is not possible to accept such a seat-allocation based on the food-rationing registry of the Iraqi Trade Ministry, because the mechanism is illogical, contradicts the reality on the ground and is a distortion of facts. Dr Hussein stated that the Kurdistan Region Presidency views this as an attempt to reduce the number of Kurdistan Region representatives in the next Iraqi parliament and diminish their achievements. He added that President Barzani is absolutely clear, that unless this seat allocation formula is reconsidered in a just manner, the people of Kurdistan Region will be compelled to boycott the election. As this is an historic moment in the history of Iraq, he also called on all political parties to shoulder their responsibility to promote democracy. He urges them to refrain from supporting a deceptive mechanism that obviously targets the Kurdistan Region, and which undermines the democratic achievements made so far.

The food-rationing registry? At this point, if you listen closely, you'll hear laughter.

The food-rations was a program (a needed one then and now) under Saddam Hussein that provided staples to Iraqis. The Kurdish north has never utilized it to the degree other areas of Iraq have. Why is that? Well, for starters, it was always a wealthier region than most parts of Iraq. Since the invasion, under US 'assistance,' the rations have been cut repeatedly to the point that they're nearly 60% less than they were under Saddam.

Now in 2004, the food registry was used (the cuts to the program hadn't been started yet -- despite efforts by Paul Bremer). And it was used with apology and, goodness, oh how, oh how will we ever do a census in time for an election, we have to use this!

The 2005 Constitution mandated a census. It has still not been done. So in 2009, it's pretty pathetic and a sign of how little 'progress' has been made in Iraq that they still haven't done a census.

Now the ration cards are impossible for refugees (for reasons we've outlined many times) and, for many, they're still listed in their old neighborhoods -- the ones they left. Which means a number of areas are being "padded." Not only that, what's not being told is that the registery got padded itself in the lead up to the 2009 provincial elections in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. This is an important point and since the press did such a lousy job in January covering those elections -- many news consumers WRONGLY believe that was elections across the country, it wasn't -- they'll probably continue to get it wrong. But [PDF format warning] you can review this United Nations document and you will see that the 'database' for the 14 provinces got padded. How? "Approximately 2.9 million Iraqis turned out for the voter registration update." This is, no doubt, part of that claim of population surge. But nothing equivalent took part in the four other provinces -- the ones not voting in January. Those were Kirkuk and the three provinces making up the Kurdistan Regional Government.

There is no national census. There is an effort by the Shi'ite dominated government to further increase their gains by expanding the number of seats in the Parliament and to do so by using the regsitry that was already laughable before the 2009 elections but that is completely unfair to the northern region which didn't do an 'update' to it. Before any vote takes place, the issue of the additonal seats should be resolved and the smartest thing to do would be to eliminate that, to add no new seats. But if they're going to try to push that through, they better be prepared to back up this alleged population growth. Without a national census, no respectable news outlet should accept any claims but do we have any respectable news outlets working in Iraq? (I'm referring to Western media.) If we did, maybe they'd be attempting to explain what's actually taking place instead of allowing spin from the US Embassy and their own desire to 'close the chapter' on Iraq to drive their 'reporting.' They might also note that a minister over the food ration program was among the ministers to have corruption charges filed against them. And this is the voter roll? Really? (That was Abdel Falah al-Sudani -- who resigned in disgrace in May of 2009. He was and remains a member of al-Maliki's Dawa Party.) Those who remember the problems with the 14 provinces voting in January may also remember the complaints that people had to go to one polling station only to be told go here, go there. This does not in any way indicate that the ration rolls are accurate.

In addition, the new seats and where they are going need to factored into Nouri's continued assault on minority rights. Not only has he and his spokesperson repeatedly stated that guaranteeing minority representation was bad for the government in recent months, the January 2009 elections saw minorities awarded less representation due to a law change that 'no one' had 'noticed' until it was too late. This is not a minor issue and it's really telling that the expansion of the Parliament didn't raise concerns from election watchers. One group that has voiced objection to the election law (and been ignored) is Iraq's Communist Party:

"The Parliament, in the first article of the law, cut down the number of compensatory seats, originally allocated to the lists that do not meet the electoral threshold at the provincial level but achieve it at the national level, from 45 in the original law to about 15 seats! And when we know that part of these seats will be allocated to quotas for some of the ethnic and religious minorities (8 seats), and for the deputies who would be elected by Iraqis living abroad who constitute more than 10 percent of Iraq's population, we can see how this reduction is arbitrary and irresponsible. The seven or eight remaining seats will not be enough to cover even the votes abroad." "On the other hand, this reduction (of the number of compensatory seats) effectively usurps the right of the lists that achieve the national electoral threshold to gain representation in Parliament. This reveals the selfishness of most of the dominant blocs and their disregard of plurality and diversity in the Parliament, their quest to extend full control over Parliament and the whole of political power, monopolizing and carving it up among themselves, in contravention of democratic norms." "In Article 3 of the law, the big parliamentary blocs went much further in violating democracy and displaying blatant disregard for the voters. They have imposed, once again, giving the vacant seats to the top winning lists, rather than putting them - as obligated by democracy, logic and justice - at the disposal of the lists that attain the highest remaining votes. They have thus opened the door again to a repetition of the infamous experience in the provincial elections earlier this year, when the big blocs stole the votes of more than two and a quarter million people who had given their votes to other lists. This was used by those big blocs to grab additional seats in the provincial councils."

Today BBC News reports the UN Special Envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert, is dubbing efforts to ensure a free and fair election which will stand up to world scrutiny a "Herculean task." He stated that to the United Nations' Security Council where he put his concerns for emphasis on the time issue. Xinhua quotes him stating, "Success is far from guaranteed as inside and outside forces continue their efforts to impose an agenda of division and destruction."

Meanwhile Iraq plans to hold another oil bidding next month; however, they still haven't finalized the contracts from last month. Hassan Hafidh (Dow Jones) reports that the "two major oil deals" were not approved today due to the fact that 11 ministers did not attend today's cabinet meeting due to being out of town. October 13rh, Italian oil company Eni bragged of being "awarded the license for the development of the Zubair giant field in Iraq, following a successful first round bid." Suadad al-Salhy, Ahmed Rasheed, Michael Christie and Keiron Henderson (Reuters) remind the approval of the Eni deal and a deal with a conglomerate including Exxon and Sehll were supposed to have been approved last Tuesday but that was kicked back to this Tuesday and it's still not happening.

One thing that never gets postponed is the daily violence . . .

Bombings?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad stationary store bombing which wounded four people, a Kirkuk sticky bombing which wounded two police officers. Reuters notes a Falluja roadside bombing which left one police officer injured, a Falluja home bombing which left three members of a family injured and a Kirkuk liquor store bombing which injured two people.

Shootings?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an attempted assassination of Judge Abdul Kareem Mohamed in Nineveh Province today in which his driver was wounded. Reuters notes a Mosul attack in which a 1 man in a car was shot dead and his son was left injured.

Corpses?

Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 2 corpses discovered in Kirkuk. AFP reports 1 corpse was discovered yesterday in Baghdad. The corpse was that of a child who'd been kidnapped and killed by Baghdad Police Lt Haidar Atlas.

Over a million Iraqis have died since the start of the illegal war. One is Baha Mosua whose 'crime' was going to work. The 26-year-old was arrested in a dragnet at the hotel -- arrested by British forces and he went on to die in their custody. As Adrian Shaw (Daily Mirror) reminds, Baha died of 93 injuries -- all while in British custody. The ongoing inquiry into Baha Mosua's death is taking place in England. Yesterday's testimony by War Criminal Donald Payne got some press attention. Press TV notes that Payne "accused his superiors of routinely abusing and threatening civilian detainees in Iraq." Thomas Harding (Telegraph of London) adds:He also alleged that a platoon commander, Lt Craig Rodgers placed a petrol can in front of a young prisoner's hooded face then poured water over him and lit a match simulating a threat to his life.Minutes before he arrived to give evidence before the inquiry in London into the death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi who died in British custody in Basra in 2003, Payne issued a short statement in which he accepted the disclosures would "harm the reputation of the both my former regiment and the British Army".Changing the evidence he had given to previous investigations, Payne said he saw every member of a unit commanded by Lt Rodgers "forcefully kick or punch" the group of Iraqi prisoners that included Mr Mousa.Payne claims that he previously covered up the extent of the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers out of "misguided loyalty". Yes, he did make that claim in his prepared statement as well as in his testimony. He also made another claim. As noted in yesterday's snapshot:Gerald Elias: Can you help about this, Mr Payne: why were you lying about orders that you had received?Donald Payne: Self-preservation.
Elaine covered one aspect of the hearing last night:

During the hearing, a video was shown. Payne was in the video. He was abusing and cursing the Iraqi detainees. His verbal abuse included racist remarks. He was asked about prior experience in the military and whether he used racist language when dealing with people or prisoners in those countries? Payne replied that it was only in Iraq. Was he telling the truth? He might have been telling the truth. I have no idea. He has repeatedly lied to investigators. He admitted as much in his testimony today -- which was basically, 'I lied every other time but, this time, I'm telling the truth!' Along with claiming that he didn't use racist remarks anywhere else he was stationed, he also claimed not to know the video was being filmed. Gerald Elias pointed out that the video was clearly taken by a video camera and not by a cell phone. Payne replied that he didn't notice it. Elias then noted the spot in the video where Payne is clearly looking at the camera. He continued to deny that he knew the filming was taking place or had taken place immediately after and that he had no idea who was doing the filming.
Sidebar, last Wednesday's snapshot covered the US Senate's Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee's Housing, Transportation and Community Development's Subcommitte on homeless veterans. Kat covered that Wednesday night and I haven't had time to note that until now. Back to the inquiry, Simon Basketter (UK Socialist Worker) reports:

His revelations expose a widespread pattern of abuse that extends well beyond Baha.
Payne said that his former commanding officer (CO) held a gun to a prisoner's head and threatened "to blow his face off".
The inquiry also heard that prisoners were scalded with boiling water, urinated on, kicked, punched, hooded, sleep deprived and made to stand in stress positions.
Payne said the soldiers in his unit enjoyed an "open season" of punching and kicking Baha and other prisoners.
He described how he was travelling in a patrol with his CO Colonel Mendonca when someone shot a flare into the air.
An Iraqi was arrested and Mendonca interrogated him.
Payne said, "The CO then cocked his pistol and said he was going to blow his face off. He was holding the pistol above the man's mouth. . . we left him there on the floor and drove off."

Robert Verkaik (Independent of London) observes, "The new allegations raise concerns about widespread abuse of dozens of Iraqi detainees and come days after the Ministry of Defence said it was investigating 33 other separate cases of torture carried out by British soldiers in Iraq and revealed in The Independent on Saturday." 33 cases? Last night, Stan noted, "UPI reports today that there's talk this could be "a second Abu Ghraib" -- the infamous prison the US ran in Iraq in which Iraqi prisoners were repeatedly tortured and abused. So keep your eyes peeled for developments on that." The allegations emerged late Friday night. BBC News reported that Phil Shiner, an attorney for some Iraqis, is calling for an inquiry into abuse allegations which include British soldiers raping "a 16-year-old boy". Robert Verkaik (Independent of London) explained, "Claims that British soldiers recreated the torture conditions of Abu Ghraib to commit the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence. The fresh allegations raise important questions about collusion between Britain and America over the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners during the insurgency." BBC News (link has text and video) noted that the UK Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell is insisting that there's no need for a public inquiry and claiming that any investigation can be handled (privately) by the Ministry of Defence. (Mike and Kat noted the story Friday night.)Meanwhile, in the US, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 begins a four-part series (Anderson's show airs at 10:00 pm EST) into the way Iraqis were treated in US custody:

U.S. soldiers interrogated by the Army in the 2007 murders of four Iraqi detainees blamed a military policy they said made it too hard to detain suspected insurgents, a CNN investigation has found.
Soldiers questioned in the killings said the sergeant in command of their detachment ordered the suspected insurgents killed because Army rules made it too difficult to hold them.
"They're gonna be right back on the streets," one soldier put it.
CNN obtained an extraordinary 23½ hours of Army interrogation videotapes that detail the March 2007 executions of the prisoners by three sergeants who were attached to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment.
The tapes, to be shown on CNN's "AC360," show one of the sergeants confessing to the crime, as well as agents from the Army's Criminal Investigations Division telling soldiers involved in the crime that the military's reputation was at stake.
On one tape, an Army interrogator compares the potential fallout from the slayings to the scandal over the treatment of inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, telling a soldier, "This is gonna be ugly, 'cause it is."

In other news, yesterday the US Justice Dept issued this press release:

The United States has joined a whistleblower suit against Public Warehousing Company (PWC), The Sultan Center Food Products Company (TSC), and PWC's chief executive officer, Tarek Abbul Aziz Sultan Al-Essa, the Justice Department announced today. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleges that since 2003, defendants have violated the False Claims Act by presenting or causing others to present false claims for payment under PWC's multi-billion contracts with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply food for U.S. service members serving in Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan. The complaint alleges that defendants knowingly overcharged the United States for locally available fresh fruits and vegetables that PWC purchased through TSC. The complaint also alleges that PWC failed to disclose and pass through rebates and discounts it obtained from its U.S.-based suppliers, as required by its contracts. The case was initially filed under seal by Kamal Mustafa Al-Sultan, the owner of a Kuwaiti company that originally partnered with PWC to submit a proposal on the food supply contracts. The case remained under seal to permit the United States to investigate the allegations and determine whether it would join the lawsuit. Under the False Claims Act, the United States may recover three times the amount of its losses, plus civil penalties. "We will not tolerate fraudulent practices from those tasked with providing the highest quality support to the men and women who serve in our armed forces," said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. "Those who do business with the government must act fairly and in accordance with the law. As this case illustrates, the Department of Justice will investigate and pursue allegations of fraud against contractors and subcontractors, whether they are foreign or domestic." "The decision to join in this civil lawsuit follows a multi-year probe into abuses in Middle East subsistence prime vendor contracts," said Acting U.S. Attorney F. Gentry Shelnutt. "This Office and the Department of Justice will spare no effort in investigating those persons and companies, regardless of location, who seek to defraud the United States." The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia also announced today that a grand jury returned a six-count indictment against Public Warehousing Company, also known as Agility, in connection with its prime vendor contracts. Assistant Attorney General West and Acting U.S. Attorney Shelnutt thanked the joint investigation team, which includes Special Agents with Defense Criminal Investigative Service; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command (Army CID), auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency, and the Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General, for the investigation of this defense procurement fraud matter.

Walter Pincus (Washington Post) explains, "Under the False Claims Act, the government may recover three times the amount of its losses plus civil penalties, according to the Justice Department announcement." Finally, NOW on PBS debuts its latest episode Friday on most PBS stations and this one iexamines:

The Pentagon estimates that as many as one in five American soldiers arecoming home from war zones with traumatic brain injuries, many of whichrequire round-the-clock attention. But lost in the reports of thesereturning soldiers are the stories of family members who often sacrificeeverything to care for them. On Friday, November 20 at 8:30 pm (checklocal listings), NOW reveals how little has been done to help thesefamily caregivers, and reports on dedicated efforts to support them.

iraq
cnn
jomana karadsheh
mcclatchy newspapersmohammed al dulaimy
xinhua
the telegraph of londonthomas hardingadrian shawthe daily mirrorthe independent of londonrobert verkaik
bbc news
the socialist worker
the washington postwalter pincus
pbsnow on pbs

The bow

That's Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Gesture" and he was asking while we were working on Third this weekend, if he should do something on the topic? He wasn't sure because there were other things he could tackle. He also had an initial idea of a courtesy from Barack and when he talked about that drawing, Cedric and Wally informed him that the Los Angeles Times did a top ten of the comments their readers left and one of them was saying Barack should have courtsied.

So when that happened, Isaiah decided he should probably forget the whole thing. We said it was too good to pass up and encouraged him to do that comic or another on the topic.

So he gave a number of options for what he might do instead and it's funny because, basically, they all ended up in it to some degree. He really did a great job.

You've got Rahm being pompous and strutting and a banty rooster. The "Kiss it" was discussed then as well. The second message and how it should be on the butt, etc. It's just amazing because he was brainstorming and didn't think he had anything and I bet you anything he didn't realize he had something until he started drawing it.

I like the way the colors on the feather are done, by the way.

My vote was always to do a comic on this because I really thought it was something that needed an editorial cartoon. Why?

Because I find it offensive. I don't play party politics or 'my side is right!' on issues like this, sorry.

Barack was wrong to bow to another leader. It's really pathetic and embarassing.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, November 16, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces another death, a War Criminal testifies in England giving contradictory answers as to why he abused Iraqis, new problems with the 'intended' elections in January, Warren P. Strobel and Sahar Issa don't seem to grasp that McClatchy signs their checks, and more.

Today the US military announced: "Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq -- A Soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division -- North, died Nov. 16 from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident. Members of the Soldier's patrol immediately performed medical treatment and evacuated the Soldier to a nearby U.S. medical facility where the Soldier died of injuries. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense official website [. . .]. The announcements are made on the Web site no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service member's primary next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the war to 4363.

AFP reports that 13 Sahwa members have been assassinated in Sadan village today. Sahwa is also known as "Awakening Council" members and "Sons Of Iraq" and were placed on the US payroll by the US military in an attempt to -- according to US Gen David Petraeus and then-US Ambassador Ryan Crocker in testimony to Congress in 2008 -- to get these Sunnis to stop killing and wounding US military service members and to get them to stop destroying US military equipment. Nouri al-Maliki was supposed to have taken over payment for the Sahwa near the close of 2008. He was also supposed to have integrated them into the Iraqi forces. Neither's happened. Despite non-stop media hype in November and at the start of this year and again in April, Nouri had still not taken up payment and the bulk were not integrated into Iraqi forces. (Nouri repeatedly stated -- as late as mid-2008 -- that he had no intention of bring Sahwa into the Iraqi forces.) Last week, Richard Sale (Washington Times) reported, "A [US] congressional staffer who spoke on condition that he not be named because he was discussing sensitive intelligence said that after the U.S. stopped paying Sunni forces directly in June, it wasn't long before payments to the tribes 'simply stopped. You got paid if you were a power in the government, and the tribal leaders were last on [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki's list,' the staffer said." AFP reports that the 13 were killed "execution-style" by assailants wearing "Iraqi army uniforms". Among those murdered was Sahwa leader Attala Ouda al-Shuker and his three sons. Xinhua has a text and audio report here. The attack is being blamed (by Iraqi officials) on, you know this is coming, al Qaeda in Iraq. What was, according to Petraeus, a very small group and, according to the now top US commander in Iraq Gen Ray Odierno, a group that had suffered severe push back must be the most well connected group in the world if they're doing everything they're accused of. And the way they manage to get all these Iraqi military and police uniforms. Simply amazing. (Alternative explanation: It's predictable and unbelievable to blame every incident of violence on al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.) An unnamed US "intelligence official" tells Warren P. Strobel and Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) that the assassinations raise concerns about Sunni vulnerability in the near future and also the "regrouping" of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Regrouping? To listen to Nouri al-Maliki, they organization is huge and thriving and always has been.

We'll come back to Strobel and Issa in a moment (and it won't be pretty). For now let's move over to the other reported violence today -- reported. Because violence goes on constantly in Iraq and the bulk of it is never reported (which is how those mass graves still pop up every few months).

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 2 Iraqi service members and left six civilians injured, a Mahmoudiyah bombing which claimed the lives of 6 Iraqi service members and left six more injured, a Falluja double bombing of two homes which reulsted in six people being injured, a Falluja triple bombing of homes which left eight people wounded and a Kirkuk car bombing which claimed 6 lives and left eight people injured.

Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 person was shot dead in Kirkuk and two more were injured.

Hey, for 'funs' let's see how many of the above incidents were reported on by Reuters today in their 'factbox'? Okay? Five bombings and 1 shooting -- all today -- according to McClatchy. Reuters reports only 2 bombings today and no shooting in Kirkuk. Wow. I guess if you were only going to go by one outlet for your information, it wouldn't be smart to depend on Reuters to discover how many Iraqis die each day, huh?

But two do just that. And now we're back to them. Warren P. Strobel and Sahar Issa sag the jeans, flip the caps around and toss some signs while asking:

Wanna copy me and do exactly like I did -- yeah! yeah!
Try 'cid and get f**ked up worse than my life is -- huh?
My brain's dead weight
I'm tryin' to get my head straight

That's the only excuse for their writing the following: "So far, November has been the least violent month in Iraq in recent memory. According to the Web site icasualties.org, political violence has killed one U.S. soldier and, before Monday, 12 members of the Iraqi security forces and 29 civilians. The site says that the civilian casualty figures are incomplete, however, and the true numbers are undoubtedly much higher." That's two wrongs. Let's break them up.

1) ICCC says "political violence has killed one U.S. soldier" -- is that what reality is? What a stupid, idiotic thing to write. Shameful. We've already noted one death announcement from the US military released today. It has one thing in common with every other announcement this month? Do you know what that was? Strobel and Issa were too busy free stylin' to notice. Here's the key phrase in every death announcement from the US military (Iraq only) this month:

* US military announced: "The incident is currently under investigation."

*US military announced: "The incident is under investigation."

* US military announced: "The incident is under investigation."

* US military announced: "The incident is under investigation."

*US military announced: "The incident is under investigation."

Get the picture? "The incident is under investigation." So you really don't know how the person died. That includes, please note, the helicopter crash last week.

2) ICCC says X number of Iraqis have died? Who the hell cares what they say?

It is offensive for anyone to use the ICCC 'count' but especially for McClatchy. In October, I warned we would rip apart the next IDIOT who used it. ICCC is not doing a count. It is noting Reuters. They don't even include -- pay attent Strobel and Issa -- McClatchy in their 'count.' As Warren should know and Sahar damn well knows (as does Laith and Jenan and everyone else who does their daily roundup of violence), McClatchy covers a lot more violence on any given day than does Reuters. In fact, we just proved that earlier in the snapshot.

ICCC's count is 41 dead so far for the month? Well let's check. Okay?

From Third November 8th: "Sunday saw 25 Iraqis reported deaths and 97 injured. Monday saw 4 reported dead and 3 reported wounded. Tuesday saw 3 reported dead and 10 reported injured. Wednesday saw 7 reported dead and 25 reported wounded. Thursday saw 5 person reported dead and 15 reported injured. Friday saw 4 people reported dead and six people reported injured. Saturday saw 3 reported dead and 3 reported injured. Totals: 51 reported dead, 159 reported wounded -- and many more people were killed and wounded than were reported." From Third November 15th: "Sunday were reported 8 dead and 6 were reported wounded, Monday it was 2 dead and 15 wounded, Tuesday it was 4 dead and 2 wounded, Wednesday found 3 dead and 5 wounded, Thursday it was 6 dead and 10 wounded, Friday there were reported 3 dead and on Saturday the number killed was 3 and the number injured was 6. [Saturday's number may be 4 -- we are going with 3, use links and you'll see why.] For a total of 29 reported dead and 44 reported injured." Now that leaves aside yesterday and the death total is 80 and the wounded is 203.

ICCC does nothing but count Reuters (click on their links). They ignore McClatchy, they ignore Los Angeles Times and everyone else. They do a "Reuters" "count." Reuters which can -- and has -- gone a whole day without publishing anything from Iraq. Reuters?

You don't use ICCC for the Iraqi death toll. ICCC does such a BAD job on the death toll of Iraqis that even the Ministries in Iraq have a higher death toll at the end of each month. It's a joke and you make yourself a joke when you use it.

If you are McClatchy Newspapers, you're an ASS for using ICCC's count of Iraqis killed. Why? Because ICCC doesn't even register you. And I happen to know what the economics at McClatchy are right now and I damn well know that promoting a count that doesn't even acknowledge McClatchy's reporting is going to be seriously frowned upon by the ownership. So get your act together. And grasp that when the bad news comes down after the holidays, you're really not going to want to be looking around and wondering, "How responsible am I for it?" Translation, you shouldn't be promoting Reuters or anyone else's count. You do a daily roundup of violence, you should be keeping track of that and have your own monthly count. It's not difficult. When Nancy A. Youssef was in charge of Baghdad, she was able to see that McClatchy kept their own count. When McClatchy has the capability right now to do their own count, they really shouldn't be promoting some other outlet's count. That's bad business. And no one can afford it in this economy.

In England there is an ongoing inquiry into Baha Mosua's death -- Baha is an Iraqi who died while in British custody. The November 9th snpashot noted that day's developments: British soldiers Gareth Aspinall and Garry Reader testified that Baha was abused repeatedly while in British custody, that he was beaten to death and that they were ordered to keep quiet about what took place. This morning, Robert Verkaik (Independent of London) reported that Donald Payne, already convicted for his role in Baha's death (and kicked out of the military) will testify today. Verkaik notes that Reader and Cooper identified Payne and Aaron Cooper as being responsible for the death of Baha -- to clarify that, they did not see him killed. They saw Payne and Cooper enter the room, they heard the cries and shreiks of Baha while the two were in the room and they saw Baha died after the two men left the room. The Daily Mail reports that Payne has testified today that he saw "every member of the unit commanded by Lt [Craig] Rogers, known by the call sign G10A, 'forcefully kick and/or punch' the group of Iraqi prisoners that included Mr Mousa." Payne also asserted that abuses covered up by him were done due to "misguided loyalty."

Under questioning from Gerald Elias, Payne stated that the purpose of the hooding was to "disorient" the prisoner. Elias then went through various documents before picking back up on this thread.

Gerald Elias: You were told, you say, about the shock of capture. What do you remember being said about the shock of capture?

Donald Payne: Keep it going.

Gerald Elias: Were you told why?

Donald Payne: No.

Gerald Elias: Your statement goes on: ". . . lack of sleep and to keep prisoners confused as much as we could."

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: Was anything said as to what the purpose of that was: shock of capture, lack of sleep?

Donald Payne: It was to aid the tactical questioner, or the interrogator.

Gerald Elias: How did you understand it aided the interrogator to maintain the shock of capture, lack of sleep and keep them confused?

Donald Payne: So that they were disoriented when they was questioned.

Gerald Elias: That was your understanding, was it?

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: You go on in this statement to say: "We were to keep this up until tactical questioning was completed."

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: Was that what you were told?

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: What did you understand then would happen when tactical questioning was completed?

Donald Payne: They could go to sleep.

Payne referred to receiving orders from a superior doing a handover but he stated he could not remember who it was or what he looked like. This was when, according to Payne, they were informed to keep the prisoners hooded and in stress positions until questioning ended. Not noted in the exchange but worth noting here is that questioning was not a few hours. For example, Baha's questioning went on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and might have continued was he not murdered Tuesday. While he was alive and in British custody, his questioning never ended. The Chair of the inquiry, the Right Honourable William Gage, asked for a clarification regarding when the stress positioning and other things ended and Payne established that it ended not when they were done questioning the prisoner but when they were done questioning everyone brought in with that prisoner.

Gerald Elias: Did you find this instruction from the TQer contrary to what you believed to be your orders for humane treatment of detainees?

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: Did you raise that question with anybody?

Donald Payne: No.

Gerald Elias: Why not?

Donald Payne: Never did.

Gerald Elias: Why not?

Donald Payne: Just didn't.

The "misquided loyalty" was a prepared statement he submitted to the inquiry today before questioning began. Gerald Elias asked him about that and about his admission that, despite what he stated previously (including in his court-martial), he did use "greater" force with each visit to the prisoners brought in with Baha.

Gerald Elias: Did your conduct in fact include kicking and punching --

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: -- routinely to detainees?

Donald Payne: Yes.

Gerald Elias: And in relation to these detainees, what I have called the Baha Mousa detainees, why did you involve yourself in kicking and punching them?

Donald Payne: No reason.

Did others do that as well? Yes, Payne stated, the whole multitude. Everyone but, under questioning, the drivers, he declared. But he could not give specifics, he stated he just knew that everyone was involved at one time or another because he saw them.

As Elias brought in Payne's past statements -- now agreed to by Elias and Payne to have been lies -- Payne yet again did a turn around. From the "misguided loyalty" excuse for his silence in the prepared statement he submitted to . . .

Gerald Elias: Can you help about this, Mr Payne: why were you lying about orders that you had received?

Donald Payne: Self-preservation.

Payne took issue with Gerald Elias suggestion that the prisoners were given "a regular beating" by the Payne and those serving with him, "I wouldn't say a regular beating, no. [. . .] They were given a beating, yes, but not constant." Under questioning from Elias, it was established that Baha and those in his group were being beaten for 48 straight hours. It might have continued after that, Payne didn't know. He stated that he left after Baha died.

Gerald Elias: From that time of assaulting the detainees on the Sunday evening through until the death of Baha Mousa, should the Inquiry understand -- tell me this is wrong if it is -- from your evidence that more or less whenever you went back to the TDF you would involve yourself in more violence of this kind?

Donald Payne: Yes.

We'll stop there. I don't believe Payne's account of his last treatment of Baha and don't see how anyone reading the transcript could believe it. It was all the more embarrassing when you grasped that Payne had already been convicted -- meaning there was no reason to continue lying, especially when he kept insisting that 'this time' he was 'finally' going to tell the truth. Stephen Bates (Guardian) observes, "Other members of the unit told the inquiry they covered up a violent assault by Payne on Mousa shortly before he died. Former private Aaron Cooper told the inquiry in a statement: 'He seemed to completely lose his self-control. He started to lash out wildly, punching and kicking Baha Mousa's ribs. Corporal Payne also certainly kicked Baha Mousa's head, which rebounded off the wall'." Michael Evans (Times of London) reports, "Colonel Daoud Musa, Mr Musa's father, who attended the hearing today, emerged tearful from the morning session."

Meanwhile news out of Iraq is the possible blocking of the election law Parliament passed last Sunday. Waleed Ibrahim, Michael Christie and Micheal Roddy (Reuters) reports Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, has stated the law needs to be changed to allow external Iraqi refugees to participate and to be represented. If the law is not changed (by Tuesday afternoon), he states he will veto it. (The Presidency Council is made up of Iraq's President and two vice presidents. After Parliament passes a law, it goes to the council which decides whether to implement it or not.)

On the latest Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera) which began airing Friday, host Jasim Azzawi was joined by Orhan Kettene (Turkman Front), Mundher Adhami (King's College) and Firyad Rawadnouzi (Kurdish MP) addressed the 'intended' elections.

Jasim Azzawi: So finally the Iraqi Parliament has passed this long delayed law. Many people, they called it a great achievement. Firyad Rawandouzi, this law stipulates we are going to use the open list in comparison with the closed list that was used in 2005. It is going to separate religion from politics by removing the religious symbols. So is it really a good law in comparison with the old law that belongs to the old regime?

Firyad Rawandouzi: Actually the demand of the Great Ayatollah Sistani was there. Therefore the most political blocs in the Parliament go for open list. And I think that this open list will create a little bit of change in the political map of Iraqi Parliament in the next election. But it not going to be a great change.

Jasim Azzawi: But all yardsticks, Orhan Kettene, Iraq is far from democracy. The fact that elections are day in, day out that does not make Iraq a democracy, far from it. There is, has to be, a culture before that. But since you are an activist representing the Turkmen and their interests and perhaps, people say, their plight, how do you look at this election in light of the fact that some Turkmen, they accuse the Kurdish authorities in Kirkuk, they have resettled by force hundreds and thousands of Kurdish Iraqis either from the north or even from other parts of Iraq -- from Salahuddin, for instance.

Orhan Kettene: Well we don't see it as a democracy with full meaning of the word because in 2003, when the invasion removed the old regime, the Turkmens had very high hopes that the justice, democracy, equality, equal participation will show itself finally and they will have a voice finally in Iraqi politics after being deprived from that right for over nine years. But the fact is they were surprised with a flood of Kurdish people from other parts of Iraq, especially from the north. And they filled the city. There is no space left in the city. And it was claimed that they were refugees from Kirkuk. And we know in Kirkuk where -- which areas were demolished, which people were removed. So the people were surprised by this influx. And now we are faced with doubling the number of constituents. Kirkuk used to be 369,000 in 2004 and now it's 800,000 and Turkmens regard Kirkuk as the cultural center of Turkmens in Iraq. And the whole Iraqi people know Kirkuk as a Turkmen city. But over the years, by the Ba'ahtists' racist pressure lots of Arab people were forced to be --

Jasim Azzawi: Orhan, let me give a chance to Firyad to answer that before I go to Mundher. Make it very short, Firyad.

Firyad Rawandouzi: I don't think that this accusation is right because since 2003, we hearing from various people in Kirkuk and other areas that Kurdish people fled to Kirkuk and occupied the city. And the fact is that many thousands of Kurdish people were displaced by Saddam Hussein's regime since 1997 to 2003. And those people now have opportunity to return back to this city, to their home, and get their property too. Therefore, we, everytime hearing this accusation but --

Jasim Azzawi: Except for the fact, Firyad Rawandouzi, and that is the United Nations, the envoy, has cast a great doubt about the numbers that currently live in the city, trying to find out their origin. More importantly, in 2003, in May, in the Attaakhi newspaper which is a Kurdish newspaper, mentioned in an article published at the time that the number of people expelled out of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein exceeded 16,000 while the extra influx Orhan Kettene referred to now --

Firyad Rawandouzi: No.

Jasim Azzawi: -- runs in the

Firyad Rawandouzi: No.

Jasim Azzawi: -- hundreds of thousands. We'll come to that in just a few moments. Mundher Adhami, in 2005 a great segment of Iraqi socieity opted willingly not to vote in that controversial election and now, in 2009, most probably, all of them, they will be voting. Will they be voting willingly or will they be voting for other considerations?

Mundher Adhami: There is two level in this. One related to the political groups in the Green Zone and outside the Green Zone -- the so-called Red Zone. And the other one is in the public, in the streets. In the political groups, the United States is making huge efforts in order to cajole and invite everybody including the people who were part of the resistance or insurgency or anything to participate. And they're trying to give them guarantees. But there is a great doubt about these guarantees because a lot of the guarantees which were given before about the Constitution, about other things in the political process did not materialize. But on the street this is complication that there are people who actually participated in the 2004, 2005 and the local elections and they are very disappointed. There is an improvement gradually in the provincial elections but even then they were not happy with the -- with the manuevering of the electoral commission. On the other hand, the areas which did not vote a great deal in 2005 and not vote at all in 2004, they are thinking that they have been marginalized by not voting and they are willing to give it a go regardless because they have nothing to lose. They have been marginalized --

Jasim Azzawi: So there is a fear that they might receive the short end of the stick by not participating in the political process and, consequently, they might have a lot to lose. Orhan Kettene, why would you be worried, especially that this political deal that was struck between the various political parties that stipulates that if the results of the election in January -- especially for Kirkuk -- is exceeded by 15% than the last election there might be going back to the drawing board and finding some sort of a compromise.

Orhan Kettene: Well we don't have great faith in reviewing election results because, back in 2005, we had lots of complaints and we gave it to the High Commission. They said they reviewed it and nothing happened. And all these violations, these frauds, these horrible acts done against this people, no results came out. And now they are talking about postponing this problem without solving it -- let's do the elections and, after that, we'll form a commission and then we'll review all the issues. The experience tells us that once things are done deal in Iraq, there is no way to go back. So if we have these elections --

Jasim Azzawi: So you're extremely cynical and you don't have faith, in the words of the Iraqi politicians? How about that, Firyad Rawandouzi? And before you answer, let us just take a recent example. For instance, in the provincial elections that happened just a few months ago, when in Mosul the elections actually reversed the results of the 2005 and it gave the Arabs the majority in the governorate as well as in other parts of the city. And yet, to this day, they cannot exercise their political powers. So why should Turkmens and the Arabs in Kirkuk trust in this deal knowing full well there is no honor among the Iraqi politicians to adhere to this, the outcome?

Firyad Rawandouzi: I don't know. You might ask them. But in my point of view, they should go forward with the election because it is a good chance to exercise their rights. And I think that Kirkuk is a little bit different from other provinces and Arab, Turkmen, Kurds and Christians should exist in Kirkuk and make a compromise even in running the country. But in the general election something is different because the general election and the result of these elections will not left an impact on the future -- political future in Kirkuk. For example, we are now in the Parliament five member. We have five member representing Kirkuk and others have four. But this -- we exercise the majority but that does [not] mean that we impose any kind of a solution.

Orhan Kettaneh: Let me ask who is rulling the street? Who is holding the security? Who's touring the streets and letting the people do what they want? It's the Kurdish Asayish which is security force, it's the Kurdish militia, armed militia, called Peshmerga. They are in every street, every corner. They are the ones who command the city. So during elections, we had hundreds of examples that they took away the boxes, the ballot boxes, and they changed it. And next day, all we can see is these completely Turkmen quarters, the votes come completely in the favor of the Kurdish parties.

Firyad Rawandouzi: No, that is not right because -- this is not right because Turkmen divided among themselves and they could get -- couldn't get seats in the Parliament so they put the accusation on the others. I think that the law this time and even the voter registers are completely different and they should go forward with the election not put accusations on the other. I think it is very important for Turkemn to cooperate with Arab with other persons to make everything succeed, this election in Kirkuk. As I said this election and the results --

Orhan Kettaneh: Well it is, sorry, excuse me, the Turkmens are not divided. The Turkmens are united but they don't have chance, they don't have chance --

Firyad Rawandouzi: This is not right.

Orhan Kettaneh: No, they don't have

Firyad Rawandouzi: This is not right. There is a huge, there is a huge difference between East Turkmens and even East Turkmens and those linked to Turkey and those linked to Iran and those to others. You're saying something is not -- you can't find it on the ground

Orhan Kettaneh: No, that's not true. I find the Shi'ite Turkmens and the Sunni Turkmens are one people and they don't see any difference betwen the other. What you say about Shi'ites --

Firyad Rawandouzi: I don't say that they are the same people but they are different political parties, they --

Jasim Azzawi: Let me bring Mundher Adhami who has [loud cross-talk] Let me bring Mundher Adhami who has the following

Munher Adhami: Could I say? Could I just say?

Jasim Azzawi: Munher Adhami, hold on just a second. Let me ask you something. Somehow you cannot help but be sympathetic to the people who were bitten once and they don't want to be bitten twice. What happened in Mosul and what happens to the Constitution if you remember very well. Article 141 states that before 2007 is out, Iraqi Parliament will convene again and will review the entire Constitution and amend it according to political deal. So as we speak right now, politically and Constitutionally, Iraq is run without a Constitution, isn't it?

Munher Adhami: Yes. That's right. That's exactly right. I mean the whole process if faulty on various steps. This election is being run on a Constitution which should not be there because it should have been revised. So that's the first fault. The whole Constitution and the whole election laws so far has been done according to [former US Adminstrator of Iraq L. Paul] Bremer's laws which came after illegal occupation. So that whole process is illegal. But the problems is that Iraqis are practical people and they have to feed their children and these roadblocks which the Americans are putting in their ways, they have to go through them. They are impelled to go through them and they do the best they can. They -- I think it is to the credit of Iraqis, rather in Kirkuk oand Mosul so far, that they have refused the enticement to fight each other on ethnic grounds. I think this is to the credit of some wise people.

iraq
the independent of londonrobert verkaikthe daily mail reporter
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
warren p. strobel
al jazeera
inside iraq
jasim al-azzawi
the times of london
michael evans
the washington timesrichard saleafpxinhua

Anita Dunn doesn't know how to go away

That's Isaiah's "White House On Attack" from last month. And I already noted it once this week when Anita Dunn got fired. I have to note it again because trash mouth just won't go away.

Eamon Javers (Politico) reports she was on Al Hunt's Bloomberg TV show and she yet again attacked Fox News while saying MSNBC wasn't biased: "Now, I will say this: MSNBC has as their host of their morning program a former Republican congressman who was a member of Newt Gingrich's revolution. I do regard them as different as a network, absolutely."

Yes and Fox has Alan Colmes, right, Anita?

She then did a two-fer with, "I am not a person who is known for going rogue, OK?" to refute that she was speaking out of school and would upset Barack.

And of course, Anita will always be remembered as the segregationist, the gender apartheid czar. She couldn't not revisit that apparently, insisting, "I don't want to play basketball with the president. I mean, none of us did. We work really long hours. We want to go home. We want to see our kids."

We?

Anita what kids are you rushing home to?

That woman's a liar and an apologist for a sexist. Anita Dunn's name will be dirt by the time 2012 rolls around, mark my words.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday, November 13, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, a war cheerleader need to profit from the war gets even messier, McClatchy becomes the first US outlet to speak out in support of the Guardian and press freedom, more lawsuits are filed against KBR and more.

This afternoon, Jenan Hussein and Warren P. Strobel (McClatchy Newspapers) report a satire by Warid Badr Salim in al Mada has led over 150 members of Parliament sign on to suing the newspaper. The reporters note, "The chilling atmosphere for the news media was underscored this week when an Iraqi court fined the London-based Guardian newspaper nearly $87,000, finding that it had defamed Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. An article in the paper in April quoted unnamed Iraqi intelligence officials describing what they said was Maliki's increasingly authoritarian rule. [. . .] Free expression is one of the few benefits that Iraqi count from the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Basic services such as electricity and sewage are still in disrepair, and sectarian violence, while much reduced, is still a daily occurence. The backlash against journalists and curbs on book, cartoons and plays, often for religious reasons, raise questions about what kind of society the United States will leave behind when American troops withdraw from Iraq at the end of 2011." The article in question is Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's "Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq" (April 30, 2009). Tuesday the court or 'court' rendered their or 'their' verdict.

As Elaine observed Wednesday, "The above topic should have been the front page of every daily paper this morning. Instead everyone turned their heads, averted their eyes and, in doing so, endorsed the assault on the press. If Nouri al-Maliki saw that the entire world would jeer him over these nonsense law suits, you better believe he'd think twice about doing it again. As it is, he's been allowed to attack the press. Let me add: Yet again." And let me add, because I've been waiting to see if this would be the case, that's All Things Media Big and Small. ALL. Get the picture? Thursday the Guardian editorialized, "But the case against the Guardian in Iraq is notable alarming. Despite repeated hearings over several months, the paper was not asked to present written evidence or provide statements from the editor or the reporter invovled. Compensation was apparently awarded for damage to the Iraqi prime minister, even though he was not a party to the legal action. The Iraqi people were promised freedom after the fall of Saddam. They deserve a free press and fair courts, robust enough to stand up to government."

Exactly. And yet where has the media been on this story?

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.

I'm crying.

-- "I Am The Walrus" (recorded by the Beatles, written by John Lennon, credited to Lennon & McCartney)

Thursday we noted that the Guardian is out there pretty much all alone. No outlet has stepped forward to stand with them. That's disgraceful. And when Nouri's other cases (both pending ones and ones yet to be filed) against news outlets come forward, some of these same outlets are going to want others to stand up for them and stand with them. Why should anyone bother? When none of them can stand up for the press right now, why should anyone later stand up for the cowards?

Thursday night, it turned out I might have been a bit harsh. That's when Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, took a brave stand and stated:

This rulling has to send a shiver up the spin of anyone who hopes for a genuinely democratic Iraq. What the court calls libel is, in most countries, called journalism. Indeed, if a respected journalist like Ghaith Abdul-Ahad can be punished for reporting on concerns about a trend toward authoritarian government, the verdict would seem to lend credence to those very concerns.

What a brave editorial statement from Bill Keller and thank goodness he was not afraid to put that in print in his paper because . . .

Oh, wait.

That didn't appear in the New York Times.

Bill Keller was quoted in Julian Borger's article for the Guardian that posted Thursday ngiht and appeared in Friday's paper. You know what, Bill, I think Guardian readers have some idea about the case. It's readers of the New York Times that might be helped by hearing your comments. But the New York Times has been so very busy on so many other things. Certainly, they're some panty sniffing they're prepared to splash on the front page any day now and pass it off as journalism, right?

There's not a damn thing wrong with Bill Keller's statements. And I'll applaud them . . . when they appear in the New York Times. Instead, it's as though Nouri attacked Guardian at school and Billy stood by and didn't nothing but later that day Billy ran over to Guardian's house and said, "Oh man, that was so wrong. I'm so mad. Man, I could just kick Nouri's ass." Brave statements become less brave when they're not made where it matters.

What the press tried to ignore, groups we spoke to about Iraq after the Tuesday verdict got. They got it instantly. They got that it was about press freedom. They got that it was about Iraq. They understood that a messages were being sent globally. They grasped that one message was that Nouri could get away with what ever he wanted and that he would be emboldened as a result. They also grasped that a message was sent to the Iraqi people to let them know that they were once again on their own and that the world press would look the other way as they did so often under Saddam. Those pulling a blank on what I'm referring to can jog their memories by reading Eason's now infamous NYT column where he whined for forgiveness for CNN's efforts at covering for Saddam in order to have continued access to Iraq.

This is not a minor issue but outside of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Chris Floyd and one or two others, find anyone commenting on it outside of the Guardian. Imagine what it must be like to be the average Iraqi right now. Following the start of the illegal war, you might have had some internet access and some access to satellite TV and you could see the press get lively (too lively for Paul Bremer who launched an attack on Falluja largely because he didn't like a cartoon -- no, it wasn't of his butt, the newspaper wasn't a broadsheet). And now you've seen the US install exile puppet Nouri al-Maliki. And you've seen him crack down on the internet and satellite channels. You've seen him run Al Jazeera out of the country. Now you're seeing him go after a Western outlet (the Guardian) and trash the work of Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. And you look around to see that world press you hear so much of. That brave, strong, independent, call out the tyranny where ever it is press. And you see silence. From the East to the West, you see silence.

And slowly it sinks in that today's thug is going to get away with the same things the previous one did because your life isn't very important on the world stage. And let's get real damn honest, that's why Iraqis suffered in silence all those years. They suffered in silence because they were less important -- to the world press -- than their leader. They suffered because the press wanted to curry favor with Saddam. And now the same world press is sending the message -- with few exceptions (count McClatchy now as one exception) -- that they will cover for Nouri because freedoms and the people of Iraq are unimportant.

That is the message being sent and you better believe that is the message being received.

Amy Goodman couldn't give us that today or yesterday or the day before. In fact, Goody missed Iraq a lot this week but Ava and I will tackle that at Third on Sunday. Mad Maddy Rothschild likes to pretend he gives a damn about the free press (in 2008, he liked to pretend he was a Democrat, this year he finally outed himself publicly as a Socialist so maybe in 2010 he'll reveal that he really doesn't give a damn about the press?). But for all of his bluster, Mad Maddy didn't have time to defend the Guardian. And then there's The Nation. Did John Nichols losing his daily paper mean that he lost interest in the press? Apparently because he's tossing more sop out about Sarah Palin. But then John Nichols HATES women. Is there any woman he hasn't attacked this decade? This is the man, please remember, who attacked Barbra Streisand, BARBRA STREISAND, for the Iraq War. That was Barbra's fault. Now not in the mind of any sane person, but as you read his attack on Barbra, you knew you weren't dealing with a sane person. (The basic 'logic' of his argument was that Barbra donated her money -- HER money -- as she saw fit to Democratic politicians and not as John Nichols felt she should donate HER money. Therefore, Barbra was responsible for the Iraq War.) At some point, Panhandle Media's going to have to have to start offering group therapy for all these misogynists but in the meantime, we all suffer because they can't address what really matters. Another swipe at Palin or advocating a free press? Nichols goes with another slam at Palin.

The topic wasn't discussed on the second hour of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show today, but guest host Susan Page and panelists Karen DeYoung (Washington Post), Roy Gutman (McClatchy Newspapers) and David E. Sanger (New York Times) did discuss other Iraq issues.

Susan Page: Roy Gutman, I know that you were reporting from Iraq last month. This week we hear that Iraq's Parliament finally has approved a law for its election in January. There had been a kind of stalemate before that.

Roy Gutman: Well there had been and it was a very damaging stalemate. If they hadn't approved the law by this point then you begin to have to predict the country going downhill rather quickly. Uhm, had they approved it a month ago, you could have said Iraq is almost heading towards a normalcy despite all of the violence. This kind of muddled middle that took a long time to decide actually is nevertheless huge progress. This election, uh, is in a way is going to create a new Parliament. There will be what they call open lists -- every parliamentarian or every person running for a seat uh will be named before the elections so it's possible for people to find out who they are and rather they have dual citizenship. You know I heard while I was there that as many as 70% of the Iraqi -- of the current Iraqi Parliament has dual citizenship. Many of them Iranian-Iraqi dual citizenship. So that-that part will end and it looks like -- they have an independent election commission, they run elections that I think, in comparison with Afghanistan, certainly in comparison with Iran, are going to look good, very clean. It's possible that this election could make a real big difference.

Susan Page: Karen, this week we found out that top executives at Blackwater, the private military company, okayed bribes for Iraqi officials. Why were they going to bribe them?

Karen DeYoung: This was in connection to the late 2007 attacks in Baghdad for which I believe five Blackwater employees who were working for the State Department have been charged. 17 Iraqis were killed. At a time when it was not clear which way the Iraq government was going to go in terms of prosecuting them, preventing them from leaving the country. This was reportedly Blackwater's attempt to influence those decisions and also the decision whether Blackwater whose-whose income is derived from -- has been derived from -- huge contracts in Iraq would be continued to allow -- be allowed to work there.

Susan Page: Alright. Yes, Roy?

Roy Gutman: One of the -- one of the most incredible things about the American war in Iraq is that we relied on outside contractors to the extent that we did. I heard the figure while I was there of -- from American military -- that there was as many as 170,000 contractors, maybe even more than that, to 140,000 troops. I think that -- obviously it drove up the cost -- but it was the idea of outsourcing the war obviously to people like Blackwater to do all the functions that would normally be carried out by the military. It's a hell of a way to run a war. It's -- maybe it's the modern way of war but I think that the Bush administration in a way into thinking that it was only 140,000, only 160,000, in fact the numbers were far, far higher.

Karen DeYoung: I-I think that's true and the bulk of the contractors certainly work for the Defense Department. [Clears throat.] Excuse me. The bulk of the controversy has been over-over personal security contractors working for the State Department and that's what -- that's what Blackwater was doing. This is a problem as policy becomes a sort of civil-military hybrid where we're trying to do reconstruction in a war zone, we're trying to boost the civilian components of our efforts in places like-like Iraq and in Afghanistan. And now the question is always: Who is going to protect these people? Is this the proper role for the military, is this something that we want soldiers to do? The State Department doesn't want soldiers to do it and so you're going to have this problem increasingly going on.

Susan Page: Do private military contractors continue to play as big a role during the Obama administration as they did during the Bush administration, David?

David E. Sanger: Well certainly as the war has moved to Afghanistan and as our attention is focused to Afghanistan -- we still have more troops in Iraq today than we have in Afghanistan -- something you could lose sight of --

Karen DeYoung: Twice as many.

David E. Sanger: -- picking up -- picking up the newspaper. Yeah. That may not be true six months from now but it certainly is true now. Uh, I don't believe that there are as many contractors at work in the Afghan theater. But it's a very different kind of situation. The exception to this, again, is the personal security forces including around the embassies.

Roy Gutman: But you know when you enter the American Embassy in Baghdad, you get first questioned by Peruvians who are contractors. I-I think the traditional role of the marines as being the guard for embassies is actually a good one. And I think the idea of contracting that out, however necessary it was during the war because there simply weren't enough troops of any force to do it -- is a real question. I don't see -- and the State Department didn't master having these private contractors. They-they lost control of them again and again and again. There not able to manage them, frankly. And, uh, the whole embassy. You go to this embassy, it's an immense thing really. It was built kind of for a pro-counsel's role. And you have to ask: 'Why did we do this in the middle of the war?'

Susan Page: Roy, Roy, I don't understand. So this security at the US Embassy in Baghdad is Peruvian?

Roy Gutman: The first line.

Karen DeYoung: The outer parameter.

Roy Gutman: The outer parameter.

Susan Page: And who's employing the Peruvians to provide the security?

Roy Gutman: Uh, I don't know. Maybe it's Triple Canopy. I forget the name of the contractor.

Susan Page: But it's a contractor working for the US government?

Roy Gutman: Oh yeah.

Susan Page: Huh. Alright. That surprises me.

Roy Gutman: In fact, going into -- into what is now the International Zone, the former Green Zone, you get queried by Ugandans, Uruguayans, Peruvians are there. It's-it's like a small United Nations. Most of them being ill paid. And go to any of the bases, the American bases, the first lines and the second lines of-of checkpoints are all run by non-Americans.

Afghanistan is not our focus ("Iraq snapshot") but since it was mentioned above, we'll note that the Democratic Policy Committee (Democratic members of the Senate and Senator Byron Dorgan chairs the committee) has released a new report on Afghanistan "Our Best Chance for Success in Afghanistan: Getting the Strategy Right First."

Meanwhile James Bone (Times of London) reports on the problems for an adivsor to the KRG: "A prominent former United Nations official was forced to defend himself yesterday against accusations that he used his influence in Iraq to enrich himself. Peter Galbraith, 58, a former US ambassador who recently quit as deputy head of the UN mission in Kabul, struck a potentially lucrative oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan which could reportedly earn him $100 million (£60 million). He helped the Kurds to negotiate provisions in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution that gave them control over new oil finds on their territory." Peter Galbraith is denying any wrong doing. He repeated his denials in Melissa Block's interview which aired on yesterday's All Things Considered:

Melissa Block: Ambassador Galbraith, you've been on our program many times before, you've published many op-eds, you've written books. Why not disclose your business ties before this? Put this out in the open if it is so-so benign as you say.

Peter Galbraith: It's obviously quite common for people to be in government, to be in private business. And it is the nature of private business that the precise arrangements are often confidential. And, indeed, some of my arrangements were subject to confidentiality agreements. But I did disclose that I was in business and that I had corporate clients in Iraq. So I think that people did know that I had these interests.

Melissa Block: Ambassador Galbraith, do you see how this business connection, your connection with the oil company, would fuel the anger that US interests in Iraq are purely about oil and about profit?

Peter Galbraith: I -- uh, well I can understand that there will be politicians that will want to use that as part of their debate with the Kurds but, uh, frankly, I was a private citizen at the time, I had no role in the US -- with the US government. The US government did not, in any way, facilitate any of my visits to Iraq. Uh, so, I was like many other former government officials who have become private citizens and who, uh, in -- generally the practice do not disclose what clients they may have in their business activities.

While he was happy to share his notions of discosure to Melissa Block yesterday, others attempted to address his lack of disclosure. Noting that he's written columns on the Kurdistan issues for the New York Times since 2004 (when his relationship with DNO began), an "Editor's Note" in today's paper (published online yesterday) concludes:

Like other writers for the Op-Ed page, Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles. Had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith's financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles.

The New York Times is stating Peter Galbraith didn't disclose to them and that, had they known about the deal, they would have either not published his columns on Iraq or required that he disclose those interests -- those financial interests. Please note that Melissa Block conducted a lengthy interview with him (over four minutes) and those are only excerpts above. Peter Galbraith continues to maintain he has done nothing illegal, wrong or unethical. Chris Floyd (Empire Burlesque) weighs in:

The New York Times is shocked -- shocked! -- to find personal enrichment of American elites at the heart of the rape and gutting of Iraq. Who could possibly have ever foreseen such a scenario as the Times revealed on Thursday, describing how "influential American adviser" Peter Galbraith helped "ram through" highly controversial provisions in the constitution that the occupying force and its collaborators imposed -- provisions that could put more than $100 million in Galbraith's pocket.

Of course, Galbraith's war-profiteering machinations are hardly unique; the roll call of "advisers" and officials and other insiders feasting on Iraqi corpseflesh is longer than the Mississippi, and considerably more muddy. Just this week, the Financial Times noted that another gaggle of occupation geese, "including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner," the first appointed satrap of the conquered land, are now cashing in on their blood-soaked connections in Iraq.

Chris Garofolo (Brattleboro Reformer) notes that Galbraith was speaking at an event at the Brattleboro Centre Congregational Church last night when the issue was raised and he said of the New York Times article (by James Glanz and Walter Gibbs ), "I actually find the article quite, well, it is full of innuendo. If you read the facts [with the implications and innuendo], I find [it] offensive. [. . .] The article argues, or suggests, that somehow I had a conflict, hmm, it doesn't say it, but there's innuendo there. That there's a conflict of interest because I advised the Kurds on the constitution at the same time I had business interests, including a contract with a Norewegian oil company DNO, in which I assisted them to make investments in the oil industry." Garofolo also notes that Peter Gailbraith supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

From greed to the violence it led to . . .

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad sticky bombing (no one wounded or killed apparently)

Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 13-year-old Iraqi Christian male shot dead in Mosul. AFP notes the shooting but says the male was 16-years-old and was Rami Katchik who "had been hosing down the entrance to his family home when the shooting occurred." Iran's Press TV drops back to yesterday to note "a man working for a weaving factory in Mosul" shot dead yesterday."

Corpses?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 corpse (20-year-old man) discovered in Mosul.

Turning to the United States, Jake Armstrong (Pasadena Weekly) notes "lawsuits in 32 states have been filed against Halliburton, KBR and other military contractors over so-called 'burn pits' the companies allegedly used in Iraq to burn everything from human body parts to tires, the Associated Press reported Tuesday." Ed Treleven (Wisconsin State Journal) reports Iraq War veteran Michael Foth and Afghanistan War veteran Brett Mazzara have filed against KBR: "The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Madison, brings to 34 the number of similar lawsuits pending across the United States, said Susan Burke, a Washington, D.C., lawyer representing the soldiers, including Mazzara and Foth. A first wave of lawsuits filed earlier this year have been merged for pretrial proceedings in Greenbelt, MD., she said." Lisa Guerriero (MetroWest Daily News) reports on Iraq War veteran Jeffery Cox (we've noted his lawsuit against KBR already this week). O fthe KBR burn pit he was exposed to, Cox notes, "This is not your little leaf fire. This is 10 acres or greater." On the health issues relating from exposure to the burn pits, Cox observes, "It's widespread. A lot of people have some type pulmonary issue. It's the Agent Orange of the Iraq war." Meanwhile the Houston Chronicle offers the editorial "Invisible wounds: Returning soldiers with mental health problems are ill-served by their country" which includes this: "It's also ironic that the same legislators who sign off on billions to wage wars -- conservatively estimated at almost $700 billion to date for Iraq and Afghanistan -- are often loath to invest even modest sums for the care of the soldiers wounded in those wars."

Meanwhile, KBR and others can profit off the war but telling the truth? Apparently not allowed in the United States. Valerie Plame is a former CIA agent. Former not by choice. She was outed by the Bully Boy Bush administration in an attempt to get back at and attack her husband, former diplomat Joe Wilson. The CIA sent Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger ahead of the Iraq War to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was seeking or had sought yellow cake uranium (which would allow him to make deadly, nuclear bombs). Wilson's investigation determined no attempt had been made. Despite that, the administration (including Bully Boy Bush) began publicly making statements to the contrary. Wilson originally corrected the issue with some members of the press. When he came out publicly in the New York Times with "What I Didn't Find In Africa" (July 6, 2003), the administration began working to attack him and using adminstration friends in the press. These friends would include Matt Cooper who keeps trying to crawl out from under his rock despite the fact that he's never, NEVER, gotten honest about his part in this or his covering for so many in the administration and for Karl Rove. Robert Novak (now dead) was the one who finally outed her. (As John R. MacArthur has noted, there's nothing wrong with outing CIA agents -- with the press doing it. It is, however, a different story for the government to out you. Valerie Plame worked for the United States government as an undercover agent and her cover was blown by the Executive Branch of the federal government. That is wrong, that is a problem.) David Kravets (Wired) reports that here efforts to go public with details (non national security details) such as the time of her employment are being withheld (despite them already being part of the Congressional record) and other petty measures are taking place. Why? A judge decided but never forget that a judge decided (wrongly, my opinion) only due to the fact that the Barack Obama administration decided to fight Plame on this. Yes, Barack is yet again proving to be Bush III. So two administrations have now disgraced themselves in the manner in which they've treated Valerie Plame.

TV notes. NOW on PBS begins broadcasting on many PBS stations tonight (check local listings) and this week's show

What exactly is going on with the economy? Stocks are up and big bonuses are back, but while they're throwing parties on Wall Street, there's pain on Main Street. One out of every six workers is unemployed or underemployed, according to government statistics - the highest figure since the Great Depression.
This week NOW gets answers and insight from Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, who's been heading up the congressional panel overseeing how the bailout money is being spent. NOW Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa talks with Warren about how we got to this point, and where we go from here.
What will it take to put both bankers and American businesses on the same road to recovery?

Washington Week also begins airing tonight (and throughout the weekend) on many PBS stations. Joining Gwen around the table this week are Peter Baker (New York Times), Naftali Bendavid (Wall St. Journal), John Dickerson (CBS News and Slate) and Ton Gjelten (NPR). Meanwhile Bonnie Erbe will sit down with Bernadine Healy, Melinda Henneberger, Star Parker and Patricia Sosa to discuss the week's events on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, on many stations, it begins airing tonight. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

The Deadliest Weapon
Byron Pitts and 60 Minutes cameras spend two days on the road with a bomb-hunting unit in Afghanistan as they encounter one deadly bomb after another. | Watch Video

---

B. Rex
Lesley Stahl meets the inspiration for the lead character in the classic film "Jurassic Park" and reports on how famed dinosaur hunter Jack Horner is shaking up the paleontology world. | Watch Video

---

Resurrecting Eden
In Southern Iraq, where many biblical scholars place the Garden of Eden, Scott Pelley finds a water world where the "Marsh Arabs" are making a comeback after Saddam nearly destroyed the "cradle of civilization." | Watch Video

---

60 Minutes, Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

iraq

mcclatchy newspapers

jenan hussein
warren p. strobel

the guardian
julian borger
mark tran

the diane rehms show
susan page
npr

roy gutman

karen deyoung
the washington post

the new york times

david e. sanger

all things considered
melissa block
the new york times

the houston chronicle
the pasadena weekly
jake armstrong
ed treleven
lisa guerriero

sahar issa

60 minutes
cbs news
pbs
to the contrary
bonnie erbe
washington week

Carly's performance

That's the cover of Carly Simon's latest album Never Been Gone. Carly was on NBC's Latenight with Jimmy Fallon last night. It was the very end of the show. I really don't like that, by the way.

Used to be, a musical guest on The Tonight Show or Letterman would perform two songs. The musical guest would sit down and talk between the two.

Apparently we're too short attention span to stomach two musical numbers these days. I've noticed that even on Jay Leno's prime time show.

Now with a guest like Carly, that's just a crime.

She did "You Belong To Me." She did it well and I'm sure the audience was jamming through the song (I was and I was tired, I get up early in the morning).

But I really would have loved it if she'd been allowed to also perform "Anticipation" or "Coming Around Again." I'd love all three but at least two.

And I really don't think "You Belong To Me" represents the album. I like the track but it really is different than the other tracks, in terms of arrangement and all.

But she looked really good. She's got shorter hair than on the album. (I haven't seen her on TV until now. I watched the Today Show and GMA clips online and didn't notice her hair being that short but I don't notice as much if I'm not watching our big screen TV -- 'our' being mine and Cedric to give my husband a link and the way he and Wally do joint-entries, Wally's like an undefined portion of our marriage -- or I'll say that to throw out a link to Wally as well.)

Repeating, I personally love "You Belong To Me" and it's probably my third favorite track on this new album but I also don't think it represents the album because the others don't have that kind of instrumentation. "You Belong To Me" is practically a dance track.

If you use the Fallon link, you can watch the show. And Carly's great but on at the very end. Jason what's his name (Rushmore, et al)? I really was dozing. (Again, I'm not used to staying up late and sitting in front of the TV.) Joan Cusak was a great guest. She was funny and she talked up a good cause (children with cancer) and she talked about Working Girl and praised Carly.

So use the link and you can check it out. This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Thursday, November 12, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, calls for investigations into Blackwater's reported efforts at bribery take place in Baghdad and DC, the PKK doesn't feel a new level of understanding has been reached, oil and money drive the news cycle, and more.

Each Sunday, Cindy Sheehan does her weekly radio show Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox. This week's guests were Debbie DeNello and Adam Kokesh. We'll note the following section of the broadcast.

Adam Kokesh: I think for the soldiers on the ground who see what Obama is doing, you know, they see troops are being taken out only to be replaced with a greater number of contractors and then for those troops to be put into a surge in Afghanistan and nothing to really change about the kind of abuse? You know, I think that's still a huge, major factor: lack of confidence in the mission. I mean, nobody really believes, no matter what Obama says, that these are wars of necessity --

Cindy Sheehan: Right.

Adam Kokesh: -- or that Afghanistan is the good war. In fact, Obama actually by coming out and saying that Afghanistan is not a war of choice, implying that Iraq is, you know what does that say to the over 100,000 troops that we had in Iraq at that time? 'Hey, you guys don't really have to be there but you're going to keep going out and being shot at and getting killed anyways'? And then to the contractors? I mean the same factor goes with them but at least they're doing it as private citizens with a little more free will -- the impact is not as much. For a soldier who's being told "You're going to go back to this war zone that doesn't have to exist." You can imagine the effect on that. Especially for the
fifth, sixth seventh deployment.
Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, you know that I have been, since my son [Casey Sheehan] was killed, actively just calling for troops out now. But when Obama, of course, says that Afghanistan is a war of necessity, he called Iraq "a dumb war" and, like you said, people are still dying in this "dumb war" --

Adam Kokesh: Yeah.

Cindy Sheehan: -- that he has proclaimed "dumb." Well you know, all wars are dumb. Let's tie this, what happened to you in Iraq, what you know, you have the exper -- experiential opinions on this. But tie it in with your Congressional campaign. What is your platform? What will you do in Congress?

Adam Kokesh: Well I'm a Constitutionalist. I'm a non-interventionalist. I'm still a proud member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and I support the mission of Iraq Veterans Against the War. I'm also a proud member of Veterans for Peace and I think that the mission of the organization Veterans for Peace is even more applicable now when we see the kind of hypocrisy of the Democrats. It's almost worse than what we had when the neocons were in charge. The neocons were easy to hate, they were brazen and upfront about it and had this swaggering machismo whereas what we see under Obama now is this really disgusting deceitfulness that has some people with really intense mixed feelings. But one of the things that we're counting on here is that by November 2010 when my election is held and I'm going to be running against -- well I am running against an incumbent Democrat who has said that he is calling for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, an immediate request for an exit strategy and yet votes to -- votes for all the funding for Iraq and Afghanistan and all of that and has toed the Democratic Party line and I think people are really going to be fed up with that. And, you know, it's definitely not the Republican Party that has all the answers but there are people within the Republican Party like myself that are trying to make it the party of Big Tent smaller government again and ensure that that includes a very strong committment to this policy of non-interventionism. Not isolationism, but non-interventionism which means free trade and commerce and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. And unfortunately in the world we live in, having a strong national defense is appropriate at this time. But there's a reason it's in the Constitution that Congress has the power to declare war and when they declare war they're supposed to do it with a specific enemy and a declaration and there's an objective. And then they give the military the mission and then they get out of the way. And this is the way it's supposed to be when it's legitimate self-defense. You go to war, you win, you come home. And when we have these open-ended committments, when we have these world policing opportunities where they are run by Congress, they are run by a political machine, and not by a military with a specific objective, you get this kind of open-ended nation building process that puts so much money into the military industrical complex, concentrates so much more power in the hands of the federal government -- into the executive especially. And that hasn't changed under Obama. You know, we want to see a return to the Constitution because of those principles behind it and make sure we don't engage in these wars because when you engage in war when there's not a declaration you know that the premise is faulty, you know that it is not honorable, you know that it is not righteous in the case of self-defense. And we know that neither Iraq or Afghanistan, in terms of what we're doing there today, qualify for any sort of just war theory. And getting back to that and making sure that that message has -- has an oppotunity to be heard in the 2010 elections is a really important part of this campaign for me. It's not easy, you know? It's really not easy. Talking to the progressive base is a lot easier than talking to the conservative base but it's a really important challenge to make sure that they live up to those values and understand why the Constitution was written the way it was.

Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, sometimes I think talking to progressives is harder because of what you said. They want to put all their hope eggs into the basket of Obama and the Democrats and clearly, clearly, they're not the peace party. The Democrats and Republicans, institutional parties, are all the same. They're the War Party and we have to put a big chunk of what's happening now on the shoulders of a Congress in 2001 that gave George -- that abrogated their Constitutional duty and gave George Bush the authority to do what is happening right now.
Adam Kokesh: Well the grass -- well the thing that I've learned is the grassroots of both the Republican and the Democratic parties are totally different from the national leadership --

Cindy Sheehan: Absolutely.

Adam Kokesh: -- and it just so happens that when the Democratic Party's in charge, they're better able to sway their base into being pro-war and supporting big government and supporting interventionism, supporting theft and violence as we see our-our, you know, just so essential to what our federal government is doing these days. But really the base of the Republican Party -- and even here in New Mexico there's a distinct difference between the leadership of the Republican Party and the base -- the grassroots activists and the rank and file members. They're totally receptive to this message. They understand that it's not economically feasible to send so much manpower and material into this nation-building -- these nation-building exercises and not have it hurt people here at home. And when they're forced to consider it like that, you know they realize that what we're doing there isn't worth it. And being able to get them to take that step at this point, it's really satisfying to bring this message to people who haven't heard it because when the Republican Party was in charge for the last eight years, they were getting that propaganda. Now that the War Propaganda is coming from the Democratic machine, they're much more ready to question it --

Cindy Sheehan: Yep.

Adam Kokesh: -- and start speaking out against it.

Cindy Sheehan: Well, Adam, unfortunately we're running out of time. Tell my listeners how they can get ahold of you.

Adam Kokesh: Oh great! This is my opportunity for the shameless plug! Thank you so much.

Cindy Sheehan: Yep, yep.

Adam Kokesh: Kokesh for Congress is the website, K-O-K-E-S-H F-O-R Congress.com, check us out there. You can e-mail me at adam@kokeshforcongress.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Adam Kokesh. And our phone number here at campaign headquarters is (505) 470-1917.

Cindy Sheehan: And I encourage my listeners to -- I know they all know about your anti-war work but I encourage them to go to your website and don't have a knee-jerk reaction just because you have a "R" after your name, right?

Adam Kokesh: Exactly. Well you know there's a lot of issues that cross party lines and it's been great to know that there are people like you who are also seeing that the Federal Reserve is such an integral issue economically which makes all these wars possible and all the other crimes of our government --

Cindy Sheehan: Yep

Adam Kokesh: -- and our corporations happen because of the Federal Reserve.


Staying with those who make war Big Business, yesterday's snapshot, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen (New York Times) interviewed four former Blackwater execs who stated that, in December 2007, approximately one-million dollars was used to bribe officials in Iraq in order to get them to look the other way in the face of Blackwater's continued assaults. Iraq's Minister of the Interior Jawad al-Bolani spoke to CNN (link has video as well as text) and stated that his ministry had launched an investigation into the assertion that Iraqi officials took bribes.

Jawad al-Bolani (via translator): Blackwater has no new positions to operate in Iraq. Blackwater has a problem and a lawsuit. Some of its employees committed a crime against innocent Iraqi civilians in Nussor Square and this case is an ongoing trial in American courts. Blackwater is a company that caused a major national tragedy. The Nussor incidient was a very difficult one and no Iraqi can ever forget it. But the Iraqi government was committed and acted responsibly for the sake of the Iraqi people and the reputation of Iraq.

James Risen (apparently due to the Times' fear of a Nouri-related lawsuit) rushes to print this morning to proclaim, "The Times article reported that former Blackwater executives who learned of the plans said they did not know whether the money was, in fact, delivered to Iraqi officials." Daniel Barlow (Times Argus) reports US House Rep Peter Welch formally called yesterday for an investigation into the allegations of bribery on Blackwater's part writing the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, "Early reports indicate that Blackwater may have violated the Foreign Corrupts Practices Act and potentially interfered with a grand jury inquiry by issuing these bribes. The United States government simply cannot turn a blind eye to such actions." Oliver August (Times of London) quotes a "relative of a Blackwater shooting victim," Aquil Akram stating, "Everything about them is bad. The victims's families were paid at most a few thousand dollars in compensation but the company is giving a million dollars to some government officials."
Meanwhile Iran's Press TV reports that Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has passed on 'details' to the UN Secretary-General's assistant Oscar Fernandez-Taranco on the August 19th and October 25th bombings: "We provided him with all the information which was not published in the media. We have not accused any country, but evidence asserts that former Baathists and al-Qaeda were involved in the attacks." Which would mean that they infilatrated the Iraqi police and the Iraqi military and, to steal from Annie Hall, "the FBI, and the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover and oil companies and the Pentagon and the men's room attendant at the White House." The trucks loaded with bombs went through multiple checkpoints.

In other news, Reuters reports a prison break in Basra with three escaping last night. The violence continues in Iraq with Marwan Ibrahim (Telegraph of London) reporting kidnapping of children is increasing in Kirkuk and goes over some of the known kidnappings including that of Sheikh Othman Abdel Karim Agha's son Moahmmed who says, "They chained me and beat me, and I was in the dark because they blindfoled me. I am still in shock from the constant fear of death."
Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded three people and a Mosul grenade attack which left two police officers injured. Reuters reports a Baghdad car bombing injuring four people.

Shootings?

Zhang Xiang (Xinhua) reports 2 Sahwa members were shot dead today in Jurf al-Sakhr. Sahwa are also known as "Awakenings" and "Sons Of Iraq" (there is also a "Daughters Of Iraq"). Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) explains it was Sahwa commander Othman Mohammed was shot dead in Diyala Province as was an aid accompanying him and reports 1 "headmistress of al Ma'ali School for girls" was shot dead in Baghdad and 2 people shot dead in two different osul shootings. Reuters reports a Balad shooting yesterday which claimed the life of 1 police officer (three more injured) and a Kirkuk shooting yesterday which injured a police officer.

Sahwa are also known as "Awakenings" and "Sons Of Iraq" (there is also a "Daughters Of Iraq"). The US government paid them to stop attacking the US military and its equipment. Richard Sale (Washington Times) reports today:A congressional staffer who spoke on condition that he not be named because he was discussing sensitive intelligence said that after the U.S. stopped paying Sunni forces directly in June, it wasn't long before payments to the tribes "simply stopped. You got paid if you were a power in the government, and the tribal leaders were last on [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki's list," the staffer said. The Iraqi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The PKK is a group of Kurds who fight for a Kurdish homeland. Labeled terrorists by many countries, including Turkey, they long ago set up a camp in the northern mountains of Iraq (which borders Turkey). Reporters have visited the camp -- Deborah Haynes of the Times of London, for example. Recent developments have included some PKK turning themselves over to the Turkish government which has then released them. Reuters reports a second wave of PKK has turned themselves into the Turkish government today (eight members). The PKK issue is not seen as a 'big' one in Iraq currently. For example, the top US commander in Iraq, Gen Ray Odierno, sees the tensions between the KRG and Baghdad as the greatest source of conflict. But the PKK issue has never gone away no matter how many times the current or the previous administration might want it to. The government of Turkey has received repeated promises from the US government (current and previous administrations) that the PKK issue would be 'dealt with' and 'handled' and all that has ever happened has been postponing it until it flares again, at which point the US government is suddenly concerned all over again. For over two years now, Turkey has been conducting air raid bombings over northern Iraq. Asso Ahmed (Los Angeles Times) visits the main camp of the PKK to speak with the leader Murat Karayilan about where things stand currently:

Q: How do you view the policy of the United States on the Kurdish issue? The U.S. has asked Turkey to resolve the issue peacefully.

A: I am doubtful of this policy by America. When [President] Obama visited Turkey he met with Ahmet Turk, the Kurdish parliamentary bloc representative in the Turkish parliament. The meeting had implications, but America does not want to resolve our cause for their own interests in the region. They want to put pressure on us to make more compromises.

Q: How do you manage to stay in Iraq? Do you get any assistance from the Kurdish Regional Government?

A: We have no relations with the KRG, we are not in need of their assistance, we rely on our own finances from our people in Turkey and our supporters abroad. The Kurdish people in Kurdistan sympathize with us and support us morally, but not materially. At the same time, we believe the current situation of the Kurds and their role in the political equation in the region is becoming weaker day after day.


James Glanz and Walter Gibbs (New York Times) contributed a bad article this morning. Peter Galbraith (long called out at this website -- search the archives) finally gets the write up for his help or 'help' which was accompanied by efforts to enrich himself. As October wound down, Al Jazeera's Inside Iraq addressed this issue.

Jasim al-Azzawi: When Norway's most respected financial newspaper, Dagens Noeringsliv, covered the activities of a small, Norwegian oil company called DNO operating in northern Iraq, no one expected subsequent investigations to implicate the former US politician Peter Galbraith. Ambassador Galbraith is now suing DNO for a quarter of a billion dollars because the Kurdistan Regional Government has squeezed him out of his 5% stake in the company. What is more devastating for Iraq is the role Mr. Galbraith played as a political consultant to the KRG writing Iraq's Constitution in a way that can only be described as a potential ticking time bomb. This story has all the marks of dual loyalty, betrayal and international intrigue. [. . .] I am now joined from Oslo by Terje Erikstad, a financial news editor at Dagens Naeringsliv and from London by Sabah al-Mukhtar, president of Arab Layers Association in London. And we were also supposed to be joined by Mohammad Ihsan, Minister for Extra-Regional Affairs of the KRG but unfortunately we were informed at the last minute that he fell sick and cannot join the program.

Transcript of a partial excerpt of the broadcast can be found in the October 26th snapshot. Today NPR's Melissa Block (All Things Considered) interviewed Peter Galbraith about his oil dealings.

Oil is the issue Ameen Izzadeen raises in his latest column for Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror:

Notwithstanding questions over the credibility of US President Barack Obama's anti-Iraq war rhetoric, he has artfully taken the world attention away from Iraq, which his predecessor George W. Bush invaded.
Obama is seen to be fighting his war in the Af-Pak region against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Obviously, it is the daily terror incidents and military operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan that fill the front pages of US newspapers. Incidents in Iraq either make no news these days or are relegated to inside pages.
This does not mean that the United States has shelved Iraq. Far from it, Iraq is very much on its agenda. The shifting of the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan is seen by many observers as deliberate and sneaky. The US apparently does not want much media attention when it is reaping the fruit of the invasion. Like a couple who want to be intimate send their children to play, the US has sent the media to Afghanistan while it digs deeper into Iraq's national wealth. Can we call this Obama's weapon of mass deception?
Last Thursday, Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell won the development rights of a massive oil field -- West Qurna near Basra in Iraq's south. The two oil giants hope to boost daily production from the current 300,000 barrels to 2.3 million barrels a day at West Qurna, which the ousted and hanged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to give to a Russian oil company.
Last month, British Petroleum (BP) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won a contract to develop another oil field. The invitation to China to join the plunder of Iraq is probably a payoff by the US so that this Asian economic powerhouse and rising military power would not rock the pirates' boat.

James Cogan (WSWS) offers, "Having drowned the Iraqi people in blood, the American financial and corporate oligarchy now believes that day has finally arrived. While US corporations are not the sole beneficiaries of the contracts, there is no question who has the final say over Iraq's oil. With huge military bases in the country and a Baghdad regime tied to Washington, the US is positioned to dictate terms to its European and Asian rivals and, amid rising great powers tensions, to wield the threat of cutting off oil suppliers -- a longstanding tenent of American strategic policy." Meanwhile Rod Nordland (New York Times) reports, "Iraq's Baghdad Trade Fair ended Tuesday, six years and a trillion dollars after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and one country was conspicuously absent" -- the United States. US House Rep John Murtha spoke with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (link has text and video) over the weekend and predicted that the costs of the wars in Iraq and Aghanistan will lead to inflation in "seven or eight years". Last Friday, US House Rep Dennis Kucinich issued the following statement:

Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war? The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer's money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businsses money to survive. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street. Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US. The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies . . . When we were promised change, we weren't thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents.

Tuesday's snapshot noted Human Rights Watch's new report entitled [PDF format warning] "On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province's Disputed Territories." The Kurdistan Regional Government has issued a response to the report and we'll note this section of the response:

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has a long standing and productive relationship with Human Rights Watch (HRW). We appreciate what HRW has done in the past. As an oppressed community ourselves, we fully understand the value of ensuring justice for all members and factions of society. In addition, the KRG appreciates the interest in the condition of the minority communities in Ninevah Province's disputed territories. We regard the well-being of all communities in these areas to be of paramount concern. The KRG is ready and willing to look into each and every allegation, and we are ready to work on these issues under the legal framework of both the Kurdistan Region and the Republic of Iraq, with the help of HRW and other reputable human rights organisations. The KRG will investigate each specific claim outlined in the report carefully and thoroughly. There may be instances of maltreatment and neglect; the KRG does not claim to be flawless. But the report reveals a systematic misperception of the circumstances in Ninevah and a worrying ignorance of Iraqi history. HRW therefore produces an inaccurate portrayal of the situation. Furthermore, due to the methodology employed to produce this report, it cannot be the basis for legitimate judgements or assertions. The main thrust of this report could be grossly misleading and the KRG affirms its strong disagreement in this regard. The KRG has done more for the protection of minorities than any other entity in Iraq, and continues to insist on tolerance and peaceful coexistence in the Region and throughout Iraq.

We don't have time for the KRG's full statement in this and, equally true, the HRW report was not given a ringing endorsement here on Tuesday. (Repeating, I believe the two activists who detailed their abuse while in Kurdish custody.) We opened with IVAW and we'll close with it. Yesterday was Veterans Day in the US and, at Fort Hood, there was a candle light vigil. Shelton Green (KVUE -- link has text and video) reported on it.Shelton Green: Well Tyler, they call themselves, Iraq Veterans Against the War. Tonight, they not only honored their fallen comrades, they also brought attention to the growing mental health needs of returning soldiers. There's another vigil Wednesday night to honor the slain and injured and last Thursday's shooting at Fort Hood. But the fire burning within these soldiers and their supporters has a less popular fuel source.Michael Kern: I approached the army when I got back from Iraq and I was like hey I need to talk to someone, I need some help. And they said come back in two months.Shelton Green: Michael Kern who is presently in the army met President Barack Obama Tuesday when he was at Fort Hood for a memorial service for the thirteen killed in Iraq last week. Kern slipped the president a list of changes he'd like to see made for troops returning home from battle.Michael Kerns: He came over to me to shake my hand, put out his hand to shake my hand and very respectfully I pulled out the letter in my pocket, tried handing it to him and I was like, "Sir, IVAW has some issues they would like you to address." And at that point, he put his hand down and moved to the next soldier. Secret Service then took the letter from me and that was the last of it. Shelton Green: Iraq Veterans Against the War want to see a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. They also believe both countries should get reperations from the US. And they want to see better mental health care for returning soldiers. Chance Mills: There should be a more compassionate attitude towards soldiers who are dealing with a lot of stress. And that's where it has to start. No program, no poster on the wall is going to fix that.Shelton Green: Now Iraq Veterans Against the War claims its membership of 2,000 is growing. The group is also organizing a petition for better mental health services for returning troops. We're live at Fort Hood, Shelton Green, KVUE News.

iraq
cindy sheehan
the new york timesjames risen
xinhua zhang xiang
al jazeera
inside iraq
jasim al-azzawi
the times of londonoliver august
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
nprall things considered
the los angeles times
asso ahmed
the washington timesrichard sale
shelton greeniraq veterans against the warkvue

Carly on Latenight with Jimmy Fallon tonight

Tonight Carly Simon is on NBC's Latenight with Jimmy Fallon tonight -- just after The Tonight Show. She'll be performing so we'll get to see some of the tracks from Never Been Gone.

The photo above is the cover of the booklet that comes with the new album. At Third, we used it for "For those about to download . . . " which is a listing of credits for the album. A number (17, I think) of people had e-mailed saying they wanted to download but wanted information (album credits). So they worked on a quick thing over there that would provide all the credits even if you downloaded it.

I'm going to leave it at that because I want this up in enough time to give a heads up to Carly being on TV tonight.


This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, November 11, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, thug Nouri's attack on the press finds unlikely allies (the press), issues effecting veterans get significant play for at least one news cycle, and more.


Today is Veterans Day in the United States. Yesterday the US Senate held a hearing on homeless veterans. The hearing was held by the Housing, Transportation and Community Development Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Senator Robert Menendez chaired the subcommittee hearing which heard from the VA on the first panel and from the National Alliance to End Homelessness' Steve Berg, Coalition for Homeless Veterans' Melanie Lilliston, GI Go Fund's Jack Fanous, Iraq War veteran Lila Guy and Vietnam veteran William Wise. We'll note the personal remarks on homelessness from the hearing.

Lila Guy: As you've already said, I spent a year in Iraq, from 2005 to 2006 and during that time I was in Kirkuk, Iraq. But I had four children at home and a husband. But when I came back home, about a month after we got home, they informed us that we would be redeploying in less than a year, you know, after we had come back and my husband was not happy. He was not in the military but he decided that, you know, it was just not something that he wanted to do and so he just left. And so at the time I had three children. Me and the children were at Fort Campbell and we were doing field training and things like that. I didn't have anybody to watch the kids for me or whatever while I went to the field for thirty days. And I had to ask my mom to come and stay with me for -- so I could do two weeks of training. And after all of that, I just could not, I couldn't do it anymore. It was I was having issues just trying to readjust to being back home and taking care of kids and all of that kind of stuff. So I ended up getting out of the military on a hardship discharge. So when I got out, I had nothing because it was such an abrupt discharge. I didn't have anything, no where to go. And I drove home. All I had was my car and my kids So I drove home to my parents' house and I stayed there for awhile. And I ended up having another baby and my father said, "You know, you can't, we don't have enough room so you going to have to find something." But at that time I had still not found a job. I had four kids now in one room in a two bedroom house with my parents. And so I sent an e-mail to Congressman [Joe] Sestak and he asked and I informed him of my situation. I was in school, I was a full time student but I just didn't have the money. I had no place to go and I asked him could he help me and they sent me to the VA and they just started a pilot program for the HUD-VASH [Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing] -- I mean not a pilot, but it had just started and I was like one of nine of the people to be the first on the program. And it took about a year before I actually got into a house and during that time it was -- it was really stressful because I'm watching as you know all of the people who are in charge -- it was only person. They finally brought in another person and by the time he came, they had about 150 applicants and they were supposed to be having meetings with us coming to our house and all of that kind of stuff but they couldn't do it because they didn't have enough people so -- But anyway I got a house through the HUD VASH program. It's a four bedroom house and it's a beautiful -- it's a nice house just to transition but I thank the HUD VASH program for being there for me when I needed them because I really didn't have any other -- any other choice or whatever. With the HUD VASH program, I really believe in it because I'm -- my situation could have been a lot worse and I see a lot of people that are when we go to the meetings a lot of other people that are in the HUD VASH program that are literally, you know, living on the street and who have mental illness. As I was listening to his [Jack Fanous] statement and it was true to me because I see so many -- not just veterans but soldiers as soon as they come back with so many mental issues and like he said the transition is hard. And they teach you to go and train and fight and do all those things but they don't teach you how to live a normal life when you come back. You know, they don't teach you how to take care of your kids or pay all your bills or whatever. A lot of that stuff is all clumped into together. But once you're out in the real world those things are not there for you. There's nobody to say, "Well this is what you need to do, this is next step" or whatever. A lot of those people are lost. There are a lot of veteran programs but most veterans don't know what things -- what options are out there for them. So it just so happened that I was able to reach out to somebody that could help me but a lot of those people don't know, they don't have those resources. So I just thank, I thank the HUD-VASH program for -- for all that they done for me because it's given me an opportunity to move on with my life. I'm still a full time student and I'm doing the vocational rehabilitation program. And so all of those programs are all different but every time you have to reach out to somebody, you're reaching out here, you're reaching out there, it's frustrating. And a lot of those people don't have the patience to deal with those kind of things so if there was some way that those things could be pushed together -- not necessarily pushed together but given them the opportunity to be able to say, "Well these are the options that you have. These are the things that are out there for you." It would help a lot of these soldiers out a lot because they don't have anybody as their liaison to say, "Look you can do this, that and the other." So I just thank you for allowing me to be here. Thank you.

[. . .]

William Wise: I'm pretty much here to endorse the long term residential programs like the one I'm in in Winslow. Having been in short term programs, in and out of psych wards and programs and then thrown back out in the private sector the long term residential program has provided me with the time to really address -- asses and address the issues of a veteran and to use our military skill, our military training experience and training and turn that into a skill set to learn how to transition out. It's a very good program. And I think the time -- the time that you're there is so important. Short term is not going to work, the 120 day program, at least not for me. Had I know about the VA program earlier, it had probably been like 4th down and 99 before I even tried to call the 1-800 number, you know what I'm saying. I come from a generation where it's nothing but a scratch, I can handle it. And so it was a long time coming before I got to the point where I sought someone to get a new play to run and I still probably would have run my own play. I don't know what else to say about that except I really, really enjoyed that program. It saved my life. I've created a balance where I can see something instead of trying to assimilate, I can take my own self and go on and that's all I have, thank you.

Chair Robert Menendez: Mr. Wise what program were you talking about.

William Wise: Veterans Haven. Veterans Haven in Winslow. It's a two-year vocational and residential -- I mean vocational and transitional arrangement. You know, two years and after completion, with a certain income, you can go to get housing assistance as long as you stay in the state of New Jersey. I leave in March and that's where I plan to stay, in Jersey.

Lisa Chen (ABC News) reports that a third of the homeless population currently is made up of veterans: "Assistant Secretary of Housing Mercedes Marquez says that since February, HUD has funded over 136 programs that specifically target programs, and a partner program between HUD and the VA started in FY08, called the HUD-VASH [Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program] is funded at $75 million annually and serves over 20,000 homeless vets, including many who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan." Susan Campbell (Hartford Courant) also covers the issue noting the estimated 131,000 homeless veterans around the country with approximately 5,000 in Connecticut alone and that the strain those assisting veterans already is expected to increase as more veterans are created by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"They gave me a gun" he said
"They gave me a mission
For the power and the glory --
Propaganda -- piss on 'em
There's a war zone inside me --
I can feel things exploding --
I can't even hear the f**king music playing
For the beat of -- the beat of black wings."
[. . .]
"They want you -- they need you --
They train you to kill --
To be a pin on some map --
Some vicarious thrill --
The old hate the young
That's the whole heartless thing
The old pick the wars
We die in 'em
To the beat of -- the beat of black wings" -- "The Beat of Black Wings," words and music by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm.


As is too often the case, turnout for the hearing yesterday was sparse; however, I'm referring to senators. The visitor section was actually fairly well packed. We'll note the following exchanges from the second panel.

Chair Robert Menendez: Mr. Berg, you said about the VA needs to take leadership at a local level. Can you expound on -- what exactly do you mean by that, 'they need to take leadership at the local level'?

Steve Berg: I think that there's two things -- two things I mean by that. One is within a community, in every community in this country, there's people working on the issue of homelessness. There's HUD funded programs, there's HHS programs, there's VA programs. A lot of the times those programs don't necessarily work together around veterans, around the simple things if you're really going to be serious about reducing and ending veterans homelessness in the community, you have to find the veterans who are homeless, find the veterans who are about to be homeless, make sure that somebody is doing that and then find the housing resources that are going to be available and the other kinds of resources that are going to be available, going to be needed for those veterans. So it's a matter of reaching out to different people in the community, to leaders in the community, to federally funded programs, to private programs, bringing them together around this task of in this community we're going to identify veterans who are homeless and we're going to get them into housing until and chip away at the number until we reduce the number to zero.

[. . .]

Chair Robert Menendez: Mr. Fanous, you talked about fragmentation, so if you had a magic wand and could make what you think is the best coordinated effort to take place, what would it be?

Jack Fanous: Well, honestly, Senator, I believe that the most important thing would be to have all the stakeholders who are providing care for veterans, they should be localized and put into one location. When a veteran has to travel from the VA in one part of the state and has to go to the Social Security administration in another part of the state and then he has to go to Social Security -- to Salvation Army or the GI Go Fund and he has to drive all over the state, many times they don't have enough money to put gas in their car. It just gets that simple that the facilities all have to be together in one centralized location which is something that we are hoping to work on the city of Newark which is to create a mall of services, just a one-stop, a legitimate one-stop mall of services where one office would be Social Security administration and one office would be the VA and one office would be various non-profits that can support veterans. If a veteran can just walk into one spot which is kind of what the VA's War Related Illness Injury Center has at the VA where they try to handle all medical issues at one point. If you can try to handle all issues completely -- veterans issues -- from the Department of Labor, every single one of those departments, is the best chance you're going to have to help the veterans. Otherwise, it's going to stay fragmented because if a veteran goes to the VA and he talks to one person, he might not know that he has to go to the Social Security administration, he might not be getting the right information. Which is what happens every day, I see it every single day in my office.

And do you ever see a female veteran? It's really appalling for an organization to send a speaker who repeatedly refers to veterans as "he." Even more so when you grasp that Fanous is the executive director. In the real world, Susan Kaplan (WOMENSENEWS) reports, "Despite growing numbers of homeless female veterans, Jackie K's House is one of only two transitional housing programs for female veterans in the country, says Jack Downing, director of Soldier On, the nonprofit group that founded Jackie K's House in 2005. Meanwhile, the number of women enlisted in the U.S. military and reserves today continue to grow." And it is really appalling how little Congress does to show that they care about the issue. They can show they care about it by inviting people who can speak to the issue. They rarely bother and it is insulting (and a female veteran stopped me after the hearing yesterday to ask that I include that it was insulting in the snapshot -- sorry to her that it's a day after the hearing) when not only are the voices of those working on female veterans issues shut out of the conversation, but the men who are invited repeatedly use language that portray "veterans" as a term only for men. Vietnam Veterans of America's Marsha Four is one of the few women who has been invited by Congress this year to testify on a panel about veterans issues -- that's veterans issues in general. There are people, such as US House Rep John Hall, who have chaired female veterans hearings and they deserve praise for that; however, why is that every time the hearing is on veterans in general, women veterans are either treated as an after thought or just ignored?

Appearing before the House Veterans Committee on June 3rd, Four explained, "There certainly is a question of course on the actual number of homeless veterans -- it's been fluctuating dramatically in the last few years. When it was reported at 250,000 level, two percent were considered females. This was roughly about 5,000. Today, even if we use the very low number VA is supplying us with -- 131,000 -- the number, the percentage, of women in that population has risen up to four to five percent, and in some areas, it's larger. So that even a conservative method of determining this has left the number as high as [6,550]. And the VA actually is reporting that they are seeing that this is as high as eleven percent for the new homeless women veterans. This is a very vulnerable population, high incidents of past sexual trauma, rape and domestic violence. They have been used, abused and raped. They trust no one. Some of these women have sold themselves for money, been sold for sex as children, they have given away their own children. And they are encased in this total humiliation and guilt the rest of their lives." The number of homeless veterans is expected to rise as more and more deployed begin returning home. That's for men and women. And equally true is that the number of women veterans who are homeless is expected to rise. When women veterans go homeless, more often that also means that children go homeless. That is less often the case for male veterans (less often -- it still does happen but less so).

For the record, it's not just a matter of putting a woman in a chair. It needs to be a woman qualified to speak on the issues and with few exceptions, Congress repeatedly invites women who know nothing about other female veterans and have nothing to offer. For example, if you're a parent, if you're a single parent and the primary parent for your children, if you're qualified to speak on women's issues you wouldn't waste time saying that it's just like when you're a man. Especially if you were a woman with children who was homeless. You're helping no one with your constant refrain of "What he said" or idiotic statements about leaving the military and "now I'm a female again." Really? The army issued you something in the place of a vagina? They removed it? I can be rude. I can be really rude. I'm biting my tongue.


But let's high road it and say that, yes, sometimes a member of Congress does ask the right questions (for instance, Senator Menendez did yesterday) but there is no one present who can answer the questions and that still falls back on the Congress. That's the reality. And let's put the blame where it also goes: with ourselves. If you're a woman and you're actually invited to testify before Congress, grasp that you are taking part in a very rare moment. Women are rarely invited to testify before Congress, even at this late date. So if you're invited, try having some self-respect. Even if you have to fake it.

Tonight on PBS' The NewsHour, Betty Ann Bowser reports on Iraq War veteran Jeremiah Workman and PTSD (and online currently, there's a NewsHour webextra of Staff Sgt Workman talking about his PTSD). (Yesterday there was a report on Iraqi refugees -- link has text, video and audio options -- which we'll try to highlight later in the week.)

Don't take no tidal wave
Don't take no mass grave
Don't take no smokin' gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace
In the crowded streets
In the big hotels
In the mosques and the doors of the old museum
I take a holly vow
To never kill again
Try to remember peace
-- "Living With War" written by Neil Young, from his album of the same name

Veterans Day was covered on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show today. The first hour featured VA Assistant Secretary Tammy Duckworth, Washington Post's David Finkel (The Good Soldiers) and Peter van Agtmael (Second Tour Hope I Don't Die). For the second hour, Page is joined by Stars and Stripes Leo Shane, Jericho Project's Tori Lyon, Survivor Corps' Scott Quilty, Yellow Ribbon America's Brad White and Sun Valley Adaptive Sports' Tom Iselin. The Diane Rehm Show archives its broadcasts and you can stream at no charge. Susan Page was today's guest host (Diane's on an NPR cruise with listener supporters).

Susan Page: And you know, I know there are a lot challenges in meeting the needs of veterans. I wonder if the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, are there challenges for the VA different in some way for these wars than for previous ones?

Tammy Duckworth: Well, yes, there are some key differences. Number one, they are being redeployed multiple times whereas in previous wars they were generally only deployed for their one year as was the case in Vietnam for example. Now there were many Vietnam vets who volunteered for additional deployments but it's actually a matter of course for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans to have two, three and even four deployments under their belts. We also have for the first time a large percentage of female veterans who are facing combat and we're finding some really interesting results out of that. For example, 50% -- I'm sorry, 45% of all of our female veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have actually come to the VA to get medical care.

Susan Page: Interesting. And I know that it was almost precisely five years ago today that the helicopter you were in, serving in Iraq, was shot down. You lost your legs in that accident. I wonder thinking about that very personal experience, when it came to the programs that were available, what mattered to you the most? What made the biggest difference for you?

Tammy Duckworth: Well the biggest difference for me was being cared for at a facility where there were other veterans and then also just the amount of amazing rehabiliative care that I received at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] and at VA. And the transition from Walter Reed, which is DoD [Defense Dept] to VA had to be as smoothly as possible because I was still in recovery and it's so critical for our warriors when they're in that -- their early stages of recovery -- of reintegration and recovery -- to get full support.

Susan Page: And what didn't work so well, did you think, in your own experience?

Tammy Duckworth: Well what didn't work so well -- this is one of the first things I brought up to [VA] Secretary [Eric] Shinseki when he interviewed me -- was the fact that we did not have a seamless transition of our military records from DoD to VA. When I left Walter Reed with my full medical records and I went to my VA hospital for the first time, I had to strip down to prove that I was an amputee. Even though he could see that I was an amputee and he had the medical records from the surgeon who amputated my legs. And we're immediately fixing that. Back in May of this year, [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates and Secretary Shinseki agreed to a program where we're going to develop virtual, lifetime, electronic records. So that from the day you raise your hand to enlist in the army to the day that you're laid to rest in one of our national shrines, your records follow you. And this will be a momnumental change in how VA and DoD hand off and care for our veterans.

Susan Page: One of the things that I think has alarmed many Americans is the-the suicide rate among returning veterans which seems very high and I wonder why do you think that is so?

Tammy Duckworth: I'm sorry. Could you say that again? You cut off for just a minute. I'm calling from a cell phone.

Susan Page: Why do you -- you know we've been, we've read a lot about the rate of suicides among returning veterans and it seems such a -- such a tragedy. Why do you think there is this high suicide rate?

Tammy Duckworth: Well there's a couple of things going on and this goes back to what I said earlier about our veterans going on multiple deployments -- two, three, four rotations -- whereas in previous wars they did not go for as long. You also have veterans coming home and surviving far more greivous injuries such as myself who would never have survived [in earlier wars]. And also I think that we're just more vigilant now. In previous wars, a lot of veterans suffered for a very long time without a diagnosis and without people realizing they were suffering and I think we're just doing a better job of diagnosing people. In fact, in 2008, VA diagnosed over 442,000 patients with PTSD. This is something that certainly wasn't done after Vietnam when we called it "combat fatigue" and after WWII and Korea when we called it "shell shock." So I think we're more vigilant, we're finding more of them but also that they're facing multiple, repeated exposure to combat condition.

Susan Page: And do you think that the VA does a good job now screening for PTSD or do you still think there's a ways to go?

Tammy Duckworth: I think that we still have improvements to make It's not just VA, it has to be a VA - DoD partnership. I think we're better than we were five years ago when I first went over to Iraq.

A friend with the program (Diane's show) tells me Corey Flintoff had a report on the 'judicial' decision in Iraq yesterday. It's a real shame NPR doesn't have it up so that people can actually hear it. From yesterday's snapshot: "Today in a huge blow to freedom of the press and a boost to thug Nouri al-Maliki, a Baghdad court declared the thug a winner. Martin Chulov and Julian Borger (Guardian) report: 'An Iraqi court has ordered the Guardian to pay Nouri al-Maliki damages of 100m dinar (£52,000) after supporting a complaint by the Iraqi prime minister's intelligence service that he had been defamed by a Guardian story in April describing him as increasingly autocratic. The ruling ignored testimony by three expert witnesses from the Iraqi journalists' union summoned by the court, who all said that the article was neither defamatory nor insulting and argued that no damages were warranted'." Chris Floyd (Empire Burlesque) explains, "What exactly did the Guardian do to merit this judgment -- which, perhaps not incidentally, directs them to put more than $100,000 in Nouri al-Maliki's pocket? Something which, admittedly, is quite shocking in our day: reporting." Floyd also notes, "After a number of expert witnesses demolished the case on legal grounds, a new five-member panel of government toadies weighed in to argue that 'Iraqi publishing law did not allow foreigners to publish articles critical of the prime minister or president, or to interfere in Iraqi national affairs'." This afternoon the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement:


The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces a Baghdad court's ruling that the London-based Guardian newspaper defamed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, in an April 2009 article depicting increasing authoritarianism in his government. CPJ calls on an appeals court to overturn the decision.
On Tuesday, the court fined the Guardian 100 million Iraqi dinars (US$86,000) in connection with the article, which quoted unnamed members of the intelligence service as saying that al-Maliki was conducting affairs of state in a more autocratic fashion.
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger described the verdict as "a dismaying development," Agence France-Presse reported. "Prime Minister Maliki is trying to construct a new, free Iraq . Freedom means little without free speech -- and means even less if a head of state tries to use the law of libel to punish criticism or dissent," he said. The newspaper said that it will appeal the verdict.
"We are very disappointed to see the politicization of the Iraqi judiciary in this way," said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem . "That the courts would devote their time to this type of irresponsible suit is outrageous considering that scores of journalist murders remain unpunished. It is vital that this decision be reversed in the appeals process."
Of the 140 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, at least 89 were targeted for murder, CPJ research shows. Iraqi authorities have not brought a single perpetrator to justice in any of those killings.
"This heavy-handed decision sends a chilling message to all journalists who have risked their lives to report from Iraq , and it resonates particularly now in the run-up to the general election scheduled for January," said Abdel Dayem. "The article accused the prime minister's government of being increasingly autocratic. This court case proved the point."
As the security situation has improved, many journalists have told CPJ that government harassment, physical assaults, and frivolous legal proceedings have replaced insurgent attacks as the greatest professional risk they face. Al-Maliki has appeared to lead the legal assault against Iraqi journalists: At least two other defamation complaints have been filed by his representatives in connection with articles critical of the prime minister, CPJ research shows. Those complaints were dropped after they came under heavy criticism.
In June, CPJ and the Iraq-based press freedom group Journalistic Freedoms Observatory sent a letter to al-Maliki expressing concerns about increasing official harassment. In the first six months of the year, the two organizations documented more than 70 cases of harassment and assault against journalists in Iraq .

That's their statement -- in full because it's such an important issue and it is shocking and saddening how many are avoiding this issue. Thomas E. Ricks can whine every damn day about Iran and the press but this man who was supposedly going to be covering Iraq -- don't they say anything when they're selling their wares -- can't He has plenty of time to fondle Spencer Ackerman's balls (or maybe he's just checking for pubic lice) and, of course, to call out Iran, to play 'I love Barack but . . .' and 'I love Barack still' but he has no time to do what should be a journalist's job: Defend freedom of the press.

Oh but he called out Iran! Big whopping deal. As brave stands go, that's right up there with coming out against child labor. Everyone knows the only way to have taken on Nouri and that laughable 'court' verdict would have been for as many outlets as possible to have flooded the zone. Instead pretty much everyone played meek and dumb. Yeah, that'll advance freedom of speech. It's as though J-schools have morphed into sleep away camps -- which, come to think of it, would explain the majority of the product the press puts out these days. No wonder so many papers are closing.

Prior to Sunday when the Parliament finally passed an election law, a number of Iraqis were publicly stating their disinterest in the elections. Warren P. Strobel and Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) report that feeling remains for some and they quote school teacher Bayda Hussein explaining, "We still have a bad security situation and bad services. I am afraid that the situation would be even worse after the coming elections. Those who come to power care only about filling their pockets with money and (then) leave the country." Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) reports that Ad Melkert, the UN's special representative to Iraq, held a press conference today in which he noted that the 'plan' is to hold elections with "less than 10 weeks available to organize these elections." Arraf reports: "Mr Melkert said officials were considering holding the poll on Jan. 18 to ensure it took place before the start of 40 days of mourning observed by Shiite Muslims to commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. Advance voting for Iraqi security forces, who will be out in full force on election day, is expected to be held on Jan. 15."

Turning to some of today's reported violence . . .

Bombings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Kirkuk sticky bombing which claimed 1 life and left two more people injured. Reuters notes a Mosul roadside bombing which injured a police officer and, dropping back to yesterday, a Kirkuk sticky bombing which wounded two people.

Shootings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 Kurdish service member shot dead last night in Erbil. Reuters notes Iraqi police in Samarra killed 1 'suspect' and arrested seven.

Turning to the topic of Blackwater. Mark Mazzetti and James Risen (New York Times) interview four former Blackwater execs who state that, in December 2007, approximately one-million dollars was used to bribe officials in Iraq in order to get them to look the other way in the face of Blackwater's continued assaults. Yesterday's snapshot noted an article by Donna Goodison (Boston Herald) and she's written another one on the topic (of the two Massachusetts veterans who are suing KBR: Jeffrey Cox and James Garland). In her new report, she quotes Cox stating, "The pits are at least 10 acres in some places -- as big as the Boston Common, if not larger. You would get this deep smoke that would come downwind to the area that I was living at, and I would breathe this in on a nightly basis." Chris Cassidy (Salem News) reports on the law suit and quotes Cox stating, "I was downwind from the burning. You'd sit in there and breathe that in all day. . . . The smoke was so thick some days that it went right into where I was sleeping. It was like a heavy fog of smoke." Andrew Wolfson (Louisville Courier-Journal) reports that Iraq War veterans Sean Alexander Stough and Charles Hick are among those suing with Stough being exposed while at Camp Bucca (now has "asthma, sleep apnea, neurological and pulmonary problems") and Hicks at Balad (now suffers from "pulmonary problems, headaches and diabetes"). Jeanie Powell (WAFF) reports Jeanie Powell (WAFF) reportson L. Russell Kieth who testified last week about his exposure and how he feels that his development of Parkinson's Disease:He said he worked no more than half a mile from the open burning in Balad. Keith claimed smoke, sometimes black, green, or yellow, would cover the base on a regular basis."As soon as they started burning the green stuff, all of our clinic patients started going up," he said. "It increased 30 to 40 percent, just in my guess."WAFF 48 News asked him to explain the symptoms patients came in with."It was everything from respiratory to sinus to outright coughing blood and stuff," he said.

L. Russell Keith testified (most recently) on Friday when KBR's burn pits were the subject, see Friday's snapshot, of a Democratic Policy Committee hearing chaired by Senator Byron Dorgan. Video is posted at the Democratic Policy Committee website.

The heartbeat went out of our house
The rhythm went out of our romance
But in life that happens and you just
Have to remember to breathe
And it then will return, if you just remember to breathe
After all I've been through, I'll wait it on through
If I can just remember to breathe
It will be coming around once more, you will see
-- "Coming Around Again," written by Carly Simon, from her latest album Never Been Gone

Tonight Carly appears on NBC's Latenight with Jimmy Fallon. She's scheduled to perform and sometimes in this world, music is the only thing you can count on. Latenight with Jimmy Fallon begins airing after The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (which follows the local nightly news).

iraq
joni mitchell
pbsthe newshour
the diane rehms showsusan pagenpr
the boston heralddonna goodisonkbr
the new york timesmark mazzettijames risenthe salem newschris cassidyandrew wolfsonjeannie powell
neil young
abc newslisa chen
susan campbell
the christian science monitorjane arraf
carly simon